#thank god none of the dudes cause me similar issues

[cblgblog]

Sorry I’m advance but one of my other favorite accounts just reblogged a Tony scene and people are talking about Civil War and how it made them Stan Tony, and how when they watch that movie they hate team cap👀 Then someone was all about how he was sleep deprived and how much pressure he was under and couldn’t understand how people didn’t like Tony because. Someone literally said that when someone says they don’t like Tony in Civil War they say “did you watch the same movie as me.” I’m baffled. Oddly enough someone else said, “he just wants to help everyone.” Sorry for the rant but I think people forget about what the accords are and what it would mean for people. Side note, I hope you’re having a great day/night 😀

No sorry needed!

I feel you man, I do. Honestly, I’ve unfollowed people based on similar posts when I was in especially Done moods, so.

Look on the one hand, the movie would’ve been a narrative failure if everyone was in favor of one side or the other, right? The whole point of the damn thing—besides giving the Mouse overlords more money—was to spark discussion, debate. Which, yeah, we’ll call that the tame description for what actually happened. But just, the thing was meant to split the fanbase so in that regard…winning? Thanks, I guess?

Film is also very obviously subjective, different strokes for different folks, so yeah, ten people can watch a movie and none of them are gonna see the exact same film. Let’s try to remember that this is, in theory anyway, a good thing. I just read a professional film review yesterday where I had the same reaction. What film were you watching, dude? Incidentally his reviewing partner said the same thing.

So honestly, no, they weren’t watching the same film as you or I or anyone else, because everyone brings their own biases and experiences and knowledge and interests into a thing, and that’s always going to flavor how it’s viewed. Again, let’s try to remember that this is good. In theory. Heavy on the theory.

That out of the way? Let’s get into Tony specifically so his uber stans can find this and scream at me on anon as though I just shot RDJ with a nuke.

Oh yeah, he was stressed. Oh, he was sleep deprived. Yeah, I’ve heard that. And that it’s Pepper’s fault, if she hadn’t left the poor baby, if she was there to rein him in, he’d be fine dammit, leave the baby alone!

Here’s the thing. You know who gets a pass on their shit behavior when they’re upset or tired? Actual babies. Actual babies and toddlers, and children, up to a point. Because they actually cannot always help themselves. Their bodies and brains are different, they have not learned better.

When you’re a 50-year-old man who’s supposedly the world’s bestest superhero, who wants, wants to be in charge of protecting the whole world? You need a little more self-control than that. The sleep deprived excuse works if you snap at someone before you’ve had your coffee, not for this. Roseanne Barr didn’t get to blame Ambien for her racism, Tony doesn’t get to handwave CW away because oops, I was tired.

Really? You’re a superhero, dude. Most of your teammates are tired too, that’s part of the gig. If you crash and burn this badly without your afternoon nap, fucking hang up the armor and go back to your billionaire playboy lifestyle.

Speaking of that, sure, right. It’s Pepper’s fault because she left him. Put aside the argument on whether that was justified or not (cough, it was and she should’ve stayed away even though they are adorable together). It’s not Pepper’s job to keep Tony sane. It’s not any partner’s job to do that for anyone. If she wants out, she has a right to that, without Tony going off the rails and blaming it on her. Seriously, he says part of the reason he backed the Accords was to “split the difference” with Pepper.

Dude. You were an asshole and you lost your girl. You destroyed all your suits, turned an emotional and mental corner in IM 3…and then relapsed 4 minutes later I guess because Whedon. Either way, Tony admits himself that he does not want to stop. So instead of doing that, or finding another partner who can accept that, you back an unjust international law that pits you against your team, your supposed friends? Go to therapy, have a pint of ice cream, cry into your pillow, send her more of those strawberries you sent her in IM 2 that she’s allergic to. You don’t go trying to change international law in ways that could ultimately affect millions of people because your girl left you.

Honestly—and thank God they didn’t do this but—the only way the Pepper excuse works in excusing his behavior in any way is if she’d died. Or been severely injured like Happy in IM 3. Still wouldn’t be okay, but, like Quill messing up their chance to stop Thanos because Gamora died, it would’ve been more understandable. Understandable, not excusable, and the way the MCU treats their women as manpain fodder, we’re probably legit lucky we didn’t get this.

As for him wanting to help everyone. He does in fact want that, I think. The problem is that his need to feel like he’s doing that is stronger than his rational mind, or his want to actually help in a constructive way.

Tony is too smart. He’s dumb as hell in many instances, mostly involving people and relationships, but he’s also too smart, and he’s been told for too long that he’s smart, and he’s bought into it. Ultron. Suit of armor around the world, protects the world, no more alien threats. It’s a simple concept on paper that fails in execution. So there are people with dangerous powers. Okay, we’ll make a set of laws to keep them from being dangerous, problem solved. But again, it isn’t.

Tony is not used to problems he cannot solve. He’s a genius, right? He can fix anything. He should be able to fix anything. That’s how he feels. But not everything is zeros and ones and circuits, things that can be fixed mechanically like his armors can. The people he wants to protect are not built that way. But he needs to feel like he’s doing something, because he’s terrified of what happens to the world if he doesn’t. So he creates these simple solutions to complex problems. The suit of armor, the Accords. They sound good in theory, but the problems they’re trying to solve are bigger than they are. And Tony, way back in IM 1, he sat back for years, clueless that his weapons were being used for bad things. He says it to Cap in CW. When he found out what his weapons were being used for, he went in and stopped it. Whether or not he should’ve known that already is a separate issue here. The point here is that when he found out, too late or not, he went in and did something about it.

Tony needs to do something about it. Again, go back to Cap in AoU, Tony’s nightmare sequence. Steve asks Tony why he didn’t save them. Tony’s ultimate nightmare is that he sits back and does nothing, and his inaction causes everyone to die. Which is where you get Ultron. Something he came up with because of what he saw in space in Avengers 1, then doubled down on in AoU. It’s where you get the Accords. Oops, he caused someone to die, he killed Charles Spencer. Must do something about that right now so it doesn’t happen again, and he won’t have to feel this guilt. He should be collaborating with others to come up with solutions (no Bruce in AoU doesn’t count because Bruce was dumb there), or at the very least, taking more time to think through the repercussions of the things he puts out there. But he doesn’t, because he’s got his savior complex that tells him that he alone can and must fix this, and because he’s too dumb to realize how not-smart he is in certain areas.

“We need to be put in check. Whatever form that takes, I’m game.”

Isn’t that what he says in CW, or something very close to it? Whatever form that takes. That’s the issue, right there, whatever form that takes. Realistically, yes, there should be laws regarding people with powers, the same way there are special laws pertaining to people who carry guns, or people who are licensed to fly planes. You have a thing/can do a thing that not everyone else does, so there are regulations pertaining to that thing. Laws change with the times, they always have. Some new technology comes up, eventually there will be laws that regulate it. As there should be, honestly. The issue with the Accords, Steve’s issue with the Accords, was not the basic idea. He says as much. He says that it could work, but there would have to be safeguards. Safeguards that are not in the Accords that Tony wants him to sign.

It's not a matter of oh, fuck the law, there should be no law governing these people, they’re above it. The problem is that the law as it’s presented here is unjust. There’s what, a month between Lagos and Ross coming by to tell them about the Accords? A month is not enough time to properly analyze such a big issue, Especially when you’re reacting out of fear, which is what happened with Lagos. People died because of an Enhanced person, an Avenger, in this case. Lawmakers don’t want that to happen again, they especially don’t want the political shit storm that comes with it. Damn, we look like we were asleep at the switch here, not having anything to throw at this problem earlier. Quick, let’s throw together this thing so no one can say we’re not addressing the problem.

Patriot Act of 2001, anyone? 9/11 happened, the public were rightfully terrified, the US said oh man, these are unprecedented circumstances, we’ve never had this before. Don’t worry though, we’re on this, we’re protecting you. The reality being that that bill simply gave the government too much power, most of it being used against people who were not actually threats, and it’s debatable, to say the very least, whether or not that law helped more than it hurt.

No law is perfect. No law ever will be. It’s not possible. We still have to strive for perfection though, have to aim there so that the laws we get are as close to fair as possible. Tony’s a big deal. If not for his “whatever form that takes” attitude, he might’ve been able to use his influence to pressure lawmakers into coming up with a fairer bill. Hey, I’m me, the public loves me, I will endorse this bill publicly and work on getting the rest of the team to sign, but you need to change this and this and this first, or no deal. Instead, he took the easy way out, the quickest, easiest way for him to feel like he’s atoned for his sins without actually doing anything. Whatever form that takes.

Tony’s not wrong because he backs the creation of a law that addresses these things. He’s wrong because he says himself that he does not care what that law does, specifically, so long as it exists. He’s wrong because he violates said law upteen times during the movie, while preaching to team Cap about what assholes they are for not backing it. He’s wrong because he cares more about feeling as though he’s tackled a problem than he does about taking the time to make sure that the thing he’s proposing is actually a good idea. He’s wrong because of what he does with Bucky, though that’s honestly a separate issue, for the purposes of this discussion.

Anyway, that was longer than I ever wanted it to be. Damn. Next time you see a comment about CW being the reason people stan Tony, just remember there are other people out there who stopped stanning Tony because of that movie. Everyone’s entitled to see a piece of media however they see it, and although the Tony stans are often the loudest, there are plenty of like-minded people out there who share your take on events. Block who you need to, unfollow who you need to, blacklist what you need to, and don’t let them get you down.

Hang in there, and have an awesome day :)

#pro steve rogers #pro team cap #anti tony stark #anti tony stans #anti iron man #anti team iron man

[mccoyyy]

Bring historical accuracy to Carlisle's early life, pretty please 🥰

absolutely (and thank you @pandabooraccoon and the other two anons who asked something similar to this too I love you so much). I'm putting this under a read more cause, yeah

ok, to start of with I am nowhere near an expert, but this time period in history really fascinates me cause there was so much going on. 

so Carlisle was born in 1640′s London, and at the time there was a shit tonne of religious and political upheaval going on. You had the Union of Crowns, disagreements over the Church systems, covenanting, Civil War and Cromwell, Executions and the removal and restoration of the Monarchy. Shit was mad. But I’m gonna start with Carlisle’s dad (I’m going to call him Abraham but full credit for that one goes to @panlight​) cause I have so many thoughts

Abraham was a pastor in 1640. He most likely started working when he was breached and then took over as Pastor (Preacher) after his dad died. I’m going to say he was born around 1620, married in 1639ish and then Carlisle was born a year later. So he would be what, 20 when Carlisle was born. 

First of the bat, there is no way that Abraham would still be alive and kicking when Carlisle was 23. The life expectancy back then was just under 40, so a 43 year old Abraham cutting about burning witches (and we’ll get to that in just a moment) just isn’t realistic but neither are vampires so oh well. In terms of religion if were being historically accurate, then Abraham would have most likely been an Anglican pastor as that was the dominant form of church in England at the time and he would have been fucked up by the mob/church/general public/all of the above for being anything else

However, it gets sticky when you bring in the idea of Puritanism. I firmly believe that Abraham would have loved Cromwell and puritanism (cause I like to headcanon him as an utter dick) but if were doing that then it creates a problem. If Abe was a devout Protestant Anglican, he would have believed in the divine right of kings (a monarch has no authority other than the word of god and therefore doesn't need to listen to anyone else) and therefore seen Charles I as the mouth of God, and had issues with the whole execution thing, so if Abe was a Puritan, then he would probably have to be a Presbyterian (dominant form of church in Scotland and also the parliamentarians) but again, this causes problems cause no one really liked Presbyterianism (understatement). It’s possible that he could have been influenced by Cromwell and switched from Anglicanism but religion back then was very different to what it was now, it took a lot to get people to change their ideas over faith (see the plague) so I’m gonna go out on a limb and blame Charles I who first started to undermine parliament and try to start Absolutism which lead Abe to change his loyalties. Either that or he supported Cromwell’s agenda but didn’t agree with execution which is the most likely option tbh.

With Abraham out of the way, we can now move on to our boy. Carlisle, the son of a pastor in 1640, there is no fucking way that this dude didn’t know the year/date he was born. Know why? cause dates were recorded by none other than the fucking church. aka his father. Carlisle is just bad with dates but that's ok buddy i guess that happens when your like 300. Secondly, his dad wouldn’t have raised him. It would have been left up to his mum, but cause she wasn't around he would have been raised by a wet nurse until he was breeched and entered the adult world at the ripe and grown up age of six (at least I think but I’m not 100% sure) when he would have started helping his father with sermons, and received an education of some form (probably a clerics education). Either way, he would have been helping his father at a very young age and exposed to so much shit

Back to Abraham for a wee second. Smeyer writes that he hunted down and burned vampires but again, this isn’t likely. Vampire hunters did exist but not in London. They were most common in Bulgarian/Serbian beliefs and even then they were very different to the modern idea of vampire hunters. And secondly, they wouldn’t have been burned! pyres weren’t used in the 1600s and instead would probably have been killed through hangings, torture or trials to determine whether they were a witch or not. So the good news is, Carlisle didn’t have to watch women being burned alive from the age of like six, he would only have to watch women being drowned, tortured, disembowelled, branded and hanged! and not just women accused of being witches, but most likely Catholics too!

We don’t know much about Carlisle’s life from his birth to his ‘death’, so I’m gonna take creative liberty and make some stuff up. London in the 1640s was utterly awful. It was dark, bleak, and really smelly. He was pretty lucky in terms of the plague cause the only major outbreaks occurred just before him and just after him (1603, 25 and 65) but there would have been the odd outbreak. I like to believe that Carlisle was an argumentative little shit and from the age of like 10 argued with his dad about literally everything. Canon says that Carlisle didn’t agree with his fathers particular brand of faith, so I’m going to go out on a limb and say that whilst he was still a protestant, and most likely Anglican, he probably followed an early form of religious tolerance at the least. Lutheranism didn’t reach England until around the enlightenment so I don't want to call him that but it was in existence in Germany at the same time so others had probably moved towards it a little, it just didn't have a name. His tolerance probably came from watching his father punish Catholics from the age of six, and their main argument as he got older was probably regarding tolerance of Catholicism. As much as I hate to say it, its low key unrealistic that Carlisle wasn’t married as a human so that would probably have been another point of contest between Carlisle and Abraham.

During Cromwell’s puritan reign was the most prominent witch-hunting years too, so if were being really nit-picky then Abraham would probably have only started hunting witches or at least started doing it a lot more frequently than he previously did round about here.

Cromwell died in 1658, and the monarchy was restored in England in 1660, but Carlisle’s dad most likely still followed puritan ideals and was not happy with the restoration period, and again, the revival of Christmas, theatre and fun was something that 20 year old Carlisle and Abraham would have disagreed over. Carlisle would have taken over a lot of his fathers duties round about this time, leading sermons and all that because Abraham should have been dead by now so I guess smeyer can have that one.

And now we get up to our boy’s final years. And this is like shooting still targets. Carlisle was hunting vampires in London sewers when he got bit, and then crawled into a potato cellar where he writhed in agony for 3-4 days. Firstly, sewers. The London sewage system wasn’t built for one or two hundred years. London was so fucking smelly. Like so much so that if it was sunny the house of commons/Westminster had to be evacuated cause the (literal) shite in the Thames would have warmed up and became especially pungent, and it was only when it started to affect MP’s that they though that maybe they should do something about it (which is probably another reason that super-senses-vampire Carlisle boosted to France as soon as possible). So he wouldn’t have been fighting vampires in sewage systems, but instead an alley, slums, or even along or near the Thames if you want to keep the sewage aspect. 

After being bitten, it would have been pretty difficult for Carlisle to drag himself into a potato cellar because he’d be crawling for quite some time. Potatoes didn't become a staple crop in society for quite a while. They were about and people ate them, but were largely seen as food for the lower classes in society, and there certainly wouldn't have been cellars filled with them.

Also just as a little end note, plague devastated London 5 years after he was turned so literally my favourite headcanon to give Carlisle is that he blamed the outbreak on himself. Yes, he may have went along with the miasmic theory that Plague was caused by bad air instead of his fathers ‘divine punishment’ theories, but there’s nothing like a good bit of puritan guilt am I right? seeing and maybe helping with the plague (masks and so many herbs stuffed inside them would have blocked the smell of blood) is also what I like to think made Carlisle want to go into medicine.

And there you have it. A (sort of) accurate version of Carlisle’s and Abraham’s life. and again, disclaimer, I am nowhere near an expert, so there might be inaccuracies and mistakes here. But basically, smeyer please. Google is free. 

#god im such a nerd #ive literally been waiting for this excuse lol #history is something im seriously interested in so pair that with immortal vampires living in different time periods and im in heaven #watch someone who actually is an expert come along like 'yeah your completely wrong lol' #ask #stregoni-benefici #carlisle cullen #twilight headcanon #twilight #twilight renaissance #rach rambles

[lostfanboy]

Dude!!! Please enlighten me about your OCs!!!

God... I've got so many..... But!!! I'll start with just my main five boys that occupy my every waking thought because I love and adore them Gonna yeet this under a readmore

Okay so quick side note, all of my ocs for the most part are for roleplays with friends, and if their not their for video games or dnd lmao so they tend to have a bunch of different varations/storylines and stuff like that. I've always wanted to make a actual like, comic or book out of a lot of the stories but I've never managed it, so none of the characters have like, a base storyline currently asdfjnasd So their motivations and personalities change/shift based on the story their in.

But! First off we have my baby boy and the oldest oc out of this group, Grech

He's just... my emo disaster I love him very much. He's very quiet and a bit shy, he tends not to show much emotion most of the time? But he just... wants to be friends with people and he wants to be around the people he loves and he's such a good boy and I just -breathes in- love him lots

He's also an absolute idiot this bad boy can fit so many bad decisions in him-

He has a twin sister named Flare who he loves and adores, and he's also got a giant black fluffy cat named Twilight who's his emotional support animal who's... so good.... He's just. Struggling along. Getting angsted by me constantly. He's a big comfort character for me, playing him is like wearing a big cozy sweater sometimes. I just... really love him.

Then we've got Carter!!

Carter is my disaster child, he also may or may not be my whump character, he's just constantly getting into trouble but he tries so hard and he loves people so much and so hard and god ahhh

His whole thing is like... being really compassionate/always trying to see the best in people, which can land him in hot water sometimes because he tends to ignore red flags because of it. He has really big abandonment issues and is just always struggling emotionally and is like... usually feeling shitty but he tries not to let it show. He's snarky and sassy, he tends to try and get a rise out of people he doesn't like and just isn't afraid to Cause Problems On Purpose occasionally. He's super cute, playful, and friendly, he calls his favorite people 'cochise', and... like he's a relatively new oc, I only made him about three years ago, but I feel like I've had him forever I literally love him so much. He also has a cat like Grech, his cat is a syphnx named Sage and she is wonderful.

I could talk about Carter for hours, I have so many feelings about every version of him I've written, he just fills me with feelings. He was meant to be a temporary throwaway character that only showed up for a bit but he just instantly stole my heart and I haven't stopped loving him since.

In the interest of time however let's move on to Damien

Damien, similar to Carter, was actually meant to be a throwaway villain character and then I, you guessed it, got fucking attACHED-

His first appearance had him dramatically draping himself across a chair in a dramatic entrance and he's ruled my life and my RP partner's life ever since

(Aforementioned dramatic chair sitting)

Damien is very much so the 'I don't care about anything except oops now I care about you' trope, he has trouble being emotionally open but he's so sweet once he does open up. He shows his affection through things like gift giving and acts of service and he's really tender and just... an absolute hopeless romantic. Simp. Dumb pining gay.

I just... I love playing Damien so much. He's so fun and dramatic and pretty, I love thinking about him and his motivations and just aaaaaaa he's a good fucking boy dude

Then we have the apple of my eye Jared!

Jared is an absolute sweetheart, just a bouncy lil fella, filled with warmth and also trauma because all of my characters are sad akdfjnaksjd. Jared is just!! Always doing his fucking best man, he wants the best for people. He tries to be really optimistic and like, sunshine-y, even when he's not feeling that way, and he tries to be really caring. He also represses allllll of his anger which is like... y'know... not great.....

But he's fine, probably.

He's actually the only one out of these characters that only has one consistent love interest (My rp partner's character Isaac, who I'd die for) and they are um....... fucking precious I love them so much.

P much all of these characters are ADHD/Autistic bc,, I play them but Jared was the first that I intentionally played that way and as such has consistent hyperfixations and special interests (Namely Tangled, Mulan, Fall out boy, and most of all, spiderman) so I really love that about him.

And, last, but definitely not least, is the chaos son himself Seth

(tungle will only let me use ten photos and I don't like his character sheet anyway so only outfit ref for him akjsdfasdj. As a quick rundown, his full name is Seth Laurens, he's 4'11, he's trans and gay, he's got adhd, autism, and ptsd, and he is a bastard)

Seth is probably the most recent out of any of these characters tbh? I only started getting really into him as a character over the past year or two but god... He's fucking fantastic. Pure chaos. ADHD embodiment.

Seth just has so much energy and rage and very little impulse control, he's constantly wrecking shop and not even meaning too. He's a tiny 4'11 himbo, not a fucking braincell in his lil head. He's very awkward and bad at making relationships but he tries so hard and once he does he latches on so hard to people and just loves them so much. He doesn't really think he's worthy of being cared about most of the time tho

He still has plenty of, sometimes unearned, confidence though. Nothing can stop this stubborn boy once he puts his mind to somethin he's fucking GOING. I love him.

But yeah!! Those are my boys!!! If you wanna learn more abt em I've got a lot more information and stuff on their toyhouses bc I have a,, hyperfixation on my ocs and I can never stop thinking about them. Thank you so much for letting me ramble a bit Tea!!! I really appreciate it ssfdiasask

#ocs #talesfromthebandgeekmafia #asks #it me #this probably isnt the most coherent my brains not working with me but i really wanted to ramble abt my kids sjddmfnena #thank u sm for giving me the opportunity to do so 🥺❤

[bigskydreaming]

TFW you realize you relate more to a fave character than you ever actually consciously realized, lmao. 

So I was just having a remote therapy session, and we were focusing on just some mental pain management techniques since my stupid metabolism makes most pain meds largely useless and my head has been waging all out warfare on me for the past week and a half, lololol. And we were delving into one of my personal fave rants, which is the fact that so many people - including vaunted medical professionals - just fundamentally don’t seem to get that having a high pain tolerance does not mean you don’t like, FEEL pain unless its really a lot or intense. Its just that you’re hard-wired/trained/geared via stuff like an abusive childhood, lol, to not SHOW or DISPLAY any visible or audible pain cues unless the pain reaches a certain high threshold where its impossible to hold them back.

But particularly over the past four or five years, with my ongoing medical shit, its super obnoxious trying to get your doctors to display a sense of urgency about your condition because they’re just fundamentally not grasping the degree of chronic pain you’re dealing with every day, since, y’know....I can literally be sitting there in the doctor’s chair and conversationally talking about the fact that no, I definitely am currently feeling like, an eight or nine out of ten on the pain scale, please don’t be confused by the fact that I’m literally LOLing as I describe this to you rather than gasping and moaning in a more obvious indication of it. 

Its like, I’m not TRYING to undersell it or anything, its just, when you grow up since the time you’re like five or six years old, knowing damn well that the only appropriate response to someone asking ‘oh am I hurting you’ that won’t earn you MORE pain is a completely casual or cavalier sounding ‘nope, I’m fine, all good here, no problems.’......like, at a certain point in your development, that becomes pretty hard-wired in, like, you can’t shake it just because you consciously WANT to. (Though it is one of the things I’m trying to unlearn and ‘rewire’ in therapy now, via EMDR techniques aimed at like, literally reprogramming my nervous system and how I react to various stimuli. Its.....slow progress, lmao, but I mean there is some progress so its all good).

But point being, when you’re a physically abused kid and your physical abuser doesn’t want to believe or accept that they’re hurting you, and so they tended to just get angrier and MORE dangerous if they thought you were indicating or even just ‘implying’ that they were in fact hurting you.....you get pretty damn good at not showing even the slightest hint of pain or distress unless its literally a level you’ve never experienced before and thus have no practical experience in hiding or distracting yourself from.

But that doesn’t mean you don’t FEEL every bit of it. It doesn’t mean you’ve found a magical off-switch that means you can just mind-over-body yourself from acknowledging or being aware that you are in fact in a shit ton of pain. You just.....have learned the importance of masking it, and found ways to do that by necessity.

Except, even much later in life when you are in a safe place or more control of your situations or surroundings, there’s no easy way to just....stop putting that mask on by default, the second you’re experiencing any type of pain. And so even when dealing with medical professionals, too many of them just don’t GET that their vaunted ‘tell me how much pain you’re in from one to ten’ scale isn’t really the be-all and end-all of pain measurement, because its subjective and arbitrary as HELLLLLLLLL.....and one of the defining parameters for what that pain scale looks like and feels like for YOU, is....your personal history with pain and how you’re ‘comfortable’ displaying evidence of it. (And I know there’s a ton of people and even groups of people who can relate to this for entirely different reasons, I just can only speak to my own of course). 

But its definitely frustrating and invalidating as hell to be in more pain than many people ever experience in their lives, and TRYING to convey that as openly and honestly as you can.....and literally being able to SEE the doubt and dismissal in doctors’ eyes, because all they’re seeing is the visual cues you’re putting out there and which they equate to ‘can’t possibly be in THAT much pain, not if he’s acting this casual about it’.....

And so the frustrating irony is that you end up dismissed as like, a pain ‘lightweight’ who is complaining about an apparent degree of pain that’s barely anything in their ‘professional’ estimation. And thus they’re disinclined to take your requests for heavier or more effective pain medication seriously, or not impressed by your attempts to imbue a greater sense of urgency in their approach to your treatment plan or procedures, etc......when in reality, the only reason you’re showing those cues of not being in that much pain is because you’re MORE used to and familiar with even extremely high degrees of pain than anything a lot of them are accustomed to.

Its invalidating as hell, being treated as though you have no idea what you’re talking about when you say “I am actually in a shit ton of active, ongoing pain, hey thanks, can we maybe do something about this,” when actually, the disconnect comes from you having MORE experience with MORE pain than some of them can even fathom. You just....also have more experience with reasons not to SHOW that pain, if its at all avoidable to any degree whatsoever.

THAT’S what high pain tolerance actually means, and the sheer volume of medical professionals who just flat out don’t get this, or worse, just don’t care or are too proud to reassess their viewpoints on this matter if that carries the implication they don’t actually know as much as they think they do......god, it grates.

(Once, when I was around twenty-three or twenty-four I think, I got caught up in the periphery of a bar fight that resulted in me getting a shard of glass embedded in the back of my forearm. Still have a pretty sizable scar from it. And it absolutely hurt like fuck, but I was conscious as paramedics arrived on scene and when going to the hospital to have it removed and stitched up, and like......kinda cracking jokes about it the whole time because I was uncomfortable as hell and didn’t really know what else to do or how to react, y’know? I mean, I had a few inches of glasses jutting out from the top of my forearm, lol, what the hell are you supposed to do or say about that? There’s not really a protocol, lmao. Problem was, they took one look at me sitting there with this spear of glass sticking out of my arm and making dumb jokes about it like it was no big deal......and they decided this meant I was in shock and kept trying to treat me accordingly. And it was just like.....useless, because lol no I wasn’t in shock, I had none of the physical symptoms of being in shock and benefited from none of their assumptions that I was.....I was just a dude with a shard of glass in his arm that hurt like fuck and I really wanted it out as soon as possible, and I was in full awareness of what had happened and everything I was feeling, I just didn’t know how to convey this in a way that they would believe, because I couldn’t come up with anything to say or do other than laugh about how fucking surreal the whole situation was.)

Anyway, so circling back to the point, or as much of one as I ever have, so today I was just learning and practicing various mental pain management/coping techniques with my therapist and discussing my issues with doctors and the High Pain Tolerance Quandary. Basically like, I would really truly like to know or learn how to display the ‘expected’ physical and visual/audio cues for being a person who is experiencing a ‘4′ on the pain scale, versus a person who is experiencing a ‘7′ or a ‘10′.....so they can stop fucking treating me like I’m only at a 4 when I’m actually at an 8 or 9, just because I look and sound like a person who really is only at a 4 no matter what they actually CLAIM to be feeling.

Course, easier said than done.

But yeah, so as she was coaching me through various techniques and surveying what I was doing with my body and facial expressions and cues, etc, she pointed out something that I had literally never noticed about myself before, even though once she DID point it out I could recognize that its something I’ve been doing for as long as I can remember, well back before I was ten and no doubt stemming from smack dab in the midst of the worst of my childhood abuse.

So, y’know on Teen Wolf, how Scott and Liam and various others are at times shown digging their claws into their palms and drawing blood to ground themselves with the pain? (And ironically, how I was just talking the other week about photo doubling for a similar such scene with gashes in the character’s palms, lmfao). Well, obviously I don’t have claws, and part of why I’d never really paid much attention to when I was doing it is because even my therapist wasn’t comfortable classifying it as a kind of self-harm or anywhere near punitive enough to carry that kind of weight or associations.....

But like, I’ve always kept my fingernails fairly trimmed but not completely. Like, just enough of an edge to them that at times, particularly when I’m in physical pain or distress already, I’ll just like....dig my fingernails into the pad of other fingertips, and use that little familiar spike of pain to not ground myself but rather distract myself from whatever else I was feeling. Like, she wasn’t comfortable calling it a self-punitive technique because as we got into it, it was clear I was never doing it to CAUSE myself pain....rather, its something I only do when I’m already in pain, usually far more pain than anything that brings up.....but by deliberately doing that and creating a focal awareness around it, even just a largely subconscious one......I’ve apparently long been using that to hook my attention up to a very specific, very manageable sensation/focal point of pain that lets me and my ADHD brain relegate whatever other pain I’m feeling (even if its much much worse) to the back of my mind for at least a little while, as I distract myself by focusing on this more obvious and consciously directed bit of lesser pain. 

And a big part of why I probably never noticed I was doing this, we eventually concluded, is because as a kid I probably came up with it as a kind of survival technique specifically BECAUSE it was something I could do to distract myself/manage my pain covertly, without drawing my abuser’s attention to what I was doing either. And by extension, without the fact that I was doing it at all 'betraying’ that I was in pain or trying to manage or cope with painful sensations in the first place. A lot of other pain management techniques, like even just deep, deliberate breaths, tend to be a lot more obvious and noticeable, and thus would have been counter-productive for my specific purposes. No matter how much they helped me manage whatever physical pain I was feeling, they would have at the same time inevitably drawn attention to the fact that I was trying to do that at all in the first place....and thus only invite more pain. 

Merely digging my fingernails into my fingertip pads, not enough to draw blood or make me cry out or anything like that, but rather just to distract myself and deliberately focus me on a source of pain I could deal with and more easily handle, as well as being ‘low in intensity’ enough that focusing on it didn’t bring any other obvious visual or audio pain cues to the forefront.....that I could do without anyone noticing. And thus this is likely why it came to be my go-to move whenever I was in any kind of pain at all, as just a quick and easy way to wrap my head around my physical sensations and shift focus to something more easily dealt with or managed (even if it didn’t actually dismiss or get rid of whatever other pain I’m feeling entirely). And just the low-key nature of it in general likely being a big part of why it became such an unconscious instinct for me until now, something that barely even registered in my conscious mind as I built up/hard-wired instinctive responses that incorporated it without me having to consciously direct myself to do that.

I mean, its still obviously not an ideal response, especially when I’m long past being stuck in any kind of external situations or need to fall back on that and the covert nature of it. So now its another of those things to just be aware of and work on rewiring on an instinctive level, making it a priority for me to focus on consciously using more helpful and positive methods of pain management.

But it was just interesting to me to have it pointed out as something I’ve been doing all this time, let alone being as unaware of doing it as I’ve apparently been. And its not hard to draw obvious parallels to when characters in media I consume do similar things even if for not quite the same reasons or in quite the same ways. So now I’m just kinda contemplating that and wondering how much even just some degree of unconscious awareness that I do that might have made me more alert to when characters or other people do similar things. Made me more attuned to noticing or even fixating on moments when they do things like that, that I related to even on an entirely subconscious level.

*Shrugs* Anyway, that’s all, like, literally not going anywhere with this, was just unwinding and felt like mapping my way through that all contemplatively, because oh no, inexplicable strangeness, therapy puts me in particularly contemplative headspaces, whodathunkit, lmfao. *Shrugs* Just struck me as particularly interesting, so felt like sharing for anyone else who can relate/see similar parallels themselves.

Or just chalk it up to random anecdotal wtf-ery from your friendly (err, mostly. okay sometimes. FINE ideally, let’s go with that) neighborhood over-sharer. 

#that last bit is just to head off the usual 'friendly concerned advice giving anons' I tend to get after posts like these #plz stop doing that #i know i over-share its not a secret and I do it with full knowledge and intent because I feel like it #it suits my purposes #my purposes do not have to be your purposes nor do they require your approval #if it makes you uncomfortable thats where the beauty of tumblr being a largely opt-in experience comes from #there's the door #i can understand the confusion - its not actually a big blinking EXIT sign but rather an 'unfollow' button #its really that simple lmfao stop being so concerned with what Im doing particularly in posts where Im not even interacting with anyone #and for the love of god please stop assuming that everyone on tumblr is TRYING to post from a state of being on #an emotional plateau of zen #nah - some of us literally use the medium to vent and unpack stuff we dont have a ton of room to vent about or unpack in our offline lives #and like the relative(ish) anonymous nature of it combined with the potential for at least some kind of validation via #like-minded or experiencing individuals in a pseudo-communal setting #our purpose/usage does not need to be yours and it does not require your condoning #and I would just like to suggest that maybe people who put a ton of emphasis on telling others (like survivors) to do a better job of #curating what content they experience/are exposed to online #might be well served to put a little more focus on curating what content YOU experience if you find yourself uncomfortable with particular #posting habits #there's a bajillion other people out there to follow #you dont need to be here if you dont actually want to be or arent actually comfortable being here #BUT I DIGRESS

[slo-liveblog]

Witch’s Heart: Bonus Stage Final Thoughts

Hello hello! Honestly I can’t believe I finished Bonus Stage after all this time... took me quite a few months, oof. Many thanks to the handful of you that stuck around during all that, and to the few new people who popped in too! Hope you’ve all been taking care of yourselves, and don’t mind the long post.

CHARACTERS

Claire: After finishing the first game, I didn’t know it was possible to love Claire even more. I was absolutely wrong. The way she took charge at the end was incredibly powerful and I’m so fucking proud of her, even if it’s sad as hell. I really really like how the game both criticizes and respects her unconditional empathy, I think there’s definitely room for both conversations and they’re both incredibly fascinating. I do think she suffers from some of the most writing pitfalls out of everyone, though. Like I said while playing, there’s really no reason given why she wouldn’t confide in Leon, or at least acknowledge that he’s likely the person there she can trust most. In addition, I found it really bizarre that Claire just... never tried to talk to Reynaldo or Sirius after learning about their pasts. Like, at all. I understand why the emphasis on Ashe was important, but it was jarring and kind of unsatisfying to see Claire act so uncharacteristically by not even really acknowledging them after their stories were over. It’s more of a story problem than a character problem though, I think, and I understand why it had to be that way especially considering the conclusions will touch on a lot of the missing pieces- I just wish there could’ve been more of a justification for it. The way her personality was explored through her interactions with everyone, and how other characters were depicted based on their reactions to her ideals, was incredible and I would die for her.

Ashe: Oh Ashe. Fuck Ashe. I do appreciate the depth given to his character, he’s definitely far more complex than I expected and kudos on that. I don’t really empathize with him as much as I do the other four mains, but I do think his writing is incredible and his relationships with Leon and Claire continue to be some of the most interesting to see play out, if not THE most interesting. Star shaped carrots man. Fucked up. Super excited to see how his dynamics with everyone continue, and he’s probably the character I’m the most interested to see make decisions going into these conclusions. His arc feels the most... unfinished, he’s never really reached any sort of closure at any point of the story so far and especially not bonus stage so it’ll be cool to see where he ends up.

Reynaldo: MY BOY. I’M SO FUCKING PROUD OF HIM... going into bonus stage my expectations for him were pretty much rock bottom from the moment I realized he didn’t have a single line in the opening scene outside of saying his name. Like, I kinda made my peace with the possibility that the writer just wasn’t that interested in developing him, and would rather spend time on the rest of the mains. But holy SHIT did he pull through in the second half of the game. The subtle but noticeable build to him deciding to side with Claire was so, so well done. I still wish there was a little more solidity to his characterization- I do have to reach way further to understand him than I do any of the other mains- but I think what we DID get for him was wonderful and god, I appreciate him so much. Definitely the character that improved the most for me from the first game to bonus stage. I can’t wait for his conclusion, here’s to hoping we do in fact get it this year. The way his similarities with Claire were set up makes me SO excited to see how their relationship develops when it’s actually the focus, and how he’ll be fleshed out more in general so we can finally have a clearer picture. Because to be honest, as much as I like the development he was given in bonus stage... there’s still a LOT of gaps to fill in with him.

Sirius: continues to be the perfect human being 1000000/10

Leon: Sweet baby boy whose expressions always make me cry. Leon is still a character I’m sort of on the fence on. Like, he’s very well written and easy to sympathize with. But I realized I’m always far more interested in how OTHER characters react to HIM than the other way around, though. He’s not really a character I personally would find interesting in general, he’s a little simple for my tastes, but that doesn’t mean I’m not 100% invested in seeing him end up happy... eventually. Something tells me it might be a while.

Charlotte: I feel like Charlotte definitely got the short end of the stick in bonus stage, moreso than any other character. Her only memorable scenes that I can think of off the top of my head were when she told Leon he could kill everyone but Claire, when she thought about how Ashe probably can’t be saved, and when she reacted to Claire after the completion of Ashe’s backstory. None of those scenes even come close to hitting the same level of intrigue or emotion as the sparse Charlotte scenes had in the first game, even if that last one does have some interesting bits in it. I said at the end of the first game that we’d only really scratched the surface and I was interested to see more from her and, well, my opinion hasn’t changed. I don’t think there was much I would’ve wanted out of her here anyway unlike the boys, so I’m not especially disappointed. Just hoping we get more excellent Charlotte moments somewhere down the line.

Zizel: I would’ve liked Zizel’s deal to be... a bit more built upon, to be honest? I could just have missed things along the way, but her triumphant moment is a little harder to get in to when we know almost nothing about her or the way she thinks beyond stuff reveled about her in the same scene. I could definitely see that her siding with Claire was being foreshadowed, but I think there needed to be juuust a bit more characterization given to her for that particular development to have the impact it seemed to be going for. Still, it was a good moment, and I think it definitely made up for a lot of the sore lack of Zizel in both games. Can’t wait to see what she does from here.

Lime: Goddddd. Okay look, I still love Lime probably more than I reasonably should. She’s wonderful and I love her design and her personality and her backstory and her motivations but... yea she’s a very very bad person. Bonus stage did really make it clear that she’s not just lashing out occasionally, and this isn’t anywhere near harmless teasing. She’s full on the primary villain of the game, in some ways, and has been doing pretty horrific stuff knowing (and intending for) exactly what she’s causing. Which we sort of knew in the first game anyway, but now it’s very explicit. And like, damn dude... I do wanna see what’s gonna happen with her. It’s tough, wanting to see a character get their comeuppance and stop hurting others while simultaneously just wanting good things for them. this really is how y’all ashe stans feel huh

Side Characters: I gotta say, I really loved a lot of the smaller characters introduced in bonus stage and the way their presence added to the development of the mains. Dorothy and Nicholas, the old dude and the thief woman (I didn’t actually realize until just now but nobody in Wilbert’s backstory had a name, huh. It may not have been intentional but considering that he might literally just not remember that far back I actually really like that decision.), and Ashe’s family and friends were really smartly integrated into the story’s themes and I appreciated that a lot. also lucy and coco rights

Overall This one gets a fucking 10/10 from me chief, some small issues certainly but as close to perfect as they get, in terms of the kinds of stories I like.

STORY

I debated breaking this up into chunks, like I did in the first game with the scenarios, but I feel like the writing quality is more or less consistent throughout the game so it would be a little redundant. I definitely need more time to think on bonus stage before I have a really solid opinion, but at the moment I kind of think the story was even better than the first game? My only major issue was the aforementioned use of Claire’s character, where she’d only really react to the boy’s backstories as she finished hearing them, with the exception of Ashe’s. And her not confiding in Leon. But other than that, it was a constant rollercoaster, with pretty much every scene being jam packed with 3000 layers of character development and relationship building with lore sprinkled in. The elements that were amazing in the first game, like the fun dynamics between the characters and the subtle and unobtrusive exposition, are nothing but improved upon. I do wish we got to play more with the idea of the demon girls living alongside the mains, I think that aspect was severely downplayed almost immediately after it was introduced, but I’m crossing my fingers those potential dynamics get some time in the conclusions. Once again, my biggest gripes with the story are just that I feel like there’s so much more to explore and I can’t wait to see how the rest plays out. still giving this bitch a 10/10 on this one it was everything I wanted and more

GAMEPLAY

Combat: This was kind of... not even really utilized in bonus stage, which I didn’t actually realize until just now. There weren’t any real “boss battles” in the way there were in the first game, the closest thing to it would I guess be Dorothy’s showdown. Considering I didn’t even notice, I think that was a perfectly fine decision. The climax worked well without any actual fights. The battle mechanics continued to be functional and everything, just... not much of a thing.

Demon Requests: It could just be because I played a lot of bonus stage at a very different pace than I did the first game but the demon requests didn’t feel as frequent or intrusive this time around. I was always really excited to get to the request portion anyway cause of the photo booth and all the cool new areas, I had a super fun time using the deep sea bubble and I think overall the stuff that was added to the fantasy spaces was really neat. also lucy and coco rights

Minigames: Very hit or miss. It felt like the minigames were either so quick and easy they were hardly memorable or so tedious they made me wanna die. Take that with a grain of salt, though, I’m really bad at video games. There were very few of them anyway so it doesn’t matter much, but I guess it would’ve been nice if the minigames were less... Like that. To be fair, they were all still pretty charming or cool conceptually. Can’t really complain about getting to fucking shoot people as Dorothy even if it was hell to play.

Overall The demon requests were actually really enjoyable this time around, but the minigames and combat were kind of downplayed. Not to big of a deal, though, it’s not as if they were a focal point of the game to begin with. 7/10

ART & SOUND

Character Design: Not much to say that I didn’t already say after the first game, but the special bonus stage outfits are absolute bangers and I wish they got shown more often. And maybe I would’ve liked the guys to have a little more variety to their suits. But that’s nitpicking, Claire and the demon girl’s dresses are absolutely gorgeous.

Sprites and BGs: The overall art quality definitely got shaky in places but I gotta say, they pulled out ALL the stops for the sprites in this one. Ashe just fully has an entirely new set of them, and everybody else gets tons of new expressions too, all of which are super super good at conveying incredibly specific emotions. All I’m saying is, this would be a totally different game for me without the sprites, and I was always ecstatic to see new ones and figure out what was going on in the character’s head based on them.

OST and Sound Effects: Again, pretty much the same deal as the first game. I think there was a bit of a higher frequency for songs that made me immediately want to search for them so I could listen to them later though, thank god for that. So many good tracks.

Overall Continued to impress me, and then some. Only a slight improvement from the first game, in my opinion, but even that is pretty impressive since I didn’t have many issues with the first game to begin with. 8/10

So uh, in other words, I really really loved this game. Cannot WAIT to start best boy’s conclusion!!!

#witchs heart #slo reviews #slo talks #LETS GOO

[malcolmbrights-a]

ship meme ray x claudia

SHIP MEME

where was their first date ?: their first date was surprisingly really cute? like i know their meeting was essentially a meet-ugly, instead of a meet-cute, since they they didn’t like each other so much. but since they ended up becoming close friends, and claudia ends up writing to him while he’s overseas, after a while raymond ends up asking her out. it’s after he gives her her first kiss and she’s so fucking shocked, but in like, the best way ever. because she never assumed he liked her and probably assumed dayting just wasn’t his thing. also when she’s younger she doesn’t want a boyfriend, not really, but then when raymond asks her if she wants to date him, they end up going for dinner and then to play laser tag and they had fun. it was during the springtime because i love the idea of them going to the park often before that. because i feel liek the park is ‘their’ place, you know? so before their first date, in a way, they had lots of friend dates.

what my muse would do to cheer your’s up: claudia makes a lot of stupid as fuck jokes to make raymond laugh when he’s feeling down. like she has no idea what he went through overseas and she knows shit all about the assassin stuff because she doesn’t know he’s an assassin. but she does know how debilitating ptsd can be so she’d want to make sure that he was fine, so she’d make him smile, she’d hold him, she’d make him his favorite foods. she’d also talk to him about nothing and everything just so he can have the company. and i feel like he returns the favor when her bipolar is acting up. because they are just really supportive and helpful with each other when it comes helping each other with their mental health issues. 

who wakes the other up with kisses ( and where ) ?: raymond for sure. at first claudia was surprised by it cause he doesn't come off as a romantic at all. so when was asleep, and got woken up with kisses, she giggled and told him to stop being a fucking sap, even though she was super into it. i think at some point, when she wakes up earlier than him, she'll wake him up with kisses too. Or she'll fucking jump on him and straddle him, put her forehead to his and be like "wake up, raymond, darling…" lol 

who would pour water on the other to wake them up ?: claudia sksksk he would've had to do something to piss her off the day before for her to resort to childish behavior like. i can't think of what the thing is on the top of my head, but it'd be bad. maybe it's the day after she finds out he's a vigilqnte murderer in the verse where he is and she isn't.

how my muse would wake your’s up: i said above, with kisses or by pouncing on him. but on days where she's behaving, she'll wake him up gently by getting on top of him to nuzzle him awake. he usually smirks while she does it and will try to keep from laughing. and when he does end up laughing, he'll give her lots of mouth kisses and turn her on her back so her can kiss her more.

who would start a food fight while baking or cooking ?: claudia. she's a bit childish at times and has a playful sense of humor whenever she's not working. her and raymond would be in the kitchen baking because that what claudia does after retiring from the fbi. then claudia gets this wild idea to put icing on his nose, kiss it, and then ray puts a handful on her cheek and it turns into an all out war that ends with a huge mess and them laughing so hard that they both cry. and rory eventually walks in to see what the commotion is all about sees, the message and just leaves. HES NOT HELPING CLEAN THAT SHIT UP. NO THANK BRUH

who would suggest putting marijuana in the brownies ?: oh god claudia, but only for her and group of lady friends cause raymond is a former addict. 

who said i love you first and how ( or when ) did they say it ?: claudia says it first, surprisingly. the two of them are in his room, listening to some music that ray likes, and she ends up resting her head against his shoulder. the reaches for his hand - albit awkwardly - and turns up to look at him. she ends up smiling because even though he’s a bit goofy looking to others, she thinks he’s really handsome and he looks even handsomer while he’s in thought while listening to music. he catches her staring, goes “what?” and she blurts out that she loves him. she’s so embarrassed when he doesn’t say it back immediately, and almost leaves his room so she doesn’t like get teary eyed. but before she can leave, ray grabs her by her elbow and pulls her down to him, giving her a soft kiss before telling her he loved and pulling her down to him. 

who would get into a physical altercation over the other ?: they both would fight for the other. like claudia will hear some bitch talking shit about ray and she’ll be ready to fucking pouce - man, woman, nonbinary - and the only person who can stop her will be raymond lmfao. she will be like so mad that anyone would even THINK to talk about her mans like that. like how could they do that - how? also ray doesn’t tolerate people talking shit about claudia either. so really people need to like keep their words to themselves when it comes to these chaotic dumbasses. 

who insists on purchasing a pet together ( and what kind of pet ) ?: lol claudia. raymond doesn’t like the idea because at the time they’re like in their early twenties with a baby, and adding more responsibility to what they already have could be too much for them. but claudia assures him that she can take care of a dog and rory. he kinda of doesn’t budge on it at first, but then claudia does puppy dog eyes and pouts all day about it. does that thing where she fake cries like a brat. and like he gives in because he can’t deal with it anymore. anyways, they get the dog and ends up being a mental health dog and he’s raymond’s best friend after that. like he prefers raymond to claudia and claudia is always so fucking butt-hurt about it. 

who is louder ( in and out of bed ) ?: claudia is louder in and out of bed oh lord. she honestly is such a noisy person in bed because she likes how she sounds and wants her partner to know that she’s enjoying herself. like if she’s not being noisy it’s either really emotional sex or like she’s not feeling it at all. there’s no inbetween when it comes to her tbh. like no inbetween at all. she just has no middle ground. raymond is quieter but more dominant and he actually makes some noises (like you said he does)

who takes more risks ( in and out of bed ) ?:  holyshit, miss claudia here of course. she goes about doing everything face first and always had. it has been her downfall time and time again, but it has also opened the world of new opportunities to her. i feel like in college, before raymond went overseas, that the two of them would do a lot of stupid impulsive shit like grafiti the street and steal candy from the store. go to strip clubs for the fun of it. follow people to parties when they don’t even know them. stuff like that, and they have a blast. when they’re older claudia takes more risks but like she’s not into partying of stealing or whatever. she’s fine with just living her life with ray. but ooooooooooooh in bed i feel like it’s ray. claudia didn’t have sex until she met ray so ray would have more experience than her. i remember you saying he’d show her new things, and tbh i love that because she’d be so excited to try them. and her favorite thing would be spankings because she thinks they’re so damn exciting. like the rush she gets - how ray talks to her when she gets them. like it’s the biggest turn on ever for her. 

who would bring up the word ‘daddy’ first ?: none of them. like claudia wants to fight when guys tell her to call them daddy, and i’m pretty sure raymond thinks it’s gross lmfao. but you did say he called her ‘baby’ when he wanted to calm her down or when they were in bed together. she’s like in love with him using that as a pet name and it really makes her feel loved and wanted in and out of the bedroom. like wow he cares enough about her to have a special name for her. god that does things to her. both sexy and affectionate things. ahhhh

what is their shared, favourite kink ?: they’re both into light bdsm so i’d say their shared kink is their shared kink is basically sex games where you’re fucked silly but you  can’t orgasm unless you’re told to do so. or where you can’t touch unless you’re told to. or when you can’t touch yourself unless you’re told to. stuff like that. or just you know, not being able to do what you want unless you’re told. and since they’re both switches, sometimes claudia will be the dominant one, while other times it’ll be raymond. so they get their thrills from sex because it’s never just the same thing, you know? it’s always different. even when it’s similar to how they’ve done it before because they shake things up.

describe their typical kiss: their typical kiss is surprisingly really soft and not rushed? like you’d expect them to have these gross, over the top passionate kisses, but that’s just not how things go. these two, contrary to everyone’s beliefs, are really soft for each other and love each other very very much. like they’re always trying to do things to show they care for each other and it makes me so fucking emo dude. 

how my muse shows their love for your’s: god, she shows her love for him through acts of service and general affection. like she will cook meals for him and make him coffee just because she loves him and wants him to know that. and she’s always surprised that on days where she’s not the one showing love through acts of service, he’s the one doing it. so she shows him by doing little things for him. like she’ll help him shave his chin, her face really close to his so that it’s really sensual and so that she can really focus, and he always seems both into it and grateful. and later on he’ll draw a bath for her or whatever. It’s basically a back and forth where they take turns showing each other love in various ways.

their favourite ways to give affection: god before raymond claudia just would not kiss or hold hands (family not incestious just like cheek kissus, you know?) with anyone who wasn’t family. like she refused to kiss them or touch them or anyway. sure she was seeing a lot of people at the same time and just wanted to have her fun and the enjoy the company of others, but it always bit her in the ass when she didn’t want to give her company affection or sex, cause suddenly they didn’t want her anymore. raymond wants to be around her in the beginning even when they don’t kiss or hold hands though, but that’s because he’s usually not one to kiss and hold hands, so it’s like, you know mutual. and when he first kisses her she’s so shook that she’s not fucking repulsed by it and just wants to kiss him again, and when they’re not kissing, she thinks about kissing him again. and it’s just so goddamn girl with a crush on a bad boy lmfao. but anyway, she shows her affection with kisses and hand holding and that’s wild to me bruh

who is more dominate ?: they’re both pretty dominant, but for the most part it’s raymond. i feel like a lot of people would be surprised by that since he’s so goddamn soft spoken and claudia is so goddamn loud both with her body language and in general,  but no, he’s the dominant one for the most part and claudia lets him be. like honestly, she prefers him to be if i’m gonna be honest. she likes the feeling of letting go and not being in charge for a moment in her life. it feels really fucking good just to break free from it all and just let someone else have control for a little while. 

who sings in the shower ?: claudia because she likes to hear herself own voice and has always been that way because she thinks she’s god’s gift to mankind. her voice is great tho not gonna lie. like it’s really crisp and beautiful. however she is the type who forgets the lyrics to songs so she sings the wrong lyrics. i feel like it would annoy the shit outta raymond with other people when she sang in the shower or when they were in the car together, but when it’s claudia doing it he finds it endearing. but like, i could be wrong. i have no idea what raymond would think cause i know he is easily annoyed by certain things

who washes the other’s hair in the shower ?: raymond washes claudia’s hair and claudia just melts into his touch, arching her back and loosening her body. it always feels really good to her. to the point where she lets out little satisfied hums that she just can’t help but to release. eventually, she does end up returning the favor and washing his hair - even though he doesn’t have much - because these two are all about taking turns with each other. but it ends up with them having a soap war cause claudia is chaotic as fuck haha. like she be that way

who initiates shower sex despite being in a rush ?: raymond, and claudia is like “bruh, i have to go to work - stop and behave” and he grabs her ass and she just gives in, even though she was gonna give in anyways. like she loves being groped by him and always has liked being groped by him. it is so fun and exciting to her and makes her feel like he’s really into her body - not that she assumed otherwise cause she thinks she’s a goddess - and she loves that because it makes her feel powerful to know her spouse is fucking in love with her body. like ha wow

who teases the other under the table at dinner with the family ?:  claudia but only at dinners with her mother because she doesn’t respect that woman and she makes her anxious. so for some reason that makes her want to bone raymond. it’s probably surprising to him every time because he just fucking gets jumped as soon as they’re alone in the house and has no idea where to go with it because he doesn’t want her to regret jumping him later. but eventually, as time goes on and she does this shit over and over again throughout the years, he starts to see that she isn’t really gonna be upset after they have sex because it’s a form of stress relief when they’re visiting her families manor.

who has the weirder taste in music ?: i’d say claudia since you said ray mostly listens to 70s rock and roll. meanwhile claudia will listen to trashy country, trashy pop, or the worst trap music ever made. she doesn’t give a fuck. music is music and it nearly always makes her feel better. on days where she feels bad she will listen to a few random songs that are upbeat and suddenly her life is much better and she’s the happiest girl in the world. like it’s temporary, but it’s enough for her to be satisfied with her mood for a little while.

who would initiate dancing in the rain ?: claudia because she just enjoys the idea of it. she loves copying what she sees in the movies and i bet she saw something that made her do it. raymond gave her an odd look when she asked, but since it’s ray, he did it anyways, and ended up having a blast. i think as an anniversary gift to themselves, if it’s raining they’ll dance in it. and if it’s not, the two of them will dance in the sprinklers cause they’re fucking secretly saps. SECRETLY. Okay, not so secretly. Everyone knows how gross they are by that point. They both went from ‘don’t touch me’ to always holding onto the other always and i think it confused the shit out of the few friends that they shared between them. 

who would be the one to suggest marriage ?: raymond. claudia wasn’t sure if she wanted to get married. she really liked the thought, especially, since she was pregnant with rory before they got married, but she never expected them to actually get married because ray had talked shit about marriage to her in the past. but then, one day, she was going through a bag he’d left on the ground and she found her ring while he was standing behind her and instead of saying sorry, that bitch screamed and said yes. that fool could’ve been holding a ring for a friend, but claudia didn’t give a fuck, they were getting married now. but the ring was for her so yeah. 

what would they name their children ?: oh clyde and joyce!

who would their children take after more ?: joyce is more raymond, rory is more claudia.

#elliesfinishedworks #writing: claudia daviau #this bitch is so long like wtf #i hate that i ramble with these 900% of the time #dkjfjkhdsjkhdsfkjhsdf #shesuperlit

[ladyruina]

First story on this site

    Three weeks. It had been three weeks since promotion day and to be honest, I had no freaking clue what Promotion Day even was. Apparently once every month the facility selects someone to be “promoted”, the problem is that the people who don’t make the promotion selection get bare minimum notification. Turns out my sector was just informed that I was transferred to a new sector...no one even knew where I went ...explains what happened to Silica. Today, after three weeks, I woke up to a waiting room. Empty seats on every side and beneath my...tush. The same metal box I lived in for the past seventeen years after “recruitment” and would probably die in. The room had the same aesthetic as everywhere else in the facility, stainless steel walls and flooring with well lit bulbs. Couldn’t tell which type of lightbulb though I’d have to gamble fluorescent bulbs with UV integration, cheap, effective and keeps us alive for a little bit longer. Just how the facility likes it. As per my regular protocol when in an unfamiliar space without a commanding officer I entered a status I have titled, “eyes down, nose out of others business”. It’s embarrassing to say that it took a rough fifteen seconds before realizing that the marks of claws against the floor were EVERYWHERE. You adjust to this kind of thing in the facility, there’s always something clawing up the floors, crawling up the walls or eating your friends upper lobe… rest in peace Franklin. My mind defaulted to entity containment training, signs of anomalous activity identified, analyze the signs: three toed claws, they appear to be dexterous and agile similar to species of avians and raptors. Stage four determine if anomalous being has moved from the ar-, that’s when I finally looked up. Three seats down from me stood a humanoid figure, full combat armor with the exact raptorian legs and feet that produced the scratch marks but the entity was calm almost seemed like it was waiting, same as me save for a bit of an impatient air. It swiftly and repetitively tapped its talons against the ground. Naturally my first thought occurred. “Oh god, is promotion just code word for feeding me to an entity.” I scanned the room only to discover many more entities, some looked very similar to the raptorian entity, others were vastly different. Entities with helmets resembling felines moving from one individual to another, entities with creepy masks that were standing on the walls and ceilings to avoid the clutter on the ground, entities that had no eye holes but spikes at the back on the helmet that vaguely reminded me of bats. All were equipped with combat armor and....facility issue weaponry? Aside from that there were few other schmucks in the room that looked a lot like me, scared, panicked and confused. I looked over to the impatient one only to see it staring at me.

“Shit!” it said in a surprisingly human voice “I-uh, sorry about starin’. It’s always just so weird to see one of you in here.”

“One of...me?” I implored.

“Y’know, an unaugmented.” it gestured at all of me. “So… weird after you’ve gone through the process. So, y’know which one you’ll be?”

I hesitated. “What?” 

“Y’know. Like a raptor, a bat, a cat. That sorta thing.” it seemed to be naming things off the top of its head. “I’m a raptor so you could learn the ropes with me if you end up a part of the pack.”

This fascinated me, I had never been allowed to examine or interview an entity that I had no knowledge of. So a part of me was excited despite realizing that at any moment this entity could unhinge it’s non apparent jaws and rip into my throat with it’s horrific unseen maw. Yet the pioneer sense of exploring the unknown just...overcame me.

“So what are raptors?” I asked.

“Well, you’re lookin at one.” it said in a smug tone. “We’re faster and more dexterous than the others. Only downside is that itchy to move sensation you get due to the energy boost they hook you up with and that these masks keep you alive.”

“I’m sorry what?”

“Heh. yeah, that’s what I said. Apparently The Fixer said that our oxygen has been made “inefficient” by the pollution of the modern world so we’re hooked up with some sorta super oxygen. Apparently it’s the kinda stuff dinosaurs used to breath so that’s pretty badass.”

“And that helps?”

“Gives us the energy to bounce off walls, literally.”

“Fascinating… are the other entities safe to converse with?”

“Ent-? Oh, them? Yeah most of em are chill, might get an extreme one or two but they should be reasonable.”

“Right, thank you.”

“Eh, no prob dude.”

I stood up and began to wander over to one of the “bats” who was standing in a group of its own kin. I began to raise my hand to greet it as I approached, a quick “hey” to get it’s attention only to be interrupted.

“Yes?” it said in a high pitched tone, turning to face me before it even should have known I was on my way. Apparently my shock was apparent as it recoiled quickly. “Right, sorry. I forgot unaugmented wouldn’t know about that. I heard you coming, you’d be surprised how easily you are to hear coming.”

“Echolocation?” 

“Indeed! Along with some other traits.” It said “I’m basically omniscient with these mods! I can tell you anything about this room without even looking at it.”

“Hm.” I smirked. “How about this? What color is my shirt?”

It stared at me for a second before giving a light punch. “Cheating asshole.”

“Just wanted to see if you’re capable of processing color.”

“You could’ve asked.” 

the amusement faded from my expression as I began to realize that what I said was quite apparently a sore topic.

“Oh...sorry.” 

“Whatever.”

I began to awkwardly leave the company of the bats before slumping back into my chair. A few minutes go by and I’m bored out of my goddamn mind. Wish they left me a phone to check, or a magazine to read or a pistol to shoot myself with. Between the embarrassment of my slip-up and the boredom I think the lead would be preferable.

“Excuse me.” said a familiar voice. “I couldn’t help but notice multiple strains in your face aligning with stress that may be caused by the process of transferring to a new region. Is it possible that I may alleviate some of your stress through a formal discussion?”

I looked up, it was goddamn impossible. I heard she was transferred and she just never responded to any message from then on, I thought she either ditched me or… the far more likely scenario, eviscerated or incinerated.

 “Silica?” the name of my best friend. “Silica is that you?”

The entity looked confused. “Curious. You have information on my title but records state that you were only stationed here today.” 

“Silica. It’s me.” I said in a shaken tone. “Devin.”

“Devin…” she stared at me blankly, moments passed by. “Ah yes. We used to be close friends, is this information correct?”

“Yes. so you’ve been here this whole time?”

“Affirmative, Devin.”

“What happened? Why didn’t you respond to any messages I sent?”

Another brief silence. “I just checked my message log, I received none of them under the name of “Devin” or any related pseudonym.” 

“Really?” this was...a bit heartbreaking to say the very least. “You had to keep in touch with Evelyn! I remember the day you got Evelyn’s contact address and you were a goddamn mess. Head over heels! Please tell me you kept in touch.”

Another goddamn pause. “Oh yes, Evelyn. I suppose she was very nice and pretty wasn’t she?”

“What are you talking about?!” the other entity’s started staring at me. I was getting loud. “You sound like you don’t care! You goddamn loved her and now she’s an afterthought?!”

“Please calm yourself. You’re becoming exacerbated and it may draw negative connotations towards you in future conversations with the other people residing in this room.”

I began to look over, the entities around me seemed...concerned. “S-sorry. I’m just hurt is all. It feels like you don’t remember...anything from back at Mind’s Edge.”

“Oh! That I can answer! I don’t!” she said so simply. My heart goddamn sank into the Mariana Trench and she said it so easily.

“You..forgot?”

“Don’t take it personally. Cat units have an AI planted into their brain in order to give them in depth data banks of medical procedures as well as a list of information that may be useful. This unfortunately has to replace long term memories which our AI assistants must remind us of. This also can lead to stunted emotional development. Fortunately though the emotional stagnation only caused depression in earlier Cat units. It also allows us to be proper care takers without having to worry about emotional errors such as becoming overly attached to the patient in therapy settings or panicking in active combat treatment scenarios.”

“I...need some time to process all of this.”

“Acknowledged. Please contact me or another Cat unit if you require any further psychological or physiological aid.”

“Y-yeah, got it. You got it.” That’s probably what I said. Can’t remember if it was actually what I said or not, I was in a haze. Every entity in this room was...a person? My best friend had forgotten about me. The whole world around me just faded. My greatest fear though was...what came next. My thoughts were cut short by the distant sound of heavy claws scraping against the cold metal rang out. As it approached, I could hear the sound of cloth being dragged across the ground. A voice spoke, both high and low pitched with a sort of rattle in its tone.

“Routine Procedures completed. Additional Augmentation scheduled.”

The door on the farside of the room opened.

“Devin.” The creature spoke “Devin Hale. Augmentation scheduled. Follow for Augmentation.”

#original story #fiction #science fiction #transhumanism

[lobselvith8]

In Defense of Desdemona

There was a criticism of Desdemona as the leader of the Railroad, and since I sometimes run across people criticizing her actions, I thought I would explain why I disagree with this particular critique.

Generally, I’ve often read people cite Deacon’s dialogue about wishing that Desdemona would greenlight some ops to help humans, but we also take into consideration that Glory tells you that she might have a night off now that you’re on the team, and Carrington laments that he has never known a time when the numbers of the Railroad were so low. They simply don’t have the people to take on a myriad of missions to help humans, and even Deacon mentions that some of the humans who help them only assist them “once or twice a month”. Let’s be clear about the Railroad: they are not a large group like the Brotherhood, which is why we only build one single safehouse and not a myriad of them throughout the Commonwealth.

She upholds the tradition of wiping synths even after it has hurt and even killed several synths and done nothing to stop the railroad from being compromised. This is a problem with the entire railroad imo. I get that they put their safety first and this is their “best” way to do it, but it’s not. Their contacts are all 1 step removed. Their safehouses are not tied to the home base. Even their tourists don’t know all the agents or safehouses or even where the homebase is. There is literally no reason to wipe synths other than they want to.

The Railroad is a small group of people comprised of humans and synths; something Deacon mentions during Tradecraft when he cites how Railroad synths like Glory don’t take on ops that involve the early model synths due to their conflicted issues over how they should be treated. We know from our own experience when playing through the Railroad storyline (and even Glory’s dialogue if you decide to help Curie achieve their goal) that synths optionally chose to undergo this (they aren’t forced), and some have nightmares about their time in the Institute.

Taking the position that the Railroad allows this procedure simply because they “want to” is also disingenuous; Coursers hunt down runaway synths, as we know from the narrative when we encounter an entire building of Gunners who were wiped out by a single Courser hunting one single synth.

Arcadia, admittedly, offers another solution, but it’s one that’s divorced from the Commonwealth, with neighboring people who don’t have the centuries of ill will towards the Institute and their synths to color how they feel, and unfortunately, Far Harbor never explores any real changes with this (it’s ridiculously limited to Boxer heading to Arcadia, and that’s it, while the Brotherhood and Institute offer more content - which I find really odd). 

Can Arcadia afford to house all of these synths? Would the denizens of Far Harbor take issue with any potential conflicts that might erupt from the Institute hunting down synths, especially if it was more than the occasional synth? None of these issues are explored.

Her plans are garbage. She’s honestly the worst at planning any kind of operation. She has no foresight, it’s all about immediate results. In this, she compromises and betrays people willing to help (such as Patriot.) It makes zero sense. Not only does it ruin the synth pipeline, but it also kills off the entire institute. Something that could SAVE the commonwealth if taken over because it’s resources are so vast. 

This is contradictory. After the protagonist speaks with Patriot, Desdemona’s long-term plan involves helping all the synths escape from the Institute, and betraying Patriot is a necessity because this person would not support helping free all the synths; it’s a matter of knowing that Patriot would chose the humans over the synths, and this is explicitly told to you if you inquire from Patriot about it in a hypothetical scenario. Also, the Railroad isn’t in support of the manufacture of synths, but in freeing existing synths from a form of servitude; this kind of criticism (which I’ve often read from people) shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the Railroad.

Furthermore, the proposal to take over an entire society like the Institute is not feasible. You’re going to force into submission an entire population of men, women, and children who are ideologically opposed to you, synths who ideologically align with the Institute, and a myriad of Coursers - one of whom, canonically, took out an entire building of armed and armored Gunners? I feel like people don’t take into consideration ludonarrative dissonance between story and gameplay when they question why the main character doesn’t forcibly seize control over an entire society without taking into consideration that absolutely no faction can realistically accomplish this. 

Even the Brotherhood of Steel, with potentially thousands of troops, is in no position to feasibly accomplish this task without hemorrhaging most of their troops and resources.

Also, “get on the pridwyn by stealing a vertibird (who no one can fly) and then blowing it up killing every man woman and child no matter if they are guilty or not.” ??? dude. Thank god this is a video game. Literally, 1k things could go wrong with that plan. It’s purely reactionary and put 3 of her best agents at extreme risk cause she wills it. 

I find this criticism odd because the Brotherhood and the Railroad are ideologically opposed to each other; the point isn’t that the Brotherhood are villainous (they aren’t), it’s that (when it comes to the artificial intelligence that are synths) the two factions want the exact opposite of each other, and conflict is inevitable (Kells Prydwen terminal message if you defeat the Railroad for the Brotherhood of Steel reads that the Railroad were “hampering” Brotherhood operations, and that’s representative of the ideological schism that exists between the two groups).

The stealth operation for the Railroad is also fairly realistic to me in terms of a small group defeating a larger group, especially given Kells’ terminology that suggests the Brotherhood troops could number up to the thousands, although ludonarrative dissonance makes it hard to properly gauge how many troops they would have (I feel it’s an example of how the Railroad, and also the Brotherhood, were more thought-out as factions). It isn’t difficult to imagine a stealth operation achieving victory for the Railroad.

Should Desdemona have written a strongly worded letter to the surviving members of the Prydwen asking them to please ignore what everyone in the Commonwealth is saying about synths because they know better? And yeah, things could go wrong - that’s the possibility with any operation, but the point is that the Railroad are up against the odds to accomplish a goal no one else wants to achieve.

She’s all about winning the battle, but in this, she’s gonna lose the war and the whole commonwealth will suffer. (this can be said for all the faction leaders except Preston, but we are talking about Des here) 

The whole Commonwealth isn’t going to suffer if Desdemona frees the synths. Each faction provides something unique to the table (with the exception of the Minutemen since they can serve as a secondary faction to every other faction): the Brotherhood are fighting raiders, Gunners, Super Mutants, ferals, and Institute synths, but the Railroad are the only ones who will protect synths and keep them safe, and that’s largely due to how unpopular such a mindset is among most people in the Commonwealth.

Similar to New Vegas, there is no golden path: you don’t get everything with one faction. Even the Minutemen Ending involves synths dying. None of the factions are perfect, and there is an appeal to joining different factions because each one affords you something the other doesn’t.

While the Railroad Ending is primarily focused on synths, if you helped Preston, then the Minutemen are still around as a group to help people. It’s not like they vanish into thin air.

She doesn't listen to her team. It’s canon. She thinks she knows best but can’t see that sometimes (many times during the story) she is very shortsighted. Any good leader knows their own limitation and knows when to listen to their trusted advisors.

Desdemona is the leader; she’s the one who gets to make the top decisions because she is in charge. It’s not her place to constantly defer to the people under her command. We also see that she speaks with other members of the Railroad - she engages in dialogue with Glory about potential casualties in dialogue we can randomly hear, and we see that P.A.M. and Carrington are consulted in a discussion about the Institute blocking a path for H2-22 during “Memory Interrupted” (and this is an example where Desdemona concedes to follow through with Carrington’s recommendation).

#desdemona #the railroad #fallout 4 #fallout thoughts

[wakandanblogger]

Catching His Eye pt.2

Summary: Your friends finally get you out of the house and onto the dancefloor! But, you catch the eyes of a predator, and he’s after you.

Paring(s): Erik Killmonger X Reader

Warning(s): Language, Mild Violence, Eventual smut

Rating: 18+

A/N: Thanks so much for all of the positive feedback on part one. Sorry to post this SO LATE but I got so excited I just couldn’t wait! It’s also 3:30AM but whatever, right!?   I hope you enjoy this one as well!

(Gifs are not mine...)

Part 1

TAGLIST:  emoniclark22  the-ruler-of-death  slimmiyagi  feminominal   ashanti-notthesinger  korrababy disneysdarlingdiva  heyauntieeee  sincerelyjamaica  foureyedsiopao  myboyfriendgiriboy  scrumptiouslytenaciouscrusade 

Catching His Eye Taglist:  emoniclark22  the-ruler-of-death  slimmiyagi  feminominal   ashanti-notthesinger  korrababy disneysdarlingdiva  heyauntieeee  sincerelyjamaica  foureyedsiopao  myboyfriendgiriboy  scrumptiouslytenaciouscrusade  youreadthatright  missumuch1918  aykanna  thadelightfulone  suburbanblackhoe  cutewylie iamrheaspeaks  zxddy-panther  cancerianprincess   vanitykocaine  misswakanda2018

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“Shhhh, You don’t want to make a scene do you?” He chuckles, his eyes were almost similar to Erik’s and you saw fangs, real fangs, not a grill. Your eyes widened and you started to kick but it was no use, he was between your legs and all you were doing was hurting your hips.

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“What was that about?” Desmond pulls you back towards him once the girls and Quida’s new fling go out to the floor once your squad song comes on. You flinch a little, seeing Erik’s intense eyes in Desmonds, but you quickly shake it out of thought. 

“What are you talking about Mo?” You try to regulate your breathing, still a little in shock at the experience you just had. Desmond eyes you and looks directly at your neck, brows furrowing. Feeling that you’ve been found out your cover it with your hand nervously. 

“Tha fuck you mean? I saw you out there with that nigga,” Desmonds face rests and he nudges you, “I mean if you tryna fuck...” 

You can’t help but push him and laughs at his joking, you can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief. The bites or bruises, whatever the hell they were, began to sting a little. You hiss but return to your friends, you still wanted to spend much needed time with them but in the back of your mind, you craved this man. Why were you falling for a complete stranger so hard? Well, let us rephrase that, who the hell is he? He seemed, different but powerful and unlike anything you’ve ever experienced before. His voice was of course just like any other nigga from the streets, but it wasn’t that obnoxious confidence, it was almost royalty. 

Curiosity got the better of you and you just couldn’t stand it. Was he really waiting for you? Did he really have the confidence to know what you were going to do? You needed a drink, so you excused yourself to go to the bar. You grit your teeth at the pain your heels were causing you and lean against the bar, “ Margarita please,” You breathe. The bartender nods and begins to make your drink, when it was finally finished you began to chug it. Finishing it the bartender chuckles and waits for your next command, “Stronger,” you chuckle nervously and go to push your hair behind your ear.

Those fucking eyes. You wanted to stare into them forever or at least for as long as you possibly could. When you look up towards the door you gulp and push yourself off of the bar. Before you could take your first step, “Where you goin’ girl?” Ashanti laughs coming back up to the bar, torso dripping with what you assumed to be her spilled drink.

“O-oh um, just going to get some air. It’s hot as hell in here,” You smile and eye her up and down, “What happened?” you laugh.

“Damn old dude knocked my drink over trying to make a move on me,” She groans, “Gummy bear please.” Ashanti pauses a moment and looks at you with a raised brow then smiles.

“I can’t get over how freaking sexy you look right now,” She smiles and pokes your exposed belly, causing you to take another step back and slap her finger. The two of you laugh and you sigh, “If I don’t come back-” 

“I knew it! You’re meeting that man!” Ashanti laughs but is cut off by a harsh ‘shh’ from you. She folds her lips in but you could still see that she was smiling. “Go ‘head girl~,” She smiles and takes her drink before turning and making her way back to the dance floor.

“Oh! Ashanti!” She stops and turns, waiting for your next words, “Give me Desmonds keys, I need my damn flip-flops,” you laugh and Ashanti scoffs, making her way back over to you.

The entire walk seemed like a cross-country run in these heels and as much as you wanted to not do it, you had to. You stopped in the front of the club where you came in and stopped at a seat to lean against it and unhook your shoes. Your toes were killing you and these hoes needed to come OFF! When the shoes were finally off you let out a sigh and looked around. You sigh when you didn’t see anyone that would recognize you because you didn’t exactly get a good look at Erik. But those eyes, you would remember forever.

You decided to turn your lie into truth, you needed some fresh air. As you pushed through the front doors, the echo of the music faded and you sat down alone on a bench for a second to let your feet breath. It was quiet here, the only noise being the cars that drove by.

“Uuuuugh what are you doing?” You groan dropping your face into your hands. What were you doing? No man has ever made you feel this way, but this one was something you’ve never experienced. You were used to the eyes of men and the attention of men, but you were never left high and dry like this one did.

Is this rejection?

Wait, he told you to come here, but where was he?

Does this count as rejection?

What the fuck was going o-

Your skin crawled when you felt the warm fingertips venture up the back of your arm and rest on your shoulder. Quick shivers travel up and your head snaps up to see an older drinking man leaning against the brick wall of the club. Of course, how stupid. You harshly brush the man’s hands from your shoulder and you can’t help but feel played.

“Leave me alone,” You breathe standing up and making your way down the sidewalk, “Fucking drunk,” you whisper to yourself.

You managed to cross the street without getting run over and god why did your feet hurt worse, now that the shoes were off? Why the hell was the clubs parking lot across the street and in an alley and why was that the only available parking? You groan and tough it out and tiptoe across another street to the painful sidewalk. as you walk you felt footsteps. Instinct kicked in and you had to hurry and make it to Desmond’s car. It didn’t cross your drunk mind to ask Ashanti to walk with you but there was no turning back now. Just when you decided that you should turn back, you turn around and is quickly pressed back against the brick wall.

“Ouch! What the fuck! I said leave me the fuck alone,” He stood with his knee between your legs with both hands on your shoulders. His fingers grazed over your bruised neck from Erik and he scoffs at it.

“He’s not ready for a woman like you,” He grunts.

What the hell was he talking about, he’s not ready? You yelp at the pain and regret ever coming here, not staying home, none of this would be happening.

“He-” He covers your mouth and licks his lips.

“Shhhh, You don’t want to make a scene do you?” He chuckles, his eyes were almost similar to Erik’s and you saw fangs, real fangs, not a grill. Your eyes widened and you started to kick but it was no use, he was between your legs and all you were doing was hurting your hips.

“Do you not get the idea, of marking?” You hear a voice, his voice. The tears flowed down even more now that you knew you were going to be rescued from this monster. Erik grabs the man by his shoulder and jerks him back from you. You gasp and drop down onto the sidewalk with a hard ‘oof’. Panting you were in a state of shock and unable to move.

Run! Fucking run! Why are you still sitting here!? GET UP!

The man let out a snarling laugh, “You ain’t ready for all this woman, Udaku. Go back to fuckin’ whores for fun,” The other man grunts and casually starts walking your way.

The man was built and looked like an experienced, absolute jerk. His bald head catching the neon lights and his full beard only accenting the teeth he had. He smelt of smoke and whiskey, so who knew what he was capable of.

Erik’s eyebrow flicks and a growl bubbles in his chest at the name, but he smirks anyways. “Not my name, but don’t sweat that shit,” He smirks rolling up his sleeve, “don’t want you blowing a hip or nothin’ pops, so I’ll take her off ya hands, come on baby,” He says turning his attention to you. He holds out his hand to you and just when you are about to take it you are snatched up but the man and thrown over his shoulders without issue.

“Don’t!” You screamed and with that, Erik lunges at the man, eyes golden and fangs out.

Fangs!?

From what you saw, the golden grill that was once in Erik’s mouth just a few moments ago, lie on the sidewalk and was replaced with actual fangs. Erik kicks straight for the man's stomach but misses as he moves out of the way. The man chuckles and turns straight running straight for the darkness of the alley. You hear something dropping and a growl. In an instant, you are being dropped again on the harsh concrete and gravel. You manage to push yourself up and before he can grab you again, you turn and swing the one heel left in your hand full force. It connects with his jaw and he bends over cursing at the pain then lets out a snarl.

“Help!” You scream trying to run down the alley back to the main road but you feel hot and heavy breath on your neck before you trip on a block. As soon as you fall you are being covered by a different large creature. It growls and huffs, steam blowing from its nose. When you look up to see just what the hell it was, you fall back instantly pushing back. Your voice getting stuck in your throat and your eyes wider than they had ever been.

What was going on!?

Who are these people!?

The creature had seemed to notice you or was too busy looking at the other man, or whatever he was at this point. It was impossible to see just who exactly was who, or who to trust. There is a sudden yowl and another comes charging from the fog and barreling straight for you. You couldn’t see what was going on or what was what. All you knew was that they weren’t of this world! They weren’t human!

You let out a terrified scream just as the animal behind you lunges forward and straight into the other. You couldn’t take your eyes away from the madness, frozen with fear. They tackle and sink their large fangs into one another. Yelps, snarls, car horns and smashing was all you could hear. But the growls were replaced with grunts and human yelling at certain points. 

When you finally came back to reality you push yourself up and whimper at your hurt knee but push forward. 

You hear a loud snarl, another loud bang, the alarm from another car, and then a chuckle.

Run.

Just when you are about to turn and run for the main road a huge dumpster is thrown in your path, crashing just a few feet in front of you. You end up running into it trying to push it but it was no use.

“No! No! No!” You bang your fists just when you hear the chuckling of what seemed to be the older man. Tears flowed down your cheeks and you press your back against it. Your silence turns into sobs when he holds out a bloody hand at you to take while he drags Erik’s limp body in the other. Blood was running down four large claw marks on his chest and shoulder. You push away his hand and continues to beg for him to let you go, for him to leave you alone. What you said, you had no idea but you were sure it sounded pitiful. 

“Aren’t you happy?” He sarcastically whines approaching closer, “I brought you this!” He drops Erik’s body at your feet and he groans, coughing.

“He had to know that this was going to piss me off, enticing me with your scent back inside,” He snorts and tilts his head at how pitiful Erik looked while trying to push himself up. The man kicks Erik in the stomach yet again and he begins to laugh. That laugh was sinister and chilled you down to the bone. His teeth caught the light of the moon and you wondered why no one heard any of this.

“Don’t you want someone who can protect you!?”

“P-please,” You whine trying to hide behind your arm but he gently takes it, the blood now rolling down your forearm. You push and try to get away from him, your eyes darting from Erik’s to this monster that stood in front of you. You can hear Erik groan when his neck is pressed down against the gravel by this mans boot. 

“Stop it!” You cry out hitting his chest earning a chuckle from him. He leans in and just when he’s about to sink his teeth into your goosebumped flesh he stops suddenly. Eyes wide the both of you look down to see a bloody spear just inches from your own abdomen. It is suddenly jerked out and the man falls forward against you, you can’t move under his weight. 

Frozen once again, you stare into the dead eyes of your attacker before they are pulled off of you. The body falls in front of you but you only see the back of a woman in red and gold holding a bloody spear.

TO BE CONTINUED???

*******************************************************************************************

Thank you so much for reading! Like or reblog if you liked this! 

#black panther #bp #black panther x reader #angst #violence #violent #blood #gifs not mine #erik killmonger x reader #hybrid #catching his eye #part 2 #erik killmonger x reader angst #hybrid!erik killmonger x reader #hybrid!erik killmonger #michael b jordan x reader #michale b jordan smut #michael be jordan x reader smut

[bon-voyage-dear-friend]

Finally got around to make this post. Watched Black Panther, was amazing, and there are many people who have already said what they think about the film. I mostly want to express my feeling from someone who is African (born form Ghanian parents), who grew up around the African community and culture and have been and stayed in Ghana multiple times, and there are so many things that I love about the movie specifically because of all of that. Still gonna say that I’m talking for everyone with similar history as me and that this is mostly personal.

Also, minor spoilers, if you are one of those 4 people who still hasn’t watched the film.

African accent:

It wasn’t perfect, but I was still happy about the fact that they used an accent instead of speaking standard American/British English. I feel like that there is this connotation that not speaking standard English makes you stupid, and I realized that even adults have these insecurities when my father told me to learn to speak with a British accent (something I’m totally not interested in, and probably can’t do anyway). Having an international blockbuster portraying a bunch of African people, speaking what can be mostly considered as “broken English”, being intelligent and all, and not ridiculized for the way they speak was really nice. 

Futurism, culture and tradition:

For some reason, I went to the movie not expecting much in world-building, other than your standard utopian, grey-looking cityscape. Imagine my surprise when I find out that instead of that I got... an open market. It was so bright,  colourful, and it felt like something I could easily find in Ghana. I also liked W’Kabi’s tribe farm, even tho it was probably there mostly to deceive foreigners and farm kick-ass battle rhinos, holy shit I loved them. Long story short, it was amazing how they didn’t sacrifice culture and individuality for futurism and technology, giving Wakanda some personality. Good, overly futuristic, greyscale cities devoid of any identity are overrated anyway.

African fashion:

Going back to the market scenes, those outfits were the BOMB. The royalty and the guards were put in Afro-punk/Afro-futuristic attires, which I’m not saying is not cool, but I was expecting that, so it was mostly no biggie. The feeling that I had while watching the random passengers on the street, however, or even the outfits that son and father were wearing during the scene in which T’Challa goes on the ancestral plane, or during the scene where everyone was directing themselves to the coronation. It was like watching the FashionistaGH catwalk insertions on ABNtv before Ghanian News or going to an African church on Sunday, or to an African wedding, or an African party, or- you get my drill, it felt warm mostly because of the colours, I hate unsaturated movies and familiar.

-

Other things that I loved, more related to the story in general.

Killmonger:

And here we come with Erik: this guy is now one of my favourite antagonists, and he is one of the few villains that I felt some sort of sympathy or empathy for. He was the living embodiment of “cool motive, still murder”. He had good points: Wakanda could easily have helped the bordering nations, avoiding all atrocities inflicted upon them, even without fully opening their borders, but instead, they decided to sit down on their comfortable thrones, while everyone around them was getting tortured and killed. Erik’s anger and frustration were understandable, however, his actions were in no way justifiable. Like dude, causing a global war and colonizing the colonizers? Just no. There is so much wrong with this plan that I don’t even know were to start. But still, I couldn’t stop myself from whispering a “no” when I saw him getting stabbed by T’Challa at the end, and seeing his face being hit with the realization of what he was doing ‘till now, just broke me. If only the adults in his life made the right decisions, he wouldn’t have wasted his life and potential in pursuing such hateful goals. Knowing his story, inside I wanted him to stay alive and maybe turn a new life, but I knew that wouldn’t have worked for someone who had committed so many atrocities (who even seemed to enjoy killing people) and he deserved a punishment, so, as he said, it was either prison or death, and, of course, he chose the easiest way out.

Erik as a villain within himself was great, but one thing that made me actually love his character is the fact that he actually has a positive impact on the story, which is something you really don’t see often from a villain. Killmonger appearance doesn't tell T’Challa that outsiders are dangerous or that they should be wary of enemies or whatever, instead, the encounter with this enemy tells the new king that, to avoid making monsters like that to be born again is important to help the people that could easily turn to the wrong side due to what they may experience in life.

Also, it raises a lot of issues concerning the relationship between Black Africans and Black African-Americans, but that’s a completely different conversation that I won’t have here.

Informality:

I hate overly formal royal families narrative and thank God we had none of that in the film. Seeing everyone roasting the new king, right after he sets foot on his nation was everything I didn’t know I wanted. 

Sibling relationship:

Don’t get me even started with this, I’ve always been weak when it comes to sibling relationships in fiction, and Shuri and T’Challa were just perfections. Thank you, Marvel.

Shuri:

This beautiful little kid. If the moment she flips off her brother didn’t settle it for me, the instance where she roasts him for wearing African dads’ open toe sandals was the moment I decided that I was going to protect this science nerd, who uses bad puns and painfully outdated memes, with my life.

Nakia, Okoye and the Dora Milaje:

I think crying is the only way I can use to express the feelings I have when I see any of these women doing anything on-screen. I mean, name me something more iconic than Okoye snatching her wig so she could use it to blind an enemy.

M’Baku:

Do I really need to say more?

Bonus

Erik and anime:

Thank God MBJ is such a anime trash because now everyone headcanons Erik as a weeb, and it is just hilarious to think about him making references, while everyone in Wakanda is really confused.

#useless rant #black panther #t'challa #shuri #nakia #okoye #ramonda #erik killmonger #m'baku #dora milaje #n'jadaka #n'jobu #zuri #wakanda #marvel #long post

[shadowfae]

**breathes in deeply**

(vent)

So I'm a soulbonder who's looking to make a new bond to a particular person and nothing is working.

I know a lot about this person, I know a good amount about their world, and I know what I need to do, but none of the things I've tried have worked. I've bonded people before in both intentional and unintentional ways. This is unusual for me. I don't quite know how to handle what's going on here.

I know what's probably causing it. My mental health kinda tanked between this and the last time I called a new bond. Like. I've started experiencing psychosis issues intra-headspace. Thankfully I've avoided anything that severe in meatspace, but I have had increased issues with my pre-existing executive function and emotional regulation issues. Every time I think I've gotten somewhere with bonding this character it's only been psychosis issues and discernment issues, and it's really, really disheartening.

But even aside from mental health issues, when I'm relatively lucid I'm not having luck.

I've tried summoning, I've tried inviting, I've tried direct "hey come here", I've tried indirect "hey we'd like to talk", I've tried yanking them, I've tried directly appearing to them in their own world, I've tried just trying to talk to them before. Most of these I've tried more than once. Nothing has worked. There may have been contact in the past (and seemed positive-to-neutral about learning more about this place and visiting), but at this point I really doubt even the more reliable incidents. Something should have worked here, and I can't shake the feeling something is going very wrong.

I know I should probably give up and move on at this point, as it's been literal months. Honestly I've asked a lot of places for help and I've looked into what resources I've been able to find on their source world and bonding in general, and my options are running dry. Nobody would blame me for giving up. But I have my reasons not to. I have a feeling about this, and they're in a situation I don't feel like leaving alone. Like, everyone they thought they could trust screws them over. I also DESPERATELY want to at least talk to this person. This entire situation is so fucking frustrating. I'm at the "try shaking cat treats at them" phase.

Also I can't talk to anyone about this because 1. dude's source is from my own AU, and is technically my oc, 2. the places I can talk about this shit are not open to sensitive parts of this, going assume I'm lying, or uh, were exposed to a few cringey false alarms on related things, 3. it's been long enough and constant enough that it's too much to talk about the full extent of this nonsense. 4. My SO can't tolerate this person's source world, so I won't make them endure my prattling.

Because I needed isolation added to this clusterfuck.

Anyway that was good to get off my chest, feel free to throw this into the tumblr void with the identities of anon asks if you want. Or post it, I have no investment in the fate of this.

Mmmm, it looks like there are several issues here that you're facing.

I want to ask: do you have any other bonds right now? Because maybe getting them to try will help, just because their methods will be different than yours, and sometimes you just need a second set of hands. (Or fins, as Albafica wants me to make sure you know.)

There could be a ton of things blocking it, and I would suggest dealing with your psychosis issues first. Not give up, but put this on hold until you know what's causing the psychosis and have dealt with it. You do not want to forge a bond on such a shaky foundation. I'm not saying 'psychotic people can't soulbond', flames forbid I am, I'm reading that this is a new and difficult thing, and you don't want unknown variables getting in your way, especially when they can induce things that look similar to soulbonding but really really aren't.

I have to account for my Devil powers every time I do a spell, ward, or fuck around with the headspace. Because I'm the host and the god in the room, and things answer to me when they won't to anyone else, and Albafica's commentary on that is "stop locking me in a room with your crazy sentient brambles that only speak static whenever you're majorly upset" and I think that's not fair to me, that only happened once and it was accidental, but you get the point. That's a variable you need to be predictable and accounted for.

Then yeah, past that it looks like they're just not willing, and if you want to bond, you need to see it from their side. Because to some random person in their world, you probably feel / appear like a particularly dangerous spirit that's trying to eat them. Al agrees that's how he'd take it if someone pulled that on him, and he's very untrusting on his best days. So it sounds, so far, like your approach is not the best for this.

If you rule out medical reasons for your psychosis - and that is not an easy thing to do, please check out medical things for that, you don't want to fuck around with it - it could also be them refusing you and using their own wards. (Or at least, I can see the line of thought between them trying to stop you and such backlash; but that's an option to consider after medical issues.)

If you can get in contact with them, you need to ask one question, and one question alone, and do not pass go or collect your 200$ until they've answered clearly: do they want you to stop?

You haven't said why you want to bond with them so badly, and motivation is a key factor here. With Goni, he showed up looking for Luco and serves partially as the adult to go to when shit gets bad and also as the resident prettyboy and slut. Al is logical and blunt and his remarks cut deep, but he gives a damn and functions as lieutenant where Goni's advisor and backup. South is uh, he's the demon commentating about how much we should just kill people and he's right, he is, but that's illegal. He also serves as the youngest and the most prone to extreme emotions, and when someone else is doing the extreme emotions, it makes it that much easier for the rest of us to keep our heads. He says what I'm thinking, and then I can deal with it rationally.

They're all people, and they aid each other as well in headspace, but the bond between host and bond is a bit different than bonds with each other. I pilot the body most of the time, I handle everything in meatspace, they help me do that. It's simple: keep the guy who pilots the body running, get body privileges.

And what you need to consider here is not only what they can do for you, but what you can do for them, and how exactly you're going to coexist. Because while my triad of fishmen help me, I also help them, largely because uh, /gestures at the fact they all died in a war in various gruesome ways and the journey they took to get there was actually worse/. It's all fun and games until they're here, away from the danger, and then there's the exotrauma.

Goni handles it by not handling it until he has to and right now we're working on actually acknowledging that he's got issues. South deals with it by being resentful as all hell and incredibly violent and yandere, but being allowed to not pull his punches is still so new to him that it's actually quite good for him to get to say what he's thinking and be respected for it. Al's grumpy about it but is trying to build something of his life now before he falls apart. He wants something to hold onto first, which is smart. Trust Al to figure out the most logical way with none of the words and then adamantly refuse to let that go wrong. He and I both understand bullying the universe into giving us what we want, and since he has full utter control over his own mental processes thanks to being able to make my Devil powers do what he wants, I don't think anyone's going to be able to interfere with his ability to do that.

So now I have to ask for you: what is this bond going to be doing for you, and just as important, what exactly do you expect to be able to do for them? Because they're also an OC, and they may have some goddamn feelings about that. They may see you as having coincidentally written down their life, they may see you as channeling it, or they may see you as the one who made it happen. All of which you'll also see in fictionkin spaces. If they fall into the last category, they're gonna be pissed you didn't give them a happy ending, and they're justified in that, and so are you for not doing that.

You have to be prepared - especially from reading between the lines of your ask here - that they're not going to be as functional as you want them to be. When we handle our exotrauma, we're a mess. Everything gets put on hold to deal with it, and even then, we rely a lot on our partner system (Faolan and the Nebulaic Collective) to keep the body from crashing so we can hold onto our life instead of falling apart utterly for a week straight. We don't do jack entirely with the four of us, and it's better that way.

The fact that you can't rely on anyone outside of yourself, especially considering 1) they don't seem to want this, 2) your attempts either very coincidentally happened alongside or caused serious mental issues that need urgent attention from you, and 3) you don't sound prepared to handle the severity of what you're implying it to be; all goes to show that this reads to me like a terrible fucking idea. I mean that honestly and gently and bluntly.

I don't mean 'give up and don't do this', I mean 'seriously dude either you're not giving me context or you haven't thought nearly hard enough about the realistic way this is going to go', and if it's the latter, no wonder you're having issues.

I already know who my next bond will be, and I know what needs to happen for him to show up. Right now, the four of us are functional, and we have a good Thing going on, sleeping arrangements and all. If we're getting another, a Space needs to open up for him, job to keep us functional that he can do as well as a part to play in our dynamic that is currently not being met. We got Adult (Goni), we got Logic (Al), we got Emotional Teenager (South), we got Has Context And Admin Access (me).

(Side note, South is vaguely 17-19, but he's been treated like he was five for most of his life and has been forced to rapidly oscillate between genuinely horrifying scenarios and being incredibly sheltered, so trying to put any sort of 'he's an average X year old' is downright impossible. He's on the upper end of teens and we call it a day there, and if he hears a word of "you're not old enough to do X activity" then I have to stop him from sending you graphic descriptions of things he can do to your insides and that's no fun for anyone so don't do that please.)

So when we have a space the new bond can fill both in keeping things functional so he has something to do and a space in our relationship so he's not standing on the sidelines looking in, he'll show. As it stands right now, that hasn't happened, so he's not here yet. That and I think I'm stretched rather thin when it comes to bonds, I need much more time with our fishes before I think I can handle more folks in here. So much on my mind, so little time.

But either way regardless. You have several glaring issues that are fairly obvious that you may not have noticed because you can't be objective in a situation you're involved in (true of everyone), and until you fix those, yeah, this doesn't sound like it'll work all that well.

Although I will note that I typically bond via my writing, simply writing from their perspective until they start commentating. They go from 'maybe MaDD doing shit' to 'oh hey soulbond' when they don't comment only on themselves but also on things I'm doing in meatspace. Albafica's a character when he's narrating his own life, he's a person when he demands More Salmon For Dinner; if that makes sense.

I doubt you'd get that far unless they genuinely did want the connection, because otherwise they wouldn't tell you stuff about themselves. Works for me, might work for you, who knows, please get your psychosis symptoms checked out first before touching this again and make sure they actually want to bond and it's actually viable before continuing and then try again I suppose?

A very long answer for a very long ask, but I like Helping, so. Hope that helped a bit.

#asks #anonymous #on soulbonding #on plurality #brrrrr what tags should I use #also opening the floor if anyone else wants to try and help out #anon didn't say no helping so I assume yes helping

[superman86to99]

Superman: The Man of Steel #23 (July 1993)

REIGN OF THE SUPERMEN! In this issue: Steel vs. Superboy! I mean, "Superman” vs. “Superman”. The Man of Steel is battling some hoodlums armed with hi-tech killer weapons when the Metropolis Kid decides to butt in and "save him" in front of the cameras that follow him 24/7. (Side note: Was Superboy the first '90s reality TV star?) The Kid draws all the firepower to himself... accidentally causing the bad guys to shoot down a Daily Planet helicopter containing Lois Lane. The chopper blows up, signaling the death of a classic and beloved DC Comics character: Frank the helicopter pilot. RIP.

Lois, meanwhile, manages to jump out of the exploding chopper in time (probably out of pure muscle memory) and is rescued by Steel in a rather familiar-looking scene.

Lois tries to turn the tragic situation into an exclusive interview with Steel, but Steel has something more important to do: chewing Superboy's butt for scaring off those criminals he was trying to interrogate (and, you know, causing a man's death). The Kid is like "I'm da real Superman, yo!" and bails... but as he flies away, he actually starts questioning his half-assed approach to superheroics. I'm sure Frank's wife and 12 children would find great comfort in that.

Meanwhile, Steel is approached by Lex Luthor Jr., who wants to offer him a job as one of his armored security guards (because having one S-shielded superhero in his pocket isn't enough for him). To butter Steel up, Lex offers him the location of the White Rabbit -- aka, the lady distributing all those highly advanced weapons to street gangs. Steel thanks Lex for the tip and immediately ditches him, making it clear that his services aren’t for sale.

Steel drops by the White Rabbit’s penthouse, and she turns out to be an old flame from his time as a weapons designer for the military. Things almost get steamy for a second in there, until Steel remembers that this lady has made him indirectly responsible for countless deaths (all those weapons are his design). Once she takes the hint that Steel won’t work for her (either), White Rabbit just shoots him point blank with one of those big-ass guns, launching him off the building and into a convenient tanker parked outside.

Superboy (who was following Steel to apologize for being a dick) flies in just in time to pull Steel’s body from the resulting tanker explosion:

By the time Superboy and Steel return to White Rabbit’s penthouse, the place is already empty. The two Supermen then bond over that whole “we’ve both caused innocent people to die today” thing and part amicably. Awww!

Plotline-Watch:

Ponytailed scumbag Jeb Friedman, having given Lois Lane WEEKS to recover from her fiance’s supposed death, urges her to “forget Clark” and go to Cairo with him. Don Sparrow says: “I hesitate to even mention that the hated Jeb Friedman appears here, and even Jimmy doesn’t want Lois rebounding with him. Serious question, though: are we supposed to hate Jeb? Or is it just happenstance?” If we weren’t supposed to hate Jeb, would they have given him a ponytail, Don?

After meeting Steel, Lois reflects on the fact that the other Supermen may look like Clark, but Steel is the only one who acts like him. Obviously she doesn’t think Clark’s already been reincarnated as an adult black man, but she does seriously wonder if ghostly possession is a real thing.

I love how efficiently Steel’s backstory is presented in this issue. As he and White Rabbit are about to lock lips, we see a handful of black-and-white panels showing the two working together for the military, hooking up, finding out his weapons were being used against innocents in Qurac, and then a flashback-within-the-flashback of Steel’s grandparents having just become victims of gang violence. It’s only half a page but it tells you everything you need to know about this dude and his motivation.

Superboy burns his hands while rescuing Steel, even though a clone of Superman should be equally invulnerable. Hmm. Hmmmm. Hmmmmmm.

The issue ends with Supergirl telling Lex she’s going off to look for Superboy, which leads to the next issue of Adventures.

And this leads to the end of my section! For more commentary, Easter eggs, and gratuitous images of White Rabbit, check out Don Sparrow’s section after the jump:

Art-Watch (by @donsparrow​):

Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like none of the other four Superman titles seems as swayed by the importance of the storyline as SMOS.  What do I mean? I mean that when it’s a big storyline, like Panic in the Sky, or Doomsday, the art on the title really seems to rise to the occasion, and there’s some standout stuff being produced.  But in the meantime, when a story doesn’t feel as important, the quality seems to dip a little. To me, this is one of those issues.  We begin with the cover, and it’s not one of Bogdanove’s best.  Sure, his artwork could be called cartoony at the best of times, but this one really took on a loose, loony tunes sketchiness, particularly in Superboy’s “ain’t I a stinker?” expression and giant wall of teeth. He looks less like a 16 year old than he resembles Rex Leech, a character we’ll come to know better in time.

Inside, the story gets off to a slow start, as we’re abruptly thrown into a video of wannabe gangsters, moving in on where they think they’ll find John Henry Irons.  The double page splash revealing his location is an exciting one, and Dennis Janke does some interesting things with his hatching to indicate the shine of the metal, leaving certain areas unhatched to show a glimmer. 

Bog’s depictions of The White Rabbit continue to push the envelope for how much skin a comic code approved book can show, both on page 7, and then later in the book. [Max: This next sequence of panels burned itself into my young mind. Because of the cool panel layout, I mean.]

[December 2018 edit: White Rabbit’s body has been covered with Mike Carlin’s face so that Tumblr doesn’t delete this post. Sorry.]

Page 8 brings us a long sought after in-comics cameo.  If you’ll recall, back on one of my first reviews on this site, I interviewed the great Tom Grummett and asked him if there were any Easter Eggs that we should look out for while we were reading.  He answered that "My personal favorite moment was when Jon Bogdanove drew me in a scene with Jimmy Olsen in one issue of Man of Steel. I’m the one with the moose on his shirt. Happy hunting.”  Well, we need hunt no more, as a certain fellow pops up, arguing with Jimmy Olsen, and what’s that on his shirt?  A moose?! Found you! [Max: Are we the first on the internet to point out this cameo? I don’t have time to look it up, so let’s go with “Yes”.]

I also love the little gag in the lettering, where the first part of “Saskatchewan” (Tom’s home province) is shown as “Saskatch” and then below that Bog has written “W-1”, phonetically completing the phrase.   It’s also a very Neal Adams-y couple of panels when Jimmy and Tom start to get heated debating who the real Superman is.  [Max: I wonder if the Neal Adams-esque panels above are homaging a specific Adams comic, or just his “intense argument” poses in general...]  Then a page later, there’s an unmistakable rendering of another Super-Teamster, none other than group editor Mike Carlin, scanning the police radio for scoops.

As the story progresses, there’s a great shot of the Metropolis Kid (who they refer to as Superboy on this page, without a rebuttal from the Kid) showboating and holding one hand behind his back.  But, on the page that follows, a pretty heavy end for Daily Planet chopper pilot “Frank”, made all the more sickening by the lack of concern from the Kid leading up to this point. 

Some great visual callback on page 12, as the mob scene when the Man of Steel rescues Lois Lane recalls the meet-cute at the shuttle disaster wayyyy back in MOS #1.

The scene were John Henry confronts the Kid about his carelessness is well-done, even if it gives way to another mention of the preposterous ‘spirit-walk-in’ idea, which even these characters seem to find tenuous.  

The flashback with White Rabbit does a good job of filling in the gaps of John Henry’s history (interesting how similar Irons’ motivation is to that of Tony Stark’s, at least in the movies) but it’s an odd scene—not just because of the aforementioned vamping from White Rabbit, but also Irons’ inaction in the scene—he went there to capture her, but mostly just stands around and then lets her stroll back over to the bed, where a weapon is clearly visible from where he’s standing. [Max: Can’t imagine what else he could be looking at.]

As The Metropolis Kid rescues The Man of Steel, we get more looney tunes-style comedy, when the Kid comedically blows on his burning hands, trying to cool them. They seem to be working hard to establish how different his powers are from Kal-El’s, though they eventually go back on almost all of this stuff.

Moving on, we get a really nice look at Lois at a rainy window, once again musing on how the Man of Steel, while physically the most removed from Kal-El, seems to embody his “soul” more than the rest.

STRAY OBSERVATIONS:

Is the cameraman gangster supposed to be a riff on Spike Lee? The glasses seem pretty similar to ones Spike wore at the time.

How is it that we never noticed such a giant, futuristic tower on the Metropolis skyline before?

Jimmy Olsen wearing a Spin Doctors t-shirt is a little too meta for my head, since one of their biggest hits was “Jimmy Olsen’s Blues”.  What does the DC Universe Jimmy think when he hears a song about himself, lusting after Lois Lane?  They were also one of my favourite bands when this issue came out, so my mind was doubly blown.

What is it with Lex hanging onto VHS tapes?  Thank God he never got his hands on that one of Big Barda! [Max: Dammit, I’d JUST managed to erase that from my mind, Don.]

#superman #louise simonson #jon bogdanove #dennis janke #steel #superboy #sydney happersen #white rabbit #ron troupe #tom grummett #mike carlin #jeb friedman #spin doctors #supergirl #possibly spike lee #rip frank chopperson #reign of the supermen

[captainsimagines]

Kill ‘Em With Kindness - PART FOUR

Bucky Barnes x Reader

    You had been detected. You were now on their radar.  You were recruited for one mission only.  You’re trained and put to the test.  With your background, everyone realizes it was a mistake recruiting a college student who would soon be faced with the thing that drove her to kill in the first place.

Warnings: violence, blood, swearing Word Count: 3,129

“You are the most beautiful person I have ever seen… I want to ruin you.”

“You’re too late.”

PART FOUR

    The second you walked through the classroom doors, everyone noticed you had a friend.  With a class of 300 students, an Avenger was pretty easy to sniff out.  You guided Natasha to an empty row and sat down, taking out your notebook and pens.  She brought along a notepad, eager to learn something as well.  Neither of you paid attention to the gawking of men in the room or the squeals the women couldn’t swallow.  But just like any other day, you sat quietly and waited for the professor to begin the lecture.

    Halfway through, Natasha leaned over and whispered,  “I didn’t know cavemen co-existed with humans! That’s so interesting.”

    You smiled and chuckled, peaking at her notepad.  Her notes were clean and detailed, showcasing the most amazing handwriting you had ever seen.  You scoffed, “I’m jealous of your handwriting.”

    She giggled.  Natasha Romanoff fucking giggled. You furrowed your eyebrows and stared at her in surprise.  When she noticed your expression, she rolled her eyes. “I’m not made of stone and I know you aren’t either.”

    That shut you up.  You turned away and leaned down in your chair.  

    “How’d you learn to write that quickly?” she asked.  

    You shrugged your shoulders, “Underground training, I guess.��  You never lied.  This was a special thing about you.  The questions you have been getting asked recently were never left unanswered.  You found it helpful to always respond with a simple answer, even if that answer didn’t quite satisfy the requirements.  You didn’t lie.  

    “You know you’re going to have to tell us what that ‘underground training’ consisted of,” Natasha said, copying down the words on the lecture slide.  You only nodded, chipping at your nails like you always did.

    “By the way, that blonde dude over there is checking you out.” Your remark didn’t stir anything throughout Natasha and she responded with a simple, “That’s nice.”

    In all honestly, you were growing fond of Natasha.  At first, you thought she would be your enemy considering your fighting style and attitude was similar to that of hers, but it only fueled her interest in you.  Natasha felt as if she had found someone she could talk to, someone who shared her views and skills. Although, your skill set was very different from hers and she was beginning to recognize this.  

    Before you could reach into your backpack and grab your red nail polish, the windows from the ceiling crashed down to the body of students, smashing all over the ground.  You and Natasha stood up and stayed put while everyone screamed and raced to the emergency exits.  The professor yelled at the students, signaling them where to go.  You and Natasha shared a look before she pulled a gun from her waist and aimed to the swarm of men sliding in from ropes.  You hooked your fingers through your blazer and removed the two knives attached to your bra strap.  

    “Oh, yeah.  I like you,” Natasha told you before she kicked herself off the seats, flying down to the front of the classroom and shooting men left and right.

      You took the stairs, running towards a man with his gun pointed straight at you.  You whipped around the aisle and grabbed his gun, pointing it in the other direction and then kneeing him in the crotch.  Once he doubled over, you kneed him in the nose sending him upright once again.  With his throat exposed and his eyes screwed shut because of his broken nose, you sliced his throat and continued your decent.  Dodging students on your way down was difficult, especially when they would want to watch you in battle.  You urged them to head for the exits and get to a safe place.  You didn’t have to tell them twice.  

      Blank face and all, you turned to make sure Natasha was doing fine.  Which was a stupid thing to do because Black Widow could handle herself.  She, however, did the same to you.  You smirked at her and launched yourself towards three men, taking them all down with your two little knives.  Natasha showed up behind you, punching the guy’s back and twisting his neck with her bare hands.  You thanked her, but your kind words came with some uninvited guests.

     Two against seven wasn’t normally an issue, but Natasha had run out of bullets and each of the seven men had a loaded gun.  Natasha sighed and looked at you.  Your focus was on the seven men before you.  When one of them aimed their gun towards Natasha, you instantly stepped in front of her to take the incoming bullet.  Natasha was stunned and looked at the back of your head in disbelief, the action ultimately startling her.  

    “What do you think you’re doing attacking a college campus?” you snipped.

     The man in the middle took off his mask and gave it to the man on his right, inching towards you little by little.  

      “We want the Winter Soldier,” he answered.  The HYDRA symbol on their sleeves made an appearance and Natasha cursed herself for not noticing that sooner.  Without being seen, Natasha pressed the distress signal on her bracelet to let Tony know your precise location.

     “He’s obviously not here,” Natasha said, studying each man individually, knowing very well you were only concentrating on the movements of the one man before you.  

    “Bring him to me,” he declared.  You shook your head. 

    “He’s not with us,” you said.  That wasn’t technically a lie.  He was not with you at the moment, but you knew they would take it as if he wasn’t residing at the Avengers compound. 

    The man before you raised his gun underneath your chin.  “You spoke to him in the early hours of Sunday morning.  You know where he is.”

    You were confused.  How did they know you spoke to him yesterday?

    “What is that supposed to mean?” you fought.  He removed the safety and was about to pull the trigger but was startled when a red and blue shield flew through the already broken glass and knocked out four of his men.  You twisted his wrist, causing him to drop the gun.  Steve, or Captain America as you were watching him now, knocked the last two men out and turned towards you and Natasha.  

    You kept your hands wrapped around the man’s wrists while Natasha tugged on his hair so he could look directly at Steve.

    “What the hell is going on here?” Steve commanded, his voice deeper than you had ever heard it.

    “Give us the Winter Soldier or we will do more than kill only one of you,” the man said through clenched teeth.  You looked at Steve, wondering what his next play was.  Without warning, Steve drove his shield across the man’s face and put him to sleep.   ______________

    You were all sitting in the conference room, your heads hung low and your jaws clenched.  Every once in a while, Bucky would stare at you from the corner of his eye.  The conversation you two had replaying in his mind.  He couldn’t get you out of his head.  You had nightmares, too.  What did they ever do to you? The thought of you strapped to a metal board being electrocuted and tortured had Bucky breathing deeply and lowly, and he closed his eyes to try and get rid of the mental image.  

    You couldn’t take another minute of deafening silence so you raised your head and spoke softly.  “What the hell were they doing at my school?”

    Everyone’s eyes turned to you, the question on their lips as well.  

    “We have no idea,” Bruce answered, swiping his hands over his face.

    “How do they know about me or where I was going to be?” you lowered your voice.  This way you could let everyone know that you weren’t about to take anymore shit from them.

    “No clue,” Tony replied this time.  

    You exhaled through your nose and straightened your back.  “When were you going to tell me about the camera’s in my room? They were obviously hacked! That’s how they know Bucky’s here!”

    She said my name.  She knows my name.  Bucky snapped out of his thoughts when he registered what you just said.  

    “Cameras?” Bucky softly asked.  You looked at him and your face softened.  You almost forgot that this whole mess revolved around him.  They wanted him.       “They’re all over my room.  I covered them with tape once I found them all,” you replied.  Tony and Bruce ran out and headed to your room, you assumed.  You were confused.

    “We didn’t put cameras in your room, Y/N,” Steve said.  You looked at him in disbelief.  You scanned the room to see if they were joking.  They weren’t.

    Your heart stopped and you felt the room closing in on you.  You started to breath heavily, your eyes fixated on the coffee stain on the table.  Your quick breaths did not go unnoticed and soon everyone was asking if you were okay and if you needed something. 

   “They’re back,” you said.  You whipped your head up and made contact with none other than the Winter Soldier himself.  “They’re back.” They had found you.

    Your voice cracked.  You hadn’t cried about the incident for three years.  You weren’t about to start now.

    “Y/N, calm down.  Who’s back?” Natasha placed her hand on your shoulder but you ducked at her touch.

    “It’s been three years.  They couldn’t have found me that quick,” you stated, looking for a way out of the room.  Natasha stepped in front of you with worried eyes but she was determined to make you stay.

    “We are going to protect you.  Tell us who’s after you,” Wanda said.  You shook your head.

    “I can protect myself.  I’ve been doing it all this time,” you said.  Bucky was now standing up, ready to hold you back if you started to physically fight.

    “You need to tell us.  You aren’t the only one who has just been compromised.  We all have,” Steve stated.  He was right.  This wasn’t just about you anymore.  The cameras were meant for you.  They wanted Bucky for God knows what, but you were absolutely certain it was them.

    By now, Tony and Bruce had returned holding the cameras they ripped from the walls and smashed.  You panicked, looking for answers.  

    “Paris, France… three years ago.  They hid my name.  Look up ‘Lucy Campbell’,” you revealed quietly.  Before they did their research, Tony’s voice sparked your senses.

    “This is much more than a single name now, Y/N.  We need your details,” Tony commanded.  You turned away and clenched your jaw.

    “I’m freaking out about something I’m not ready to tell you because it’s personal as fuck and you’re still begging for information?” you lowered your voice.  You were becoming monotone again.  You were fading again.

    “Don’t pressure her, Stark,” Bucky tried to reason with him but Tony interrupted.

    “And you? They want you.  You.  You really don’t want her to reveal anything right now?  This is on you.  It’s always on you.”

    Steve stepped towards Tony but Bucky placed his metal arm across his chest.  No fights.  They had just repaired themselves.  It was much too early for any more fights.

    “Don’t blame Bucky for this!” you yelled.  This caught everyone’s attention.  Bucky turned to you, his eyes widening.

    “We were doing just well without you in the picture, kid,” Tony turned to you.  

   “You. Kidnapped. Me,” you clenched your fists around the edge of the chair causing your knuckles to turn white.  

   “We need you for one mission.  One mission and you’re gone.”

    You shook your head in disbelief and stared at Tony.  

    “Starting today, your school knows you’ll be taking a leave of absence.  You are now confined to the compound.”

    You pushed the chair to the desk harshly and tugged at your hair.  Your temper was shortening by the second.  You stared wide eyed at Tony still.

    “What?” you screamed.

    “Romanoff will train you harder.  Bruce and I will work on your new suit.  You will go back to school after the mission.”

    “I didn’t ask for any of this!” You were about to combust.  You were done.  You burst through the conference room doors and ignored the calls of your new “team”.  No tears fell from your eyes and you weren’t about to show just how vulnerable you truly were to those freaks.

    “Hey, Y/N! Wait up!”

    You heard a recognizable voice calling out for you.  You continued walking but they quickly caught up to you.  When they tugged at your shoulder, you elbowed them in the gut and tried to leave again.  Next thing you felt was your hand smacking against the wall and a white substance covering it.  You whipped your head to the person responsible.  

    “Hey, I’m sorry about Mr. Stark,” Peter explained.  You rolled your eyes and leaned your back against the hallway wall as well.  You didn’t reply and Peter took that as a sign that he should continue.

    “He’s just been really stressed and this mission coming up is going to be a big one.  He even wants me to come and that’s saying something,” Peter said.

    You stared at the kid and tried to read him.  You didn’t detect anything other than sympathy and understanding from the kid.  You tried to untangle your face so you could indirectly tell Peter he could continue talking with you. 

   “I’m sorry for getting you caught the other day.  I didn’t think they would keep you here,” Peter thinly smiled.  You nodded and looked back at your captured hand.  

    “Get me out of this thing.”

    “Oh, yeah- I’m sorry about that,” Peter cut the webbing from you and you relaxed.  You just stared at him while he rocked on his heels.

     “I didn’t even know you were in there,” you admitted.  Peter chuckled and slid his hands into his pockets.

     “I’m the youngest here.  I shouldn’t be raising my voice in situations like this.”

     “Don’t be afraid to speak up,” you told him.  He chuckled again.

    “Yeah, I’ll keep that in mind.  I’m free whenever you want to talk,” Peter offered.  Your lip twitched into a small smile which caused Peter’s eyes to brighten.   

    “Okay,” you replied.  

______________

    It was one in the morning when tapping interrupted your sleepless night.  

    “.- .-. . / -.-- --- ..- / --- -.- .- -.-- ..--..” Are you okay?

    Bucky.  You closed your eyes and smiled.  You hesitated getting out of bed but you felt as if you had to answer him.  Leaning your forehead on the cold wall, you tapped.

    “.. .----. ...- . / -... . . -. / -... . - - . .-. .-.-.-“ I’ve been better.

   It was almost like your roles had reversed.  Bucky smiled at your response.  The small interactions you two were having were making his still heart revive little by little.  He wouldn’t admit this to anyone but you were actually the only other person he has held a conversation with other than Steve.  

    So, his next response was out of the blue and unexpected.  

“-.. --- / -.-- --- ..- / .-- .- -. - / - --- / -.-. --- -- . / --- ...- . .-. ..--..” Do you want to come over?

    You smirked at that.  Were you really ready to talk to someone?  Bucky was like you, thought.  Maybe he only wanted to sit in comfortable silence.  

    “-.-- . ... .-.-.-“ Yes.

   You took a deep breath before opening your bedroom door and knocking on his.  It took a few seconds for Bucky to open the door, but when he did your heart picked up its pace.

    He stood there with a small smile painted on his face.  He moved aside and allowed you to come in.  You walked in and took in your surroundings.  

    Gray walls.  Black and gray sheets.  Black curtains.  White tile floors.  Same walk-in closet and marble bathroom as yours.  

    “It’s nice to meet you,” you finally spoke.  You held your hand out and Bucky shook it.  

    “It’s nice to meet you as well.” You wouldn’t admit to one another, of course but you’d be lying if you didn’t feel your legs wobble after touching him.  

    Small talk was comfortable between the two of you.  You asked him how he joined the Avengers, how long Steve and him were friends, and what his hobbies were.

    After an hour, you both were getting sleepy.  You didn’t want to leave.

    “Can I ask you something?” Bucky asked.  You nodded cautiously.  It depended.

    “Why do you truly do what you do?”

    Although you had been asked this by the other team members, you knew Bucky was implying something else.  Translation: What happened that made you start doing this?

    You looked down at your lap.  You two were seated on Bucky’s bed, an admirable distance in between.

     “Long story.”

     “I have all night.”

    You laughed at that.  “Why do you want to know?”

    “You just seem like you want to get it off your chest,” Bucky commented.  Silence ensued.  

    You sighed and broke down one wall. “Paris. Summer vacation.  Lucy Campbell was kidnapped right in front of my eyes.  I couldn’t save her,” you revealed.

    Bucky only nodded, taking your hand in his metal one.  You looked his arm over, marveling at its technology.  He caught you staring and quickly retracted his hand, only for you to pick it right back up.

    “I like it,” you admitted.  He smiled and let you hold his hand.  Even though you didn’t reveal the whole story behind it all, you still didn’t lie to Bucky.  

    “Who was she?” Bucky was careful not to step over any boundaries.

    “She’s my sister.”

    Bucky’s breath hitched in his throat and he quickly collected himself.  He rubbed circles with his thumb into your knuckles.  You blankly stared at your connected hands.

    “Biological?”

    You nodded.  “She’s married.”

    Bucky noticed you weren’t saying the word “was”, indicating you thought she was still alive.  Even behind your cold and hard exterior, you had hope.

    “Are you okay?” he asked for the second time tonight.  You looked up at him and found yourself lost in his blue eyes.  This ex-assassin has the most beautiful blue eyes.  You wanted to reach forward and feel every inch of him in case you couldn’t see him again.  Feeling him, hearing him, seeing him…

    “I don’t know.”

    Bucky took a few seconds before he removed your hand from his and reached over to pull the sheets back.  He motioned for you to get in and you obliged.  Once settled, you watched him get up and sit in the couch in the corner.  You were grateful he didn’t cuddle up next to you.  You two weren’t even fully acquainted yet.  Then you remembered this was his room.  As if noticing your internal argument, Bucky quickly reassured you.

    “I don’t mind.  Get some sleep.”

    “I don’t sleep that much,” you said.

    Bucky settled into the couch and crossed his arms over his chest. “Me neither.”

Let me know what you think! I got a thousand plot twists for you guys.

TAG LIST:

@owhatshername1 @chipilerendi @g0back2bed @buckyappreciationsociety @4theluvofall @katykyll

#bucky x reader #bucky barnes #bucky imagine #bucky #natasha romanoff #steve rogers #tony stark #kill em with kindness #series #peter parker

[capn-charlie]

hey dude your drabbles are great. i don't usually read fanfic but yours are on point. can you do one pre-alison's disappearance where the girls are at a party, and a rando girl starts threatening emily because she thinks she flirted with her boyfriend, and alison overhears and takes care of it

Altered and a bit angsty, but 1) young Alison dragging people is my fav, and 2) tipsy, honest Emily is a good concept:

Emily stumbles through the cramped living room full of party guests, snickering at her own, beyond-tipsy state with none of her friends in sight ━ a result of her “let me be reckless, just this once” attitude because, God, she’s so damn done with being pulled back and forth by Alison, not to say their friends know what’s going on.

Her vision is hazy, feeling like she’s able to see straight even though looking around the space causes things to grow spinny. Brown eyes dart around the room once she’s leaning against a wall, attempting to appear far more put-together than she feels, and she bites her lower lip while staring ahead of her. Emily doesn’t focus on anything in particular, glancing around the room and getting lost in thought whenever she looks in one, specific direction for too long. Two minutes later and her eyes are landing upon a blonde girl flirting with her boyfriend ━ a well-known couple at Rosewood High ━ and the teenage boy locks sight with Emily who doesn’t deter from her absentminded gaze, primarily because she’s attempting to focus on the girl he’s talking to, noting how similar her hair is to━

Suddenly, Emily sees the girl hesitantly turn around while mouthing the words “Who are you looking at?” only to get a shaky “No one” from her boyfriend. Green eyes lock with brown, Emily feeling agitated because Alison will never stop clouding her mind and, quite frankly, she’s sick of it. She straightens her posture while taking a deep, near-drunken breath that makes her want to throw up, but becomes distracted once the same blonde from seconds prior angrily approaches, stopping two feet away, her boyfriend lost in the crowd.

“Do you always stare at other people’s boyfriends?” the girl bites and Emily bitterly laughs, looking away.

Alison, keeping tabs on Emily from a distance, narrows her eyes at the girl who steps closer with a fierce body language, and she finally shoves herself toward the two.

“Don’t lie to me,” Alison hears the other blonde loudly say. “I know you were eye-fucking my boyfriend.”

The next thing that comes from Emily stuns Alison greatly, making her hesitate for a brief second.

“Maybe I was eye-fucking you,” the brunette dares through her fuzzy mindset, squinting with a demeaning smile and, once blue eyes note the other girl’s hand raising as if she wants to slap Emily, her feet move faster until she slides between the two.

“I know you weren’t thinking of slapping her,” Alison’s tone is challenging, the other blonde’s nostrils flaring as Emily shifts her jaw behind the girl who’s been tugging her back and forth, though she notes how nice she smells and, fuck━

“What’s it to you? She deserves it,” the girl thinks of getting in Alison’s face, trying to keep up with her “superior” attitude. “She needs to be taught to keep her wandering eyes to herself.”

“Or maybe your boyfriend should be taught to stop acting like a dog in dry heat.”

“Fuck you.”

“And fuck you right back.”

The pair of blondes stare at one another for seconds longer, Emily absentmindedly checking Alison out while standing behind her, and green eyes notice her drifting focus, snickering before saying, “I never knew you were gay, Alison. How interesting,” and walking away. Alison, remaining in the same spot, narrows her eyes severely as she glares at the girl who grabs her boyfriend’s arm and tugs him into a nearby hallway, eventually and slowly turning to Emily who clenches her jaw while looking somewhere else, though blue eyes see her swallow hard.

Without a single word, Emily shimmies out from between Alison and the wall, weaving through everyone as the blonde follows with an incredulous expression. Emily exits the house entirely, Alison doing the same as she’s only steps behind the girl who begins to speed up when she realizes she’s being tailed, stepping onto the sidewalk and randomly feeling dizzy, resulting in a stumbling walk.

“Emily, where are you going?” Alison continues to follow, knowing she won’t forgive herself if she doesn’t keep an eye on the girl.

“Home, Alison. I’m going home,” her voice is cold and solid, stunning the blonde because it opposes her inebriated attitude.

“You’re welcome, by the way,” she sounds equally as irritated, watching Emily stop before turning around so they’re ten feet away, standing on the sidewalk in the dead of night.

“For what?” the brunette chuckles. “Maybe she should’ve slapped me!”

“What is your issue?” the words come out with a crack through the middle, Alison feeling like someone punched her in the gut.

“You. You’re my issue,” she can faintly see tears spring into brown eyes. “God, Ali, I wish she would’ve slapped me. I wish she would’ve knocked some sense into my head.”

“Em, come on,” Alison, herself, grows softer, slowly walking toward Emily who doesn’t move. “Don’t do this. You know that I━”

“I know that you what, Alison? I’m tired of this,” the brunette’s voice breaks. “I’m tired of you pretending that I’m some pawn. I’m a person.”

“I know you are,” she takes another step forward, making the mistake of reaching for Emily’s hand and watching the girl pull it away with a shaking head.

“No,” Emily gets out through gritted teeth, looking like she wants to say something more, but, instead, turning around and walking away.

“I’m walking you home, whether or not you want me to, so you might as well accept it right now,” Alison tries to cover the hurt in her voice but the brunette can hear the shakiness hiding beneath.

Feeling guilty, Emily stops and waits for Alison to catch up although she was only a tad behind, getting a small “Thank you” from the blonde.

At first, there’s silence between the pair, only listening to the sound of leaves rustling when a breeze flows through the street. They walk carefully, arms not brushing like they normally would, and Alison can see Emily side-eyeing her out of her peripheral vision.

“Didn’t you want to stay and party?” Emily makes a face while raising her eyebrows, gently tripping over absolutely nothing before rolling her eyes as Alison snickers. “What’s so funny?”

Alison offers her a shrug with a tiny smirk, “I’ve never seen you this… drunk.”

“Neither have I.”

“I hope I never have to see it again,” she whispers, wringing her hands as they walk.

“Why not? I think it’s fun,” her voice is blunt and sarcastic, Alison gaining an upset frown.

“Being drunk when you’re upset is the least bit fun,” her answer is lecturing, Emily biting her inner cheek while feeling her body tingle with warmth as they continue to walk, her vision clearing a bit even though she still feels like she’s on a boat.

“You sound like you’re talking from experience.”

“That’s because I am.”

“What do you have to be upset about?”

Alison takes in a sharp breath, initially not wanting to answer as Emily’s house comes into view. Within seconds, however, she partially bows her head to look at their feet moving along the pavement, whispering, “You.”

Emily creases her forehead in confusion, not looking at Alison while asking, “What about me?”

Like before, the blonde waits to respond, the two making it onto her front lawn as Emily stops to turn around and face the girl who seems wary of opening her mouth again, but feels her lips part once Alison gathers some courage and does answer her question with the smallest, most-sheepish grin.

“I know I’m your issue,” she whispers, “but you don’t realize that you’re my issue.”

#answered ask #emison fic #emison drabble

[frostbite883-archive]

DBM Bra hating

These comments won’t be in order. With that said..let’s do it to it.

Tregrenos

So, is it Hyukhyuks turn to eat a Senzu in the middle of the match?

#GetGudBra

Me:...I doubt that would happen seeing as that hulking monster never did carried senzu beans after it’s ‘birth’.

A Poverty-Stricken Antelope

@Tregrenos

Now I understand another reason why I hate Bra: she heals mid-match like a little bi***. She wouldn't last 10 seconds in a Dark Souls duel.

Me: So you say.

Itsarge (gamergater or former GGer) and snowflake exchanging some words with each other.

snowflake:

My view on Bra: She's an awkward character. Literally. She's an entitled princess of a Deity-God-Warrior and Bulma, so she's a overpowered brat with a genius level IQ, and obsessed with strength and being better than everyone, which makes her relationships very one-sided and binary. She literally divides the world up into people stronger than her and not stronger than her, and only acknowledges one person as legitimately stronger than her. No, seriously. It's a problem. Try writing like a tomboy teenage girl would talk, who's obsessed with beating everyone she comes across. At best it would come out as parody. It is hard to find that voice, and harder still to make it resonate with a predominately male audience, and yet harder STILL to do it within the confines of traditional shonen story-telling, from which DBZ is inspired. So Salagir took cues from cocky, pre-redemption Vegeta (not a bad idea). But I believe it only jarred the readers more. The gender-swap seemed obvious and artificial and distracted the reader from the story. The same problem occurs in superhero comics. Iron Man? Everyone accepts that a white dude of indeterminate age can be of genius level intellect, have his own company, and be a superhero/playboy in his copious spare time. Riri Williams? A 15 year old black girl who reverse-engineered Iron Man's tech? Whom he then decided to fund and sponsor? UNBELIEVABLE, according to the backlash. Not a real Iron Man/War Machine, it was obvious that the writers simply "made her up." X-23, Laura Kinney? Not a true Wolverine. "Just created as fan-service." Dr. Jane Foster? Not a real Thor. "Just a writer gimmick." This begs the question, why not? What dissolves the suspension of disbelief with these characters, while the suspension of disbelief is limitless with traditional characters? People claim they want new and interesting stories and challenging plots and characters, the same way they claim they want to lose weight. But they really don't. They want the old chestnuts, the familiar, the predictable. The sugar and the salt. If a story is predictable, you don't have to think about it too much. It won't upset you. People dislike being upset. Shonen style stories are the most predictable on the planet. Good always wins. Evil is punished. Virtue is rewarded, and sins are rebuked and/or reprimanded. Good guys and bad guys are obvious and look the part. So Salagir set himself up with challenge in U16 Bra: an unsympathetic, one-dimensional character who happens to be a girl whose cockiness and obsession with strength is/was rewarded, not punished. Her morality is questionable. It's a deliberate inversion of the typical shonen character. But plot-wise, U16 is integral to the story. So she had to wear Plot Armor from the beginning, as well. Also DBM is moving along, plot-wise, at the pace of Freeza's kitchen timer. And there's also a peanut gallery of readers dissecting everything you do every page? Uh-oh...

ltsarge:

Regarding their statement people could buy iron man cause he is a white male... You know I take issue when people bring this line of thinking up. I think their iron heart girl, being a 15 year old black girl is a total cash grab gimmick appealing to their xtreme social left. In the same way that female Thor was a giant feminist spectacle that literally went around beating up misogynists. I don't think it's unreasonable to call out this type of pandering where it's seen. If marvel really wanted a black female heroine to take up the reigns of them iron man, they could have gone with this character. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misty_Knight It would be way more believable for an previously established in comics older black lady who has personally designed by tony stark tech, to take up the Ironman mantle than some 15 year old prodigy made up whole cloth. Same with female thor. If she - hulk or black widow went around welding his hammer (them latter which has occured), I would totally buy it. Having some super powered feminist be the new thor, and telling thor to check his privelege seems almost a parody of sjw influence in comics, yet it's played horribly straight. Sorry for the digression in this thread

snowflake:

But the entire superhero genre is pandering. Captain America punching Hitler? Meek and Mild-Mannered Clark Kent becoming Superman beating up anyone and anything with complete moral justification? Batman being the God-Damnned Batman? Itsarge - In the same way that female Thor was a giant feminist spectacle that literally went around beating up misogynists. That's a totally legitimate power-fantasy. It's just not aimed at you. At least you can console yourself it's likely to fail commercially. And just wait until the Enchantress gets her hands on her! As for Misty Knight, they were probably wanting to avoid anything smacking of blaxploitation. In fact, since Riri Williams looks like her exactly, she'll probably end up being a clone or something. Anyway, my point is that female superheroes are a challenge. They're a challenge to draw (how sexy is too sexy? how muscular is too muscular?). They're a challenge to write. They're challenging to present in an appealing light, and they're a challenge to plot for. And then there's the audience predisposed to hostility against such characters, and then there's the fact it's on the internet, which simply makes everything worse!

ltsarge:

1st up, female superheroes are not a challenge.  Just focus on making a good character, that happens to be female.  Black Widow, Ripley, Sarah Connor, Lara Croft, Rukia, Riza Hawkeye, Winry Rockbell, Bulma Fucking Briefs... (I can go on but you get my drift.) 2nd.  Anyone complaining about them being too sexy is either a prude or hypocrite, considering the over masculine features of male heroes which gives plenty of fanservice to people who like men.  And before anyone says any Anita Sarkeesian-esque excuse about how male superheros having amazing body appeal to the male power-fantasy, go do a cursory google image search on any male hero, ESPECIALLY if they anime, and take off your parental filters.  You will see endless fan art of male characters from Ichigo to wolverine to Raiden who are all in sexually explicit poses, if not flat out porn of them.  Probably the latter. Hell just look at fucking Twilight series if you want an entire series dedicated to the female gaze upon appealing strong masculine figures. The point is, if you're overly concerned about the sexual imagery of a female character, you're in either fear of the rabid feminist crow, or possibly the overly conservative crowd.  Considering their are female characters throughout comics and anime that are sexually appealing but renownly well written speaks volumes on how little an artist or writer should give a fuck about whether they are too muscular or sexy.   3rd.  Regarding superhero pandering like Captain America punching Hitler (or similar heroes punch insert political villain) in the face.  You may note that is something that is often mocked by comic book fans for how politically charged and nationalistic it was.  If that low bar is what we are setting as defense for female thor, than sure, well than I guess those examples of bad writing justifies absurd levels of feminist pandering.

4th.  Most of the arguments brought forth in the discussions regarding all this since the comment about "people are more willing to allow for a white male Iron man, but not Insert minority character" that have emerged as defense of bra, seem to be desperate attempts of justifications for an overall badly done character.  You don't need testicles or white pigmentation and blue irises to recognize the Bra for the most part has not jived with the fan base.  I've made a hefty list in this thread of why her character has problems, and none of them are because she has a vagina.  In fact, I have criticized many of Salagir's Original Characters for the same reasons, but Bra has either more or all of the flaws of the others such as Gast or King Cold. Let's be real.  If Bra was not a female character, people who defend her would not have certain cards in their arsenal.  If this character was Vegeta, and I was defending her, you wouldn't see me saying "Oh you vegeta haters dislike Vegeta because he's a male.  You are all sexist!"  or "its difficult to right an arrogant MALE character from space" I don't give a fuck that Bra is a strong female character.  I give a fuck that her blatant mary sue traits are not addressed, and in story she's not criticized for being a bratty person. Just because there is a lack of "strong female" characters in DBZ cannon (not complete absence, as there are still many in DB/DBZ), is not a good excuse for building a shitty one.  We don't need affirmative action in comics or fan comics.  If people want to make a strong female character, that's good, that's fine!  But if there is one that's made that has HUGE FLAWS, we shouldn't say "Well, there are no other strong female characters, so thank god for BRA."

snowflake:

Well, on the flip side, if Bra was male, I doubt we'd get as much demands for PUNISHMENT!1!11 or "Punch me harder, Daddy" jokes. At this point, we'll just agree to disagree. We're talking past each other. I have faith that all of your complaints with U16 Bra will be addressed in the story eventually. U18 and U16 have had limited interaction since the beginning of the story. There's a reason for that.

ltsarge:

I'd be happy to argue at length over female portrayals vs male, so if u'd like to merge some of this over to a new thread that be fine with me.

Me: Hopefully, they don’t do that. Not because I think they’ll lose any argument or whatever you’d have with them, but out of the fact that whenever they DO point out flaws in your arguments and show you evidence you’ll just conveniently ignore them. You’re def. not someone worth conversing with.

Me: And seriously, why would you liked their last post to you?

prphd and ltsarge like this

Me: I mean with the way you went after them, I’d rather they didn’t get a like from you let alone anything else (although, this could be your way of respecting your opponent or whatever you would refer to them as, still, it doesn’t make it any less awkward seeing as how antagonistic you had been towards that person, a stranger no less...who you try to inject your thoughts and feelings towards while replying to their post when it wasn’t warranted).

Me: And some Anti-SJWs wonder, bitterly, on why some social justice advocates don’t take them seriously. Let alone obligate themselves to even talk things out with them.

#post #webcomic #Dragon Ball Multiverse #Universe 16 Bra

[strawberry-and-neon]

...All of them. Por favor.

*cracks knuckles*

1. The real reason I’m confused is a question that no one thinks about; why does Charlie the tuna advertise for a tuna commercial. Why is he selling us tuna. Why is no one bothered by this.

2. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten good morning texts; but on everyone else’s behalf, this is probably a wise thing.

3. I would only care if they smoked pot instead of doing anything else, like why am I paying for your vices, I’ve got my own to worry over, why am I involved

4. Not particularly, especially if the other is a stranger. Or if the other starts questioning me about god at four in the morning and there’s no one else around

5. Organizing a shit-ton of prompts

6. Nobody; I would not be drunk or lost walking down a road. I don’t drink. I don’t get lost. That is not me. Run.

7. Heaven help the hapless soul who cheats on me, for I have no mercy. And heaven’s the only thing that’s gonna save them.

8. Not particularly, but I’ve been told we have similar personalities

9. Hahahahahahahahahahahaha, no

10. Abient-wise: the thunderstorm that’s going to roll through. Music-wise: Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack

11. I feel like this is a trick question… so I will give a trick answer. Water, because you can make nearly every liquid drink known to mankind, and the question never specified whether or not you can add things to the liquid.

12. I’ll let you know when I’ve had one; probably wouldn’t care, I get random bruises already

13. Usually around 4am… don’t judge me, 4am is the best time for stuff

14. Uhhh… no, actually, thank goodness

15. I can text fast with one hand. I can text fast with the other. Ironically, I trip myself up when using both hands at the same time

16. I have the annoying habit of trying to answer /everything/, even if it’s ridiculous and doesn’t need an answer, so yes. Just don’t expect it the same day

17. Nope, I don’t think I’ve ever fallen hard for anyone, actually… so can’t hate them *shrugs*

18. Last night, 1 in the morning

19. Yes. 

20. “I bet if I just finish this sentence, I’ll be able to quickly finish this smut piece tomorrow at some point…”

21. I certainly hope there’s no one in this room with me right now

22. No, what, that’d be ridiculous *nervous laughter*

23. I was still doing school, so no, not happier at all. I will only be happy when my mortal enemy is defeated.

24. *the magic conch says* try asking later

25. Uhh, yes, but because of characters. And stuff. You know the stuff. You know why.

26. Black like the void

27. Nope. If they do, I just keep walking, because who are they. How did they find me.

28. …Actually, all my characters are listening to me for a change, this is incredible; it’s a miracle!

29. Absolutely

30. Not really, mainly cause I’ve never kissed anyone. And if I had, there’s a reason they’re my ex. Go right ahead.

31. A family member, about going to IHop this morning; I got chocolate pancakes.

32. Nobody specific, really… okay, I take that back, Tom and Rodrick because they deserve to be hated

33. Nope, unless you count platonic kisses, in which case yes

34. Do I get points if I make up a birthday?

35. According to my horrible math skills, 337 days

36. Um… summer school… vacation in August… I don’t have a summer

37. Yep, but I don’t talk to them as often anymore

38. I am definitely keeping something, but only cause it’s not done yet

39. Possibly, if I could be bothered to remember it

40. See, the great thing about never kissing anyone before is I don’t have to regret a damn thing

41. In certain cases; but if they’re both consenting adults, who cares

42. Available for what? For hire? For dating? For the third Wednesday of October? Yes, I suppose, and no, in that order.

43. Ummm… define “real strong feelings” because I’d argue no…

44. First, I would question why I had to get one; second, I’d probably get a second ear piercing on my left ear. Or third. Why not.

45. Yes, but it depends on the exes

46. I have no regrets; even if I did have any regrets, I can’t have regrets

47. “If I could just sit down and focus, I could get a lot more done” “Don’t be ridiculous, we both know you can’t focus that long anymore, you’d get distracted by literally any passing thought or noise” “But-” “Just sit your butt down and draw, it’s the only thing you can do that you won’t be distracted while doing”

48. I lost one at 7 because we moved; after that, I only lost fake friends, and I‘m okay with losing those

49. I should actually go and kiss someone, that’ll show you

50. Because I told myself to not get into another relationship right now; also because what is “like” and how does this emotion thing work

51. How many questions can there be about kissing?

52. THERE’S ANOTHER ONE :O Nope, I don’t

53. Kit-kats

54. I complimented myself for getting out of bed at a reasonable time, so yes

55. Dude, I wish I knew. Out of the many options, I hope it’s Disney… or Pompeii…

56. I own several foreign coins, a Japanese-made doll, and a few other things from Hawaii and Alaska; yes I know they’re not other countries; but they’re far enough away to be

57. Hmm… at the moment, mostly girls?

58. Texas, it’s the longest place I’ve lived to date; not by much, only slightly

59. A couple months ago, to an optometrist

60. Nope, should I?

61. I watched other people do it and laughed at them, but nope

62. Family members…?

63. In general: The Emperor’s New Groove. At theaters: Guardians of the Galaxy 2. Go watch it.

64. No clue, I’ll ask when I have a boyfriend/girlfriend

65. Uhhh… zero I think?

66. Nope

67. Heck no, I want to live to see graduation

68. No, summer lasts way too long and it’s /hot/. It’s hot right now. There’s no wind, it’s so humid, there’s sun; the only good thing about this is there are regular thunderstorms, but it’s /too hot/.

69. Short and sarcastic

70. Monogamous, I tend to have jealousy issues, so for the safety of human-kind…

71. Not yet, but who knows what will happen

72. Writing about it is fun

73. I can’t even flirt, what the-

74. Coyote take opportunity; coyote see no opportunity, so coyote take none

75. Eyes? Eyes. Yes. Or hair. Maybe. I don’t know. WHy are you asking me this-

76. Mah best friend

77. Does writing about this count? Dude, I won’t even kiss someone I’ve known for less than an hour

78. Again, same answer as above

79. My OTPs doing cute stuff together

80. Sure, kids are great

81. Yerp, once

82. No. What crush. I’ve never seen that crush before in my life. You can’t prove anything, and if you can, you won’t be able to hide

83. Uhhh… what? No.

84. I’ve literally never slow-danced in my life

85. Like fake dating? No, but I’ve considered it a few times

86. Books and chocolate

87. Taurus

88. Eating chocolate covered nuts, blissfully unaware I would be spending the next eight hours binge-watching Series of Unfortunate Events

89. Absolutely; I bake too, I just hate cleaning up afterwards

90. Nope. “I never look back, darling, it distracts from the now”

91. 100% no; I’ll take life as it comes, but I’m definitely not wishing to be in a relationship

92. I don’t really date… mostly monogamous relationships for the time being, but if it were just a one time date thing, sounds like fun; no strings

93. Interest in what? Like shiny things? I love shiny things, especially colorful shiny things… or things that make nice chimey sounds and are shiny and colorful… what were we talking about?

94. The power to punch people over the internet, a fairy to write for me when writer’s block strikes, a button to stop time so I can get enough sleep, and money so I can go places/visit people

95. I don’t even like playing board games, let alone people

96. I kissed two books in one day; I hope they don’t find out

97. If sarcasm counts as teasing, then yes; if not, I can’t help you

98. Nope, but I haven’t to meet Tumblreans, so…

99. No? Well maybe. Sort of. I don’t know. Probably not by conventional standards.

100. No clue, will there be breadsticks… *coughs*

101. Hugs? Wait, how well do I know this person

102. No, just too weird

103. “Nice t-shirt”

104. Umm… raises eyebrows, but is preferable to “doll”… I guess it’s cute?

105. No. Nope. Not happening. Doesn’t matter the sex appeal, not getting into that mess. Pretty obvious what they’re looking for.

106. I don’t even know when people are flirting with me

107. Make out scene between Berin and Correnten; good times…

108. Nope

109. Well I haven’t, but the same doesn’t go for my characters

110. I have a list, but I’m not talking. You can’t make me talk. Ahahahaha!

111. Who /really/ knows who they’re kissing next…

112. No clue, but if I did and they were hinting, I probably still wouldn’t know

113. Maybe? What are you, the FB-

114. Serious relationships, I guess.

115. Nope, haven’t; might happen, I dunno, haven’t gotten that far yet

116. Does anyone really know the answer to that question?

117. Dunno the question, but: Let’s sit around the campfire and sing the campfire song

the C A M P F I R E S O N G song

and if you don’t think that we can’t sing it faster, then you’re wrong

but it would help if you just sing along

#my answers #shadowdragonss #this didn't take as long as I thought it would #be prepared Jess #questions are coming