#{ Granted he has no issues submitting to monsters and the like since he is a proud monster fucker. :eyes emoji: }

[chronosbled]

i know dick is the one who always does the kissing with his ships but has he ever had someone do it to him? corner him and give him a kiss?

{ You know, now that I really think about it... no, he’s never had someone else be the one actively pursuing him with things like kisses. I mean, yeah he’s had people pursue him, like his canon wife for example since he was never originally interested in her, but she never was actively trying to gain his affections through kisses or acts of affection. She would just try to talk to him and be nice.

To be honest though, I think if someone that was vastly interested in Dickson just kinda came at him and kissed him (especially if they did as you said and pinned him against a wall or cornered him and kissed him), he would very likely be surprised or he would be extremely flustered by the sudden gesture or he’d end up being both. Listen. Dickson is not accustomed to love and affection like most people are. He was not granted or permitted such a thing throughout a vast majority of his life when his grandfather was still alive, so receiving sudden affection like that, especially in that manner, would be too emotionally stimulating that he’d probably lose his “charming boy” act real quick. This goes double for if it’s a man suddenly kissing him instead of a woman because he was raised to only be invested in women by his grandfather for a possible heir to their family. He has no idea how to act with men that are invested in him, nor does he know how to deal with them.

If you’re asking this because you have a muse that wants to do this to Dickson, I would say go for it, but he can be a pretty hard person to make comfortable with other muses. He doesn’t like being touched by strangers and he’s got issues with his space being invaded (even though he has an awful tendency to invade people’s personal space when he’s comfortable with them or genuinely invested in them). He also has issues with being cornered or confined due to how he was treated with his grandfather, so that would either end with him trying to rip your muses head off or he’d just react in a startled manner. But if you’re a muse who he’s close to or likes, I say go for it! Never know what could happen. Oh, I should also probably add that it depends on if your muse is intimidating or not to Dickson as well, cause that would greatly affect how he would respond to your muse. }

#☣ [ ' Fσɾ ϝυɾƚԋҽɾ ɾҽʂҽαɾƈԋ. ' ] - ✡ Aʂƙʂ ✡ #☣ [ ' Mαʂƙҽԃ Pαɾƚιƈιραɳƚʂ. ' ] - ✡ Aɳσɳყɱσυʂ ✡ #{ Thank you for the question! } #{ I certainly was an interesting one to answer. } #{ That's for sure. } #{ But for the short answer if you don't wanna read all that... no. He's never had that happened before. } #{ No one has been brave enough or bold enough to do so. } #{ Most muses want him to pursue them and not the other way around. } #{ Mainly cause I noticed that most people want their muses to be 'bottoms' for some reason? } #{ I dunno. There's a severe lack of 'tops' and 'switches' nowadays. } #{ I guess everyone just wants to be 'uwu' now? XD } #{ Please know that's a joke. } #{ Nobody has had the power to make Dickson 'uwu' yet. And I honestly don't think there ever will be. } #{ Granted he has no issues submitting to monsters and the like since he is a proud monster fucker. :eyes emoji: } #{ I remember the incident with the muse with the tentacles all too well. } #{ *war flashbacks* } #☣ [ ' Tԋҽ σɳҽ ɯԋσ ʅҽαԃʂ Ⴆҽԋιɳԃ ƈʅσʂҽԃ ԃσσɾʂ. ' ] - ✡ Oυƚ σϝ Cԋαɾαƈƚҽɾ ✡

[themswritinwords]

Past/Current/Next WIP Game

This looked way too fun, so I'm hopping on an open tag from @blind-the-winds. Gonna no-pressure tag @northernrosewritings, @hayatheauthor, and, of course, passing on the open tag! (That means you!)

Rules: past is a WIP you stopped working on/finished; current is a WIP you're currently working on; next is a WIP you want to write

Past

I was gonna go for Ethan Ellis, since it's the only one that's officially done in the sense of "in a publishable shape and currently being queried." But then I thought about my first love, Shadows of Flame.

It's post(-near)-apocalyptic high fantasy, wherein the King's right hand man, Ayris, is living a lie. For his own safety, of course, but a lie nonetheless. See, Ayris can do magic. If he'd been around 20 years ago, this would have made him one of the Irriman. Only around 20 years ago, one of the Irriman went off the deep end and tried to take over the known world. She nearly succeeded, too. After having murdered, subsumed, mind controlled, or otherwise squashed all opposing Irriman voices, stealing all their magic for her own in the process, she marched her army of unfailingly loyal supernatural freaks across the continent, steamrolling everyone and everything that wouldn't submit to her rule. An alliance between the three largest and strongest nations managed to stop her. By stop her, I mean kill her. Which is great news, unless you're Ayris. Because not only has he lived his whole life having to hide his powers for fear of getting murdered as a potential threat, it turns out it didn't work. She's back, and she's got her sights set on revenge-- and Ayris.

If we go back to the earliest iterations, I've been working on this one for 15 years. Of course, I don't want anyone going back to those earliest iterations, and I will start torching old notebooks to make sure that doesn't happen. But my point is that I have a special place in my heart for Ayris. I was working on this one in its current unfinished iteration when I had my child 4 years ago, but put it on hold just after covid lockdowns when I realized the pacing I'd had set out just wasn't working. There was more to it than that, but that was the biggest issue I couldn't seem to get past. So I shelved it. But you can't keep a good WIP down, so it'll soon be out of "past" and into "present," and I'm so excited! I've figured out what needs to change, I have a plan, and I even have most of an outline. (Amazing what 2 years on the shelf will do, eh?) But it's gonna have to wait, because....

Present

The Rockbridge Experiment. Urban fantasy meets Southern Gothic, with just enough "dude that's messed up" to toe the line of horror crossover.

Evan Grant is a detective. For now, anyway. She was pretty close to quitting altogether, especially when she got this assignment. Fae in the human district. What could possibly go wrong? A lot, as it turns out, and none of it in the way she expected. When she's paired up with a half-dwarf and a dying elf to solve a string of kidnappings and murders, Evan's whole belief system gets put to the test. The elf just so happens to be able to see the future, which might be handy if they weren't living in a world where magic was hunted to extinction several thousand years ago. Worse, those kidnappings and murders are starting to smell an awful lot like a drunken uncle's favorite dinner table conspiracy theory- that there's folk out there running horrible experiments to try and bring magic back. Evan and her new partners have to solve these cases quickly and quietly, or risk upsetting the delicate balance of human-Fae relations, quite possibly unpausing a particularly uneasy cold war. Add in an undead (maybe possessed) terrorist, the literal monsters in the shadows, and a millennia-old, quite-possibly-all-powerful baddie pulling strings they didn't even know existed, these kids are about to have one heck of a time.

"But wait!" I hear you cry. I thought that was one of the finished ones! And to that I say, "you're right! But I'm rewriting it!" Not editing, rewriting. Why? Because the first draft was, I kid you not, 365k words.

And yes, I may have had three separate alpha readers binge it in less than 3 days and come back asking where the sequel is, and yes, I spent a long time crying in the shower about how much I didn't want to change a dang thing because do you have any idea how long it takes to write 365000 words??? But as much as I love my slow-burn, takes-its-time, thoughtful-exploration-experience version, it's never getting published like this. Hard stop. It's just not. It took a lot of shower tears, but I've accepted that.

I've also learned a thing or two about the craft of storytelling since finishing it the first time, as well as over the course of finishing it the first time--- my writing style matured a lot from the front half to the back, and it unfortunately shows. So did my understanding of story structure, my characters, my own worldbuilding, etc. So I know now what's extraneous and where I want these characters to go, and I had just enough alpha reader feedback to know what landed the way I wanted it to and what didn't. I know what I need to do to make it as tight, coherent, and impactful as possible. So rewrites are underway, and we're not stopping til we've chopped this sucker at least in half! Which isn't to say it's gonna become a novella, not by any means. My best estimate right now is still sitting around 120k, but at least that's within the realm of "non-debut normal-ish" for the genre.

Future

I could cheat and say Shadows of Flame again, because I'm gonna start working on that one as soon as I get Rockbridge settled. But I like having two or three active non-editing WIPs at a time, so I'll also put in a plug for my next brainworm hyperfixation, which I'm currently calling "Fantasy Escort Mission, but with Babies, Goats, and Demons."

Okay, there's only one each of those, but our protagonist Ayla Severin, gets saddled with all three. She only knows about the baby and the goat, though, because the demon is bound to the baby's bodyguard. Why does the baby have a bodyguard, you ask? Because it's the infant prince of the neighboring kingdom. With whom Ayla's country is at war. Because a rebel faction framed Ayla's nation for the murders of the entire royal family. The baby, however, escaped (thanks, bodyguard!), and is living proof of the framing. If Ayla's team can get the prince back to the members of government who weren't part of the coup, they might be able to stop the war and bring the rebels to justice. Unfortunately, the only possible way they're getting across enemy lines without getting caught is through a wilderness so inhospitable that both countries gave it up as hopeless decades ago. That would be hard enough for an elite force of highly-skilled commando soldiers, but this is a baby we're talking about. An orphaned baby, and orphaned babies have to eat, so along comes the milking goat. And the demon? Well, it's certainly not going to be making things any easier, but just what it is up to is anyone's guess. Ayla gets to sort all of that out while also battling her own, less literal demons-- the grief of losing her little family, and the guilt that comes along with it.

So keep a look out in the next few months for early brainrot re: my many Plots, Schemes, and Homemade Blorbos, because I'm super excited about literally all of these!

#writing #wip games #writing games #ocs #wips #writeblr

[silyabeeodess]

FusionFall Fic: Wayward Souls

(Over the Garden Wall in FusionFall, requested by @tonixman, might be due for a part ii because I kinda like this idea.)

As another soldier spawned from the nearby Resurrect ‘Em in a flash of gold fire, Wirt asked himself yet again why he was even there.  He couldn’t fight on the battlefield: All he could do was help the ones who did during recovery.  And, for the most part, that was a joke since the Resurrect ‘Ems did most of the work.

The newly revived fusion fighter was unconscious--maybe it was their first time or they suffered a particularly bad death.  One of the other field aids dragged them onto a nearby mat to rest, double-checking them for injuries in case the process wasn’t complete. That too was just a formality at this point. So long as the Resurrect ‘Em worked, the body should be completely healed.  The real issue was that it took people a little longer to catch up to their own deaths mentally.  

Wirt watched on the sidelines as their helmet and armor was removed, and all of a sudden pictured Sara lying in their place.  Right: Other than the seriousness of the invasion, that was good reason for him to be there.  His crush had joined the war effort as soon as she could sign-up.  If he couldn’t protect the people he cared about on the warfront, the least he could do was offer some support.

Someone called for him, pulling him out of his thoughts, “We’re out of tea.  Brew another batch.”

“Right!”  He jogged over to the table of outdoor appliances to get to work.  At first, it annoyed him a little that they set up this camp just outside of a suburb when they could be working from any of the homes open to fusion fighters--they were even in-view. He got used to it though, considering himself to be in a much better position than the ones who barely gave themselves the time to dust off before charging into battle once again.  The aids needed to be just as swift and prepared.

While there was often at least one medic among them, their main job was to brace soldiers after resurrecting.  Denied the rest typically given after dying, their souls needed to recover most.  Assuring them that they were alive and well, offering small comforts until they could spring back to their feet, were everyday tasks.  

Granted, to do that, they used some not-so everyday means.  As Wirt stared at practically glittering contents stewing in the tea kettle, he inwardly winced.  He’d stopped looking at the ingredients for things a long time ago, finding one too many of Underworldly origins that disgusted him. It was better not to know. 

He’d just about finished up when he spotted a familiar, tiny figure running down the hill from the streets above, an unruly patch of brown hair bobbing above a river of tall grass. 

“Hey, Wirt!  Wirt!” Greg beamed as he reached the table, holding up a plastic bag, “Woo-woot!! The choco-train has reached the station!”

Wirt spotted a handful of empty wrappers mixed in with the candy where clearly his little brother had helped himself, but didn’t mention it.  In the past, he might’ve scolded him, but he’d grown to be more patient.  He played along with a soft smile, motioning to the soldiers resting nearby, “Good work, Conductor Greg.  Think you can finish delivering the goods?”

“Aye, aye!”  Just like that, he was off, darting from person-to-person to give each of them a piece. Their parents wouldn’t let Greg officially sign-up for the war, but he came to help Wirt nonetheless.  He’d become a regular face for Wirt’s co-workers, and since the areas surrounding Resurrect ‘Ems were usually safe, they didn’t mind the visits.

Part of recovery was inspiring soldiers to use their five senses--almost like how one might for anxiety.  It helped ground them within their own bodies.  If the soldiers were unconscious, Greg left their treats lying next to them.  He made sure everyone--including the aids and any nanos that hung around--had some candy before walking back to dump the rest of the bag onto the table. 

By then, Wirt had walked away with the kettle in-hand, passing it off to his senior.  Left to himself once more, another, typical thought entered his mind as he looked around for something else to do: He’d gotten far more used to this than any sane person should be.  

Not to say the their world wasn’t weird enough on its own, everyone had some kind of story to tell.  Grappling with death just happened to be his.  For a while, he dismissed everything that happened to him and his brother one Halloween night as nothing more than a dream.  The more time went on though, the more similar dreams he had and the more supernatural things he saw in his waking hours... He started to wonder if their journey through the Unknown hadn’t been some kind of purgatory.  The two of them had nearly drowned, after all, but the idea that they had been that close to dying was hard for him to accept.

Being here, among so many that did die and were only given their second chances because of the war, he couldn’t just dismiss the idea either.  However, the Resurrect ‘Ems were almost instantaneous: When a soldier was killed in-battle, their consciousness only lasted so long outside of their bodies before they woke up in a place just like this one.  Since their souls were bound to the supernatural devices, they had no memory of being anywhere else.  It was direct transfer.  If it wasn’t, well... Without a nano with a revive ability, it typically meant they’d become one of the army’s rare, true casualties. 

In short, whenever he’d asked, no one had ever even heard of the Unknown.  Wirt considered finding an Underworlder to talk to about it, but even if he found answers, he was almost scared of what they’d be.  He wanted to live a long, normal life, without any out-of-body experiences or monsters to trying to take over the planet!  If he pried, he’d probably be giving that up.

Wirt squat down by a young man who wasn’t much older than himself, checking him over.�� He looked fine, his breathing steady and no visible signs that he was having a nightmare. It was uncommon, but not out of the ordinary, for some to sleep longer than others upon revival.  The memory of dying alone was enough to cause people to pass out.

There was talk, among the aids, that more people were staying unconscious for longer periods.  Even the haphazard types who became disturbingly familiar to the Resurrect ‘Ems needed more time to rest now.  Since the war dragged on, it was theorized that it could be a kind of widespread weariness: Morale was low and people were getting tired, their bodies responding in-kind.

He glanced over his shoulder to where the newcomer still lay.  They hadn’t woken up yet either, but at least they were stirring.  Hopefully, they’d be up soon.

He was about to get up when a quiet tune froze him to his very core.  Someone was humming softly: Another fusion fighter--a girl--was sitting up on her mat with her back to Wirt, looking at holograms.  He watched her in silence until her hums turned to whispered words:

“Come wayward souls that wander through the darkness, There is a light for the lost and the meek, Sorrow and fear are easily forgotten When you submit to the soil of the earth...”

Memories of a deeper, distant, and far-less pleasant voice filled his mind.  He raced over to her, taking her by the shoulder so abruptly that he startled her.  However, the way she jumped was nothing compared to the horror that rose inside him.  

Wirt fought to reign his nerves back as he asked, “H-how do you know that song...?”      

She blinked at him, confused by his outburst before turning inward.  She couldn’t seem to answer that for herself, no matter how much she tried to think.  Her eyes drifted to the ground innocently, “I don’t know... I must’ve heard it somewhere.”

He really hoped she hadn’t.  

Continue to Part 2

#fusionfall #fanfic #fanfiction #video games #cartoons #tv show #my writing

[reynesofcastamere]

Surface Breach(2/3)[β]

(A/N: Good grief but it has been a while since my last contribution to the ship. Sad to say I’ve been caught up with several irl things, including moving and settling in to the new place. Rest assured, I do have several drafts in the works for other projects and I am hoping to set up a regular writing/submission schedule. Now that that’s out of the way...Warnings for: possessive behaviour, emotional manipulation, (negotiated) bondage, blindfolding, edging, cockwarming, blood, masochism and mentions of polyamory, coitus interruptus, and non-consensual play.  Unbeta’d and NSFW.)

Ahsoka knows the second she sets foot on her ship that time is up. She could still flee, drag this game out a bit longer and drive up the level of his frustration...But what would be the point, really? It’s been months since they parted ways, and while she hasn’t avoided his calls, she’s also made a point of not meeting with him in person. A reprimand for his behaviour, and a reminder of the challenge she’d issued.  She recalls the first, trembling breath of relief she’d taken after the medical scans were complete. He has no further hold over her than this. Nothing burrowed and secreted away beneath her skin to...Do any number of things, really. Most of which she’d rather not consider right now.

Maul is of course perfectly at ease in the pilot’s seat, already turned to face her. “Lady Tano. I trust that your last assignment was successful.” He’s being neutral, bordering on pleasant, even. But the tension is there, kept in check by the slimmest thread of restraint. “And I trust that you’re not here for small talk.” Ahsoka makes certain to keep a few feet of distance between them, arms crossed. The corner of his mouth twitches, the speed of it leaving her unsure of whether he meant to smirk or grimace. “You have business on Nar Shadaa, and I have certain...interests that need tending there.” “So you decided to catch a ride. Without asking.”  “You would have refused even if I had offered compensation. This is the most expedient method of travel.” Maul’s eyes narrow, attempting to pierce through and determine her intent. “Unless you plan to run in order to spite me.” “I’m not running anywhere.” Ahsoka retorts. “But I’m also not going to spend three whole days in hyperspace...entertaining you.” “Naturally. However, when we are not occupied with tasks and other essentials, you will make good on your promise, my Lady. Now please, sit.”  She takes up residence in the navigator’s seat, given that he’s obviously not willing to move. “I told you to stop calling me that.”

“What does it matter, if you are not truly mine? Just a monster’s delusion. Unless...”

“Don’t. Start. You can use either of my names. Just not...that.” “As you wish.”

Nothing else is said for some time. Even after the ship takes off, the course is set in, and space has blurred into blue lines, there are other responsibilities that need to be taken care of. Ahsoka has to stop herself from dragging out the time. She’s not looking forward to this. The discussion she needs to have with him, not what might happen afterward.

“Look, if this is going to continue, there need to be some ground rules.”

 “Explain.”

“First off: Unless I’m badly injured or in immediate danger, you’re not allowed to just...carry me back to your lair, no matter what your reasons are.” He’s more than capable of coming up with a multitude of excuses to do so. Which is why she’s cutting him off at the knees, figuratively speaking.  “Second: This arrangement doesn’t interfere with work. Ever. Third: I decide when anything starts. You’re not allowed to grab or molest me in any way before that.” 

Maul appears mildly amused, but the small tics that betray his impatience are growing. “This seems rather excessive for a casual arrangement.”

 Ahsoka pins him in place with a look and a hint of a Force hold. “I’m not finished. Fourth: Any marks left behind have to be concealable.” She’d walk away from this ‘business trip’ with more visible punctures in her than being dropped into a giant cacti forest on Yavin 13 otherwise.  “Fifth: No matter how far along we are, if I say ‘kyber’, we stop what we’re doing. No questions, no persuasion, nothing. If you don’t have a safeword, then pick one and tell me.”

“Is ‘stop’ somehow inadequate?” The question is soft as she releases her unseen grasp on him. Even seated, something in him reminds her of a hunter in the moment before a kill; tense with anticipation and bloodthirst.   “No.” She wets her lower lip. There’s no going back from this confession, hard as it had been for her to admit it to herself. Much less him.  “When I use ‘stop’, it usually means ‘go harder’.”

Maul’s grip is practically throttling the armrest at this point. He is trying, from the shudder in his breath, to follow the rules she’s set out so far. That’s a good sign. His eyes, though? There’s a flicker in them that she used to see from the people she’d helped or rescued during the war. The ones who fully believed that the Jedi were capable of miracles and could do no wrong. A kind of...awe. Achingly soft, and in his case, almost buried beneath avarice and raw desire. She fights the urge to squirm, and it’s not entirely from discomfort. “Is that all?”

“Yes.”

“Good, ‘scimitar’ should suffice. I have some conditions of my own.” Every word is a caress, heavy and deliberate. “You are, of course, free to object.” He produces the blindfold she’d given him from within his shirt. She remembers exactly how he’d taken her apart; bound by choice and utterly enthralled. “So long as you wear this, you will obey.” Maul purrs, heat suffusing her body as he winds and pulls the fabric taut between his fingers. “I’m not going to call you ‘Master’.” Ahsoka is certain he’d like almost nothing more. She gets far too much pleasure out of denying him, however. So he’ll have to earn it first.

“Yet.” Maul responds, overconfident ass that he is. “I have no desire for you to dull your tongue. But you will submit to my commands.” He leans in, nearly closing the gap between them, but not quite. “Such as if I tell you to get down on your knees and show me how you pleasure yourself.” He’s only saying it to provide an example, yet her thighs rub together all the same at the thought. Sightless, her cunt exposed and dripping while he watches, giving obscene praise and instructions on how to bring herself to orgasm.

“Should you want to take control, all you need do is remove it. Or ask that it be taken off.” Of course he’s not done yet. Has to finish having his say first, and bring her arousal to a fever-pitch with the only options currently allowed. “Any amount of marks you receive from other paramours, I will match in number, and I will take first priority.” There is a jealous glint, a madness in his eyes that should terrify her. “Regardless of your position and how close your mutual release is.”  Ahsoka sucks in a sharp breath. “You really expect me to just...make someone leave while they’re-”  “Yes.” Maul snarls, hushed and vicious in a way that brooks no refusal. Much as she might like to, if she does not compromise, give some inch of ground...He will lash out. Ultimately, he’s not asking for much. So far. “And should you draw a weapon on me again-” His left hand circles her jaw without actually making contact, though the intent is clear. “-be prepared to use it.” Her gaze falls to his throat, his markings almost concealing the burn scar she’d given him. But not quite. That he’d chosen to keep it at all is- “Do we have an agreement, Ahsoka Tano?”

 A small eternity seems to pass between her indrawn breath and the resulting answer. “Yes.” Ahsoka looks at him again without fear. Straight into the eyes of the monster, the murderer, the tyrant she has and will be taking into her bed for the forseeable future. “Go ahead.��� The first kiss is nothing short of a conquest, taken with broken vocalizations and sharp bites. She lets him pull her in, straddling his lap in the pilot’s seat while they break for air, and offering no resistance when he ties the blindfold securely in place. “Undress. Completely.” Softer now, his lips ghosting along her jawline. It takes a bit of effort, but before long she is bared to him, nipples pebbled from arousal, the air, and the cold presence of the Dark Side. The body beneath her, the bare hands that trace and mould her form are nearly white-hot by comparison. “Perfect...Turn around, and place your hands behind my neck.” Ahsoka obeys, shuddering in pleasure as he purrs. The cuffs he attaches to her wrists are made of some kind of leather, and she instinctively tests the give of the metal chain between them. Sturdy, but nothing she can’t break out of.

The position leaves her undeniably exposed and at his mercy. She expects none, yet he grants it anyway. With each stroke, squeeze, and tug of his fingers down her body, he steadily tunes her nerves to exquisite sensitivity. He never quite touches her core, preferring to caress and grip her inner thighs and the curve of her breasts even as she pants and shifts restlessly. She can feel him against her, hard and unyielding, the cloth barrier separating them gradually being saturated with her essence. And still he makes no effort to hurry things along. “I thought you wanted to -haaaaahhhh- punish me for making you wait this long.”  “You made a game of testing my patience. It is only fitting that I return the favour. I will keep you here, on the precipice between agony and bliss...Until, in your desperation, you beg me to ‘stop’.” Maul pinches her throbbing bud and she whines an incoherent stream of vowels. “Although...Hm. Your impulsive side is endearing.”

“What are you rambling on ab-AnnnnnH!” He bites down on her shoulder while slightly twisting the bundle of nerves held captive between his digits. She’s bleeding and the pain between her legs is pure torture, but she still wants-

‘I will grant your release early. If you ask to be fucked.” “You can’t be serious.” “Three simple words are all that stand in your way.”

“Why not just order me to say it?”

“Why should I, when you so clearly want to? Despite your self-denial.”  There’s no longer anything gentle about his touch, how his nails dig in and rake across her inner thighs while her shoulders and upper back gain a rapidly-growing collection of teeth-marks. His shaft is still there, still covered and rigid, rubbing against her hot and sodden core. Ahsoka is on the verge of sobbing. Or breaking her restraints to just seize what he’s dangling in front of her. But if all it takes is a couple of words...”Please, fuck me.” She whispers, rough from repressing her whimpers.

“Again.” His lips on her throat, feeling the command rumbling against her vocal cords.

She grits her teeth and snarls. “Fuck. Me. Please. You smug, overbearing bastard.” Maul’s fingers curve over and tug her recently-abused pearl, and she is lost, sent tumbling and screaming into the abyss.

Her body is still quivering in the aftermath when he presses in. A slow invasion, one that encounters no resistance until he is fully secured within her walls. At first, she thinks he just wants her to ride him. Yet before she can start... “I will give you a choice.” Maul’s voice is low enough to feel in her bones. “If you can keep relatively still for fifteen minutes, you will be taken against the control panel. And if you are very good, Ahsoka-” Her name on his lips is electric and scandalous, her body arching as if pulled by unseen strings. “-I will get down on my knees and devour you first.” She should never have given him permission to use it in the first place. His other...’endearments’ are easy to brush off. Somehow, hearing those three syllables in this moment is more intimate than having him inside her, feeling the incremental shifts between their bodies with each breath. 

Ahsoka raises herself up, almost to the point of letting his shaft slip out, then drops back down. She can feel him hiss, how his hips jolt up on instinct once before he stops himself. “Mmmm. Think your other option is bad enough to stop me from putting this to better use?” She’s teasing now, circling and rolling her hips in a way that takes him deep, but not all the way in again. Having Maul relatively immobile is a new experience. Even when he’s not being rough, he’s hardly still. It probably won’t last, but so long as his patience holds out...Using him like a sex toy is doing a lot to rev her up right now. He seizes her head-tail and pulls, bending Ahsoka’s neck back at an uncomfortable angle, free hand grasping one of her thighs to force a stop to her movements. “Keep this up and I assure you, ja’ti mirtis{my death}, you will not enjoy sitting when I am done with you.” Maul rasps, his mouth so close to her left montral that she can feel his lips brushing against it with every word. Her core trembles, breath coming in short, sharp pants. “I wonder which would bring you more pleasure? Being bent over the edge of your cot to be mounted and used...Or disciplined until that option becomes a mercy?”  Something like insanity seizes her. It’s the only explanation for what she says next. “Both.” Ahsoka breathes. “I want-Take these off, please.” The light is harsh for the few seconds it takes her eyes to adjust, wrists slightly chafed from the cuffs as she carefully turns to face him. “I need both.” Her hands gently circle his face. “Can you do that? Get me ready with your mouth, and take me nice and slow right here?” He seems transfixed, almost unable to believe the words falling from her lips. “Think of how wet I’ll be, when you’ve finished your ‘discipline’ and I’m just aching to be ruined.” Ahsoka can taste the hunger when he captures her mouth, how similar it is to her own. Her nails claw at his shoulderblades, seeking purchase, to bury herself in him, anything. “Yes, Ahsoka.” Maul whispers, between their lips meeting in repeated, feverish collisions. “You have only to ask.” (A/N: Some of you may have noticed a slight change in the numbers up top. So yes, there will be one more chapter to this particular story. 8D Cheers, everyone!)

#maulsoka #ns.fw #this might just be the kinkiest thing i've written so far #time will tell though lol

[tainted-wine]

All Consuming

Fumikage Tokoyami x Reader, Dark Shadow x Reader (NSFW)

Rating: Explicit Warnings: Noncon, Dark Shadow being an aggressive monster

(I’m very mixed on this. This was a weird one that feels less smutty and more just plain horror, and I wasn’t sure how to approach the perspectives. Either way, writing this was an experience)

Dark Shadow was a simple creature that craved two things: strong emotions and darkness.

It remembers Master’s first and only tantrum. Anger was a suffocating heat that licked at Dark Shadow like a flame, but instead of burning, it was pumped with newfound energy. It launched from Master’s body, lashing out and ready to tear apart the two humans responsible. But Master held it back with tears in his eyes, begging it not to hurt “Mommy” and “Daddy”, even though they made him angry. Dark Shadow could have fought back, and it probably would have overpowered the child, but it was not interested in damaging Master’s trust.

So it retreated back into the abyss.

It remembers the first time the lights went out. The surrounding pitch blackness became one with the abyss. It coated the beast, layer by layer, morphing it into a power-drunk monster that felt free. It laid waste to Master’s room in a joyful rampage. Alas, Master stopped it once again, asking it to please stay put when he slept. It warned Master that darkness is always a delicious temptation, but it will try its best.

So it retreated back into the abyss.

As the years passed, Master strengthened his control on both his emotions and his hold on Dark Shadow. The moments he lost his grip on either were becoming so rare. Dark Shadow floated in the abyss with conflicted feelings. It cared for Master’s wellbeing, but it also cherished his gravest mistakes. Every powerful sensation that broke through the carefully built barrier within Master’s mind surged through his quirk like an addictive injection. He has called Dark Shadow a greedy beast many times throughout their life; the beast does not disagree. The human mind offered the best flavors when it was loud and untamed.

That’s why Dark Shadow believed you were a godsend.

A fellow Pro Hero that has teamed up with Master on several occasions. You two were surprisingly compatible, inside and outside of work.You have his back during villain attacks. You were there to comfort him after brushes with death, or when he couldn’t save every civilian. You pet Dark Shadow after a job well done like he was a lowly pet. The sentient quirk would shrink back into Master’s body after refusing to accept your praise (it felt good). It was clear that your relationship was becoming something more than a professional one.

The abyss was changing. Dark Shadow felt a shift in temperature, a more comforting heat instead of the usual eerie frigidness. The vast emptiness suddenly felt…soft. No emotion has ever pulsed within Master’s body so strongly and for so long, to the point where it changed Dark Shadow’s void of a home. The creature of darkness much preferred the sensation of more hostile emotions, but this admittedly wasn’t so bad.

But sometimes the feeling did change into something more aggressive, if only for a moment. During those times when you showered Master’s beak with kisses that he couldn’t properly reciprocate (he’s expressed his frustrations about this many times, but you insist that it isn’t an issue) while his hands roam your body, the abyss’s dreamy atmosphere became something more passionate. He would stop you before things got too heated, but Dark Shadow still felt that brief spike of hunger, a hunger that it has never felt before.

One night, Master pleasured himself for the first time. It was an urge he never wanted to act on during his adolescent years out of fear of losing his grasp on his quirk. But his cravings, his desire to have you was becoming shamefully strong. Despite the dangers of introducing the demon within him to such a powerfully new sensation, he took his own girth in his hands.

Dark Shadow observed from inside. It watched Master stroke himself, it listened to his increasingly heavy breaths, it noticed his feathered head becoming damp and disheveled as sweat dripped from his pores. All the while the abyss grew hotter. It wasn’t the angry kind of heat, the kind that pricked the shadow with energy and agitated it until it violently snapped. No, this heat gathered around it, forming bundles of pleasure that slowly grew in size. As Master jerked himself and drew closer to…something, the pleasure swelled more and more until it was nearly suffocating Dark Shadow, and yet the confused but excited creature didn’t want it to stop.

The moment it was sure that the hot pressure was going to crush it, the entire abyss burst and for just a minute, Dark Shadow felt afraid. Orgasmic bliss engulfed its entire being, nearly paralyzing it as the last of hot pleasure exploded around it in bright flashes. Beyond the void, Dark Shadow could hear Master heaving and groaning. Both of them were stunned by what they just experienced.

Love was a sweet and cozy feeling, but lust was absolutely breathtaking.

‘Again!’ Dark Shadow begged from within. ‘Do it again.’

The voice snapped Master out of cloud nine. “Quiet, beast.” he huffed while regaining his composure. “I’m not foolish enough to spoil you with this.”

‘You loved it too.’ it countered.

“I have made many sacrifices to keep the darkness at bay. This will be no different.”

‘Damn you.’

Master resisted touching himself after the first night. Dark Shadow knew the itch was there (you can’t hide your wants from me, Master), it noticed every time a wave of feverish heat swept through the abyss, but the human continued to be stubborn.

“You will get greedy and lose control, like you always do.” the human said.

The anger and frustration distorted the shadow’s voice into a monstrous growl. ‘Why won’t you grant me just one freedom?’

Master wasn’t intimidated. “The day I do will be the day you doom us both.”

Dark Shadow roared and sank into the deepest depths of the abyss. It can’t remember the last time it felt so deprived. How long will this torture last?

Thankfully, not for much longer.

On a rare day when both you and Master were free, you spent the evening at his place, killing most of the time with horror movies and cuddles. After the last film, the cuddles quickly escalated into steamy kisses and groping.

The abyss was tingling, but Dark Shadow felt the hesitation. Do it, Master. Finally, we can feel the real thing.

Master grunted as your hand drifted down until you reached the growing bulge in his pants. There was no more resistance. He needed this; he needed you.

You were in his bed in a flash, cradling his soft head as you both ground your clothed groins against each other.

Dark Shadow could faintly feel your touches, your fingers brushing between Master’s feathers, your mouth kissing his chest as you pulled down his boxers…it was probably nothing compared to what Master himself felt, but it was no less exhilarating. The heat that was so dearly missed was returning with a vengeance, consuming the entire abyss. Every single stimulation was bringing back the bubbling pleasure. The hand on your breast gently massaged the soft flesh, while the other pushed its fingers inside your feminine warmth. The sight of you completely submitting yourself had Dark Shadow licking its jet black beak. I want a taste.

It wasn’t ready when Master finally entered you, making the entire abyss quake. Everything around Dark Shadow was pulsing so strongly that it could barely pay attention to the sex. It heard the unified cries of you and Master, heard the slap of skin and creak of the bed with each thrust, but the expanding pleasure was wreaking havoc on its focus. The beast wasn’t afraid this time. It welcomed the approaching explosion with welcome arms.

The blast was even more powerful than before, burning the whimpering shadow in the best way possible. The cumming lovers outside of the abyss could be faintly heard, your entire body spasms as you cried out Master’s name. Each spurt into your core released another sensual shock wave that left Dark Shadow trembling.

The orgasm felt never ending, yet it somehow ended too soon. The darkness slowly stabilized once again; Dark Shadow felt drunk. The beast felt crippled, yet it wanted more immediately. It could tell that Master was spent, lying on his side and cradling you. ‘NO, do it again. I want to feel it again. This is tastier than fear. More addicting than rage. DO IT AGA—

“Enough.”

Master’s voice is still firm even through his heavy breaths.

“Eh?” You were on the verge of sleep until that single word startled you.

Master shook his head and cradled you closer. “Dark Shadow hungers. I was afraid of this.”

“Is that dangerous? Do you want me to leave?” You knew that Dark Shadow was a legitimate threat when it became overwhelmed by Master’s emotions. You only know from the past stories that Master has shared with you, but it was more than enough for you to take his warnings to heart. Dark Shadow hissed in annoyance. Master always tells people to keep their distance whenever he believed it was becoming hostile. Now he was going to tell you to leave the room, probably too afraid to ever engage in this wonderful act ever again…

“No. Stay.” Master held you tightly to ensure you weren’t going anywhere.

Ah, of course. ‘Love makes you stupid,’ right?

Dark Shadow didn’t make a sound, but it was still shaking with want, the faintest smile curving its beak. I will have more.

It hadn’t calmed down by the time the lights were off and the couple was sound asleep, your back pressed against Master’s bare chest. The abyss has since switched back to its regular empty and cold environment, but Dark Shadow was still restless. It watched your sleeping form. Your curves, your soft flesh, even enveloped in darkness your body looked ravishing.

Master didn’t react as a black tendril emerged from his abdomen and slithered across your side. The limb soon took the shape of a hand, making sure to avoid the bulky arms wrapped around your stomach as it drifted closer to your chest.

Just a touch. I want to feel her for myself.

The hand reaches your breast, giving it the softest of squeezes. The touch was so much stronger than feeling it through Master’s hands. Oh, I really missed out.

You were even warmer and softer than it imagined. Its fingers prodded your nipple, watching in fascination as it hardened under the touch. It froze instantly when a soft whimper slipped past your lips, but it continued when you didn’t react any further.

The abyss wasn’t heating, but Dark Shadow was.

It tried to form the rest of its body as well as it could while trapped between the two lovers. Its face nuzzled your hair, one hand continuing to fondle your breast, while the other moved down to your thigh.

A low growl vibrated through the shadow beast. It wasn’t used to taking action on its own. Freedom. Free to touch you however I want. The rush from the lust, darkness, and independence was taking Dark Shadow to new heights.

It lifted your thigh just enough to expose your hot core. There it is. That is where he will find bliss once again. It wasn’t going to wait. For all it knew, Master may not be brave enough to take you ever again. It can’t take that risk.

Then I’ll be the one to take you.

A black phallus took shape and rubbed against your folds. The contact was enough to wake you from your slumber. Dark Shadow panicked. No no no no so close. It was already pressed against your wet lips, why back out now?

“Fumi…?” You groaned when you noticed something poking at you. There wasn’t time to think of much else when it suddenly pushed into you.

Dark Shadow muffled your cry with a hand clamped over your mouth. Fuck, you felt amazing. Master didn’t know just how lucky he was, enjoying this pussy while his quirk was forced to stay put. Feeling such pleasure directly was forcing the shadow to shift into something more monstrous.

It barely registered Master’s shouts, ordering it to stop this instant. Shut UP. Shadows seeped out of Master’s body and wrapped around him, pushing him back down onto the bed and pinning him like prey trapped in webbing. You know you can’t beat me in the darkness. Don’t even try.

You were rolled onto your back, the foreign dick now pumping into you deeper and faster. Dark Shadow could see the look of frightened confusion in your eyes, eyes that were trying to comprehend the horrifying form that was claiming her in the dark.

This is wrong, Master won’t forgive me.

It hit a sensitive spot inside you, forcing a moan out of you as your wetness clenched around it.

I don’t care. It’s too good.

The bed rocked loudly as you were pounded into the mattress. With your screams of combined fear and pleasure, Master’s desperate pleas for it all stop, and Dark Shadow’s ravenous snarls, the room conveyed pure and unadultered terror. The grotesque demon that was Dark Shadow was feeling a familiar tension, the kind when the abyss was on the verge of exploding with hot pleasure, except this time the feeling was inside of it.

Closer. Take me closer.

Shadows glided across your body as if you were slowly being devoured while being violently fucked. Dark Shadow didn’t care; it’s only concern was reaching that release.

Almost there.

One of your hands managed to break free from the tangled blackness and was blindly feeling across the desk drawer next to you.

Hold still, dammit.

You whimpered and trembled at the merciless pounding but didn’t stop searching for…something. It didn’t matter; Dark Shadow was so close, that tight pressure was ready to give away and burst.

YES! LET ME HAVE IT! LET ME FEEL IT THE WAY MASTER DID!

Instead of a sensual explosion, Dark Shadow was hit with a blast of light directly in its face. A shriek of pure agony tore from its throat as its massive form writhed before scrambling back into Master’s body and the safety of the abyss.

Dark Shadow’s face burned. So close. Why must everything always stop me?

It watched through the pain as you turned off the shockingly bright flashlight feature on your phone, your body furiously shaking. Finally free to move, Master reached out to you…

Only for you to jump back and onto the floor. Tears fell from your face as you quickly gathered your clothes while frantically apologizing about how you couldn’t stay here. You were out of the room before Master could even stand and say anything more.

The air in the abyss became suffocating as the darkness began to boil. Dark Shadow hasn’t tasted the burning pangs of fury in years. It should be savoring such a rare opportunity.

But this isn’t what it wanted. It didn’t want to feel anything but the euphoric bang that was unjustly torn away from it at the last minute.

Master’s rage pierced Dark Shadow like a scorching needle.

“How could you do this?! How could you do that to her, you goddamned fiend!” Master grips his head hard enough to tug out several feathers.

Dark Shadow feels it all. Shame. Regret. Sorrow. Hatred. All of them bit and tore at the shadow like mad dogs. Master will never forgive or forget such a deplorable act. You may never approach him again, and even if you did, he would think it’s best that you stay away because his cursed quirk can never be trusted. He clutched at his chest, hot tears running down his face.

The relationship between the man and his quirk has been destroyed. The quirk couldn’t bring itself to care.

I WAS SO CLOSE….NEVER AGAIN….

#bnha #smut #tokoyami fumikage #tokoyami x reader #dark shadow #tw noncon

[shlabam]

THE HISTORY OF THE H-DIAL, DC’S WEIRDEST SUPERHERO CONCEPT

Everyone wants to be Superman. His unparalleled might, massive array of powers, and winning personality makes him a fantasy figure in many imaginations. But if we’re being honest with ourselves, given the option, we wouldn’t want to be one superhero, we’d want to be all of them. This is the premise behind Dial H for HERO’s H-Dial, an incredibly powerful object used in DC Comics stories intermittently since the 1960s.

Introduced in House of Mystery #156 (a title up to that point reserved for supernatural horror stories), the H-Dial was discovered by teenager Robby Reed in a cavern while he was camping nearby. The H-Dial resembles a rotary phone dial, and since Robby existed in a time when rotary phones were still in use (youths of today would likely struggle a bit), he quickly discovered by dialing H-E-R-O, he could turn into a random and wholly original superhero until he dialed O-R-E-H to change back. There appeared to be no limits or boundaries on the heroes Robby would be become, as the first year saw characters like Giantboy (a giant with super strength), the Mole (who could dig at super-fast speeds), Hypno-Man (with the ability to control minds), and Mighty Moppet (a super-strong baby who could shrink his enemies by spraying them with a milk bottle). Clearly, this was a creative playground for writer Dave Wood and artist Jim Mooney, who had smartly devised a storytelling platform that liberated them from the bonds of using the same power set to solve new problems every issue. However, the stories clearly weren’t a huge hit, as House of Mystery reverted back to horror stories and ended the original Dial H run after only eighteen issues.

The H-Dial would return in 1981, with new users Chris Grant and Vicki King, who discover them in a haunted house. A number of changes were made to the H-Dial this time around: there were two of them (Chris wore his on a watch and Vicki’s on a necklace), they had a one-hour time limit, and, incredibly, the heroes they became were submitted by readers! If you had the manual dexterity to hold a few crayons, you could see your creation in print in a real comic book! (The creators of these heroes were rewarded with a t-shirt and, uh, credit.) For eleven issues of Adventure Comics and twenty-one issues of New Adventures of Superboy, Chris and Vicki transformed into heroes submitted by the youth of 1980s America (as well as science fiction writer Harlan Ellison, then aged 46 years old), and series creators Marv Wolfman and Carmine Infantino clearly picked the cream of the crop: Vibro the Quakemaster (caused earthquakes), Hasty Pudding (either moved super slow or super fast, no in-between), Glass Lass (who could amplify laser beams), and Sister Scissor-Limbs (do you need this one spelled out for you?). This iteration once again faded away as new back-up features replaced them. Chris and Vicki got a mini-epilogue in the pages of New Teen Titans but following that, just faded away.

It wouldn’t be until 2003 that the H-Dial would appear again, and this time it would be the star of the book: H-E-R-O would follow the H-Dial (as it was seen in the original House of Mystery run) as it gets passed around from person to person for anywhere from one to four issues. Writer Will Pfeifer took this opportunity to tell some smarter, smaller stories about normal people who briefly possess incredible chaotic power, only for it to be lost, via intentional abandon, theft, or, most commonly, hubris. Robby Reed also returns in this series, hunting the traveling dial as it turns minimum wage earner Jerry Feldon into Afterburner, pre-teen girl Andrea Allen into Nocturna, and small-time crook Tony Finch into the Stretcher. The series was cancelled after an incredibly satisfying twenty-two issues, ending with Robby sending it 50,000 years back in time, hopefully ridding the world of its dangerous potential.

However, reboots gonna reboot, and the H-Dial would make its triumphant return in 2012 as a part of DC’s New 52 line-up in the series Dial H. This time around, the H-Dial is turned into an anachronistic telephone booth, as novelist China Miéville would lend his signature surrealistic take to transform schlubby everyman Nelson Jent into heroes like Captain Lachrymose (who derives strength from the traumatic memories of others), Hole Punch (who had three arms and sledgehammer hands) and Control-Alt-Delete (a computer-themed hero with the ability to “reboot” recent events). Miéville traded adventure and coherence for comedy and absurdity, showing that when the existing status for a device is one without presented limits, the logical step forward is one without logic at all. It could be argued this series existed at the wrong time; if it had shared the shelf with 1990s Vertigo hits Doom Patrol and Shade the Changing Man, it could have entered a classic status and stayed reprinted forever. Sadly, 2012 wasn’t the year for an interpretation like this, and Miéville’s Dial H would be cancelled after 15 issues.

This brings us to the most recent swing at the H-Dial, the criminally underrated Dial H for Hero, remarkably the first time the feature has had its full, original name as the title of a book. This time, the H-Dial is a glowing red rotary phone (complete with fairly unnecessary handset), wielded by teenagers Miguel Montez and Summer Pickens as they travel across the United States to find a place to safely dispose of the powerful device. Under the storytelling direction of Sam Humphries, this version of the H-Dial transforms its users into wholly original superheroes, plus the new wrinkle of each hero being drawn in a distinct homage to comic book creators of the past, such as the Rob Liefeld-esque Monster Truck, the Mike Allred-ian Lo Lo Kick You, and the Irritable Various Geckos, four lizard villains drawn exactly like the classic Eastman/Laird Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Illustrator Joe Quinones puts in work for this series, effectively aping artists like Frank Miller, Akira Toriyama, Moebius, and even Bill Watterson, while keeping everything on brand in the distinctive DC-house style, allowing every page to function as a museum exhibit on comics history. This mini-series was originally intended to only last six issues, but early success expanded it to twelve, with the dangling possibility of more to come down the line.

What could the future possibly hold for the H-Dial? Like the device itself, there is limitless potential. Superheroes are more popular than ever, and with deep cuts like Doom Patrol and Stargirl finding success on the small screen, there’s no reason a Dial H for Hero show couldn’t make a similar mark. It could be animated (Cartoon Network’s Ben 10 showed there’s a market for “boy with many superhero forms”), but a live-action version would also work. Utilizing celebrity guest stars as the different heroes could place it perfectly in that high-stakes-meets-childish-wonder space the comics always occupied. Dial H for Hero is nails exactly what we love about superheroes: powerful, vibrant characters in a grounded, human space. But while Wonder Woman is limited to magic and mythology, Green Lantern is confined to space policing, and Batman deals with a constant crew of painted goons, Dial H for Hero discards the pesky origin and setting to create a one-person anthology hero, something completely different yet charmingly familiar every time, where the only thing predictable is that it will be absolutely unpredictable.

[morkhan]

Will Byers is Gay: The Evidence So Far

With the release of Stranger Things 3, there has been a lot of discussion kicked up about the character of Will Byers and his sexuality (or lack thereof). I've seen a lot of takes about what "it's not my fault you don't like girls" was intended to mean, many of which seem to take it in isolation, so I wanted to make a post putting it into what I think is its proper context; not an isolated incident, but the latest carriage in veritable train of queer themed language and imagery that has followed Will Byers since episode one of season one, and before that. You ready? Alright, let's go.

Season Zero: the Montauk Files

Before Stranger Things became Stranger Things, it was called Montauk. Like many would-be show makers, the Duffer Bros put together a "show bible" describing the premise, setting, tone, and characters of the show they intended to make. Like many shows, a lot of these ideas changed or were lost on their way to the screen, but it's always worth looking into their original concepts. Here is their description of Will Byers in the Montauk show bible:

Obviously, the major whammy there is in the first line "sexual identity issues." But there are some other interesting notes, like his "colorful clothes" that you might want to keep a lookout for on your next rewatch. Now, onto...

Season 1

The thing to pay attention to regarding Will in season 1 is in the language used to refer to him when he is not present (which he isn't for most of the season).

Episode 1: the subject of bullying comes up right away in the conversation between Joyce and Hopper. "The kids, they're mean. They laugh at him, laugh at his clothes, call him names." "What's wrong with his clothes?" "I don't know!" This harkens back to the Montauk show bible, but it's arguable, since it's never made clear what about his clothes draws ire.

She also mentions that he is "sensitive," "not like most," and that his dad said he was "queer" and called him a "fag." Hopper asks "is he?" to which she replies "He's missing is what he is!"

Episode 3: Troy says he's not missing, he's dead. "Probably killed by some other queer."

Episode 4: Troy, again "Will's in fairyland, flying around with all the other little fairies, all happy and gay."

Sensitive, queer, fag, fairy, and gay are all used to describe Will in season 1, but perhaps more notable is the fact that they aren't used to describe anyone else. If the show were truly period accurate, let's be real; the whole party would've been called queers on a pretty regular basis, because "queer" doubled as a generic insult back then. But in season 1, these words are only ever used in relation to Will, with one exception; in episode 6, Steve says to Will's brother, "I used to think you were queer." So it's not even an active accusation in that moment; it's used in the negative.

Hell, Troy walked up to Lucas mockingly proposing to Mike and proclaiming his love for him, and he still didn't call them queers. That language is reserved for Will.

Now granted, most of these are used as insults by characters who don't like Will, but still; as a writer, if you want your audience to remember something, repetition is an excellent way to embed it in their minds. There's a reason for the specificity of language surrounding Will, and a reason that language keeps coming up over and over and over again.

Season 2

Season 2 retires much of the homophobic language used to insult Will, replacing it with "Zombie Boy." The only homophobic language used in season 2 is the word "faggot," used by Billy's father to refer to Billy, who expresses a clear interest in women (and an arguable interest in one particular man, but that's the subject of another post).

Still, there is an arguable bit of queer theming in Will's conversation with Jonathan regarding the benefits of being a "freak" and how normal people never accomplish anything. Jonathan even invokes bisexual icon David Bowie to make Will feel better about his "freakishness."

The clearest piece of queer theming for Will in season 2 comes in episode 8, in this beautiful speech from Joyce to Possessed Will:

"When you turned eight, I gave you that huge box of crayons, do you remember that? It was 120 colors. And all your friends got you Star Wars toys, but all you wanted to do was draw with all your new colors. And you drew this big spaceship, but it wasn't from a movie. It was YOUR spaceship; a RAINBOW Ship, that's what you called it. And you, you must have used every color in the box. I took that with me to Melvald's, and I put it up. I told everyone who came in, 'My son drew this.' And you were so embarrassed, but I was so proud. I was so, so proud."

This is one of the most powerful memories of her son that Joyce has, an image so strong and distinct that she uses it to invoke his true identity against the monster that is slowly subsuming him. She notes very specifically that it's not something he copied, but something that came entirely from Will himself, an image that she felt represented him so perfectly that she took it with her to work and proudly touted it as his to everyone she knew. The Rainbow Ship is Joyce's picture of her son's very heart, and surely I don't need to explain to you how powerful a piece of queer imagery the rainbow is.

Some subtextual stuff; in episode 9, when the girl asks Will to dance, he stammers "I... I don't..." and only goes to dance with her when Mike literally pushes him towards her.

During the final montage, the scene cuts to different characters in time with appropriate lines from the song: "every move you make" cuts to Mike and El (as he is teaching her to dance), "every vow you break" cuts to Nancy dancing with Dustin (as she technically cheated on Steve with Jonathan), "I'll be watching you" cuts to Lucas dancing with Max (as she has playfully called him 'stalker' all season). What line cuts to Will? "Every smile you fake," specifically on the word fake, while Will dances with a girl wearing this expression:

That is not a real smile, that is not a comfortable boy, and that is not an accident; Noah Schnapp is one of the best actors in the entire show, and of the young boys, he is the one the Duffers trust most to do dramatic heavy lifting.

Do you want it to be a little more explicit? Okay, here is that scene in the script:

I mean, that pretty much speaks for itself. It's less explicit in the actual show, but it's still there, you know?

Season 3

And now, the biggest and most explicit thing to date; The Scene. I mean, you could discuss the obvious subtext in the simple fact that Will is the only male main character who has yet to find a girlfriend or express any interest in girls whatsoever, but that pales in comparison to The Scene.

The setup for The Scene is pretty simple; after declaring "a day free of girls" in order to get his friends to run the D&D campaign he's probably spent a significant amount of time creating, his friends have blown him off to continue bemoaning their girl troubles, so Will has decided to leave. Mike, realizing too late that he has genuinely upset his friend, chases after him to try and get him to come back.

A back-and-forth argument ensues, where Will accuses Mike of ruining the party and abandoning his friends in favor of girls, and Mike, in the heat of the moment, responds with "It's not my fault you don't like girls!" After which, everything stops. There is a full second of silence, and a close up on Noah Schnapp's face so you can take in his reaction.

There is a lot to unpack here. Now, acting is up to interpretation to a degree, but to me, that expression conveys two primary emotions; shock, and betrayal. That face says "how could you?" Because here's the thing; regardless of what Mike does or doesn't know about Will's sexuality, Mike knows for a fact that Will has been called a queer all his life by everyone from his school bullies to his own fucking dirtbag father. By invoking even the specter of that, Mike has crossed a fucking line, and he knows it. And we know he knows it, because he immediately backtracks and tries to mitigate the damage. But it's too late. The damage has been done.

I also think there is a tinge of fear in that image. Just a moment of soul raking panic that pretty much every closeted queer person knows intimately. It's very brief. But I think it's there, if you look.

This scene sends Will into an emotional tailspin that culminates in him tearing down the literal last bastion of his childhood in a fit of sorrow and rage. His innocence has been destroyed. He cannot regain what he has lost, and he can never go back to the way things were before. This is the emotional climax of his arc for season three. It's a powerful one-- shame it comes in the third of eight episodes, but that's neither here nor there.

And that's pretty much it for now. Any one of these things taken in isolation could be very easily dismissed, but here's the thing; they aren't isolated incidents. They are part of a clear and consistent pattern, one that goes all the way back to the show's inception, before even one minute of footage was filmed. And this pattern points to one very obvious conclusion; the Duffer Brothers have always intended, and continue to intend, for Will Byers to be gay.

Now, for the obvious question; why haven't they made it explicit yet?

The answer is as unfortunate as it is obvious; I don't know.

It's entirely possible that there is some external force that the Duffers have to answer to that is preventing them from actively pursuing this particular storyline. This happens all the time in Hollywood, and it could be anything from Netflix to Noah Schnapp's parents to Noah Schnapp himself just being uncomfortable with it. Many are the creators who dream Big Gay Dreams only to run into the horrors of our Forced Hetero Reality. If the Duffers ultimately submit to these pressures, I hope you won't be too hard on them. This shit is harder than you think to get to the screen sometimes.

But it's also possible that they just aren't ready for it yet. That they have been saving this for a future storyline, that they just want their characters (and the actors) to get a little older before they pursue this particular storyline explicitly, but they've been busily laying groundwork for it so that anyone paying attention will know it's coming.

I don't know. Only time will tell for sure.

For now, I can tell you this; I see a great deal of evidence that the Duffers still intend for Will to be gay, and precisely zero that they have changed their minds.

I hope that holds true.

#stranger things #will byers #mike wheeler #lucas sinclair #dustin henderson #stranger things spoilers

[mutantsrisingrpg]

Congratulations BECK! You’ve been accepted as EUROPA with a FC change to ELIZABETH OLSEN.

Bea’s skeleton was one of my favorites when I wrote it, and you definitely brought her to life and reminded me so much of why I loved writing it, Beck! I love the straddled lines between facade and feeling, of power and control, of protection and obedience that you explored through her eyes. There’s a tangled web she left in her wake, and her ties to others outside the mob only give her an extra dimension I can’t wait to see you explore! 

Welcome to Mutants Rising! Please read the checklist and submit your account within 24 hours.

Out of Character Information:

NAME/ALIAS: Beck

PRONOUNS: She/Her

AGE: 22 in January!

TIMEZONE & ACTIVITY LEVEL: GMT. I am in my final year of uni, so admittedly there will be times where i’m not as active as I would like to be. Though no doubt writing will be the only break I have from work so i’m gonna want to write as much as possible lmao

In Character Information:

DESIRED ROLE: Beatrice ‘Bea’ Einfalt // Europa

GENDER/PRONOUNS: Cis Female She/Her

DETAILS & ANALYSIS:

Bea is a cataclysmic event of her own making. It is hard to tell how solid she really is, and how much of the forced calm demeanour is just an optical illusion. As if this carefully balanced and closed off exterior is like a thin sheet draped over a gaping hole, of something much emptier and bleaker beneath. It was once such a conscious effort to keep those walls high, to keep herself two steps away from everyone else. That distance soon became a comfort, second nature, a feeling of security. Was that security for her or whoever she was distancing herself from though?

She would have been happy to play on no ones team. Stay a free agent but more importantly, keep herself far from anyone she could remotely care about, for fear of hurting them too. In her mind she’s the the pin of a grenade, finger on the trigger, a molotov cocktail waiting to be thrown. Her’s is a mind so shredded by it’s own teeth that sometimes, there are glimpses to be seen through the holes and tears. Her expression slips carelessly for a moment and something twisted and suffering is there instead, peering out from the body that has been forced into a prison.

Bea is similar to a flower growing through the cracks on the side walk. Other flowers look nice with their neat and pretty garden beds, but rest assured this wild flower had to fight like hell to be where it is now. It takes an observant eye to take a moment to appreciate the violet growing by itself and see the little beauties in her simplicity.

BIO:

Beatrice does not have an origin story; nothing is known about the girl she used to be, before she came to Chicago that one fateful day- a skin-and-bones rag doll girl dragging herself and her sister through the world, starved and desperate. At least, that’s the truth everyone has been led to believe.

There was always something off about the Einfalt girl. Something unsettling. People had been talking about her since you first came into this world, bright eyed and big lunged. There never seemed to be a reason for you to cry, but she was one of those babies desperate to be heard. She came rocketing into the world begging for attention, but her cries got quieter every year until she was quiet enough to make some adults around her uncomfortable. No wonder she had so few friends growing up. The kids called her mouse. Oblivious to her social ranking among some circles. Kids didn’t care that her father was quietly raising in political rank. They didn’t care that she became so quiet at home because he was so loud about what he saw as terrible world issues.

Growing up the word ‘mutant’ was always followed by ‘freak’ or ‘menace’ or ‘problem’. They were made to be the monster under her bed, the creak of floorboards at night. Bea can’t count the times her mother had to tuck her back in at night, begging her not to listen to her father and his wild thoughts. It wasn’t until years later that she found out why her mother was so gentle when her father was cold and angry.

Everything had always just felt so empty to her. The houses lined up one after another. Straight like the teeth every one of your father ‘associates’ seemed to smile at you with. Everyone seemed to be trying so hard to cling onto the façade that they were happy. They might have been. She herself was happy enough but she never understood why it just felt so ungenuine from everyone else. Her life was silver spooned perfection, but she always felt like a dove in a cage. Raised to be gentle but with fiery strength burning her your skin, threatening to burn its way out.

Bea’s childhood never seemed like anything to think twice about until you were older. To her, everyone had full days of classes, learning languages no matter how hard they were to comprehend. She was raised amongst wealth, the few friends she had were just as busy learning through the days, leaving little time to play. It was years later when she realised her father was trying to mould her into his own shadow. Unaware that she was everything in life he seemed to hate.

Growing up with so much fear of even the word ‘mutant’. When her powers reared their ugly head, Bea was rightfully terrified. If her father ever found out about her, it was unimaginable what he would do. A quiet child, her voice hadn’t raised in years. So when her mother dropped a glass, and Bea came running into the kitchen, treading on the sharp scatterings, her scream was surprising. In more ways than one. Bea will never forget the way her mother was propelled across the room, or how calm she was even as Bea couldn’t stop crying. Pressing a cloth to the back of her mothers head to stop the bleeding, all her mother could do was try to reassure her it was okay. The story of the mutant gene in their family was a long one, but Bea’s mother managed to tell the tale before her father got home.

Life was always going to be difficult after that point. Bea went from quiet to almost silent, terrified if she spoke something awful was going to happen again. It took years for her to allow her mother to tell her more about their family, about her mothers own power. It wasn’t until her little sister, Ellie, showed signs of the gene that anything really kicked off, however. Where Bea had kept this secret so close to her heart, it was basically sewn into her. Ellie was never as subtle.

The day their father found out was the end of it all. For someone who’s voice felt like a caged bird, a locked away box to never open. She had no trouble using it when she found her father ready to turn over her sweet, harmless little sister to people that would no doubt poke and prod or even worse. There was no literal blood on her hands that day, but Bea will never forget the light leaving her father’s eyes, or the way her little sister cried and clung to her.

Bea would never have gotten away with this normally, and her father was no normal man. A politician with strong Anti-Mutant views was always going to be well known. It was her mother that took the fall. Persuasiveness weaved through her DNA, literally. Convincing officers and officials that she was the one to do this was easy. Too easy. While some looked deeper, suspiciousness rampant, others were just glad to have this cruel man out of the way.

It’s been years since that day that Bea and Ellie were made practically orphans. Several cities, several lives. Bea’s mother is granted a visit once a month that never goes unanswered, and hearing the pride her voice when Bea mentioned The Jem Family eases a hole in Bea’s heart each time. Guilt still rages rampant at where her mother will be for the rest of her life. Now that she’s older however, knowing that she took out a horrifically evil man, and saved so many mutants? Makes it all a little more worth it. What if the truth is revealed, however? There will still be her fathers supporters, even years later, still digging for the truth. Each day Bea works that little harder, to work on her own powers to protect herself and her sister in case that day comes.

EXPANDED CONNECTIONS:

When there was no one in the world Bea could trust besides her sister. It was a small, lonely world. Then there was her introduction to Jem and those involved. She went from having no one, to people who actively wanted to know and care for her. It was far too much all at once, and frankly Bea pulled away more than she wanted to.  Sensible distance was always kept from people, but it felt like she was digging a ravine between her and them all. The first to start building a bridge was Shae. When Bea took a step back, Shae stepped forward. When someone would usually write her off as too broken, too distant, too uncaring. Shae was always there. Never pushy but always actively trying to get to know Bea. If her life was a constant storm, Shae was the sun behind the clouds. It was impossible to make friends, and Bea will admit that was on purpose. It was a comfort to be unknown. Now its a comfort to know she can call or visit Shae and be understood and wanted. She’s the one person in the world that has some idea of what might have happened in Bea’s past, however no matter how close they become, Bea knows she’s always going to keep Shae that little bit away from the truth.

EXTRA:

Pinterest Board here!: https://pin.it/fnymedfualhdfq

Her father raised her with every intent of moulding her into his own shadow. With his wealth he enrolled her into more classes than a child was ever capable of keeping up with. This included languages like German and French. As a result education is exhausting for Bea, and she avoided going to further education and instead learns in her own time. Alone.

There are very few people that can pull a full, engaged conversation out of Bea. She isn’t rude, she’ll always talk to people when talked to first, but her interest is often elsewhere. She’s well aware this makes her come off as uncaring at times, and she doesn’t bother to correct people.

There’s fear of the unknown weaved between her bones, born from years of fear. But there’s an adventurous streak that brings out the bold and the brave within her. New experiences and the thrill and power that come with them are calculated and thought out butare often craved.

She’s not naive, she knows how this world works. Its good at times yes but there’s so much bad and so many people that fall under that darker side. That she knows to keep her wits about her at all times. Those she has befriended still know only what she wants them to know about her.

The memories are never going to fade, everything a constant reminder of the past. However the longer she spends pretending her past didn’t exist, the easier it becomes to believe it herself.

Theres a rage inside Bea she tries so hard to pretend doesn’t exist. It built her entire childhood, when she had to face fear every single day. Or as she lacked the friends she needed. The comfort she needed. It exploded out of her when her father threatened her sister, and  ever since Bea has tired to lock it away. The only person who ever saw that anger since then was Ciara and it keeps Bea up at night that she saw that side of her. No matter how angry their break up, she knows she could have kept more control.

ANYTHING ELSE: A FC change to Elizabeth Olsen please?

#accepted #accepted: europa

[ghostofbambifanfiction]

Can you be more specific on why you like Arya and Sansa? So many people like Arya for being strong and fierce, but for some reasons so many hate Sansa for what she was like in the earlier seasons. Can you give specific instances why you like both of them? And why not Daenerys? Thanks! (I'm just really curious, please indulge me :) )

I’m going to talk about Dany first (and I’m sticking to the show here, though I have read the books, but they’re never getting finished, let’s be real), and then I'll put my thoughts on Sansa and Arya in another post (hey, you asked, so I’m delivering) because otherwise this will go on forever and it’s cleaner this way. Putting a ‘read more’ here because this is long (lol I’m at work I should be working)

To preface, I would not dislike Daenerys as much as I do if she didn’t want to be queen. I’ll touch on this when I talk about Arya, but I appreciate characters who have the self-awareness required to know who and what they are. Since Daenerys does want to rule Westeros, I have so many issues.

I also think the eighth season is going to see her turning on most of the people she’s currently allied with and I think the catalyst for that is the discovery that Jon is the legitimate child of Rhaegar and Lyanna, and therefore his claim to the throne supersedes hers. I’ll gladly admit that I’m wrong if I am, but right now I don’t think I am. Here’s why.

1) She is an ineffective ruler

After Dany liberated the slave cities of Astapor, Yunkai and Meereen, she stayed to rule and did a terrible job of it. Nobody in particular was better off, the majority of the slaves she freed were homeless and scraping for food in mess halls, and she killed elders who had spoken out against slavery without even listening to what any of them had to say. She has the mind for conquering, not for ruling.

(side note: why does she even want to be queen? It’s something she just seemed to jump on in season two without ever reasoning it out, and from there on in it’s like an obsession that has grown inside her. Now she says she wants to make the world a better place but she hasn’t the skills to do it. It should be enough for her to liberate oppressed societies and allow somebody qualified to fix them. But it’s not.)

The truth is, Meereen saw no real improvement until after Dany skipped town on Drogon, because Tyrion had the idea to replace the slave trade with actual trade. He made changes that impacted the city’s economy and allowed its residents to start supporting themselves, so of course, the slavers attacked just as Dany came back, at which point her bright idea was to decimate an entire armada when she needed ships. Tyrion had to talk her out of it. Which brings me to her next point.

2) She requires constant babysitting

It’s ironic to me that Tyrion told Cersei that “the difference” between Cersei and Daenerys is that Dany knows herself well enough to hire advisors who tell her not to do dumb, impulsive things, firstly because that is such a low bar, Tyrion! There are people out there (Sansa) who do not require that kind of monitoring! Secondly because Cersei is far more self-aware than Dany.

Cersei knows that the things she does are bad and does them anyway because fuck it, she knows she wants power for power’s sake. Dany has such a narrow view of justice that actually thinks she’s being righteous when she burns people to death (more on that later) and that is the most dangerous mindset a leader can have. Compare that, if you will, to Sansa, who quite sensibly told Arya that chopping off heads might feel good but that’s not the way to make people work together. Jorah, Tyrion and Jon have all had to speak out against Dany’s more violent predilections and she’s fast running out of people she wants to listen to. She and Tyrion are certainly hanging on by a thread. Which brings me to my next point.

3) She mistreats her own Hand

The relationship between Dany and Tyrion absolutely reeks of Aerys and Tywin, their respective fathers, who were the best of friends until Aerys’ jealousy and paranoia forced them to opposite sides of a bloody war. Dany is all too happy to take credit for Tyrion’s best ideas when they work (and he is happy to let her) but as soon as one of his plans go wrong she whirls on him and berates him like he’s a piece of trash. Everything’s his fault when a plan goes wrong.

When he brought up the matter of the succession she accused him of plotting her death with his brother, which not only is batshit insane but proves that Daenerys gives far less of a shit about the future of Westeros than she claims to, because if she cared that much, she’d care about planning to carry on the legacy she wants to build. She can’t seem to forgive Tyrion for the heinous crime of…loving his siblings? Trying to broker the most peaceful end to the war? Not wanting his brother to die?

Honestly, her treatment of Tyrion is one of the most telling aspects of her character and I am aghast that nobody seems to be talking about it.

4) Like all of the maddest Targaryens before her, she gets off on burning people

This one isn’t subtle at all. Sorry to drop the intellectual veneer for a moment but she fucking loves that shit. It doesn’t bother her a whit to watch people scream as they’re being burned alive. She takes pleasure in burning people, you can see the satisfaction on her face, and a good leader should never take pleasure in something like that.

(FYI people like to mention how Sansa smiled when Ramsay’s dogs ate him when I make this point and to that I blow a raspberry. That was her personal moment of justice against her rapist and abuser, not the lord of some house who wouldn’t submit to her, there is no fair comparison)

Dany was smiling like a satisfied cat when she burned down the temple of the Dosh Khaleen and killed everybody inside it, which was something she did to seize power, by the way. She didn’t do it to stick it to a bunch of misogynists, though I’m sure that was an added bonus. She did the exact same thing Cersei did to the Sept of Baelor and for the exact same reasons, yet only one of them is painted as a villain by the viewing public even though you can argue that Cersei was also sticking it to misogynists when she killed the High Sparrow. The only reason for that is that Dany was given humble origins while the narrative told us that Cersei was bad from the very beginning.

Theon is still beating himself up for killing and burning those two farm boys — as he should. Stannis burned his daughter and everyone was horrified. Jon was so repulsed to watch Mance Rayder burn that he defied Stannis and shot him in the heart. How many times is the show going to have to tell us that burning people alive is a terrible act of evil before people stop cheering Dany on for it? When Ned Stark was Lord of Winterfell, he understood and felt the weight of executing a man. Jon feels the weight of it, too, as we’ve seen on a couple of occasions. Sansa clearly thought long and hard about executing Petyr — that’s what her moment of reflection on the battlements was meant to show us. Dany just… doesn’t care. I think she cared a bit when she had Daario execute Mossador, but I can’t think of any other occasion where she has been directly responsible for a death and been remotely bothered by it.

So. yes.

I think the reason a lot of people – and in particular a lot of women – support Daenerys is because she has a girl power narrative. She does have a girl power narrative, it’s true, but that is not a good enough reason to support a character who on so many occasions has proven herself to be unqualified for the job she wants, not to mention bordering on dangerously unhinged and increasingly paranoid. In that sense I think her season 1 narrative was genius, because her origins and the way in which she started to gain power (as well as her gender) has granted her a kind of automatic forgiveness for behaviours that several male characters – and Cersei, most importantly, because she also has a girl power narrative (and she and Dany are two peas in a pod) but the show told us she was a baddie from episode one – would be dragged through the mud for. And I’m sorry, but it’s not good enough for me. I’m not going to support a powerful female character just because she’s a powerful female character who did some good things once. Powerful women can be good or bad.

Some other points re: Daenerys

The dragons are weapons of mass destruction and need to be killed. They’re nukes with wings. She’s burned her own people with those monsters because fire doesn’t fucking differentiate. Sorry not sorry.

The Targaryens are literally GRRM’s interpretation of the Aryan race. It’s practically in their name.

“I have tried to make it explicit in the novels that the dragons are destructive forces, and Dany has found that out as the tried to rule the city of Meereen and be queen there. She has the power to destroy, she can wipe out entire cities, and we certainly see that in Fire and Blood, we see the dragons wiping out entire armies, wiping out towns and cities, destroying them, but that doesn’t necessarily enable you to rule – it just enables you to destroy.” – George R R Martin, folks.

One of the show’s directors, Jack Bender, made a reference to Hitler when talking about her. He said we should be “horrified” by her. No shit, Jack. No shit.

“Do you wonder if the gods ever get lonely?” Just… this line. Get a grip, woman.

#Game of Thrones #rambling

[darkfire1220]

Godzilla: King of the Monsters SPOILER Review!

WARNING! SPOILERS BELOW! IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS YET, GO AWAY! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

I made a post just yesterday defending Godzilla: King of the Monsters from the harsh criticism the film has received since it’s release over the weekend. I stand by what I said: I think the critical reviews have really hurt the film’s reception in an extremely negative and undeserved way. Now, that’s not to say the film is a perfect one! It has its positives and negatives, and I’m going to go in-depth into them in this review. I’m also going to be making theater experience comparisons to other movies I’ve seen in the past to help you understand where this film falls under my spectrum. This is absolutely my sole opinion, but I just want to clear some of the air and really give everyone my thoughts on this film.

I’ve gotten to see the film twice now, the first on opening night, and the second about five hours ago. The first time I went in as a huge Kaiju nerd, excited and anticipating the film which I hoped would be the blockbuster of the summer. I’d even go so far as to say that I was more hyped for this than Avengers: Endgame. I watched Ghidorah: The Three-Headed Monster, Kong: Skull Island, and Godzilla 2014 prior to going to see this movie. I was prepared to witness glory incarnate. 

And I did. Can confirm, my mind was blown. I walked out of that first showing with a stupidly huge grin, possibilities whirling in my mind, and a fierce excitement to see it again. We got a bunch of easter eggs in addition to seeing some of my favorite Kaiju on the American big screen for the first time. I got everything I wanted and I felt very positive about it all.

Godzilla and Ghidorah OWN this movie. Not only did I get way more Godzilla than in 2014, but I got to see Ghidorah shine. That dragon is such a savage, showing every bit of maliciousness he’s known for and even when Godzilla gets juiced up towards the end of the film, he takes every hit thrown at him and pays it back. This Ghidorah takes no bullshit from anybody. He deals it out, and he deals it out with extreme prejudice. Everything from his design, sound effects, the unique behavior and interaction between his three heads (I LOVED that, btw) is so goddamn good and I can’t express enough how much you should go see the movie if only to see the kaiju do their things. 

Now Rodan, my boy Rodan! You were once one of the goofiest looking Kaiju I’d ever set eyes on, but my god you got a makeover in this movie. Legendary’s Rodan is a monster in the skies, and you can see that without any trouble. When the planes start to fire missiles at him, he shrugs it off and seems to be more annoyed than anything. Actually, he kind of just plays cat-and-mouse with the jets when he’s pursuing the Argo (The big jet, kind of like a stealth bomber. My dad would disown me for just calling it that because he works in aerospace XD) and only when they completely surround him does he eventually get fed up with the jets and executes a mean barrel roll to essentially bitch-slap all of them (yes, all of them- he kills the entire squad) out of the sky. That was an awesome shot. 

Last but certainly not least, Mothra. This incarnation of Mothra is by far the most aggressive, but still retains a lot of the classic kaiju features. She’s beautiful to see and when they started playing her music theme I got so excited. This Mothra also has a few tricks up her sleeve! I was very, very surprised when she whipped out a stinger of all things! But she showed a lot of loyalty to Godzilla in protecting him from Ghidorah and eventually transferring her power to him after Ghidorah kills her (of course she dies, it’s Mothra :(  BUT there’s another egg in the end-credits, so maybe we’ll get more Mothra in Godzilla vs Kong!). Another detail I didn’t actually notice the first time watching this was when Godzilla went Thermonuclear and blasted Ghidorah with atomic pulses, the pulses sounded like Mothra’s cries and gave off patterns similar to Mothra’s wings. I thought that was very cool!

Also, one thing I wasn’t expecting to enjoy were all the kaiju Legendary made up for the movie. As much as I would have loved to see more Toho kaiju, (I wanted Anguirus so bad lol) the designs for these kaiju, brief as they were, were awesome to see. We got a number of new minor kaiju with their own unique designs, ranging from the mammoth-ground sloth hybrid Behemoth, the mountain-backed Methuselah, and even a massive MUTO similar to the ones from the 2014 film, but with her own unique features. I’ve heard some people call this one MUTO Prime, but I think that might be a reference to a Godzilla comic that was released not too long ago. I think it was called Godzilla: Aftershock. Don’t take my word on that, I haven’t gotten to check it out yet. I could be totally wrong. 

But anyways, I loved all of my kaiju, even the new ones! I’d love to see more of them, even if it’s just little bits and pieces!

Onto the human characters. Yes, your favorite part of this review. Yes, I am being absolutely sarcastic, but to be fair, I personally think the actors did a great job. Of course it’s a Godzilla movie and the plot line is a little wacky, but everyone from Millie Bobby Brown to Kyle Chandler (and especially Ken Watanabe) played their characters very well. The acting was spot-on. I couldn’t really bring myself to truly hate any of the characters. There were some questionable choices, yes, but the actors themselves played their characters very well, I think. 

Now of course, I’ve had time to sober up a bit and the second showing let me think a bit more about the movie and its problems. I’ve boiled it down to three main issues: First, the humans take up too much time. Two, I wanted more kaiju (specifically Mothra). And three, the fights kept getting cut in the middle of the action.

King of the Monsters struggles with the same issue that Godzilla 2014 had in that it actually doesn’t have enough monsters. I’m not talking about monster battles- it has that in spades, (though I found myself wanting even more of that, as well) but I found it lacking when it came to some of the kaiju themselves. The first half of the movie rolls out exactly like I wanted. It starts with a bang and just immediately starts to move. It’s fast, catastrophic, and visually stunning. 

That visual awe, by the way, is something that is maintained throughout the entirety of the film. If you want to see some of the most amazing shots you’ve ever seen in a movie, then this is the one. 

The problem with King of the Monsters starts mostly in the second half of the film, just after King Ghidorah rises from the ocean victorious in his latest battle against Godzilla. At this point, the film slows down and focuses far, far too much on the people. We know that the Titans are rampaging around the world, but we don’t see much of them. Even Ghidorah and Rodan (the latter of whom submits to Ghidorah’s authority after getting his ass beat) aren’t given much screen time to show what they get up to, which apparently flying over to Washington D.C and turning it into Ghidorah’s personal crib.

I would have LOVED to see Ghidorah and Rodan fly up to the capital and basically lay waste to the place, if only to add to their danger factors. They both present an immense threat, but it feels a bit subverted given how little screen time they have together while Rodan is under Ghidorah’s authority. 

But we slowed down and focused on the people, who were sent on a mission to heal Godzilla after the Oxygen Destroyer missile almost killed him. Granted, that is important, but it felt too stretched out for me to really enjoy it. I would have liked to see Mothra partaking more in helping Godzilla, especially since she gets so little screen time in the movie. 

That’s one of my biggest nitpicks as I stated before- I didn’t get nearly enough Mothra. We actually got more Rodan than we did Mothra. Don’t get me wrong, Rodan is one of my favorite Kaiju and this movie scales his baddassery level up so much, but I NEEDED more Mothra to really make the movie work better. Her design is gorgeous and her brief participation in the final battle is fine, but I wanted MORE of her. More of Mothra interacting with the people, with Godzilla, and with Madison (Millie Bobbie Brown).

Just more of Mothra. For a kaiju that plays such a key role in rebelling against Ghidorah’s Alpha status and protecting Godzilla, she doesn’t get remotely enough screen time. 

But let’s get back on track. The movie slowed down after the battle in Mexico concluded and Ghidorah became the Alpha kaiju. And in this, I felt in my second viewing, is really where the crux of the problem lies. Some of the human actions were very necessary and provided the meat of the plot, but a lot of the fat could have been cut out and replaced with kaiju instead. 

The scene with Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) and Godzilla was masterfully done, though. For those of you who aren’t diehard kaiju fans, Serizawa was the scientist way back in the original 50′s Godzilla films that killed Godzilla with the oxygen destroyer. In this movie, Ken Watanabe’s character, who is also named Serizawa, sacrifices himself to save Godzilla by detonating a nuclear bomb beside the Titan, which helps him recover his radioactive life force. 

“Goodbye, old friend.”

There’s something tragically sad about that quote and it was the most powerful moment in the film for me. Not just because it pays homage to the original Serizawa character, but because that really takes you back to the original Godzilla roots, when the kaiju was used as a metaphor for nuclear devastation. Serizawa is of Japanese origin and his father was killed by the bomb in Hiroshima (in the storyline). He sacrifices himself to save Godzilla and is killed by the nuclear bomb they use to jump-start the Titan. That echoes hard and reminded me where Godzilla came from in the first place. 

Godzilla gets juiced by the nuclear bomb and goes on the hunt to track down and slaughter Ghidorah once and for all. Cue one of the most epic monster fights you’ll ever see on the big screen...or it would have been, if they didn’t cut away every few seconds to focus on the people. It’s this repetitive sequence in the film that hurts its score the most for me. I don’t care about the people scrambling on the ground, or at least I don’t care enough to want to focus on them when Godzilla, Ghidorah, Rodan, and Mothra are scrapping in the background. 

Like hello??? Can I look at THAT please??? More, please!!! 

What action sequences we do get are great, but god they would have been so much more satisfying and powerful if we just got to see the kaiju duking it out while the humans scrambled in the background, and not the other way around. 

Walking out of the theater this time, I felt like I stated before- I didn’t get enough kaiju, or at least the kaiju I did get kept getting cut off by human nonsense. I still enjoyed it, absolutely, because for me, the pros of the film outweigh the cons. I got to see my favorite kaiju duke it out amidst tolerable human actors with CGI that Toho couldn’t have even dreamed of seeing back in the day. I got my Godzilla movie, and while it wasn’t perfect, I liked what I liked more than I hated what I didn’t. 

To put this in comparison, I think this film falls into a healthy theater experience, but not an outstanding one. For example, I am a Jurassic Park nut, and when Jurassic World came out, I saw that movie more times than I can even count. Every opportunity I could have to go see it, I saw it. I think I saw that movie in the theater something like eight times? Not even a joke, I saw it that much. I loved it so much. That was probably my favorite theater experience ever. King of the Monsters makes me want to go see it again and again, (even now, after seeing it twice!) but maybe I’ll refrain from seeing it quite that much lol. 

But it doesn’t deserve to be thrashed with criticism the way it is. Another example, my most negative theater experience, is when I went to go see The Last Jedi. Oh my god. Now THAT movie made me wish the new trilogy had never happened, and I love Star Wars. Even in my first viewing of The Last Jedi, I walked out of that theater with two of my friends (both of them hardcore Star Wars fans) and we all said out loud, “What the fuck was that garbage?” 

Oh my god we hated that film, but we went to go see it twice regardless because that’s what we do to really determine how much we like or hate a film. The first time is for initial reactions as fans, the second time we go see a film to be more perceptive about it. And The Last Jedi sucked even more the second time, which is why I will never touch that movie ever again. I could go in-depth about it, but that’s not what this review is about. This was simply an example to compare King of the Monsters to. 

If I had had the kind of reaction to the film that I did with The Last Jedi, I would absolutely understand the box office numbers it is currently being pounded with, but I didn’t have that reaction. I loved the movie both times I went to go see it and for the life of my I can’t fathom why it’s receiving so much heat. This film is pieced together BETTER than that horrifying Star Wars movie, for god’s sake, but it’s doing so much worse. Let that sink in for a second. A Godzilla movie’s plot is pieced better than a Star Wars movie. Will wonders never cease?

All in all, I think King of the Monsters is a sold 7.5/10. It’s not perfect and it has its problems, but I think it’s a solid entry into the kaiju franchise, and at this point I’m just praying that the negativity it’s receiving doesn’t hurt the Legendary Monsterverse later on down the line. I want to see more Godzilla movies after Kong vs Godzilla, thank you very much! 

Whew, that was a lot to write. Anyways, my final advice to anyone thinking about going to see it is to just go take a crack at it in the theaters. I can understand why people didn’t like some parts of the film, but I found the positives outweighed the negatives. Long live the King!

#godzilla #godzilla: king of the monsters #legendary godzilla #mothra #rodan #king ghidorah #ghidorah #monsterverse #king of the monsters #kaiju #kaiju movie #review #movie review #spoilers #spoiler review

[virovac]

White dragons

I feel they’re made too intentionally dumb that it makes fights with them uninteresting.

As stated by Monsier Meuble in their thread on a French version of the 3.5 E monster manual:

Indeed, he's cold-themed. He starts life with an immunity to cold (and a corresponding vulnerability to fire) and Icewalking, allowing to adhere to any icy surface with no regard for the inclination of said surface (this include being upside down on a frozen ceiling ; this put in mind one of such dragon having contracted the local kobold tribe to trap literally every square of the floor of his lair while he himself circulates on the ceiling and walls to meet the intruding PCs ; or, for purely aesthetic reasons, while they cross a frozen lake, the PCs realize that something is walking in their steps on the other side of the ice (at least a Huge dragon with Water Breathing) ). Later it will acquire Fog Cloud thrice a day to make to blind everybody with Blind Sense (and still be able to drop his breath cone on a zone anyway), Gust Of Wind thrice a day (probably while shouting something, anything), Freezing Fog that is like Solid Fog but also covers anything it touches with ice, just so the dragon is still at home even if you choose your own battlefield, Wall Of Ice for breaking the party (and, in an incongruous scenario in which the PCs managed to stop the dragon from flying, still giving him some manoeuvrability) and finally, as a Great Wyrm, Control Weather once a day to show those pathetic mortal druids who thought they could have a nice winter for once. Really, with those capacities, I can imagine a "fun" dungeon-fleeing game, were the murderhobos enter an apparently normal grotto with no appearance of ice or anything like that, a few obvious traps here and there, only a few wandering monsters, until finding the Lair, with a surprise white dragon at the bottom announcing "Let's play tag. I'm it. I give you thirty seconds." before dropping his powers to turn the tunnels into an icy, fog-filled death-trap where the dragon can come from the ceiling and the chasms and rifts the group barely paid attention to when coming in. Alas, the text itself insists that the white dragon is not clever, no even cunning, only ferocious and bestial, and that frost giants hunt them as game animals or to make them guard dogs.

I’m fine with them being “dimmer” than other dragons as an energy saving adaptation, but a well fed one or one that has to deal with being prey to giants should be craftier and capable of traps. Their downfall should likely be in most cases that they are used to finding challenge in opponents that are their size or larger, so adventurers are an outside context problem they may underestimate or not be mentally prepared for the tactics they use.

Also, I can’t help but think of them as the most playful of the chromatic dragons ever since I read how they happily frolic in water.

Still, there is the issue of their breath weapon not being completely effective in their biome. and how adventurers will already have cold resistant spells prepared just for the environment. I feel a secondary breath weapon of hailstones would help, allowing a thematic method of bludgeoning damage.  

edit: Also they are written very inconsistently. Are they honey badgers with a photographic memory, or will they yield and submit to another that defeats them?

edit 2:  Commentary from  the user Sleeper in the  same thread

I'm not a fan of the some of the granted powers given to dragons in later editions. For the white dragon, it's the icewalking ability. A dragon that skitters across the icy translucent ceiling, like a giant spider on a bed of glass? That's cool. But making every white dragon a cross between a water strider, a drop-bear and Legolas really changes how they fit into the world. I'd prefer some guidelines on how to give each dragon their own unique schtick, instead of giving all white dragons a once-cool trick

#white dragon (d&d) #d&d dragons #dragons #dungeons & dragons #dungeons and dragons

[nofomoartworld]

Digital Identities: A Photo Feature from the New Issue of VICE Magazine

This article appeared in the February Issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.

We were honored to collaborate on the "The Future of Tech" Issue for VICE Magazine alongside our colleagues Waypoint and Motherboard. The issue investigated how tech affects our lives, from an essay on sex in virtual reality to conversations with a slew of professionals on how we can make technology work better for all of us. For our contribution, The Creators Project selected seven multimedia artists whose work uses technology as a canvas or explores larger notions of modern security and identity. Many of these artists pour themselves into creating 3D worlds or robotic personas, so we asked them to submit self-portraits that honor their creative identities. See likenesses that reveal the wondrous, wild, and computed facets of a few of our favorite artists below. 

::vtol::

All images courtesy the artists

As they did for the original synthesizer makers of the United Kingdom after World War II, discarded scraps of techno-rubble provided copious building materials for ::vtol::, a.k.a., Dmitry Morozov, one of the first multimedia artists to emerge in post-Soviet Russia. In addition to residencies from Norway to Oswego, New York, Morozov has lectured at UC Berkeley’s Center for New Music and Audio Technologies and the 19th-century Polytechnic Museum in Moscow. In 2015, he was an honorable mention at Ars Electronica in Linz for Digital Musics and Sound-Art. These days, the Moscow-based tinkerer and musician solders his chops in robotics, sound art, and science into a succession of experimental musical instruments and modular synthesizers, including robotic-painting machines, a magnetically levitating Bluetooth speaker, and a musical tattoo. – Emerson Rosenthal

Cool 3D World

Masters of the absurd, Cool 3D World is an ongoing collaborative animation project from artists Brian Tessler and Jon Baken, otherwise known as brianbrian—brianbrian and popcorn10. Since 2015, the two have been publishing a hoard of 3D-animated shorts and digital portraits of some of the most bizarre media the internet has to offer. In the absence of any sort of linear narrative, Cool 3D World’s animations follow a loosely familiar cast of characters recognizable only by their lopsided and deformed renderings. The duo’s sublime vignettes transport the viewer to another world—one that is dramatic and unpredictable, where anything is possible. The bizarre animated episodes from these uncompromising artists will leave you laughing and confused, if not a little sick to your stomach. Their creative process is as much about spontaneity and experimentation as it is about humor. Cool 3D World doesn’t ask why, but why not. – Nathaniel Ainley

Browntourage

 Enmeshed in a Bay Area creative circle primarily populated by white dudes, Tonia Beglari and Hawa Arsala took it upon themselves to create space for diverse female artists. The idea for Browntourage, the duo’s curatorial collective supporting female artists of color, was born out of a party foul: An inebriated man at a party asked the women to form his harem. The incident inspired Beglari and Arsala to turn a cultural paradigm on its head. They formed Browntourage as a coalition of women of color, intent on advocating for representation in mainstream media by inserting themselves into the cultural-feedback loop. Today, the collective functions as a media agency, curatorial portal, and production company, enabling the work of diverse artists around the globe. A recent collaboration with Iranian new-media artist Morehshin Allahyari interrogates censorship and cultural genocide in the Middle East. Balancing entertainment with advocacy, the women of Browntourage endeavor to end appropriation by shifting conversations around race and gender, one genre-defying project at a time. – Kara Weisenstein

Chico MacMurtrie

The term “amorphic robot works” (ARW) is either a proper noun or a disturbing declaration, but for the Brooklyn-based artist Chico MacMurtrie, it’s both—and then some. ARW is the name of the kinetic sculptor, roboticist, installation artist, and performer’s interdisciplinary collective, a group responsible for award-winning experimental artworks that have garnered a grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation, and, most recently, a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2015, MacMurtrie filled a church in Brooklyn with more than 50 robots, including a series of music-making machines. Last year, he created Border Crossers, giant internally illuminated inflatables designed to simultaneously balloon on both sides of the US-Mexico border. – Emerson Rosenthal

PussyKrew

Originally from Poland, this experimental CGI duo has taken what started as a creative exploration of new media and turned it into something of an internationally recognized art practice. Comprised of Andrzej Wojtas, a.k.a. mi$ gogo, and Ewelina Aleksandrowicz, a.k.a., Tikul, PussyKrew uses a combination of motion graphics and 3D-scanned imagery to create fully immersive installations and multimedia experiences. Through their assertive and disorienting digital compositions, PussyKrew plays with gender in a way that challenges our preconceived notions of heteronormativity and the patriarchy. Their music videos and live performance–based visuals explore the aesthetics of the urban landscape, man’s assumptions about the future, and how we perceive the synthetic and the organic. PussyKrew makes visual journeys they describe as “carnal data mesh, liquid dysphoria, and 3D fantasy shuffle.” – Nathaniel Ainley

Nina Beier

Though the phrase gets bandied about pretty liberally in creative critique, Nina Beier is the embodiment of a truly multimedia artist. Her artistic experimentation varies vastly, to the point that it’s hard to categorize. Unafraid of the untested, Beier fearlessly fords uncharted technological waters, experimenting with green screens and live-video feeds that transport viewers to fantastical digital locales. It’s an exploration of the ephemerality of our lives, in an age when we can be manipulated, transported, and transformed by technology at the touch of a button. Though disparate, the Danish-born, Berlin-based artist’s works are unified in their surrealism. Dealing in dog hair and paint, data and fabric, her unfaithful relationship to form is what makes Beier one of the most well-equipped artists to traverse emerging digital mediums. – Kara Weisenstein

Jeremy Couillard

Jeremy Couillard is a mad conductor of media, orchestrating 3D-printed sculpture, painting, film, and video games into a candy-colored assault on the physical world that consumes whole galleries or theaters. He offers out-of- body experiences and journeys to the afterlife. Couillard’s virtual reality–based multimedia installation Out of Body Experience Clinic asks, “What if it were possible to leave the terres- trial plane at will?” After donning VR goggles, viewers find themselves in an exact replica of their physical surroundings—then rip through the ceiling into a metaphysical sojourn full of chanting and monsters. At the end, the soul is reunited with body, but the insistent belief in his world never fades. Hailing from the suburbs of Detroit, the Brooklyn-based artist got his MFA at Columbia University, where he developed the pop-surrealistic painting style that colors his experiential art. Through computer-generated art, he not only needles at the inherent biases of our physical world, but of the technology giants building the digital one. – Beckett Mufson

Click here to read more stories from The Future of Tech Issue, out now. 

Related:

[Music Video] A Lavish Trip Inside an Empress' 3D-Scanned Palace

A Dystopian Guide to Managing the Anxieties of Aging

I Had an Out-of-Body Experience at an Oculus Rift Art Show

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