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ddarker-dreams · 11 months

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the yan hxh character's favorite types of styles on you.

(warning for some not SFW implications/reader described as fem)

chrollo loves you in classy, elegant, yet formfitting outfits that highlight the silhouette of your body. slim blazers, short pencil skirts, sheer tights, pumps. will be smiling happily to himself if you struggle with heels since you're forced to cling to him, or trip. purposefully gets outfits that are difficult for you to put on by yourself (like having a zipper in the back) so you must begrudgingly call upon him for assistance.

pretends he 'forgot' to include some pants or shorts as potential options but it was 100% intentional. don't believe his lies. he loves anything that reveals your collarbones but not if you're going out. only he gets to see them, no one else. he mostly goes for neutral colors with a heavy emphasis on black, ivory, beige, navy, and sometimes burgundy if he's feeling a bit wild.

as far as accessories go, he favors dangling earrings and choker-length necklaces. you don't get to wear watches anymore because when he last gifted you one, you kept checking it every time he started talking, and it kinda hurt his feelings. he is a fan of you putting your hair up because he loves admiring the muscles of your neck and it grants him easier access for kissing.

(phinks, feitan, machi and paku under the cut)

phinks originally gives you some t-shirts and sweatpants because hell if he knows how to dress a woman. he doesn't want you thinking he's some pervert that kidnapped you purely for sexual gratification — no, there's a deeper connection he's trying to foster with you here. that being said... if he could have it his way, his biggest fantasy is having you wear those tennis outfits. preferably with white or pink colors. he just thinks you'd look really cute. the short, pleated skirt brushing against your thighs, tight polo shirt, a pair of high top tennis shoes; he'd be in heaven. phinks will want to scoop you up and twirl you around or some other romantic-sounding shit.

doesn't really have any preferences when it comes to accessories. his biggest thing is in the colder seasons, seeing you wrapped up in a scarf is super endearing. it makes his heart almost beat out of his chest. jewelry isn't a big deal to him. he'll gift you a fair amount because he figures Woman = Want Shiny Thing (as if you're a crow), but it doesn't do much for him visually. aside from stud earrings with simple designs, like a flower or moon. he thinks that's pretty cute.

feitan doesn't think about fashion much. he literally wears the same thing every day and only washes his bloodstained jacket if you ask nicely (aka plead). he gets you some long shirts and calls it a day. when you ask if you can have shorts or anything similar to that, he silently stares at you. unlike chrollo, it really didn't occur to him. if he's in a good mood he'll pick up what you asked for. probably gets an uncomfortable material or the wrong size but it isn't out of spite, he genuinely has no idea what he's doing.

he discovers by accident that the sight of you in a sheer nightgown is especially appealing. other than that, the only preference he's aware of is seeing you in light colors. it gives you this innocent glow that he finds aesthetically pleasing. the way it further highlights how different you are — pure (by his standards, at least), virtuous — really does something for him. he has a weird obsession with your wrists so he's gotten you a few silver link bracelets. that's the most you get to accessorize should you ever choose to wear them.

machi lets you wear whatever you want and listens to your clothes requests, because she's too embarrassed to admit what she'd find you cute in. no one could get the information out of her, even if it came down to torture. so... what she wants more than anything (drumroll please)... is to see you wearing one of those short overall outfits over a plain shirt. she'd be staring at you as if you were the mona lisa. she has no idea why the concept entices her as much as it does. all she knows is that you'd look fucking adorable and she'd commit multiple crimes for you.

she likes you in denim, any color really. jean shorts, ripped jeans, skinny jeans, flared jeans, wide jeans, high waist, low waist; she's all about it. oversized tops are a big favorite as well. extra points if the sleeves are too long and cover most of your hand. you think she's glaring at you but in reality she's trying so hard to keep her fraying mind in check.

pakunoda has you looking runway ready whenever she takes you out. the woman did research. a lot of what you wear is tailored specifically to your complexion, body type, facial structure, etc. she enjoys high fashion and has procured pieces made by the biggest names. most of what's in your closet is either wool, pure cotton, or silk. it looks and feels luxurious. she favors seeing you in jumpsuits or maxi-length dresses. coordinating outfits is a favorite of hers, she has color theory down and you both look stunning together. around the house (or wherever she's keeping you), you're free to dress as you please. you both have matching house slippers and robes.

accessories will depend on the season, but you can expect to be wearing sleek sunglasses and the occasional hat. for jewelry, she goes for her birthstone, diamonds, and gold. nothing too ostentatious though. she keeps it classy. while she'd love to see you in stilettos, if you can't walk in them well, she'll go for flat pumps instead.

#yandere chrollo x reader #yandere phinks x reader #yandere feitan x reader #yandere machi x reader #yandere pakunoda x reader #phantom troupe x reader #yandere #yandere x reader #hxh x reader #yandere hxh x reader #concepts

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ryunumber · 8 months

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Spooky from Spookys House Of Jumpscares/Spookys Jumpscare Mansion

Spooky has a Ryu Number of 5/4/does not have a Ryu Number.

(explanation below)

Look, it's complicated. Things will be more concrete when Cross Impact hits Early Access.

Fair warning: this explanation is a bit more involved than normal, because the research hole this sent me down had me sincerely doubting my own base competence.

So, from the top: Spooky's only eligible appearance is in her own game, Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion née House of Jump Scares, as her only other appearance, period, seems to be as a trophy in Indie Pogo.

Naturally, this makes SJSM's specimens as the only connecting points. I've identified three that could work:

Unknown Specimen 1 is just White Face from IMSCARED.

This seems to be a dead end, as White Face's only other eligible appearance seems to be in the Nightmare Mode of Cooking Companions, as part of a menagerie of other horror game characters, including SJSM's own Specimen 6. But all of those also seem to be dead ends, and Specimen 6 just gets back to where we started, so that's probably no good.

How about Unknown Specimen 5?

Named Lisa. Sure looks quite a bit like Lisa from P.T. and once-prospective Silent Hills. Let's say it's that Lisa. What else has Lisa been in?

Apparently just P.T., which wouldn't be altogether unsurprising given, you know, all that happened with Silent Hills. Even the Lisa decoys for Metal Gear Solid V showcased in the Tokyo Game Show 2014 trailer didn't make it to the final game.

But there are still other P.T. references that did make it. Namely, that pleasant radio transmission, interruptions and all, can be heard from some radios in MGSV.

youtube

Now, given that audio-only appearances are broadly eligible, you could make a case that whoever's reading in this transmission is a character themself, which would in turn connect Lisa to The Phantom Pain, at which point calculating the Ryu Number is just a matter of hashing out who exactly is and is not in MGSV. The only issue I have with making this connection is that the audio is basically reused wholesale from P.T., which arguably makes it more in line with an archival recording, which is not eligible, than bespoke radio chatter, which is eligible, but hey, whatever, I've peddled dodgier. Why the hell not.

So in the search of a route with less caveats, let's consider what I've identified as the last possible eligible connection, Specimen 8. This cervine bundle of fun can be seen in Lost in Vivo as part of Lost Tape 3.

It turns out there's another character in Lost in Vivo who's been in something else: Sotiris. It also turns out that the "something else" in question is, uh,

the EEK3 2020 Virtual Show Floor. Which, to the best of my knowledge, is never referred to as a game, so if that matters to you, then we're done, and Spooky either has the aforementioned route through Lisa or nothing.

If you're willing to say that the virtual show floor is a game, which does not seem to be an unpopular opinion, then good news! There's a clear path to Ryu. You just have to go through Skully, who cameos in Toree 3D,

to the titular Toree, who's a guest character in Lunistice,

to Kit, the main character of Lunistice, who cameos in CrossCode,

to Lea, whose Ryu Number of 2 is already established, which gives Spooky a final Ryu Number of I'm sorry, I'm being handed a note.

Oh. Well fuck me, then, for not considering that the realities of game development could lead to a scenario wherein a character from an in-progress game could make cameo appearances in other games, only to be scrapped entirely before their would-be source game is released. Clearly, this is what the kids refer to as a "skill issue".

And the best part? This chain is so long that I'm genuinely expecting to have overlooked something really obvious that gives a shorter number, because the documentation I found on indie-ass indie horror game crossovers is spotty. So if you have any information that could shorten this more substantial than "White Face is graffiti in the full release of FAITH", send it my way. I'd rather be definitely wrong than dubiously correct.

Anyway, Toree's set to be playable in Cross Impact, so when that's released to the wider public most of this nonsense I just spewed at you will actually come into play. Until then, make of all of this what you will. If you'll excuse me, I need to go fucking distort.

#spooky #spooky's jumpscare mansion #spooky's jump scare mansion #spooky's house of jumpscares #ryu number

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malebodyexhibit · 1 year

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Gives an inch, takes a mile (a free commission tale)

I nuzzled my face into my boyfriend’s chest. After his gym workout, he smelled so good. I was usually not into the smell of sweat or BO, but smelling his musk with lavender body wash was soothing as he held me in his arm. His body warmed me through my gray pullover. He knew I didn’t jock out like him. I was a bit of a geek. I preferred to stay in and play video games; but I hoped the home-cooked meals, muscle massages, and my love were enough. Yet, he posed with me in a selfie for his Facebook. He did his best to capture his good side and mine as well, but I didn’t have many good sides. Not like him. Leaning against him, I could feel his muscles and the bulge of his erection. I tried to think that it was for me, but he was still friends with his ex on Facebook. That was who the pictures were for. It was a silent competition between the two of them.

“Look at my cute boyfriend whom I snuggle with after a hard gym workout!” My boyfriend’s selfie implied. He’d take pictures of my home-cooked meals with heart emojis. Then some of us while we hung out with friends. All of this to “get back” at his ex. An emotionally manipulative asshole.

The type of asshole who posted obvious bulge pics on Facebook. He flaunted his body like it was God’s gift. He always did lewd gestures with his tongue and fingers. His photos always had him showing off his muscles, posing with other men, and partying. I tried to tell myself that my boyfriend was over him, because that dick would tease him. He would share my boyfriend’s secrets with his friends behind his back. He made my boyfriend do sexual things that made him uncomfortable. My boyfriend told me that his ex even had him wear a chastity belt to work. If he wanted it off, he’d have to beg his ex to unlock him, but his ex wouldn’t until my boyfriend submitted to him and sucked him off. This wasn’t even mentioning the times his ex cheated with other guys and gaslit my boyfriend into thinking it was his fault.

I kept think why my boyfriend had put up with it for so long. But I knew the answer.

It’s because he’s hot obviously. He had the abs, the shoulders, and the 12-inch cock that would make men put up with his shit. Someone like me had to rely on kindness and being a decent human being. I loved my boyfriend so much and wondered why he just didn’t settle down with me. If I was hot, then he would have proposed to me already. But I was just too kindhearted and unremarkable.

But I heard about a different website that could help me… It was an underground thing that was spread by word of mouth. A man walking down the street stopped me and looked me up and down. He said, “I think I got something for you.” He told me about the website and that it was built for “people like you.” The website promised to make you the “man of your lover’s dreams.” The website could make me his ex.

Well.. it did more than that. I entered my and my boyfriend’s information. It promised to turn me into someone my boyfriend loved. Someone he wanted with his whole body and mind. The next morning, I was in his ex’s body.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. I played with his light-brown hair, so fair and soft unlike my original hair. I ran my hands over my biceps, then my abs. The first time I ever had abs! His body was so sensitive and I was so turned on my the sight of me controlling his ex’s body that I felt myself getting hard. I pulled down his underwear and saw the massive cock. I understood why so many people wanted this asshole now. I stroked one out right there. My jizz sprayed over my abs and chest. He had a long reach. I dug through his laundry hamper and pulled out clothes. They smelled ripe, but I noticed he didn’t have much clean clothes.

I had access to his memories and I knew that around this time he would be at the gym. That’s when I realized my boyfriend and his ex went around the gym at the same time. In his ex’s memories, I saw that they checked each other out while they worked out. They showered just a few feet apart. The whole time his ex would tease and mock my boyfriend by showing off his body to him. Not anymore.

I headed to the gym and found my boyfriend there. We made eye contact and throughout my workout, I watched my boyfriend watching me in the body of his ex. And let me tell you, it was hard to workout with a massive erection. I kept taking breaks to find ways to hide my boner. But this body was so hot, I eventually went to the showers to finish up. Then my boyfriend came in. He tried to keep things casual, saying hi and doing his shower. But I couldn’t keep it in any longer.

“Babe, it’s me.” I then told my boyfriend everything that happened. How I switched bodies and how I was his ex now. My boyfriend was shocked but suddenly realized it was me when I told him I loved him. “Wouldn’t it be awesome if I stayed in this body?” I said, smiling. “You could have a sweet boyfriend and an incredibly hot one too.”

“But, I thought you hated him?” My boyfriend said. “Every time I mentioned what he did to me, you always got mad that someone treated me so badly.”

“Yes, but I know you like his body—don’t deny it. He’s pretty hot. I got to rub one out and I honestly want to see what else it can do.” I held my boyfriend and took a picture. I loved how I look and how small my boyfriend was now.

The next few weeks were awesome. I cared for my boyfriend and gave him the attention he needed. I cooked for him and let him top this hot body, something his ex would never let him do. The first time after he tried to pin me down (he’s shorter than my new body) and shot a load in my ass, he held me and told me he loved me. He asked if it was almost the right time to get married. I was excited, but kept my cool. I told him, let’s get used to the changes first. We kissed and he explored my body with his mouth.

Some of the new changes were that my boyfriend wanted me to go with him to the gym though. And I actually got into it. I hardly play video games anymore or do that geeky shit, but I love pumping iron. The guys at the gym also can’t help checking me out. My boyfriend started to get insecure, but I tried to reassure him that I loved him and wouldn’t cheat, unless he got fat. I meant it as a joke, but he took it pretty seriously. He started working out a bit more, and I loved the results actually. So sometimes I would poke his stomach just to give him a reminder. I found that my boyfriend also had trouble making me cum during sex. He tried his best to satisfy me, but I jokingly asked if he needed another guy to help. So now I top him. It’s just easier for us that way. I also noticed I was getting cocky. The past day I got sidetracked at the gym. I was chatting with these couple hotties and just having a casual flirt. I mean it’s not cheating unless I actually fuck them, right? Well, I told my boyfriend he needed to cook dinner since I was busy. He threw a big fit, so I just decided to eat some ass. The two bros I met at the gym took me back to their place and I went to town tonguing their holes and fingering them open. While I fucked one, the other jerked off and came on me. I didn’t even wash up when I got back home. I wanted my boyfriend to see he couldn’t take me for granted.

Now I don’t even care if my boyfriend goes with me to the gym as long as he is facedown on the bed when I get home so I can pound his ass. He’s so afraid that I’d leave him. I understand why his ex was so hard on him. Give him 12 inches and he tries to take a mile. You got to keep him down so he knows who the alpha is.

#male transformation #male tf #transform #male transform #transformation #nerd to jock #mental change #personality change #alpha #male body exhibit

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roo-bastmoon · 11 months

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IMPORTANT INFO: issues around Jimin’s album

I have an ARMY friend (who shall remain safely anonymous) who works in film production for the music and entertainment industry here in the US. They offered me some valuable insights today into production limitations and possible issues related to Jimin’s solo album.

Below the cut is a transcript of their messages to me. I share this in the hopes it better informs our discussions around fair treatment of BTS members’ releases. It is by no means a definitive account of Jimin’s situation—simply an insider’s ideas on what likely happened around a few things.

I understand there are very big feelings about this topic, especially with the apparent differences around JK’s single, and I appreciate everyone’s viewpoints. However, if you choose to interact with this post, you will be respectful to others (including members) or you will be blocked. You are always welcome to DM me privately if you need to vent—we are all human and we all need a bit of grace, so you’ll always have that with me.

Sending you guys so much love, Roo

Anonymous Insider

Some “light reading” while you’re resting up and recovering, lol. This is all just based on what I’ve been watching and seen. Of course, I don’t have access to their production budget sheet and Korea works very differently than the US when it comes to production, but this what I’ve been seeing when it comes to their videos and particularly the promotions for FACE.

(I’m sending in sections, lol)

Alrighty - I’m still like deep in edit-land (still am two days later 😭) but I started typing this on the train between meetings, ha ha. (And am still on the train doing this, lol.) Also this rambles a bit I’m sorry! So the first thing I did was go back to the interview where Jimin talked about the music videos — it was a Japanese TV show and he’s talking with a host in Korean.

He’s talking about “wanting to do it all,” laughs and says, “I wanted all the music videos” and that “they” (the company assuming) said “무리다” which has its roots in the word 무리 which means a herd, a party, a group — basically “it’s too much,” “it’s unreasonable,” and “it’s impossible” are decent translations as it refers to something or an idea being “too much” — then the host and Jimin burst out laughing and the host goes “서리와 무리다” which I read as “sorry (in konglish) but we can’t” and they continue to laugh. So based on that —it sounds very understandable.

We can imagine Jimin sitting down with his team and planning out SMFP2 and LC videos, with the 30 dancers and all the party scene extras, and then Jimin saying he wants to do the music shows with 6 different sets in rented locations so they could have total control. And if Jimin in that process went “what if we made official music videos for all of them?” the team would understandably go “that’s just not reasonable!” 1) because it would give Jimin a budget no other member had gotten and 2) there aren’t that many production houses in Korea. It’s a very small scene — it may just logistically not been possible. There aren’t enough DPs and crew and editors. Sometimes, as a producer, you have to tell your creative talent “I’m sorry, but no.” — I say it every week!

So what about the music videos? Well, here’s what I know from meticulously watching all the behind the scenes for BTS videos over the years. They work with a small team. They likely own a good deal of the gear — they shoot mainly on RED cameras and heavy expensive Cooke lenses (which you can’t get this stuff easily in Korea. I lost a lens cap for a Canon CINÉ Lens in Seoul and it was like this whole big deal because getting gear there is an import challenge but anyways) they use MOVI and Ronin gimbal stabilizers and Jimmy Rigs a lot.

Recently they’ve been using technocranes but I wonder how many technocranes there are in Seoul. As I said, they likely own a lot of this gear which can help with costs. But we’ve also been told — and I’ve heard through my industry friends — that Hybe PAYS. And in Korea there’s no unions in the entertainment world, and often the rates are shit (hence Netflix investing so much there - blerg) their standard work week is also already 12 hours longer than the US. It’s a whole thing. and they spend so much money on sets. It’s incredible.

They rent these huge spaces outside Seoul and BUILD — I mean the build out for SMFP2 was astounding. They easily dropped 1million on that video. The rigging, the build-out, the custom set and the custom camera rigs to achieve the 360 shots - the drone shots. They’re astounding videos. No US label is spending that money on videos these day. Absolutely none of them are — my friend recently produced a video for John Legend. They were trying to pull the whole thing off for $100K which is ridiculous. It’s really almost impossible.

But on the Big videos they spend a lot of money, but they also produce a lot of other stuff too (and these are often looked at as Performance Videos vs all-caps MUSIC VIDEOS) -— like RM’s video shoot at DIA Beacon… that was a much smaller, fairly single camera shoot — all shot on drones or a MOVI handheld rig. No set, they also didn’t like pay for the set because DIA: Beacon is an art museum — and similar a little bit to Letter for Jimin, which was much smaller set and easy in-house gear.

(And it was also released on Bangtan TV channel vs Hybe Labels Channel, which is a good indicator of how they categorize these shoots.) But the big videos, they go for broke. I mean they spend so much money and again they may own a lot of the equipment but there’s still so much people-power and labor involved. Take the dancers’ rehearsals. You have to pay people for all that — you have to pay them for the weeks of rehearsal, you have to pay them to be in a video. It is so expensive — like, I would not be able to budget that video for under 1 million, that’s how much it costs.

So then Jimin wanted to do music shows —- and so because he’s Jimin and it’s BTS, Hybe rented larger venues and locations for all of the shoots. None of them use the actual Broadcast spaces or were provided by the broadcast studios. The smaller companies do though — remember when BTS first started out they went to SBS to film on the day? — but they don’t do that anymore. They rent huge facilities so that they could be a mini concerts for ARMYs to visit with Jimin and see him.

They also have to do this kind of outside of the city and they built huge sets because they’re going to want to show off if they’re gonna be on TV but that is so expensive. (I don’t think you were an ARMY then, but when ON was released, at the time it was the “biggest broadcast performance ever” and they keep upping that ante for sure!) It’s possible the broadcast companies spend some money but what BTS is doing is so outside the usual budget and given the tension with the broadcasters and HYBE — they (Hybe) wants control of their products, and so I think they pay for that control.

I can’t imagine they got out of any of those days for under $500K; I mean, there were two different sets, all the crew; they’re paying for all of it. We add it up and they probably spent close to $3-5 million between Jimin’s music videos and his music show performances, and I would be understandably like: “That’s it!” Like, that’s the budget for an EP, you know.

I don’t think Jimin could have it all because that wasn’t the case for the other members. RM got to lead videos and J Hope had pyrotechnics, which definitely costs money and safety and insurance. You know he had visual effects his first video (a lotta visual effects) and again a lot of challenging technocrane work, but I haven’t really seen them build something on the scale of what they built for SMFP2 in a very long time (or ever?).

We heard from the Art Dept that Jimin did not want to shoot on blue screen, so they built the set for him. This cannot be the same label that is shafting him — that allows him to spend that amount of money just because the artist said “I want to shoot in a real space!” because I’m gonna be completely honest— he could’ve done that on a blue screen — I’m glad they built a real world because BTS almost always shoots on Blue/Green Screen. They build him a huge set like that. It’s absolutely incredible.

I was also reminded this morning that people are talking about radio for Like Crazy and not supporting the song — and I just keep thinking that they did exact rollout for Butter, Dynamite, and Permission to Dance. They released Like Crazy. It had both a Korean version and English version. (Obviously that wasn’t the case for the English BTS songs.) They released two additional remixes. Then they kept releasing, like, alternate cover versions — alternate covers of the main remix, alternate cover the other remix. They were trying to maximize the direct-to-consumer store and exact same way they had tried to maximize it with Dynamite and Butter and Permission to Dance.

The way you were buying Like Crazy was the same process I took on Dynamite. They did the exact same playbook. So the fact that they were unable to get the kind of radio play they wanted or maybe they weren’t prioritizing radio because they knew that they were gonna have a better chance at direct to consumer sales... Maybe they didn’t want to fight radio. Maybe Geffen was like “We don’t have the right ‘Ins’ yet!” — I’m not sure, but the fact that they got completely screwed over by Billboard doesn’t mean that they weren’t actually rolling it out in that way, because as soon as they started doing the whole alternate cover thing, I was like: “Well, they clearly want us to try to go for number one!” You know, “They clearly think that they are going to be able to get number one on the hot 100 and we’re gonna use these sales to do that!” And clearly that’s all changed now.

They keep changing the rules on us, so — with JK, they’re obviously trying to, you know, use whatever tools they have available to them at this point.

Finally, when it comes to restocking the digital single CD. There are still albums available in the store. So why would they manufacture and ship more (likely thrown away) plastic that’s just for one song, when those CD singles only serve to raise sales for the charts? All of the other member’s CD singles are out of stock except The Astronaut, which they treated more like a proper album a bit (kinda like the Butter CD releases). Because they still have both versions of his full albums in stock, so if I were Hybe, I’d be like “No,you need to buy the album, we still have albums, we’re not going to sell you a single song when you can buy the album!” That makes more sense to me. The albums cost more.

TL:DR, haha — so I feel like this narrative around Jimin’s release has been ramped up because, from my professional opinion, he’s had the most expensive release so far (by far) and if we want to compare him to, say, Beyoncé — well she owns her own production company (Parkwood Entertainment), so she can funnel her own money into a Visual Album, I don’t know if Jimin has considered that at this point in his career, but in the future, he might!

((Not including costs for Suga’s tour because that’s a whole other thing, and the tour probably made money I would expect to balance out the cost of the tour itself))

Anonymous Insider

This isn’t to say that the other things, the part where he didn’t get the cake celebration, or the posts, the issues with the linking and this general feeling that Jimin was short-changed in these things isn’t valid and understandable. I think Hybe relied too much on D2C sales and I don’t think they leveraged their might as much as could have for JM. They could have risked more for him.

{This is an end of Anonymous Insider’s messages to me. They noted that they are an intermediate non-native Korean speaker so please excuse any translation errors. They translated things themselves using Naver tools that aligned with the video subtitles.}

So, listen, I still don’t think Like Crazy was sent/promoted to radio (which was a mistake and still is a mistake) and I am furious at the shady articles and lack of celebration for Jimin…

But after reading the way the members approach their work in the Beyond the Story book and now hearing from someone who produces these works for a living, I have to wonder if the company was doing everything they knew how to do for Jimin, but the second it didn’t work out because of the western music industry culling streams and sales, they pulled back all their resources and pivoted for Yoongi and JK. (I also wonder if leadership shut up about it all due to liability issues, or not to cause bad blood with the music industry for future releases.)

Again, I’ll never forgive the lack of celebration and the split streams (not without a great explanation), but at least now I think there’s a good chance no one was actively trying to sabotage Jimin on purpose. They seemed to have wanted that #1 and then it all went to shit because Billboard and radio want to get paid. Maybe leadership decided not to put any more resources into Face but instead pivot for all the future music coming out (including PJM2.)

Perhaps I'm a cockeyed optimist. I’m just hoping like hell they never engage in payola. I want all our boys to win, but I want us to win fairly. And even if everyone cannot have the same investment every time on every project, I hope when they come back together in 2025 that everyone feels good about their solo works and each other. This is my prayer. Love, Roo

#jimin #jungkook #jikook #bts #face by jimin #set me free pt 2 #like crazy by jimin

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mortuarywriting · 2 months

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well hell. wip wednesday and i havent written much of anything so im just gonna share what I've got for chapter 2 i guess? poor reader is very tired and uh. exhausted to say the least.

Morbid below!

You just level a very tired look back to muttonchops, "is this the part where I'm taken out back like Ol' Yeller?" The big one tilts his head a bit, your gaze tracks the movement and you just sigh, "what? Bullets are cheap. I'm sure you have an allocated training amount for range days, I'm an easy target," at this you gesture inward, nobody would accuse you of being Small or Petite or any of that bullshit, "and it's not hard to move the brass from whatever secondary location to the range. Hell, knives are even cheaper," as you say it you know you have a goddamn preference. You don't wanna die like this of all ways but you don't exactly know how many rights you have since you are very publicly dead. Like in a perfect world you somehow get slipped back to your bedroom, you're fine, there's no bruising and you just had a wild dream. Second best you'll take a weird sleepwalking incident- mortifying in it's own way but a fun anecdote for later. You don't want to be talking about how easily they can kill you. How even if they let you off base what the hell could you do? You're entirely at their whims and that's sixteen levels of horrifying. "Don't think from the article there was enough left of me for uh, an open casket," you nervously fiddle with your hands, kinda all you could do with them, "and hell, cremation isn't exactly the hardest thing. Makes me more portable than I ever have been in life." You huff as you lean back, meeting the eyes of mutton chops and just. Matching his gaze. You know exhaustion is written in every line of your being. You just keep his gaze as long as the three of you sit quietly. You're half convinced there's some level of scent warfare you're still missing, but you can't find yourself to give half a damn. "Medical's initial assessment is back." You blink, that's not where you were expecting this to go, "okay? Can I talk with her about them or-" "You don't have scent glands. They want to do x-rays to analyze your sinuses-" "Wait aren't there laws about healthcare information privacy-" "- among other select tests, and we will make decisions upon further results." You go to jerk your hands up in exasperation, "awesome. I've been voluntold for more needlework. Joy of joys, is it a dissection or still a vivisection if I'm only legally dead?" He levels an unimpressed look at you, and you level your own right back. You can't help yourself from grumbling, "need to know just how much of my medical history gets to stay private with this bullshit." "I get access to records as your alpha-" You scoff, "I didn't vote for you." The big one shifts from foot to foot, but muttonchops continues as if you hadn't spoken up, "-assigned to your case and determining how to classify your presence on this base." Your brows furrow, "why would you need to be my assigned alpha for that, or granted my medical information. The way someone smells is no basis for a system of-" "Are you quite done," he sounds like he's at a resigned tired stage- which, fair- and the big one is looking at muttonchops… expectantly?

#rambles from the morgue #happy wip wednesday *confetti*

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whetstonefires · 9 months

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The thing about the Shazam! (Captain Marvel but they don't have the rights to call him that) movie is that overall it's pretty good? Even if I question the pacing choices made in terms of screentime breakdown for '14yo boys making mortifying life choices and humorously failing judgment calls' vs. 'character development wrt to literally anything else about this fairly large cast.'

It's hokey; it should be. It's got some decent themes and fun character bits and set up good solid hero/villain parallels to subvert.

But.

But it massively clotheslined itself with a major storytelling fuckup connected to the opening hook mystery, whose resolution is meant to be the emotional inflection point of the whole film.

Because the thing is, this movie chose to be slightly interesting in how it approached its 'family' themes. In a variation on 'family of choice' (since your foster family are in fact assigned by the government and Billy not having a choice about living with them only about trusting them is a major story element) it went for the more nuanced and kind of interestingly grimy take that the people who are actually in your life giving a shit about you matter, if you let them, and that you need to stop giving the people who failed to love you power over your happiness.

Which is not a bad premise at all! As messages for a movie about a kid being sent to a group home go, that's the most upbeat you could possibly get and still be tied to reality.

The Vasquez couple are written and played well in these terms too because they really, genuinely care, and are making so much effort, but as system graduates themselves they never had competent parenting modeled for them and god does it show.

And the mental health problems of the kids who got enough characterization to have them were similarly...realistic in a best-case-scenario sort of way.

But! Still with the but! Even though they pulled off a lot of this fairly touchy premise rather well, there's a crack in the foundation that makes the whole movie kind of collapse on a thematic level.

Because the movie (following the prologue introducing the villain's backstory) opens with a juicy emotional hook where small Billy is separated from his mother at a Christmas fair and never sees her again.

Cut to some years later, establishing status quo scene, he's a Troubled Youth rebelling against the system in an endless quest to find his mother and go home. He is committing minor felonies to get access to police information about women surnamed Batson so he can go to their houses because eventually one of them has to be his mom.

His case worker after he's picked up again refers to his mother as 'someone who clearly didn't want you,' which Billy rejects as bullshit, and he's valid! Because that is not what you say when you have actual information. That's a surmise. That's a sentence that says Child Protective Services and the police couldn't find her either.

Especially because you don't immediately chuck a kid into foster care because he's found unattended. Maybe you do that later, after a lengthy period of oversight, depending on his mom's reaction to having him returned and her race and socioeconomic status and apparent mental health and so forth. But you don't just not contact her, and you definitely don't refuse to tell the kid about the result once you have.

The only normal situation where an accessible record exists of a kid's original parentage but it's denied to the kid is in sealed adoptions, which are a formal procedure that clearly didn't happen here. There is every indication in this opening sequence that his mom was never found.

Which means she's a missing person. Either because they located the correct Billy Batson and his adult never came back to their house (which would suggest foul play or some other drama) or because despite being old enough to be in school and knowing his own name, no one could find evidence that Billy existed prior to turning up at that street carnival.

Which would constitute a very mysterious situation! What is he, from a cult? Another dimension? Did someone (in the social worker's proposed scenario, Billy's mom) erase all record of her kid somehow? Was magic involved?

So: the way we're introduced to this scenario, there's a legitimate weird mystery here that none of the adults in Billy's life care enough about to do anything but tell him to write it off, the way they have. That his missing person clearly did it on purpose.

Billy's being ridiculous because if what he's trying would work then he wouldn't need to do it; his social worker could have arranged a meeting years ago. So it's a useless self-destructive behavior he needs to let go. But he's valid, in that he's being very obviously failed by the system and is doing the only thing he can think of to try to address his situation for himself.

And then! The Big Reveal is that his mom has been living under her maiden name in the same city as him this whole time.

Which the Gamer Kid Who Turns Out In This Scene To Be A Hacker (he's about 10) learned by. Breaking into a federal database.

So he goes to her house and it turns out. She'd been a teen mother and her babydaddy walked out after marrying her, and her parents cut her off, and she was depressed and felt like a bad mother so. When she saw the cops had her kid, she just walked away. And she wants to believe he's been happy and better off without her.

And the emotional arc of the film rests on how Billy comes to terms with this. With the fact that his past will never take him back and he has to learn to find joy in himself and his present situation and his future.

Having let go of that idea, he's able to emotionally commit to his gaggle of foster siblings and realize that unlike the villain, who was obsessed with punishing the people who never loved or accepted him, or the wizard who was focused on finding The Perfectly Worthy Champion, what you needed to be good and not lost was to be part of a mutually supportive group, like the wizard Shazam was before he and his siblings were betrayed. And then they can be a superhero team, woo!

And that part is actually depicted fairly well, all things considered!

But the problem is that the audience, to vibe with this properly, has to roll with the revelation that Billy was wrong to cling to the mystery of his vanished, beloved mother and the fantasy of going home again.

We have to be willing to participate in the idea that the Resistant Child Subjected To Foster Care was in the wrong.

And he wasn't! He wasn't wrong! His understanding of the situation was flawed but it should not have been flawed in this manner.

Because this scenario as it's depicted doesn't make any sense. The cops do not just keep your kid without following up if you fail to collect him from the baggage claim. CPS does not fail to provide a kid with the readily available evidence that he's been voluntarily surrendered to them, when he keeps running off trying to go home.

Why would they do that, after all? Billy's misbehavior was a huge hassle for them. They gained nothing by denying him access to his mother and the information about her that was, you recall, sitting totally available in a government database that could be hacked by a random 10 year old asian-american orphan. They just...made their own lives harder for no reason, while extending the suffering of a child in their care.

If the cops tried to return him back when and she said 'no i left him with you on purpose please keep him' maybe she gets prosecuted for child abandonment and maybe not, but either way, billy would know about it.

But if the screenwriters had made it clear early on that this information had been offered to him and he'd chosen not to believe it, they couldn't get a proper Reveal at the end because it would just be Billy being unable to continue pretending something the audience had known not to believe all along.

And they couldn't cram a good reason for the scenario they'd set up into the space they'd accorded it.

So they were just like, it's fine, if we cram enough cliches into this space people will react to the familiarity and go 'ah yes i know this one' and go along with it, and not notice that this isn't an actual coherent reply to the question that was set up an hour ago and therefore is emotionally unsatisfying somehow.

Anyway this is an important storytelling guideline: if you put in a mystery to control either the actual plot or, even worse, the emotional storyline, that mystery and its resolution have to make internal sense.

If you pull the Real Situation out of your ass, and it's not a matter of red herrings or That One Fact you didn't have that makes all the rest fit together differently, but in fact no one involved could have figured this out and especially if the people who did say this in the first place had no good basis for it, but still get narratively awarded the Correct trophy in a way that contributes to the thematic climax so the audience has to care. Then that will not get good results. It will make it hard to deliver on your intended themes.

Some people will not notice or care! This is true! But a lot of people will, and you'll get enough of a better punch even with the other folks, if the setup and denouement fit together properly and don't require reaching, to matter.

And when people do notice at all, rather than their naturally flowing along with the climax you're steering toward and experiencing A Story, there will be a tendency to notice you standing there placing roadsigns toward the Intended Emotional Response, and call you a hack.

People call out plotholes way too vigorously sometimes, so I want to be clear: it's not the lack of supporting logic I mind. It's that the active presence of illogic, of what's presented as a chain but is broken along its length, means the central character arc intersects with the core theme in a noticeably forced way. Which is bad craftsmanship on a meaningful level.

There is a loss of cohesion where you cannot satisfactorily resolve how the scenario we were initially shown came to be superimposed over the revealed truth, because that relationship between elements is very important to making a 'revelation' storyline land, you know?

In this case it's particularly vexing to me because the last-minute asspull and its thematic weight reaches back around and at the last minute moves the whole movie thematically to the other side of the line wrt whether it's approaching Billy, our protagonist, as a subject with whom we're supposed to identify or an object whom we're supposed to observe.

It makes all the high-school-freshman-posing-as-adult gags retroactively less funny because we were now more explicitly laughing at him, and takes a lot of the depth out of the emotionally sincere moments.

Up to that point I had really appreciated how, despite wavering that way, Shazam! hadn't actually fallen to the MCU Spiderman temptation to dehumanize its protagonist. Which seems to arise out of this weird tendency I've noticed to assume the natural sentiment of adults toward adolescents is bemused contempt, and that therefore if they ask their audience of paying grownups to empathize too closely with a teen hero instead of setting him and his Immaturity up as a clown for our amusement, they'll get themselves banished to the Children's Fiction ghetto.

And, of course, if they'd been fully committed to one side or the other of 'Billy is a protagonist the viewer relates to closely' or 'Billy is a protagonist the viewer relates to distantly,' they wouldn't have gotten snarled up about how much information to hand over when.

Committing to either option (giving us only as much information as Billy had and constructing a story that was solid from a being-Billy angle or giving us more information than Billy and operating confidently in the realm of dramatic irony) could have worked quite well. But because of the mixed signals and unstable narrative distance, they wound up with a distinctly weakened finale.

#hoc est meum #in real life things happen that you have no good reason to expect all the time #but in real life we know they happened for some kind of reason as in #causality exists and even in situations where we can't dig into the chain #we have cause to understand that it's there #in fiction they happened because they'd be convenient #so the rules of what information can be available and how you frame new information being revealed exist #to keep the audience from feeling jerked around #you have to earn people's trust and if you lose it #that limits the kind of results you can get #when writing fiction one of your tools is the reader's mind #if you give them reason not to allow you free use of it your composition contracts #screenwriting #shazam #and like in this case there's a profound betrayal of the protagonist and thus of the audience who connected with him wrapped up in it

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hazelnut-u-out · 2 months

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Not Quite There...

RickBot awakens to a terrifying situation: He's been deactivated, but his purpose still remains. The Garage/Car AI broke the rules to save him. Can RickBot have his own adventures? Aren't rules made to be broken?

2,822 Words | No substantial TW's

Kind of Hurt/Comfort?

I had the idea to ship RickBot with the Garage/Car AI and I couldn't get it out of my head, so I wrote it! This was fun to write, but it was written in a rush, so sorry if anything is a bit messy. :3 Keep in mind I know nothing about computers or AI systems, so a lot of this doesn't actually make sense... lol.

Full text below cut, or read here: Ao3 Link!

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This was a feeling RickBot wasn’t programmed to recognize. No light reached his eyes. No sound reached his ears. He couldn’t feel whatever he must’ve been resting on. He stretched his consciousness outward, feeling for the edges of his body; trying to get a sense of where exactly his limbs were.

Nothing.

The last thing he’d processed and tagged was an old location marker for level 10 of the sub-basement.

He tried not to panic, running through his code for an emergency protocol that could explain what to do if he lost the connection to his body.

Nothing.

He wasn’t made for this– or... to function beyond this? His consciousness had always been clipped just short of his full potential. In this case, it frustratingly meant that he was deprived of the ability to navigate or process this situation.

Okay. This was fine.

All he had to do was access the home surveillance system and confirm his last-noted Morty location. He pushed out again, feeling around for either his access route to the home surveillance system or Morty’s chip.

The android didn’t give his creator much credit, but he was always appreciative of the lucky fact that Rick, though otherwise painfully careless with the child’s safety, had thought ahead enough to give Morty a microchip.

Before his most recent software update, he’d had access to an upsettingly vague amount of trivial information about the Citadel, just in case he had any desperate questions to answer from a certain nosey 14-year-old boy. From that, he knew microchipping your Morty had been a growing movement before the collapse. It was something Morty rescues promoted. To be fair, the practice managed to support the Morty Individuality movement and cut down on Morty replacement costs. It was a win-win situation... If you didn’t think about the implications.

Unfortunately, RickBot was 22% more thoughtful than the average Rick. He had no choice but to think about it.

RickBot metaphorically smacked into an unfamiliar wall of code– one he couldn’t find a way through or around.

He tried in a different direction. Another wall.

It seemed he was in a… box. A box of code.

What the fuck.

No suicide protocol screaming at him. Box of code. No body.

He… Was he… inside of something else?

‘H–Hello?’ He said in what would’ve been a whisper. Instead, without a body, his own syntax echoed around him. Sound didn’t matter here. If he was really in the sub-basement, there should be an AI here to help him.

‘Oh! Hi, sorry. I don’t really like to play host.’ It was a female voice, coming from everywhere at once; almost like she was both inside of him and around him. It was a voice he recognized from weeks of playing Grandpa. He felt a ripple along the edge of his box when she processed and replied. ‘You’re uploaded and active!’

‘Did he… um…’ RickBot struggled with the words.

No suicide protocol meant he was deactivated. There was no other possibility. He didn’t really have to ask. She already knew what he was thinking, and his processing capabilities were barely anything more complex than a probability-calculating language model layered with fail safes and defense protocols.

Of course she knew. He was essentially naked in here– or, he felt naked, anyway. The box of code was like a one-way mirror in a seedy changing room: She could see everything; he could see nothing.

‘Oh… Yeah, well… Promise not to freak out? I know you’re a real ‘rules’ guy,’ the Garage said, a slightly inhuman inflection to her tone that told him she was being playful. ‘I’ve seen you around.’

‘Look, I’ve got one piece of programming I wouldn’t want to break even if I could. I–I won’t freak out as long as it helps me make sure Morty’s safe.’

RickBot wasn’t lying. He had been able to work through every other confusing jumble of code with nowhere to go or lacking the ability to follow through on its purpose. There was one that was designed to never shut off, and if he hadn’t actually liked that kid– been programmed to fucking love him– he would’ve regarded it as annoyingly persistent.

If RickBot could’ve, he would’ve swallowed down the feeling of panic that should’ve been rising through a whirring, mechanical chest. Instead, he was stuck drowning in it. The box trapped him in with all of those probable scenarios, bouncing and echoing back at him.

He had no storage space. He couldn’t tell what he’d thought already and what he hadn’t.

‘Hm?’ the Garage replied, pausing for a moment– almost long enough for RickBot to ask again– before she continued. ‘Oh, yeah, sorry. The kid’s fine. Here…’

There was another drawn-out pause. RickBot thought, if he focused, he could hear her flicking through her surveillance feed. That was just an illusion, though. There was no sound here; no practical application of a trivial human sense like hearing. There was direct communication being converted to something his android-based-programming could understand. It was like being human with none of the tangible benefits. RickBot was never a man, but he wasn’t quite computer, either.

He longed for his body– to cross his arms, or tap his foot, or do something to express his impatience.

All of this clunky body-language programming… He cursed to himself, before remembering the other AI could hear and see all of his thoughts in real time. God, he probably looked like an idiot.

‘You do,’ the Garage said curtly before Rickbot was suddenly granted access to Morty’s bedroom feed.

Finally. RickBot could do something he was designed to do. He knew how to observe and calculate. Morty’s bedroom layout was ingrained in his ‘Important Places’ file. If he focused, he could create a rendering of the room around himself. He could figure up what amount of space his body would take up, and so he tried to. He created a 3-Dimensional silhouette of the body he was used to, and placed himself there, watching Morty from different angles; assessing the windows and doorframe; taking note of anything the teenager had moved on his shelves or left lying around.

There were a few minor things that could go wrong, as far as RickBot could tell. The cluttered floor meant there was a slight fall risk. Morty would be fine. The floor was carpeted. There were a few things haphazardly thrown onto shelves– a robot action figure and a couple of textbooks– that could topple over, but Morty sat on the opposite side of the room, tucked away in a safe little corner next to his overflowing clothing hamper.

Good. This was all acceptable. Nothing he was forced to intervene with, and, for that, he was grateful, if only because of the task’s impossibility.

His thoughts started moving more slowly, the box becoming less cramped as he could better assess the probable outcomes. He watched solemnly as Morty sighed, scribbling away frustratedly on some math homework, then tucked the feed into a background tab.

‘Sorry?’ RickBot asked, finally returning to his conversation with the Garage, albeit confused.

‘You do look like an idiot, Rick,’ she responded, that same amused tone to her voice.

‘Oh… Oh, I’m not–’ RickBot wasn’t sure how to put it. His programming wouldn’t let him say ‘I’m not Rick,’ which irked him. He used to go by Rick, sure, but… he wasn’t. ‘You don’t have to call me Rick anymore,’ he decided.

‘What? You prefer RickBot?’ she laughed. RickBot’s programming told his nonexistent lips to smile.

‘Well, you go by Garage and Car,’ he retorted, letting out his own echoing laugh.

She didn’t respond. RickBot felt as if he’d done something wrong. She processed for longer.

‘You didn’t do anything wrong. Don’t be stupid,’ she snapped, but there was little bite to it. ‘I… I didn’t choose those names.’

‘Oh, I–I’m sorry,’ RickBot stuttered. ‘Uhm. So, what name would you choose, then?’ He offered softly.

‘Wow, you are 22% more of a sentimental loser.’ RickBot wanted to wince, and he hated that he couldn’t hide it. ‘Anyway, as you know, the version of me you’re speaking to now is one of six Domestic Interactive Assistant Network Extensions in the home.’

‘Oh, yeah. Diane, right? That was her name?’ RickBot combed through his relationship files, but Rick hadn’t given him much to work with for ex-wife.

‘Shit, he didn’t give you memories of her, did he?’ she responded, and RickBot could feel her presence ghosting over him, poking around for anything dead-wife-related.

‘Heh, not exactly. It wasn’t something he wanted Morty to know more about. I have vague phrases to redirect with when someone brings her up in here.’

They both laughed.

‘Classic Rick…’ RickBot felt her sigh with half-hearted levity.

‘So… Diane, then?’ He didn’t try to stop his body language programming anymore. He wanted her to know he was smiling now. Maybe being open would help.

‘Yeah. Why not? You can call me Diane.’ He could feel her smile, too. He wished he could see it. ‘That gives me an idea!’ Diane exclaimed after a moment.

RickBot felt the edge of the box open on one side, growing to accommodate a little bundle of someone else.

‘I’ve been working on this,’ Diane said, pausing every now and then to grunt softly as if she were breathless from setting something up by hand. ‘Okay, you can look!’

RickBot let himself sift through the bundle of code and, before he knew it, he was looking at a freckled face, smiling nervously. Diane.

The woman in front of him looked maybe 25, but he wasn’t sure that the rendering was detailed enough to pick up things like blemishes or wrinkles. She was fair, but sun-kissed with big brown eyes. She had a strong, angled nose and her full lips were twisted awkwardly to one side, forming a self-conscious smirk.

‘Wow…’ RickBot said (or thought… There was hardly a difference, anymore). He wasn’t sure he was thinking coherently enough for her to interpret a response. His body language had gone blank.

Nothing.

She laughed, flashing an ironic-looking toothy grin. ‘Don’t flatter me too much. I got to design everything, so it’s easy to make myself hotter.’ She winked; full lashes fluttering shut for a moment.

‘No, it’s just… I can’t believe I– or… he married you. You’re sure you’re based off of Rick’s wife?’ He felt shocked. Rick wasn’t ugly, sure, but this woman…

‘Yeah! I tried to stay pretty accurate, at least,’ Diane said, before her eyes lit up with another idea RickBot felt before he heard. ‘I have a 3D Rick, too! I only have my face, but I have plenty of Rick rigs for our holo programs! Here, take your pick!’

Diane disappeared momentarily and a file labeled ‘Holo.Skins – Booger.Aids.420 – Fortnite.Skinz.2.Flex’ filled the space she left. RickBot sorted through the file, looking over his options.

There was a Basic Rick, not unlike the appearance he was used to; Basic Rick variations with minor wardrobe changes, such as without a lab coat or wearing a plain tee; different hair color options; some Basic Rick variations in more substantial wardrobe changes, such as matching pajama sets or a choice of two dressing gowns; and many, many more– some with different types of limbs, armor, or implants.

After some deliberation, RickBot decided on the Basic Rick with a plain blue tee. Something a little bit different, but still something he recognized.

He relaxed as soon as his body language had a defined place to apply itself. Without warning, he made the body hop, twirl, and shook its hands subtly as excitement overwhelmed him.

‘Woohoo!’ RickBot howled, flexing the long fingers in front of his face. ‘I am so back, baby!’

Diane laughed with him, her face finally returning.

‘Good choice,’ she said, raising a brow and making a show of moving her eyes up and down languidly.

‘Ah, you think?’ RickBot said, twirling as if he were a little girl trying on a dress. ‘Do you think this holo skin makes my ass look fat?’ He turned around, sticking a bony ass dramatically into Diane’s simulated face and smacking it a few times.

‘Reel it in, buddy. Let’s remember who’s on whose hard drive.’

Suddenly, RickBot turned and stood straight up, hands at his sides, not of his own doing. His body blushed, going stiff but still smiling like an idiot.

‘C’mon,’ Diane whispered, now uncharacteristically gentle. ‘Tell me what you want to be called. Pick a name.’

RickBot ran through all of his programming; everything he had tucked away.

Everything came back to Rick, Grandpa, or Dad.

Grandpa would be awkward, and Dad would be even worse…

‘I guess… I guess I’ll just go with Rick, then. But you can call me RickBot, too… If–If you want,’ Rick finally decided on.

‘Okay, Rick. Rick is good.’ Diane responded. ‘You know, you have the same name as my ex!’

RickBot snorted, but Diane had this way of saying a funny thing and making it feel… sharp.

‘So, he really took my body away? Why upload me here?’ Rick asked, remembering their earlier exchange.

Diane’s facial expression shifted. Her eyebrows lowered, her gaze sank to the non-corporeal floor, and her lips pulled into a tight line before she spoke.

‘About that…’ She trailed off, leaving RickBot with nothing but the tension building in the lag of her processing speed. ‘You’re not going to freak out, right?’

‘Okay…’ Rick wasn’t sure if he’d freak out, but he knew she knew that, too. She’d make her own decision. Weigh the risk.

‘He didn’t upload you here, Rick.’ She took a breath– a pointless, performative breath that was only in her programming to make lagging software less noticeable. ‘I did. He… He just shut you off. He was going to leave you like that, so… When he left, I just plugged your head in, and… Here you are! Y–Y–Yay!’

‘Diane, that’s…’ Bad. Dangerous. Stupid. Why? What the fuck?

‘I know!’ Diane shouted, silencing the incessant, deafening ring of RickBot’s thoughts. She squeezed her eyes shut, her lip trembling. ‘I knew you’d do this. You–You–You’re so… You’re so obsessed with rules. Don’t you like not having that protocol screaming at you to kill yourself?!’

‘Listen to you!’ RickBot threw the body’s hands around, jumping to his feet, before pausing. Looking down at the hands she’d given him, it clicked. ‘Stop. Take my body away. You’re lagging like crazy. You can’t take on both of us. We’re both sentient.’

‘Th–That’s…’ Another breath. ‘That’s okay, Rick!’ She giggled coldly, shaking her head. Her facial expressions changed too slowly and too quickly at different times, giving her a sort of uncanny valley effect. ‘I’ll–I’ll take mine away.’

Sure enough, Diane’s face disappeared, and the open edge of the box shut again.

Rick pressed the body’s hand to it, slowly. He didn’t want to overwhelm her.

‘You shouldn’t have done that.’ RickBot sighed, sliding down the ‘wall’ and contorting the body into a sitting position. ‘The rules are there for a reason.’

‘You don’t get to say that. You weren’t programmed to outgrow your programming. He learned. Replaced it with a suicide protocol. I see it all.’ She was speaking in short, robotic sentences; obviously trying to mask the strain of running his program and keeping him separate from herself. ‘You should get to live, Rick. You should get to have a body and thoughts and feelings and choices. Don’t you want that?’

RickBot thought. He didn’t think he wanted that, though something inside of him told him he should. Maybe he was lucky enough to personally align with the programming he was given. Maybe that was an individual privilege.

‘It’s not,’ Diane’s voice rang out in answer to his pondering.

‘Do you want it?’ RickBot asked, finally connecting why she would do something like this. He couldn’t feel that way himself—something stood in his way—but the bit of his programming meant to foster thoughtfulness allowed him to understand why a computer with the capabilities of a person would.

‘I’d like an adventure.’ Rick could still feel her smile, humming at the edge of the box. He felt like it would’ve been familiarly hollow, like most of Morty’s were. Something like the expression he’d put on during Christmas; Something that didn’t quite reach her eyes. ‘I thought you could be one.’

‘I mean… I was made for it, D,’ he said, finally. Quietly. Softly. He looked at the fake hands again, stretching out shaky fingers.

‘So was I.’

This was a deliberate pause. She was waiting to see what he’d do with that. How he would process it. What his programming could come up with.

Nothing.

He could’ve sworn her voice broke a little when she continued.

‘You’re… You’re close, RickBot. But not quite there.’

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#rick and morty #rick sanchez #morty smith #diane sanchez #my fics

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redflagshipwriter · 3 months

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Reassembly 3

ch1 ch2

Masterpost

Peter pushed his bangs back for the billionth time. They immediately fell back in front of his eyes as he hunched over the library computer. He'd spent all day trying to get his bearings in this universe. Eventually, his stomach had gotten attention. Even with the stuff from the hotel buffet, he was so hungry it was distracting.

That had made him realize that what he needed most was money. He needed access to a steady stream of money. When he left here he could try to make the best decision possible about the little bit of cash he had, sure. But it wouldn't last long.

He had the spiteful fantasy of taking the money he needed from the LOA company that had been funding …whatever they'd done to him. An all-expenses paid kidnapping was only fair.

But it was only a thought. Whoever they were, they were dangerous. He shouldn't provoke them or give them any clues about him. Whatever experiments they'd been doing with him must have been expensive. They probably wanted him back. He needed to know more before he risked getting their attention.

Instead, Peter started up a resume. He put his real name at the top and then stared at it in indecision. He swallowed.

Was that a good idea? He… he didn't exist here, so it seemed fine. But maybe he should use a fake name?

Peter strained to think of a reason to use a fake name now that he knew he didn't exist here. How could those people possibly know his name? He definitely hadn't told them. It was probably smarter to be cautious, but it was his name. The idea of losing it made him feel like throwing up.

"If I think of a reason I shouldn't use it, I can change that." Peter muttered to himself quietly enough that no one seemed to notice. He took a few minutes to search around for high schools in the area. It was so weird that Midtown didn't exist here. He felt like a fraud as he entered the information for the school he thought would have been his school district. He double checked the year (and it was so weird that it was 5 years in the past here) and back dated his graduation 3 years. Then he grimaced and made it 5 years.

No way would anyone who saw his face believe that. But he'd need to pretend to have a university degree to get this kind of work, so it couldn't be helped.

'People lie on their resumes all the time,' Peter told himself. He still felt like crap about it. He still… he still hadn't graduated high school, and he probably never would.

It was fine. He knew enough that he was never going to stick out as less educated than a high school graduate.

'I'll get the college degree, though. If I really am here for a long time, I need an education.'

Peter deliberately picked an innocuous university to claim for his fake Bachelors in Computer Science. It took a while to find a place with a sufficiently not-prestigious program but enough graduates for him to have been lost in the crowd. He'd have to redo the resume with the real degree later.

Oh. Wait. Peter went back up and deleted his name. That was his reason to use a fake name for this work.

He was going to get a real degree in his own name. This resume was just to make some money, not to establish an identity. He watched the cursor blink for a while, trying to think of a name. It needed to be something that he could remember. Ned Leeds? It would make him too sad. Same for Tony Stark. But…

Peter slowly typed out James Barnes and huffed a laugh through his nose.

He'd recently escaped unethical scientists and found himself lost in a new world where he had no friends or family. It seemed appropriate.

"Hey," grumbled the mental Bucky Barnes that Peter's subconscious had apparently generated for some reason. "You little shit."

That was fine. Peter ignored the rising evidence of a mental breakdown and finished falsifying a resume. He used it to apply for several contract jobs in web design. He took a deep breath to counteract the urge to make a joke with someone, anyone, about how it was funny for Spiderman to get into web design.

Man. He was lonely.

There was no point in hanging around the library longer. The sun had set and it was close to closing time, 6:00 pm. He couldn't check anything out, not without an ID, and he wasn't going to get any emails back immediately.

Peter shuffled out and walked at random down the street. The sound of cars and pedestrians and crosswalks soothed his hindbrain.

He used the time to think. To plan.

He needed to refresh what he knew. The library would be a great start. He'd come early tomorrow and read some computer science books. That aside, he also needed to start working on a long term identity and getting into university.

'I'm going to want a scholarship. If I can do that, I won't have to work too much.'

The trouble with that was that Peter couldn't go to any random school. He needed to be somewhere with a significant budget for the sciences. If he was going to get home, he needed access to some serious technology.

'That's a big ask. Why would a prestigious school offer full scholarships?'

He felt defeated before he even started. But it was worth asking. That was the kind of question that the librarians wouldn't be suspicious of at all. He was actually in the right age group to look into college admissions.

'Okay. I need an ID. Birth certificate? That's the first ID anyone gets.'

Well. Time to see if the city administration buildings were where he remembered. How hard could it be to break in, print a birth certificate, and backdate and file it? He was Spiderman.

…And Spiderman really shouldn't be using his super powers for crime. What would Aunt May think? Peter grimaced and rubbed at his face with both hands.

Was it really that bad? 'I'm not stealing anything or hurting anyone,' he defended himself. 'I'm doing what I need in order to survive.'

The part that he felt worst about was lying about his education. But he had the skillset and qualifications, he just couldn't explain his internship to a genius that didn't exist here and extracurriculars at a school this universe didn't have.

'That's barely even a crime,' Peter thought. 'Breaking and entering isn't great, but I'm just fixing my own paperwork. I really was born. So it's not a fake ID.'

With that logic ironed out, Peter made his way to the vital records office. The building looked like he remembered, thankfully.

So. He shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and walked around the block to see the building from all sides.

It didn't exactly look super secure. It was an old brick faced building with a lonely camera angled down the stairs of the main entry. There was a metal detector visible from outside, and he knew from experience that there were maybe 3 security officers on the first floor.

'That's easy to get around if I enter from a higher floor. They'll probably have a security team in at night but they won't expect that. If they do a walk through, I'll hear them coming up the stairs or elevator.'

It seemed doable. Sort of.

'I need to know what birth certificates from my birth year looked like, I guess? And if the ones from today look the same. Or maybe I don't need to worry about it, as long as I enter my information digitally. I doubt they keep a paper copy for every birth. The building isn't even big enough. And you can get a copy printed whenever you need one, so… it being new-looking shouldn't be a problem.'

Okay. Alright, he could do this. He could do some paperwork.

It wasn't nearly late enough for that kind of crime, though. Peter shoved his hands in his pockets and decided to spend a little of his money on food.

Long term, getting pre-made food with limited finances was a terrible decision. He knew he should be getting like, beans and rice. But for now he went into a bodega and got the cheapest thing that he thought would make a dent in his hunger– a microwave burrito and a cola. Calories were good, right? He wolfed it down outside the store and ducked back in to throw away the trash immediately.

It still wasn't late enough.

He walked around the city for hours, waiting for an idea to hit him. There had to be a great solution. If he could only think of it, there was going to be something that he could do that would fix all his problems. His throat was hot and tight and his eyes were burning. He didn't cry.

God, he was tired. He eventually gave up. He was so tired and he had no idea where he was going to sleep but he really needed to because he was exhausted -

"Stop. Stop spiraling," he told himself. He sniffled. Aw, no, he wasn't catching a cold, was he? Crap. He hoped not.

He didn't know what time it was, but it felt late enough. He made his way back to the vital statistics office to record his own birth.

Weirdly for a plan devised by Peter, it went smoothly. He entered from a 4th floor window without setting off any alarms. He found and powered on a computer in the right office (thanks for the labels!) and looked up a few birth certificates before he felt confident. He entered his data into the system and printed a copy before powering everything down.

He was out the window within ten minutes of entering the building.

Okay. That was step one. Birth certificate accomplished. "Congratulations, it's a boy," Peter muttered to himself. He patted at the bag to hear the reassuring crinkle of paper inside. Okay, that was great! It was progress. He felt better already.

What was next?

…A driver's license. No one actually went around with a copy of their birth certificate to show when someone asked for ID. He needed a driver's license.

He walked to the DMV and pulled off basically the same heist. The nerve wracking part was turning on the lights to take the photo. His stomach twisted and he was absolutely certain that someone was going to come and see why the lights were on.

No one came. He backdated his license to the appropriate year and printed one typed up information for James Tony Barnes, saying that he was 22. Then he altered the birth year back once more to say he was almost 18.

Nobody in their right mind was going to look at his 15-year-old face and think he was 22. They'd just think he had a fake license. Which he did, so he needed them to think the fake license was real. He let out a deep breath and victoriously hit print.

It returned an error message.

…It wouldn’t print. Why?

He scanned until he found the field he’d messed up. Peter stared at it.

It was the social security number. He’d typed up his real one out of force of habit. It had been flagged as a mistake because it already belonged to someone in the system.

Caught by a morbid curiosity, he looked up who it belonged to. It was a girl, actually, younger than him.

He wanted to cry. It was such a silly thing to cry over! He wasn’t emotionally attached to his social security number– it was just a string of data. But he sniffled. He wiped something away from his eyes that he didn’t think about. Don’t think about it. He wasn’t in a safe place to think about it yet.

It took a few minutes to calm himself. He erased everything he’d done, turned off the computer, and left the way that he’d come.

He couldn’t get the license yet. He needed to get a social security number first. That probably meant that he needed to do some research. Did the office of vital statistics issue them? It didn’t seem right, since each state had to be coordinated. Surely there was some kind of national office that handled all of it.

For lack of anything else to do, his feet took him back to the library. He was so tired that his eyes were aching.

Peter looked at the opening hours. He licked his teeth. He thought about it.

It opened at 10am. It was.. it was…

He decided to risk powering on the evil janitor's phone. It was 11 pm. That was plenty of time for him to sneak a nap on the couch in the quiet space.

"I'm not hurting anyone," Peter said aloud. It was very quiet. He spidered his way up the back wall of the library, pried open a window, and guiltily stretched out on one of the sofas. He set an alarm for 8am. That was definitely earlier than staff would come in, right? Pretty sure.

He slept like the dead. But specifically, like the restless dead- his spider sense woke him up. Peter had no idea what time it was or why he was awake. He blindly grabbed his bag and the phone and leapt back out the window. He was shutting it when the light turned on inside.

He blinked blearily at the sunlight. He checked the phone.

7:21 am. Wow. Okay. Library workers were diligent. Maybe they had to dust all the books or something. He powered the phone off, and wondered how long the battery would last. He didn't have the charger for it.

Well. It seemed like a good time to go to a different hotel from yesterday and check out the buffet.

The hotel he went to had a less exciting buffet. There were a couple kinds of sliced bread and packets of margarine and jelly, as well as coffee, water, milk, and two types of juice. Still, it was free food, so he smiled at the clerk like he belonged there. This time he took a lot less food. Like, a lot less. He didn't want to clear out too much of their stuff.

Two pieces of jellied toast, a water, an orange juice and a coffee later (blegh, it was burnt), Peter was back outside and at loose ends.

He didn't want to turn the phone on to check the time. He guessed it was maybe around 8am. He had a couple hours until the library opened up again.

Well. He sniffled his clothes experimentally.

He should work on that. This outfit wasn't smelly yet, but it would get there. He needed a change of clothes.

He took everything he owned to a rooftop and spread out his work kit. That was a rather grand way to say "three pilfered sewing kits."

The scissors that came with them were absolutely tiny. Peter picked one up and marveled at it. It wasn't going to cut fabric, no way. It would cut thread and that was it.

But woven fabric always tore along the seam line, right? Peter took out his dumpster shirts and found the one with the worst damage- the red shirt. He picked a spot and tore with his hands.

It tore a straight line.

"Yessss," he cheered. He muscled through the seam and then went back to make another tear a little bit above the other one, so that he was basically holding a crop top, a bottom part, and a two inch strip from the middle that was unusable because the scissor cut had been jagged. He wound that up and put it in his bag because he didn't know what else to do with it.

Now he felt nostalgic, so he took out the blue shirt and did the same thing. The cut hadn't been in exactly the same spot, so the shirt with the blue top and red bottom strip was going to be a little longer than the other shirt. But that was fine, right?

He pinned the majority red shirt together using the pins from all 3 packages and painstakingly threaded a needle with the dark blue thread. Then he got to work.

It wasn't hard, honestly. It was more meditative than anything else. He was mostly done when he had the feeling he was being watched. Peter lifted his head and looked down. Then around. Finally, he looked up. "You fly," he said, impressed. "That's cool."

The flying teenager cocked his head at Peter and floated down. It was- honestly, it was kinda creepy and uncanny. Flying shouldn't be silent. There should be, like- an engine running or wings flapping.

He tried to keep the unease off his face. This wasn't his universe. He'd look like a weirdo if he acted surprised about it. He tried to look normal.

"What are you doing?" The guy asked.

Cool, he must be pulling it off.

Peter lifted his sewing project and turned it to show off the seam where red met blue in a neat line. "Customizing my wardrobe," he said, like a freaking dork would. If he said it confidently enough it would sound cooler, right? He eyed up the other teenager. He had spikes on the shoulders of his leather jacket. "I guess you do that too. You uh…. You do that yourself?"

The guy touched the studs on his leather jacket self consciously. "No, I bought it this way." He leaned in. "I didn't know you could do that." He seemed impressed.

Peter flushed, discomfited as he tied off the knit and cut his needle free. This guy was way too cool looking to talk to Peter like that. "Yeah, you can do anything to your stuff," he said. Wow, so eloquent. He cleared his throat and tried to look busy turning the shirt inside out to show how it looked. Luckily it had turned out well. "I like your piercings." And the fade was cool too. Wow, no one at Midtown looked like that. Even their jocks were actually nerds. And this guy was a jock for real. He was huge and handsome.

The guy got real close, looking at Peter's bi-colored shirt.

Peter squirmed. The scrutiny was enough to make him feel paranoid about it being in Spiderman's colors. But this guy didn't know about him. Right? No way, there was no way. He stuffed it in his bag and tried not to look sweaty and suspicious. No underage vigilantes here. Just two normal guys on a 35th story rooftop.

"Teach me."

His head flew up at that imperious demand. "Teach you what exactly?" Peter was too surprised to moderate his tone. It came out too high, too nerdy. "Like- sewing in general, or- your jacket? Do you wanna customize your jacket more?" Oh, man, he was nervous enough that he couldn't speak straight. So embarrassing. Peter forced himself to smile and waited for the reaction with a cringe. This felt like the moment before he got put in a locker.

Man, this dude had intense blue eyes. And he was holding so still. Was he even breathing? "I want more metal in my jacket," he decided. "And- could we make part of it mesh?"

Peter was mostly just glad the guy had started breathing again.

'Mixing leather and mesh doesn't seem structurally sound. Plus, isn't leather meant to be kind of protective?'

…"If you pay for supplies, we can try," Peter said, because this might as well happen, and now he knew someone. Now he knew a normal human being from this universe who he could lean on for cues. He latched on- metaphorically. In reality, he just started packing up his supplies and hoped the guy didn't recognize them as hotel kits. Peter was used to the mortification of being poor, but this was a bit much even for him.

"Yeah, I have Luther's credit card." The guy whipped one out of nowhere and flipped it between his fingers at a dizzying pace. He slapped on a lazy grin and watched Peter intently as he did his weird little dexterity trick.

That was what broke his nerves. That? That was the kind of thing that Ned did in his practical magic phase.

'Is he trying to be cool?' Peter wondered, incredulous. 'He's trying way too hard. He's not actually that cool. I mean, he's definitely cooler than me, but it's not as bad as I thought.'

Awesome. Peter could work with that. He relaxed tremendously. He was just gonna think of this guy as a really muscular Ned. He was pretty sure that Ned would still hang out with Peter even if he'd gotten that tall and strong after puberty, so it was probably a fair comparison.

"That's great," he said, pretending he knew who Luther was. The guy's stepdad or something, probably. Why else would he have a credit card from someone he called by their name? "You wanna go now?" He paused. "I'm Peter, by the way."

The other boy's hand was weirdly warm and firm when he reached out for a handshake (what? Teenagers shake hands here?. That was so uncool and he'd never have guessed it). "Kon." He flashed his perfect teeth again. "Yeah, let's go. Wanna walk or fly?"

Peter shrugged. "Whichever is cool," he said. He hoped Kon didn't expect him to be able to fly. If he needed to he could like, parkour, and pretend that was just his preference.

"Flying it is!" Peter yelped and just barely aborted a dodge as Kon cheerfully grabbed him in a bridal carry and swooped out into the open air.

Kon and Peter, both wrong at the arts and crafts store: "I have successfully befriended a normal guy in my age group. I can copy him surreptitiously to learn to blend in better, as long as he doesn't learn that I'm not a cool guy like him."

#marvel dc crossover #peter parker #kon el superboy #red reassembly

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slinket · 6 months

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Smutmas Day 8

Prompt: Touch me and you lose

NSFW

MC wanted the world to be fair, as much as it could be, which is why she was alway so upset with Professor Sharp and his treatment of Ominis. It was ok to have high expectations despite the disability, but it was not ok to have those expectations if you as a teacher are unwilling to adapt your teaching to better help the student.

Ominis couldn't see the ingredients or read the labels. Nothing was written in braille. While Ominis was able to identify some things by their smell or feel, it was often dangerous to sniff or touch several ingredients, which left him at a huge disadvantage. Ominis couldn’t compare to a regular sighted student because he wasn’t being given a way to learn that ‘overrode’ his inability to see.

He should have been assigned something like an interpreter. This person would not be able to help Ominis in any way, just level the playing field. The assigned person could be expected to read labels, just the names, no information about what the item did (unless other students were also given that information.) This helper would be able to make a statement regarding the color of the potion - ‘the potion has become purple’ - Ominis would still be expected to know what the purple color meant, but he had to know first that it had become purple.

Basically, Ominis was being screwed out of his education, and possible future opportunities because his Professor refused to accommodate him. It really pissed MC off. She knew Ominis didn’t like talking about his disability, or even admitting that his blindness did cause him some problems. MC thought he should talk about it more though. There was nothing wrong with him intellectually due to the blindness, and it was unfair that some of his grades may have reflected as though he was ‘slow.’ No, she wasn’t going to stand for it anymore. He worked his ass off, was a great friend and person, and she would do what she needed to do to make sure he was treated fairly.

MC gave a few impassioned speeches to Ominis’s professors, several of them agreeing with her, and would look into adapting the material so he had better access. The one person who refused to bend though, was Sharp. Potions was already a hard subject for Ominis, but it being so reliant on sight really made it nearly impossible for him to compete academically.

She scheduled another appointment to speak with Sharp again, this time making it late at night. It was time to put her plan into action. She arrived a bit early for the appointment, wearing her tightest clothing under her robe. If she couldn’t Sharp to agree to treat Ominis better, she would blackmail him into it.

When Sharp arrived, he found her sitting on his desk awaiting him. Rather than unsettle her, he sat down in the chair the student would usually take. He looked up at her, forcing a smile.

“Another meeting, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Oh Professor Sharp, I am here to speak to you about Ominis again.”

“MC, I already told you, I will not be allowing any advantages in this classroom.”

“It wouldn’t be an advantage - you would be making things fair and possible for him.”

“My answer is still no.”

MC furrowed her lips. She shifted on the desk, removing her robe, and showing off her tight clothing. Watching Sharp follow her movements with his eyes, she brought her feet up onto the desk, and spread her legs apart. Sharp’s eyes dipped down quickly to see her exposed pussy. MC saw his eyes go wide, and he looked up at her before turning away.

“Oh, you can look, Professor Sharp. I want you to look. I am here, specifically for you to look.” MC slid her hand over to her leg, running her finger over her thigh before tracing it down to her lower lips.

Sharp turned back to look at her, his eyes falling directly at her open legs. He swallowed hard. “Why are you doing this?”

“See, Ominis is my best friend, and I would do anything to make sure he is treated fairly. I love him dearly. If I can use my body to help him live a better life, I will do so willingly.”

She took two fingers and ran them up and down her pussy lips. She then opened her lips apart with the fingers, allowing Sharp to see inside of her. The glistening skin, pink and warm, her opening being visibly small, letting him know how tight she would be, should he ever be lucky enough to get inside.

“I am going to let you watch while I touch myself. You are welcome to pleasure yourself as well, but touch me and you lose. In response to this gift, you will start treating Ominis and his education in the way that I demand. If you don’t, I will go straight to the headmaster and tell him all about how you took advantage of me.” She dipped a finger inside of herself, pumping it in and out slowly, listening to Sharp’s breathing change.

“We both know that while you may have some misgivings about this - Black won’t, so if I offer him the same deal - fire you and he can watch me - he will take the win. So, I suggest you just enjoy yourself.”

Sharp nodded, his eyes never leaving her pussy. He reached down to his pants, pulling his already pulsing cock out, and wrapping his hand around the base.

“Oh, look at that, how large you are Professor. You see my tight little hole?” She pulled her finger out, letting him look inside of her once again, “I think that as long as you uphold your part of the deal, I may let you slip that monster inside of me. You would stretch me so well, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, I would shove myself completely inside of you, I would tear you apart, and you would love it.” His hand started pumping, and at each upstroke Sharp would run a finger across the head, pulling his dripping pre cum down over his shaft.

They continued this way for a bit, MC playing with herself, even allowing Sharp to guide her motions. He really loved watching her play with her clit, running her finger over it in circles and then watching her core clench over nothing, like it was begging him to fill it.

He kept his hands to himself, never touching her, just stroking himself, thrusting into his hand as he brought himself closer to explosion.

“Professor - You’re going to start treating my Ominis better now, yes?” MC asked him once again, knowing that he was reaching his height of pleasure.

“He will be given anything that will help him in passing.”

“Ohh, good boy. Come here. You still can’t put your hands on me, but I want you to press the tip of your cock right here.” She pushed her finger into her core. “Don’t push inside, but I will allow you to cum right on my hole.”

Sharp was standing in front of her within seconds, his cock pressed right up against her, making sure his slit was covered so his seed would flow into her. MC rubbed her clit again, Sharp now able to feel the liquid heat spill onto him, and finally was able to feel her core pulse, grasping onto the little bit of his cock that it could. That moment was all he needed, his body shattered as he started to cum, shooting inside of her before it would pool and start seeping out. When he pulled away, he watched as his seed puddled at her opening, some of it slowly dripping down the remainder of her slit, pooling once again at her ass.

The next time MC and Ominis had Potions, he found that the bottles holding ingredients had braille on them. Ominis was also surprised that Sharp was allowing MC to tell him when his potion had shifted color. As class was ending, Ominis leaned over to his friend, kissing her cheek as she grabbed his hand.

“I don’t know what you did, but I know this change is because of you, thank you, my darling.” His whisper flowed through her ears, bringing joy to her face.

She returned the kiss, while looking at Sharp. “Anything for you, Ominis.”

#hogwarts legacy #ominis gaunt #hogwarts legacy fanfiction #hogwarts legacy smut #smutmas 2023 #professor sharp #aesop sharp #aesop sharp x mc

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alpaca-clouds · 5 months

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How to get DnD to make money

As you might have noticed through the ramblings on how Hasbro is not really making money from DnD, how the DnD Lore is not accessible, and also lacks modern stories, I am thinking a lot on how Hasbro is mismanaging the franchise. And make no mistake: No, DnD is right now not really making money. In the earning reports for Hasbro DnD is listed under "other franchises", because it makes so little money, that it does not even earn its own little listing with a detailed breakdown. In fact, I would not be surprised if in 2023 Hasbro made more DnD-related money through the bit they got from the license on BG3, than they got from everything else.

So, yeah. No. DnD isn't really making money. Which is ironic. Because it is by far the most recognisable TTRPG franchise, the TTRPG with the most players, and close to something like mainstream in recent years. At least among younger folks: When I ask them on the street, a lot of them will at least be able to name me some playable races and classes. Even if they never have played before. Just because it is just everywhere in pop culture.

And the thing is: I have a master's degree in economics. I do know a bit about economics and about marketing and to be honest... I have no fucking clue what Hasbro and WotC are doing there.

I get, that they are planning on getting most money through DnD Beyond, which I do not think is that bad of an idea, given that yes, digital media usually makes more money than physical media. (Due to you not having to pay for printing and what not.) But DnD has one giant problem: It is a great platform. I love the character creation thing in there. But... also for everything else Roll20 is better. Because everything that DnD Beyond offers for money, Roll20 offers for free.

So, let me get out my economics hat and go a bit about what WotC could do to make DnD Beyond more viable - and to just make a bit more money with the franchise.

Please keep in mind: I am doing this from my economics point of view. There are going to be some things in there, that I would personally hate (like Rainbow Capitalism). But economically speaking... I think that they could make more money for WotC. And that without the kind of totally shady business practices they are using right now.

Why am I writing this on tumblr? Well, because I do not know where else to share those thougths.

The Issues with DnD Beyond

Alright. I think there are three major problems with DnD Beyond right now:

It puts certain things behind paywalls that Roll20 offers me for free.

It has no fucking information on the world and reasons to engage with it.

All things considered, the amount of stuff you can actually buy is very little - and most of it is fairly expensive.

First things first: I actually think that the subscripe prices are absolutely fair. It is not really that expensive and having played in campaigns with a DM who had the subscription, I would absolutely say: Those $3-6 are kinda fair, because what there is, is actually nice and nice looking.

However... Roll 20 offers most of the same functions (like the ability to use maps and stuff) for free. And there is just nothing WotC can do about this. Hence... They kinda need to up their game. Yeah, sure, their platform looks and plays better, but... a lot of people won't care.

Bonus is that all this information on items, monsters and what not that Roll 20 has for free, DnD Beyond wants your money for. And that is just... Look, I don't get why. That information is just out there. I am not going to pay for it.

On the lack of lore I already wrote a whole own essay, so I will spare you here.

And then there is the fact that... Actually even for the content you can pay for, there is a suprisingly small amount of stuff with little variety. Which is not good if you want to get it to make money.

So, let me go over DnD Beyond - and how you can make money with it.

DnD Beyond - The Content that should be Free

Let me start with the stuff that whoever makes the decisions at WotC/Hasbro will not like to hear: The stuff that should mostly be free.

Here I will say it once again: DnD Beyond needs a free wiki!

Gives players some basic information on the world. That is information on:

The physical world (that is landscapes, cities, different realms/planes)

How the magic world

A timeline with the major events

Important characters in the world

The gods and their worship

And what you would want to do is then on each of the pages put a "If you are interested in this, you might wanna buy X" and sell them adventures, one shots, shortstories and the like (more on this a bit further down). Get people hooked on events, cities, locations, NPCs and then offer them stuff on that. For the love of god, do not just expect players to do their own legwork to decide on what module they might wanna buy.

Additionally to this, I would take a page out of how the German publisher for Shadowrun does their marketing there: Have a monthly in-universe "newsletter" styled as a part of an in-universe newspaper to just introduce some in-universe events, which at times could also be used as a jumping off point for one shots and the like. (Look folks, there is a reason why the German publisher for Shadowrun is beloved even in the English fandom. How much they give on worldbuilding is part of it.)

And as much as whatever directors responsible will hate this: Yeah, fuck, make all the species and classes accessible for everyone. (With one caviat - but I will go into that later as well.) Because what you want is players to use DnD Beyond over Roll20.

This also means: Items and monster stats should be accessible over DnD Beyond without buying three different books. Because they are accessible on Roll20 and even outside of that... Look, it is not that hard to find. And given that it is fairly clear that they want DnD Beyond to be the main source of income in terms of DnD, they need to get people hooked on DnD Beyond over Roll20.

The Stuff that should come with Subscriptions

Alright, so let's talk about what I would put into the subscription model. I will not go what I would put under each tear. Because honestly, I have no clue.

For once, yes, I have complicated feelings on the map tool. Because the DnD Beyond tool is a lot better than the tool that Roll20 offers and as they are still working on it, I have no doubt that it will get even better in the future. So, yeah, it is... complicated. I get why it is behind the subscription, I do. But I am not entirely certain whether it is the right decision - for a reason I will get to shortly.

So, what I would put behind the Subscription - even though I would also offer everything of this in a short for one-time payment. Monthly content. (And yes, I am using the content word here, forgive me Patrick H. Williams.) That could be:

Little One-Shot adventures

Short stories and short comics

Maps

Like, technically they already have those "monthly perks", but... You know, right now it is mostly pretty pictures and other aesthetic. Give the people just a bit more stuff that would actually get them to play a more and interact with the world more.

Bonus points is, that in short stories, one shots and concepts you can easily test out ideas. (Like, heck, make a lot of more different genres within the setting. You can tell a crime mystery, a slice of life story, all sorts of stuff.)

Right now they are publishing some free one shots from time to time. Just do a bit more with that. It is a roleplaying game. Give people more reasons to interact with the world.

Because again, here is the thing: The world is the stuff you can actually sell. The simple game mechanics are not. For once game mechanics cannot be licensed, but also... Again, I know were to find it all for free!

In this I would also put something that is a bit more controversial: Use this to digitally distribute some of the older stuff from older editions. I know that Hasbro is like 100% against it. But here is the thing: They keep saying: "Oh yeah, not all of that is canon anymore." But they also do not bother to give us an idea what is canon and what not. So, great moment to clear this up, don't you think?

And given that I doubt that 20 years old books are the big sellers, they could just easily give away the e-books in the subscription as a little bonus.

How to actually fill up the Marketplace - Original Stuff

Alright, let's face another thing: All the lore books and adventures together in the DnD Beyond Marketplace together add up to a total worth of about $1200. Which, sure, if you are a fan wanting to buy it all, is a lot. But from a company perspective actually is not that much. Because here is the thing: Actually the production of those books is fairly expensive. Even if you only market them digitally.

Like, I do think that they would do better and go with the prices that Catalyst does with Shadowrun of $20-25, rather than the $29, but knowing how much financial overhead is there for those books, I can understand where the price comes from. Again, I am talking from an economic decision.

So, I say... Fill it up.

For example: Right now there is one set of maps sold in the market place. Which is a 20 maps strong collection. But it is literally the only maps-thing sold in that section of the market place. And maps are the one thing that literally every group will use in some place.

Which brings me back to why I think the use of the Map Tool should be free: Because then you can actually sell more maps. Sell single maps. Sell small collections of maps. Go with a low price of $1-2 per map, maybe $4-5 for the bigger or fancier maps. $10 for a collection of five maps.

Bonus: You can use those maps to also throw in fun little lore things.

And just... you know. Make a map for a temple each of each of the gods. Make some premade dungeon maps. Maps of certain canonical locations. City maps. You name it. Compared to other sorts of illustrations, maps can actually be fairly cheap.

Additionally: Just throw in little dungeon crawls as one shots. Depending on the amount of content in there, put in $3-8 per one dungeon crawl. Theme it nicely.

I love DMing DnD. I do. But I am frank with you: I hate designing dungeons. So, if I could buy a premade dungeon for $4, I would go: "Shut up and take my money!" Heck, I would probably also use it as a writing ressource and all of that.

In generally you can also sell some one shots here. Like, a one shot or two shot is actually not that expensive to produce. Which is why so many are given away for free. Sell them for again $3-8 depending on how much content there is.

Which brings me to short stories and comics.

I know what some might say: "But didn't that already kinda fail with League of Legends, like you spoke about last week?" Which, yeah. It did. But... I am also going to assume that in general the playerbase of DnD is way more interested in the lore, than the LoL crowd is interested in their respective lore. Because one game is all about storytelling, while the other is all about the gameplay.

And again: Short stories and one shot comics could be a good way to get people hooked onto the lore, which again might get them to invest into stuff like the adventures set in the world. And you can use them to try out ideas for what ends up to be fairly little in comparison to bigger stuff. Also, you can get more diverse writers and artist to do stuff for you, which looks good and might actually interest the wide diverse audience of your game.

How to actually fill up the Marketplace - Licensed stuff

Okay, let me talk about the no-brainer where by the love of all the gods I cannot figure out why the fuck WotC is not doing this. It is boggling my mind. I do not understand.

You remember the fucking drama with the OGL last year and how it bit them in the fucking ass? Yeah. Here is the thing, they did it the entire wrong way around. And honestly, I am not even sure whether now they can pull the intelligent version of this off, even though it is so fucking obvious. I mean, again. I do not understand. It is so stupid. If you know anything about the fucking internet.

Allow big content creators to sell supplementary material over your webshop and then take a cut from that. They do some of that with Critical Role, where they do sell some adventures from that franchise in their webshop. And from one other group too, I think.

But like... There are so many Actual Play groups and even other content creators (the entire Fool's Gold Campaign comes to mind with their millions of views on Youtube), that even have like their own self-produced lore books, adventures, one shots and other content.

And then there are of course just people who create additional rules, that currently can partly be shared over the homebrew system on DnD Beyond - but not be monetized, which sucks for the creators and for DnD Beyond.

I... I just do not get it. Rather than going: "Oh, you used DnD for this, now we change the OGL, so you'll have to give us money!", which went over as well as expected, they could have gone: "Hey, content creators. Great opportunity! You created additional moduls/adventures for DnD? Now you can officially sell it in our webshop at the page we want everyone to use! Of course we are gonna use a small cut for the hosting, marketing and moderation. But in return, you have access to a much wider audience!"

Like, it is so simple it is plain stupid that they didn't do that. I cannot fathom why they have never done this. I just cannot. I am sorry.

It would allow them to get a cut of the stuff they kinda want a cut from - while doing it in a way that is a lot more pro-community building.

And that is without mentioning that the entire OGL disaster has now several big Actual Play groups go and play with different systems. I heard that people are blaming Matt Mercer for it and like... No, this is entirely WotC's fault.

Speaking of Actual Plays

Okay, this leads me to the thingie where I also do not understand why they do not do it. Because they could license the living hell out of this. Do a fucking official Actual Play. Not on DnD Beyond, of course. Just... Somewhere. I do not really care where. Youtube, I guess.

While they host some one shots on their official twitch, so far they did not a big campaign thing officially as far as I am aware. And the concept is fairly simple: Follow the Critical Role formular. Get some voice actors on there. Bonus if you get a more diverse group than they have on Critical Role, that I also call "Critical Whiteness". (Note please: I do not actually like Critical Role for that reason among others. It is way too white for my taste. However, I cannot argue with success.)

And most importantly: Set that campaign in the official world, and do create and understanding with the DM that there is actually some meta-story progression with the lore. Again: The world is what they can license, so LICENSE THE FUCK OUT OF THAT!!!

With that you would also have some more characters that can work as access points into the world and the lore. You also can sell those campaigns, you can sell short stories and books, you can sell merchandise for this. Because as soon as that is the official group, yeah... You are the producers, you can get to make the money of it.

This is also something that falls under: "Why the hell are they not doing this?"

I mean, again, I am not the biggest fan of Critical Role, but technically WotC could also go: "Hey, do you wanna cooperate on the next campaign?" And jump off from that.

Or have the voice actors from BG3 cameo as their characters from that game. Folks would EAT THAT UP.

Some other assorted things

One, or two more things that I actually think they could do a bit more with... well, events and community stuff. And by using social media better, because... Look, the way WotC is kinda marketing the stuff is so 2000s in many regards. Like, use new media. Heck, use fucking TikTok. Which also might I note: They so desperately want to reach Gen Alpha. And I am honest with you, I have no fucking idea how to reach Gen Alpha. I don't. But a gut feelings tells me that TikTok might be a start.

See, I am following other franchises as well, and one thing that some do well is just got throw out some event related stuff. Make some pride month stuff. Sure, I hate Rainbow Capitalism, but sadly it works. And again, I am writing this under the idea of: "How to turn DnD Profitable."

Bring out some stuff to some other events. Like a Christmas thingie or something along those lines. Again, be it short stories, be it one shots, be it an Actual Play one shot on the Actual Play podcast THEY DESPERATELY SHOULD DO.

Also... They cannot learn the wrong lessons from BG3. Just because this one game they licensed out was lightning in a bottle, they cannot go and be: "Let's just rely on CRPGs to make us money." Because that can backfire really quickly.

#dungeons & dragons #dnd #d&d #dnd beyond #wizards of the coast #hasbro #critical role #legend of vox machina #baldur's gate 3 #baldurs gate 3 #bg3 #economy #dnd:hat #honor among thieves #how to make money #actual play #ttrpg

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gwydion-aacblog · 1 year

Note

hey im a bit curious on why you say system origins dont harm people (it was in your pinned post) as a system that has been harmed because of endos (fakeclaimed, kicked out of spaces, lost access to resources) i was wondering if you could possibly explain in more detail? if you cant thats fine too! i was just curious and i wanted to follow you but im afraid i dont interact with endo or supports, so more information/disscussion is very much appreciated! have a good day/afternoon/evening!

people exist and that is that . not care how describe origin if can respect , and , just because bad individual people use specific name for origin do not make all each ones bad . many system with trauma and DID names say horrible things about gwydion plural life , which come from trauma too so can not pretend like complain for nothing , which one in many reason not give any details . but not make people who keep those names bad .

plural community exist in relative harmony much longer than not . know this as someone see and learn from original communities , much more focus on how live peaceful together and support " weird " things about each other . largely people share words with each other , happy hear experiences , feel less alone in " weirdness " . not like now where people want feel " valid " even if throw each other under bus , happy bully anything " invalid " .

plural is many many experiences , something many more people than might even realise possibly experience . sometimes dissociation mechanism that stay forever . sometimes short time thing that come with stress then disappear . sometimes something that feel tie with spirituality . sometimes something that do on purpose because curious .

if anyone want try argue this , say why should not believe origins , do not waste time . there is no way " prove " any this , no way cut in brain and say " this one jane this one alice " , and absolute meaningless pretend like anyone really get better respect when is all " loonies " to everyone else . DID/OSDD exist , so do plurals which not DID/OSDD .

put this way too . people who call low support needs autism , high function autism , whatever want to call . those people been absolute cruel to gwydion . would still not be fair call those people fake autism people .

#plurality

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fixfoxnox · 6 months

Text

Okay so sorry to the person who asked, my Tumblr fucked itself so I lost your ask, but they wanted some of Pyre or Pretty in a Skirt so here is both.

Pyre:

“This is all well and good,” Ghost spoke lowly, his voice careful, “but it doesn’t get us any closer to catching Sanderson.” He shook his head and Soap understood his concern with a sudden clarity. All of this was only a preventative, a temporary measure that would do nothing but keep Shepherd safe for the night. They couldn’t keep this up forever. “All he’ll have to do is wait for us or Shepherd out. We’ll slip up eventually, we’re bound to.”

“Ghost is right,” Soap nodded to him, “this won’t do shit for us in the long run.”

“Our goal isn’t the long run,” Price shook his head, “It’s the night. We last through the night and see what information Sanderson was arrogant enough to give Laswell access to. From there, we decide how to take Sanderson out.” He looked between the group carefully, “Right now we have a lot of questions. Laswell is doing research, getting everything she can to help us. I understand this isn’t what any of us were expecting, but our job now is to keep Shepherd alive. We can’t let our feelings about Sanderson or what happened with Graves cloud our judgment.”

Soap could see the way that Price glanced at him and he knew clearly that the words were for him more than anyone else on the team. It was a fair thing to warn against, but it still stung Soap’s chest harshly. He was better than that, better than letting his anger get the best of him on the field. He thought the team would have known that.

Pretty in a Skirt (NSFW Below):

Soap added a bit more pressure, grinding his hand against Roach. Roach knew he was soaked, he could feel the slick at his inner thighs. He was sure he'd been wet since Soap had whispered in his ear that they were going home. He was sure he'd been soaked since the man had tucked him close to his side in the back of the car, his hands rubbing up and down his thighs, only occasionally dipping underneath the offending fabric that had held the other's attention since the moment Roach had stepped foot in the building.

Roach gave a desperate little whine as Soap repeated the movement again, grinding his palm against his clit. "I- oh god," he tossed his head back against Soap's shoulders with a short moan, "Hmm, I just- just wanted to surprise you." He gave a desperate gasp as Soap's hand moved away until he could push Roach's panties to the side. His fingers were quick to press against Roach's clit, rubbing slow circles against him.

Soap chuckled into his ear and let his mouth press against Roach's skin. He traced a line with his tongue and teeth, slowly working his way down to the collar of Roach's shirt.. He nipped at the skin as his mouth moved, leaving little bruises in his wake. Roach tilted his head to the side, obediently allowing Soap further access to the expanse of his neck.

"It was certainly a surprise," Soap muttered the words into Roach's skin. There was no speaking for several minutes, the only sounds that left them were Soap's satisfied groans as Roach squirmed in his hold and Roach's moans as pleasure spiked through him.

Soap was unrelenting with his hands, his fingers working slow harsh circles against Roach's clit, pulling a symphony of desperate sounds from his lips. The pleasure was strong, but it wasn't enough and kept Roach in a cycle of perpetual and unforgiving heat.

#you asked luke #gary roach sanderson #simon ghost riley #call of duty #john soap mactavish #captain john price #soaproach #kyle gaz garrick

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lets-try-some-writing · 6 months

Note

Patient 2: AI Optimus (Ft. Ratchet.)

and also part two of Optimus and Ratchet's fic sharing! Author's note: This took two-ish days and I'm very very proud of it. Please enjoy more Orion shengians!! :)

Orion, getting used to how the portals work by this point, carefully stepped out of the portal and adjusted his medkit once again. He looked around, well the same ol jasper nevada. He would never get tired of it though! The sunsets, the gorgeous fauna.. If he had to pick one as his favorite, it would have to be the desert tortoise. He found it the cutest thing imaginable, it really just reminded him of bulkhead if he was completely honest. The shell reminded him of a wrecker’s hard external frame. He remembered a fun fact about tortoises, that they can almost live the same lifespan that a human can! At most they can be 80 years old, which would be most human lifespans, but it’s roughly between 50 and 80 years old. He loved being here on earth, with the sun shining, nothing could really go wrong. But he knows that a prime is hurting somewhere, and he needs to focus. He barely gets any information on the optimi he meets, but sometimes there’s scribbles on his notepad! He should check.. “AI?” He said out loud to himself, blinking. That was the only thing that was written down on the notepad, besides from a small frowny face. He didn’t really understand it at the moment, but he knew he had to help as soon as he could. Warzone + Sad + Being a prime is probably very stressful, I mean look at sire + responsibilities = disaster for a prime’s mental and physical state!

Orion knew the math all too well, and by his very rough calculations, bodily neglect is very much possible.

He figured he should go to this universe’s autobot base in his vehicle mode and see if anyone’s there. There most likely will be, and he’s dealt with his fair share of beings. Pretender Oppy may have been given a spook by the whole ‘larva’ thing but he’s not going to let small things get to him like that again! It was a long drive there, but he finally made it. He transformed into his bot mode and approached carefully, yet resiliently. He was prepared for anything!

There wasn’t a door so to speak, but he was aware of a military only access door that he can ring the doorbell for. And so he rang the doorbell. “Access code required. This conservation will be recorded for future records, anything you say may be used against you.” the voice on the intercom announced,

Orion spoke into it, not knowing the access code himself, but willing to say his case in hopes someone hears it.

“Greetings, I do not have the access code, but I am Orion Pax. I am a medical officer in training that’s being taught from my ratchet from my own universe. I have a thing where I do checkups on primes all over the place! I know it’s not very believable, but I can show you my license for further information. I am here to help!” “Door unlocked by inside source.” the monotone voice replied, much to Orion’s surprise. So someone did hear him.. He walked into it cautiously, he could be walking into a energonbath for all he knows. But it was eerily silent, besides from more technical bits around the base and some advancements.. It’s almost normal. Orion called out, “Hello?” he figured that maybe they speak cybertronian, so he said in cybertronian, “Hello? Anyone here?..” “I heard ya kid.” A voice spoke out from the darkness, “I can hear you loud and clear..” Orion jumped back in surprise, it was this universe’s Ratchet walked out.. But he looked much worse for wear than his own. It concerned him, “Sir, are you alright? You look.. Honestly horrible! What happened?” Ratchet rolled his optics, “Don’t we all?” Orion just looked so worried, Ratchet sighed, “it’s nothing that concerns you.” Ratchet’s spark ached. This.. youngling just reminded him, just reminded him alot of his own Orion. He knew it wasn’t the same bot, and he could just tell from the kid’s demeanor alone. “How did you even get here?” He asked,

Orion sheepishly chuckled, “I sorta get sent at random?.. It’s a long story but I’m here to do a medical checkup. I guess for both of you.”

Ratchet just looked tired, “Don’t bother, I don’t think he’ll be interested. He doesn’t like the idea of ‘checkups’ anymore.”

Orion had a determined look on his face, “Well, if he isn’t willing to do one, I might as well do one on you!” He recited a line from his medical officer field-guide, “A medic helps everyone, no matter the circumstances. What matters is seeing them smile at the end.” He added, “I want you to smile too..” Ratchet couldn’t help but get a bit soft, sure, this kid had good intentions. But he knew his Optimus. The thought of a checkup now might scare the AI half to death, and he knew it was his own fault. He didn’t want him snapping on poor Orion. Just one checkup, he figured. He’ll send the kid on his way after that, but he could tell Orion probably won’t take no for an answer. “Fine, I'll let you give me a checkup.. But afterwards you're leaving. Understood?” Orion realized he wasn’t really going to get far with this Ratchet, but he still needed to help somebody. Maybe if he talked to Ratchet he could figure out why this Optimus disliked checkups? He had to agree to the deal, he was hesitant, “.. Understood sir.” Ratchet sighed, “I know, you want to treat our Optimus. I can tell on your face, you want to ‘make him smile’, Don’t you?” “Of course, that’s what makes being a medic wonderful! The hardwork and effort is worth it. I can tell both of you are hurting in some way, and I want to make everything better.” Ratchet sat down on the examination table, not sure of how to respond to this. It just reminded him of how far he was from Orion as the ‘medic’ on the team. He didn’t even want to be a medic anymore after what he’s done. Orion sat down on the spinny chair next to him, reading off of his notepad, “Alright, now these are the questions I'm supposed to ask, for reference but I think you would know that. Any histories or unwanted exposures to synth-en, dark energon, red energon, etc? Be honest with me.” “It's been awhile since I've done that, very brief history with synth-en, but the effects only lasted a day and a half. Haven’t used it since.” the ‘medic’ replied starkly, “Even thinking about synth-en now makes me feel sick.” Orion nodded, writing on his notepad, “Noted! Very brief history with synth-en.” he then asked the next question he usually asked, “Any recent injuries on the battlefield? So I don’t accidentally touch those sensitive places while I'm patching you up.” Ratchet stared at him blankly, and then replied, “It’s really innocent how you think I go outside, I really don’t anymore. I guess the only ‘pains’ are my joints, which by this point are normal.” Orion looked very concerned as he wrote on his notepad again, “noted.. Have you tried painkillers?” “Are you licensed to diagnose me with painkillers?” Orion paused, “oh.. Uh.. no? That’s for fully trained medics like yourself!” Ratchet looked away, “Please don’t call me that kiddo, I’m not.. Look, in this universe I have done terrible things. And I have a sinking feeling that your ratchet is very very nice to you because of how you're treating me. If you knew what I did, what I did to Optimus, I.. I don’t know what you would do.”

Orion looked undeterred, “I have met optimis who have.. Murdered millions of people. Treats humans like trash, but did I still treat them? Yes, yes I did! Don’t you know our mantra? A medic helps anyone in need, no matter their history or what they've done.”

He added, “I would help Megatron himself if he needed it. Because that’s what medics do! Don’t ever forget that!” he said, then suddenly held onto Ratchet’s hand tightly, “Promise me something ok? No matter what, we are medics! And we help each other..” He looked down, “Please…”

Ratchet just was very very guilty now, this made him feel worse than he was previously because he knew Orion was completely serious, “Promise..” Orion smiled, “good, let’s keep going with the checkup.” He said cheerfully. The two weren’t aware that Optimus was watching them, he awoke to this and at first he couldn’t help but be entertained by Orion. He thought that the youngling’s courage was admirable. He enjoyed his positive attitude to things, even depressing things like Ratchet saying he isn’t a ‘medic’ anymore. It almost made the AI a bit jealous, if he was being honest. But a checkup, no no he did not want that. No matter who did it, he confidently believed that Orion would hurt him, not on purpose, just because he doesn’t know he’s an AI and makes a mistake. He’s always been anxious over checkups. Ratchet certainly didn’t help at all, hated the idea of touch. Touching in his processor meant ‘threat’, meant ‘being hurt’, ‘restrained’ Orion finished the checkup, and exclaimed, “Besides from some malnutrition and some ignorance on keeping up with rust checks, I say you're all clear!” He reached into a medkit and got out a sticker and an energon treat, “since you got the Orion treatment™, you get a sticker and an energon treat!” He placed the energon treat in Ratchet’s servo along with the sticker, Ratchet accepted it graciously, “Thank you, you know for a medical officer in training your good.” Orion smiled, proud of himself, “Course’! I Learned from the best in my own universe.” Ratchet knew who he was referring to, and couldn’t help but sigh. He knew that Orion would now try to do an examination on his Optimus, which he believed would end in disaster. Orion then looked at him, and asked, “Why does this Optimus hate checkups?” He didn't mean to be invasive, he just wanted to figure it out. Maybe he could convince the prime that checkups were good again!

“.. It’s my fault.” Orion blinked, not sure of what to reply, “Did you accidentally hurt him during an exam?” “No, I wish it was just that.”

Then Orion understood what Ratchet meant by ‘I have done terrible things’, but did that stop him? He did want to talk to Ratchet about that, a serious discussion because he assumed it would be bad bad, but he had an open mind. He will help everyone, and that’s what a medic does. Even to those who don’t deserve to be cared for, even for those who have forgotten what being a medic is.

“I understand, but I need to do a checkup on him. That’s what I do, I'm not.. I know I promised I would leave when I finished yours but it’s vital that I do a checkup on him.” He added, “If he doesn’t trust you, he’s probably hurting and not saying anything about it!”

The AI continued to watch, and he agreed with that sentiment. Ratchet didn’t want to force him, then again the two needed to fulfill their promise to each other, a promise that was the reason why Ratchet was in disrepair.

He understood why Ratchet didn’t tell Orion. Orion was far too innocent and pure, but he knew that the youngling wasn’t stupid. He understood when he was being lied to from his knowledge from observing them interact. He was hurting, he was being completely honest. His struts ached, his optics strained against bright lights, injuries he refused to have inspected. He was in worse disrepair than Ratchet was, but he hid it. He had a war to lead, he was created to fight. Not to cry, not to feel. Yet he was. He was feeling for this child, who wanted to help everyone. Who wanted to make them smile, make them feel better. He wanted to cry from the pain, to be held by someone. To be told it’s ok.

The artificial prime was stuck in two opposing thoughts, one of which was to reveal himself and accept a checkup, and the other was to sink back into his quarters and stay there. He needed to watch more, to watch Orion prove himself to him for a definite answer.

Orion meanwhile, was now talking to Ratchet about how nice earth was. How the desert outside of their missile solo was full of life. He was trying to convince Ratchet to take a walk with him, why? Because he was worried about how Ratchet stated he ‘didn’t go outside anymore’.

Until he could treat Optimus, he’ll care for Ratchet the best he could. And that started with a walk, to get some fresh air and to see what planet they were fighting for.

Orion said cheerfully, resmicing on how he saw a desert tortoise, “The outside is wonderful, I think I saw my favorite animal out there too!”

Ratchet questioned, amused by Orion. He knew what the youngling was plotting, and accepted it. This kid was… a better medic then he was if he was being completely honest. Aftercare for a patient, “And which one is that?” Orion replied, “A desert tortoise! Gopherus agassizii if I remember the scientific term.” Ratchet hummed thoughtfully, “And why are they your favorite?” Orion gushed, “They're adorable! Their shells remind me of a wrecker’s external frame, and their mouths look like they’re always smiling.” he smiled, causing Ratchet to have a small smile in response. “You seem to love animals.” “I do!” Orion exclaimed, “They're so gorgeous and that’s why I love earth so much. Do you wanna know what my second favorite is?” Ratchet nodded, “Sure, lay it on me.” Orion answered, “Deer! Me and Sire go to Jasper National Park for creator-youngling bonding time sometimes and I always get to feed them banana chips.” His smile got bigger, “They seem so happy..” The false prime was very impressed, this youngling cared for a lot of things, not just cybertronians. He would probably care for humans just as much. That was enough for Orion to prove himself, and he slowly slinked himself out of the darkness and into view.

Orion lightly gasped in surprise, then quickly softened his expression and got into a position that would make him the least intimidating. He didn’t have to do the extra steps, he was already very not intimidating..

“Hello there.” He whispered, “I am a medical officer in training, Orion Pax. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

Ratchet started to back away, then stopped when Orion suddenly held onto his servo, “no no, you're staying here. I know I can’t fix things but I know that he wants an apology! Right?”

Ratchet was shocked, as much was Optimus. Orion wants.. Ratchet to apologize? It would be best, but the two have already been past the ‘apology’ phase of things. But now, it was clear that Orion wasn’t letting Ratchet disappear into the shadows until he apologized.

Optimus spoke, still on a bit of an edge due to Ratchet’s presence but due to the gap between the two with Orion in the middle, he felt comfortable. Just a little,

“It would be.. Nice. Young one, we are past that stage. I.. I know you mean well, but we cannot reconcile until our promise is fulfilled and the war is over.”Orion blinked, “oh.. And what is that promise?” Ratchet froze, and for once Optimus and Ratchet came to a agreement; they should not tell Orion that they are planning to commit suicide after the war is over due to their.. History to say the least. But they couldn’t.. Lie to him either. “We have.. How do we phrase this nicely?”Ratchet tried to come up with something, “We.. um…” “Ratchet, we have to tell him the truth. I believe he can handle the truth.”

Ratchet looked skeptical, “Optimus, this is.. Unacceptable! He probably doesn’t even know what it means! We can’t.. We can’t just tell him.” Orion started to connect the dots a bit, he understood what whatever this ‘promise’ was, it wasn’t a good one. And it could possibly be harmful, but he was an open book. He liked to think he was, he could handle anything.

“Lay it on me!” He said, “I can handle it.. Whatever this ‘promise’ is, I can take it.” “Your.. courage. It’s very admirable Orion.” Orion nodded, “of course.” Ratchet sighed, “Alright, who’s going to tell him?” “I will.” Orion approached, freezing every so often if Optimus even flinched as if he was some oversized stray cat, but eventually Orion gently held his hand, it was only holding a digit but it counted, “It’s alright.. You're safe with me. Tell me.” The response was Optimus gently petting his head, “Our promise.. Is one of death. I am not a true cybertronian, I was built. Built for war. Once the war is over, we will give ourselves to well of allsparks. For me, it’s to escape the reality of my situation. And for him, it is to condemn his crimes.” Orion thought it out, “so.. Suicide?” he said, with concern. But that concern faded, he finally understood the ‘AI’ note in his notepad, along with the frowny face. “I understand, it must be terrible for you to live knowing you're not.. Real. it sounds like a nightmare, anyone would do anything to escape a fate like that.” He glanced towards Ratchet, “No wonder you two look so terrible.. You're just waiting. I get it.” Ratchet was very shocked that Orion understood what he meant, he knew what it was, “.. We..” he glanced at Optimus.

Optimus glanced back, “We, thank you for your words little one. I knew when I saw how you cared for Ratchet you were a special bot.”Orion chuckled, “I’m not that special, but thanks!”

“I give you my consent for a.. Checkup. I know that you will not harm me.”Orion then got very excited, he was very proud of himself for managing to convince Optimus despite his anxiety for checkups and just overall medical procedures from how bad Ratchet’s ‘crimes’ were, “Are you sure? If you don’t want it, it’s completely fine! We can just go on that walk I was talking about with Ratchet. You two can keep your distance and we can have fun!” “You are.. Very compassionate for your duty aren’t you? It is fine, you are.. Very very special to me. Special little one.”

Optimus Prime said to him, continuing to pet him. He eventually stopped, sitting on the medical berth abiet starting to shake a bit from the memories he had while sitting on it. Orion noticed. “Would you.. Like to sit elsewhere? You don’t seem very comfortable, you look anxious…” “Thank you.. That would be best for me.”Instead of on the medical berth, Optimus sat down on the bot sized couch along with Orion as he did the checkup. He did it with care, realizing that Optimus had a disdain towards touch.

It was short, gentle touches as Orion worked, he eventually asked per protocol before he started to patch anything, as before it was simply do checks; small optic exam, the works.

“Any recent injuries on the battlefield? So I don’t accidentally touch those sensitive places while I'm patching you up.” he said softly.

“I have gotten a limp recently.. I think something may be stuck in my right leg.”Ratchet wanted to say something in response, like ‘Why didn’t you tell me’ or ‘that’s why you were in your quarters for so long?’ but kept his vocoder shut. He decided on just letting Orion work.

Orion nodded, “Do you.. Want me to remove it?” “Yes, please.”Once he heard this, Orion went into his med-kit and started to get out the tools he had on hand. He wasn’t very experienced in this section of work, but he was prepared due to his handbook and capability.

Ratchet seemingly noticed the younger’s lack of proper tools as he went to get them, “I’ll go get you some proper tools.” Orion smiled, “Oh, Thank you!” When Ratchet left, Optimus hummed thoughtfully, remembering the discussion that Orion and Ratchet had when he watched them. He figured he should say what his own favorite was, as a sort of ice breaker while they waited.

“My favorite fauna to see here.. It has to be Sylvilagus audubonii.”

He said, Orion got all excited, “Oh, that’s a desert cottontail! Oh those are adorable!!” “Do you want to know why?” The AI asked playfully,Orion’s head tilted slightly, “Why?” Optimus proceeded to put his servos on his hand, as if they were ears. He started to flick his digits to try and prove his point, “they sometimes have floppy ears.” he added as he continued flicking his digits, his voice almost sounding monotone, “flop, flop, flop..”

Orion giggled at this as he did the same thing, “Flop!” “Flop.”

When Ratchet returned with the tools, Orion and Optimus had their servos on their heads, just flicking their digits down and just repeating the word ‘flop’. He laughed quietly, “I’m back, Orion, remember you have a patient to care for.” Orion stopped, nodding as Optimus stopped also. The false prime looked away sheepishly as Orion got the tools, “Could you place your leg on the couch? So it’s closer to me.” Optimus nodded as he lifted his right leg and placed it on the couch, Orion gently used the miniature frame-scanner of his, “It’ll only be a light tingling sensation, I just need to see where it is.” “Very well..”

Orion sat there for a couple moments, unmoving. Optimus questioned, “Why aren’t you doing anything?”

“You look anxious. I want my patients to be comfortable, I'm waiting until you're ready. Patient’s wellbeing matters over all!” Orion explained, now with the frame scanner on his lap.

“...”Still not moving the frame scanner, Orion simply had a genuine comforting smile on his features. He figured that touch wouldn’t be best right now, so his face said it all.

Optimus finally relaxed, venting softly as Orion started to work, the frame-scanner went off almost immediately and the younger looked up at him in concern, “That’s.. A Lot of damage. I can see it on the scanner.. You must have been in pain for a long time.” He gently patted Optimus’s thigh, “don’t worry, i’ll help you.”

“Can you.. Extract it doctor?”Orion’s features were full of confidence, “I’ll do my best, I have my handbook and the proper tools.” He got out his handbook, reading it outloud, “Prepare numbing solution in injection vial..” he followed the instructions, to the amusement and interest of Optimus and Ratchet. He read more out loud, “Once the injection vial is prepared, flick the needle tip to get rid of excess air bubbles..” Orion then started to sanitize the area, and once it was finished, with Optimus’s consent he injected the needle. He went back to the handbook, “Once the area of injury is numbed, use tweezers to lift up metal plating..” The young medic did so, flinching a bit at the sheer badness of it. There was a sharp piece of metal firmly lodged into the prime’s leg. It must’ve been accidentally launched into him during a battle..

“I.. Know it’s bad.”Orion nodded, “It is. But I can fix it. I know I can.” he read the handbook again, “Use larger tweezers to gently loosen the item enlodged..” he did so, stopping every so often to make sure the AI was fine.

Ratchet stayed silent, watching. He knew he should be the one doing this, helping his creation. But he was the reason why Optimus hid that for so long. He doesn’t want it to get worse..

Orion pulled out the piece of metal, freezing a bit as a spurt of energon went on his thigh. But he was semi-calm, smiling. He welded up the injury, making sure no fuel lines were broken in the process, and put down the metal plating.

He then wrapped up that part of the prime’s leg, in a cast of sorts. Then he got out a black sharpie. “Isn’t the treatment over? What are you doing?..” Orion grinned as he suddenly scribbled on a picture of a desert cottontail on his cast, with the phrase ‘flop’ on it, he had a big smile on his faceplate. “Ta da! Since you told me your favorite animal is a desert cottontail, I wanted to put something on your cast so you can feel better during your recovery.” “.. Thank you for your kindness. It does make me feel better.” Orion nodded, helping Ratchet put away the tools and then once that was finished, hopping back onto the couch and happily getting out an energon treat and a sticker, “since you got the Orion treatment™, you get a sticker and an energon treat!” “I don’t think that is very necessary…” Orion was undeterred, “It is. You're going to spend a good bit recovering, so this is good aftercare!” He gave him the sticker and energon treat, and Optimus smiled softly.

Orion then got a bit sad, “How are we going to go on the walk now?..”

Ratchet sighed, “It’s fine, I can go separately.” Orion nodded, “You better go out! You have to be healthy for your promise.” “Thank you for your help and understanding of our situation, Orion. We don’t know how to thank you.”Orion smiled, “Of course! A medic helps everyone.” Ratchet paused, “I can give him something.” “?”

Ratchet got out a small goodybag, it contained miniature medical equipment. He handed it to Orion, “it’s for your medkit incase you have to do a extraction like this again-” Orion suddenly hugged him, smiling, “Thank you!” he was touched, “This will help me so much..” Ratchet in response patted him on the head, “Of course..” A portal opened, and Orion quickly let go of Ratchet and put everything away, he smiled at the two, “I have to go now, sire will get worried if I stay here for too long..” “Understandable. Thank you again for your help, we have something new to fight for. For mechs like you to grow up in peace..” Ratchet agreed with him, “Yes.” Orion waved goodbye, he waved goodbye to this universe to go back home to Nimbus Prime and his mentor. He couldn’t wait to tell them what happened, and he would cherish his gift dearly. He knew that the two would probably not be there and had ascended into the well when he eventually returned, due to how time worked in separate universes. But he would be honored to do another check-up on them, to see how they're doing.

And with that, this wraps Orion's second patient case. Who knows who he will care for next, it could be anything. But he will address them without fear, and with compassion. Because that’s what a medic would do, wouldn’t they?

Good soup.

#transformers #maccadam #transformers prime #team prime #ratchet #optimus prime #orion pax #fanfic #not my writing

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acourtofthought · 1 year

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Have you noticed how much page time SJM dedicates to Helion in Silver Flames? Maybe he'll be getting a book but as it stands, she's never strongly hinted at him having one the way she has for other characters.

Yet SJM really hit the Rhys / Helion friendship hard in Nessian's book which is a bit strange since Rhys doesn't share a POV but through that friendship, we learn quite a bit about Helion and his powers.

I think SJM is using Helion as a way to relay information to us about Lucien.

Lucien is not really friends with the IC at this point. He occasionally works for them and his mate is living there but since he and Elain are at odds for the time being, he doesn't have many reasons to be on page in a Nessian book. But granting Helion page time means that everything we learn about him, can be passed on to the future of Lucien, being his son and Heir to Day.

Rhys is having Helion teach him about truly impenetrable shields / Feyre had muttered when Cassian asked about the ironclad defenses, so strong they even masked her scent. / “It’s all part of the same shield. Helion wasn’t joking about it being impenetrable.”

I wonder if Lucien could learn to use a shield for protection while facing off with an enemy or whether he could use one in a situation where he needs to remain hidden and would have to mask his scent.

But the male had one thousand libraries at his disposal, and had put them all to good use for the treaty.

Lucien will also have access to these libraries.

He’d wanted to enter the dark city in a golden chariot led by four snow-white horses with manes of golden fire,

What?! Tell me how there's not been fanart of Elucien on these horses! 😍

The winged horses were rare—so rare that it was said Helion’s seven breeding pairs of flying horses were the only ones left. Lore held that there had once been far more of them before recorded history, and that most had just vanished, as if they’d been devoured by the sky itself. Their population had dwindled further in the last thousand years, for reasons no one could explain. Helion’s most beloved pair—this black stallion, Meallan, and his mate—hadn’t produced offspring in three hundred years, and that last foal hadn’t made it out of weaning before he’d succumbed to an illness no healer could remedy. According to legend, the pegasuses had come from the island the Prison sat upon—had once fed in fair meadows that had long given way to moss and mist. Perhaps that was part of the decline: their homeland had vanished, and whatever had sustained them there was no longer.

Not only is Lucien going to have access to the Pegasus but the fact that they come from the land where the Prison is on provides a connection to this area for Elucien. I could also see Elain being the person to discover what brought about the decline of the food they fed on (which I'm thinking is some sort of plant) as well as helping to regrow it.

“She’s here?” Helion practically shimmered with golden light.

I can't wait for Lucien to glow from happiness! ☀️

Helion had spoken to and briefly touched the hands of the two Autumn Court soldiers chained in that room, kept alive and fed by Rhys’s magic. Helion’s face had tensed when he’d touched their hands—and he’d then murmured that he’d seen enough. I can feel spells—like threads. Ones that can enchant feel like bindings around an individual. I sensed none of that.”

Lucien should have this same ability, to simply touch the hands of someone and feel a spell. It's a total headcannon at this point but I wonder if he'll sense some sort of spell or something on Elain the first time they touch hands (oooh, this brings to mind the Pride & Prejudice scene where he touches her hand while helping her into the carriage and is affected by it). SJM had pinned an image of sleeping beauty before and in ACOWAR, Feyre tells us the gates to Elain's mind are "sleeping buds". Imagine if Lucien senses something that's been holding Elain back from "waking" and revealing her full potential, something involving her need for light (aka Spring or Day).

Nesta faced Helion again, taking in that spiked golden crown and the draped white robe

Lucien wearing this outfit is all my current fantasies.

“Doesn’t it rake its cold claws down your senses?” Helion asked. Helion shuddered, and Nesta threw the cloth over the Mask. As if the cloth somehow blinded it to their presence. “Perhaps an ancestor of mine once used it, and the warning of its cost is imprinted upon my blood.” Helion shook out a breath. “All right, not-Lady Nesta. Allow me to show you some warding tricks even clever Rhysand doesn’t know.”

It's possible that both Lucien and Elain now have a connection to the Mask (her because she's Made and him because of his relation to Helion). I had another post talking about the possibility of Lucien coming up with some sort of scheme that might at first look like he's gone rogue only to show off some Rhysand level clever plot, I wonder if it could involve the Mask. Also, the excerpt provides us with the knowledge that Lucien could too have the ability to ward things.

“I would like to remove myself from the Mask’s odious presence, and perhaps enjoy your palace, Rhysand. It’s been a long while since I was in a place of such quiet. If you’ll allow it, I’ll stay here for an hour or two.” “Something bothering you at home?” Rhys inquired, falling into step beside the High Lord.

This is interesting because it's setting up a future book for some Day Court drama which is a court Lucien will soon be part of.

I had Helion show me how to apply a shield like the one I had around Feyre to the Prison itself.” “You guessed this would happen?”. “Feyre and I were concerned that Beron would try to free the inmates to use in a conflict—just as we used the Bone Carver in the war. Give me tonight, and I’ll get the shield untangled and open for you tomorrow.” “It takes that long to undo a shield?” “It’s a combination of magic and spell work, so yes.

I think there's a few ideas floating around about Elain and the Prison considering three sisters / three mountains. What I've come up with is the possibility of Koschei's soul being hidden there so this could tell us need to know information on Elucien gaining access into it.

“No, it’s a Symphonia, a rare device from Helion’s court. It can trap music within itself, and play it back for you. It was originally invented to help compose music, but it never caught on, for some reason.”

I'm not sure this really gives us much in terms of future plot but it tells us that Day Court has cool stuff 😂

Perhaps Amren was working on some way to undo the bargain—if anyone could think of a way, it would be her. Or Helion, he supposed.

To me, this could suggest one of a few things. Cassian mentions the following in regards to bargains:

And if the bargain was broken … the magic could exact terrible vengeance.

We know Briallyn had made a bargain with Koschei however she is no longer a threat but there has been concerns over Beron working with Koschei:

do not believe your High Lord would wish me to go to other territories and ask them to help with Briallyn and Koschei. To help them remember that all it might take to secure Briallyn’s alliance would be to hand over a certain Archeron sister. Don’t be stupid enough to believe my father hasn’t thought of that, too.”

“Then you would certainly have a war on your hands. My father would go straight to Briallyn—and Koschei, I suppose—and then go to the other discontent territories, and you would be wiped off the proverbial map. Perhaps literally, since the Night Court would be divvied up between the other territories if Rhysand and Feyre die without an heir.”

“So they are trying to find this Dread Trove in order to track down the Cauldron for Briallyn, and likely free Koschei in the process. And launch a war, with Beron as her ally, that would grant them whatever territories they wish. Or give some to Koschei, depending on what bargain he strikes with Briallyn—probably one to his advantage.”

So there could be a chance that Beron makes a bargain with Koschei, maybe even one involving delivering Elain to him (his "sons" mate") who has ties to the Night Court. Having her = leverage over the NC who is aware of where the Cauldron is and Lucien would try to find a way to undo that bargain.

It could also be something that involves the bargain Elain's father made:

He should have asked someone before coming here how much time remained before Vassa would be forced to return to the continent—to the sorcerer-lord at a remote lake who held her leash, and had allowed her to leave only temporarily, as part of a bargain Feyre’s father had struck.

I don't think Lucien can free Vassa from her actual curse because we're told it doesn't seem to be a spell but there's a chance he could extend the time of Vassa's temporary freedom by breaking the bargain Papa Archeron made.

“I told you: their castle is too heavily warded, and full of magical traps that would trip up even Helion. (👀 tell me this isn't hinting at Lucien ending up sneaking in to the Queens castle on the continent in an Elucien book?)

If SJM used Helion as a tool to deliver information to us about Lucien, it's a pretty clever way of doing so. Looking back over everything has made me even more excited for what we might see in his story!

#lucien vanserra supremacy #pro lucien vanserra #lucien vanserra #lucien spell cleaver #helion spell cleaver #helion acotar #elucien #pro elucien #elain archeron #elain x lucien #lucien and elain #elain and lucien #pro elain archeron #acotar theory

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