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dollarbin · 7 months

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Dollar Bin #17:

Ian Matthews' If You Saw Thro' My Eyes

I had big plans for this weekend's post. My famous brother has been jawing of late about how I will kneel in perpetual penance before Stephen Stills' altar of jock rock greatness the moment I listen to a Manassas record and I will then declare Stills a rock and roll god. One would think my brother is famous for devilry and nonsense.

Indeed, so confident am I that Stills will forever suck that earlier this week I got down on the weathered floor of my local dollar bin (they know what they're doing in my local shop: all of Stills' records are relegated to a neglected, ground level cardboard box, while The Incredible String Band section towers at chest height over Stephen's treasure chest of trash) and hauled out their cheapest copy of Manassas's debut double album (there were plenty of copies to choose from; no one wants to own Stephen Stills records).

My grand plan was to spend a glorious Friday afternoon playing a drinking game of my own invention wherein I'd drink every time I heard a note that did not suck in Manassas's monster ode to mediocrity and I'd admit to each chug in print. I had no fears about a hangover heading into this adventure; I knew I'd emerge stone cold sober.

Fair Reader, I extend to you my sincerest apologies. You'll simply have to wait, with baited breath, for that future entry. The truth is that moments after gleefully cracking open a cold one and dropping the needle on Side 1 of Stills' pretentious piece of pomposity I heard Stephen open his crack (I honestly could not tell which it was, face or ass) and realized I did not have the spirit for it.

Simply put, the very real terror being inflicted upon our fellow humans in Gaza and Israel makes the musical terror Stills inflicts upon us both unfunny and utterly incidental. Please join me in praying for the safety of all innocent people now living in war zones, most especially the children in harm's way.

So, at least for now, I propose that we put off any further pulverization of the guy who thought it was a great idea to name his new band after the Confederacy's first and greatest victory in the Civil War.

Instead, let's consider some fragile and largely unappreciated beauty by spending time on Ian Matthews' first and greatest solo record, If You Saw Thro' My Eyes.

Nick Drake and Sandy Denny both hold and deserve sainted status in the history of popular song. Almost 50 years after their tragic deaths they remain the yin and yang of cosmic British folk music, their all too brief careers forever marking them as the only true peers we have to Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. Of course all four artists owe a heavy debt to Dylan, but each was also consistently capable of creating something Dylan, for all his greatness, has often chased after fruitlessly: beauty.

A consummate recognizer of genius, Joe Boyd saw Sandy Denny sharing the stage with Matthews in Fairport Convention in 69 and understood all of this. So he decided that Ian Matthews needed to take a hike. Denny and her almost equally talented bandmate, Richard Thompson, both loved Matthews but agreed with Boyd; so Matthews got his walking papers, leaving Sandy gloriously alone before the microphone.

Everybody knows the more famous version of this story: George Harrison similarly traded in his forever bronze medal in The Beatles then went on to make the truly Olympian All Things Must Pass.

But Matthews story is a bit more complicated. Rather than settling down and producing a masterpiece, Matthews acted like a restless, slightly panicked (but still quite handsome!) toad, jumping from scheme to scheme. Between 69 and 74 he founded two entirely separate bands (Matthews Southern Comfort and Plainsong) and put out 7 (!) albums. All are Dollar Bin winners, but only one, 71's curiously spelled If You Saw Thro' My Eyes, is transcendent art.

So let's talk about it!

A good introduction is the album's second track, Hearts.

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Matthews is not considered a songwriting genius; after this record he increasingly turned to covering other artists. But here he shows early equal promise to Young; indeed it's great to listen to Hearts alongside Young's equally tender track Birds, which was recorded just a year earlier. Both songs portray young men setting aside the bruising and dumb elements of their assigned and culturally dominent gender; indeed it's hilarious to compare these songs' equally androginus yearnings with the way an artist like Young was marketed at the time. Just look at the image below.

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All he needs is a bullwhip, a fedora and a groveling look of worship from the babe on his hip to complete the image. But there's no macho macho man to be found in either of these lovely songs, and the gesture is missing from every note of If You Saw Thro' My Eyes.

Even so, there are plenty of men making music on this record and they all shred. That's none other than Richard Thompson you hear bubbling and bending on lead guitar all the way through Hearts, and he is a full contributor throughout the record, lending his unmistakable tone and gesture in ways that are frankly more successful than his contributions to Drake's first two records. Richard may have given Matthews the boot, but the two guys still literally lived together in the same house and clearly understood one another's gifts.

And then there's Keith Tippett. My famous brother will now crawl out from under his Stills' shaped rock of shame to shake his fist at me in exasperation when I admit that I know nothing about this guy. But he's clearly some kind of genius. Listen to his quavering, elemental piano work alongside Thompson's guitar on Never Ending.

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Seriously, why did the 74 zillion people buy Tea For the Tillerman then skip on this record?

And that's none other than Sandy Denny playing the harmonium behind Thompson and Tippett. While in Fairport together, Denny and Matthews either traded off vocals masterfully, as in the band's version of Suzanne, harmonized conventionally around one another or stood to one side altogether while the other sang.

But on this album's title track, If You Saw Thro' My Eyes, they finally learn to lean in together. Like lovers, friends or even enemies, they perch on the opposite banks of some terrible chasm, reaching out palm to palm over the breach to hold one another up. High above turbulent seas we listen as they leave the land and soar away, taking us with them.

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I hope all of you are safe, and I hope you can find some way to reach out in love and peace to someone else this weekend. Even if it's Stephen Stills.

#ian matthews #sandy denny #richard thompson #stephen stills still sucks #Youtube #https://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/

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tadbitfooled · 6 months

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I received these on my personal/writing blog, but I'll post them here too for anyone curious.

USFW HEADCANONS

2. What are your Muse’s favorite sexual positions?

She's not entirely sure. She's not had the experience to form a strong opinion, yet. But she's open for experimentation with the correct partner to find out what she does and doesn't like.

4. What does your Muse feel is their most attractive feature?

Oh I was hoping I wouldn't get this one for her. She's got a mediocre opinion of her appearance, thinking she's okay looking but not anything to stop traffic, you know? She has a bit of a cinched waist, really good to grab and pull her close. And she does appreciate it when she's wearing clothing that accentuates that so we'll go with that.

9. What’s one thing that never fails to turn your Muse on?

She's still learning, honestly, as she's more in line with demisexual so it takes a bit. But probably sincere, sweet words of love in a warm, heated voice with some gentle adoring kisses would be a good start.

10. How easy is it for your Muse to talk about sex?

On a technical standpoint or when it's not involving her too much, pretty easy to be honest. She's done healing at Sharess's Caress, she's not a naive child, after all. But when it's focused on her, she'll be a little flustered, unless she's talking to her partner about possible ideas to try together, then she'll be fine.

15. How does your Muse feel about dirty talk in bed?

hmmm...Depends? If it's discussing what the partner is going to do to her in a heated manner, dirty praise, that kind of stuff, yes. But any kind of degradation dirty talk wouldn't be for her.

24. How high is your Muse’s sex drive on average?

Not that high, on average in her life considering she's not really engaged with anyone prior to the game time frame. But it depends on her partner and fluctuating hormones like we all deal with. But with a partner she has that connection with and the correct stimulation, I could say her drive could easily go up.

25. Would your Muse hide hickeys/marks on their body or wear them proudly?

I think it would depend on what she was doing? If she was trying to be official, proper cleric of Ilmater, doing her duty and that, she'd make sure they would be covered if they would be visible so they aren't a distraction. Actually, she'd probably prefer to keep them less visible just due to being a bit of a private person in concerns to her relationships, but if someone were to point it out, she would shrug it off.

29. What is one sexual fantasy your Muse has that has yet to be properly fulfilled?

Leave her alone it's a heated make out session against a bookshelf that eventually falls into passionate, mutually servicing oral sex that eventually ends on a couch or something. Does she have other ideas? Yes. Of course. But there's something stimulating about the simple ones.

#HC: Gwenifar van Hol #Character: Gwenifar van Hol #// usfw #// nsft

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manonamora-if · 2 years

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My problems with this IFcomp judging thing was the requirement to rate minimally 5 games to be considered a judge. They should have raised the bar, like to become a judge you have to judge at least 15 games or more to make the judging process more fair for the entries. You have entries that have gotten more votes than some other ones which translates to raising their score compared to the other entries. It's NOT a fair competition neither real results this way.

There is also the "create an account" problem. There aren't many people who would want to go through the hassle of creating an account just to be considered worthy of casting their votes for the entries. Some others just don't want to disclose their personal emails to a one-time competition they happened to hear about from their favourite author that is participating on it. (useless rant this one).

The downloading of the games through zip files might work on a PC or a tablet but it's hard (more like a long process) for a smartphone to unzip the files and actually download the game (it's easier if the game file inside the zip file is apk at least for my phone)

Usual participants in the judging thing seem to be so biased towards certain genres/styles of interactive fiction that they can't judge new styles of interactive fiction correctly and fairly (I'm not trying to diminish their importance in the community of interactive fiction). If this games were played by the average or new players that are being introduced to interactive fiction,I'm pretty sure they would give a much more fair review/make the judging process much more fair than the one that we saw in the IFcomp (you mentioned once that you showed it to your mother,who has never played IF games, and she quite liked TTTT).

The game wasn't mediocre in the slightest (at least in my opinion sine I tend to gravitate towards innovative games) so don't think much of the ranking in this IFcomp.If you want to improve it's fine and all but don't beat yourself up over some ranking😊

Hi Anon!

If you voted for the comp, I think there will be some sort of feedback form passing around sometime soon. I highly encourage you to send your thoughts there. Or contact the IFComp via email (please do not spam/troll them, it's pretty much a one-person organising event, I don't want it to reflect badly on the Tumblr IF community). Especially about the site functions, I am 100% sure they want to improve how it works (they do have a play online button tho).

I do think there are good arguments for the first 2 points: 5 entries is not too much for people to consider being a judge (especially if you play 5 of the long entries, that's 10h at least of playing right there) and not too little that people can't flood one/two games with a certain rating; and registering ensures you don't get floods of bots/trolls to push a game up/down the ranking (it gives some resistance to it).

I don't know how they calculate the results, so maybe I am completely missing the mark here, but I like the itch Idea of adjusted scores, where they take the mean and adjust it by the median number of ratings per game in the jam (it's probably more complicated than that). That gives the change for entries that had less votes to be considered as much as the ones who got more.

Regarding the voting pool, it actually seemed like there was a shift this year. A Choice-based game won the competition (should out to The Grown-Up Detective Agency, 100% well deserved), and so was the top 4! Actually, even in the top 10, only 3 were parsers. It was also a more light-hearted game that won too (again 100% deserved, it is a great game). There are reasons why my entry didn't vibe with people (the Post-mortem is coming today), and that's fine.

If you want to diminish the bias towards one type of game/genre/etc in the IF Comp, the best way of doing it is by voting and push other people to experience those games and vote (like I did this year).

With your last point, I felt my feelings yesterday, I finished my post-mortem for the last bit of catharsis, I've gathered my feedback to improve TTTT so I can work on it later, and I went back to finish my translation.

#ask box #personal #ifcomp

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strangeharpy · 2 years

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My Cass/AuDy Fic Master-Post

I've been thinking about doing this for a while so I can have all my Cass/AuDy fic (up until this point) all in one place. I feel like this is especially relevant since some folks have recently reblogged/liked parts of my Cass/AuDy manifesto.

Without further ado, here are my Cass/AuDy fics and why you should read them!

light up the way - E (but the explicit part can be skipped) - This was my first major Cass/AuDy fic. It's a post-canon quasi-fix-it fic that is somewhat canon-compliant, wherein Apokine threw Cass's consciousness on the mesh before they got incinerated and AuDy collected the pieces to put into a new body. It's very introspective and partly a character study of Cass. It's also a slow burn and contains canon-typical violence. If you are iffy on the pairing, I recommend reading this fic first because it establishes a lot about why I like the pairing and I've been told that even people who aren't into the pairing found it interesting to read. This fic is complete.

Human Resources Can't Exactly Fix This - E (but the explicit part can be skipped) - In contrast to lutw, Human Resources is a very silly "everyone lives" post-canon fic wherein AuDy insinuates themself as Cass's bodyguard. It's very light-hearted and good if you want to ignore the fates of almost everyone in the finale. I have it marked as "complete" but I do have a couple of ideas of further vignettes in that 'verse that I might add later. There's no real over-arching plot to it, though.

Graveyard Whistling - T - Instead of being post-canon like much of my other Cass/AuDy work, this is nebulously pre-canon and canon-compliant. It's mission fic gone wrong with a heavy helping of hurt/comfort and emotional constipation. I can't write "confession" scenes between these two without them talking around their feelings rather than fully confronting them. I don't know if this fic will sell you on the pairing, but I deeply enjoyed writing it. This fic is complete.

i held your name inside my mouth - T - This is another post-canon "everyone lives" AU with a side of political marriage. After the events of the finale, Cass (as Apokine) is pressured to marry someone for political reasons, and they end up marrying AuDy. There's a lot of pining in this one, and once again I can't write a "confession" scene that involves directly talking about feelings. Overall I'm super proud of this one, even though I'm not sure if it would sell the ship to someone who's on the fence. There is an E-rated coda that can be skipped, too. This fic is complete.

Divine Pygmalion - T - For Secret Samol one year, I ended up trying to write a Hieron AU wherein Cass is an Ordennan who constructs Pala-din and ends up constructing AuDy based on some plates that they'd found. They go on an adventure, and there's a little bit of sick-fic and hurt/comfort near the end of what's posted. It's not complete, but I don't want to say it's dead because I absolutely want to return to it one day. While I have small bits of it posted to AO3, it's actually a Twine game that's hosted on itch.io.

I've also written a couple of fics that aren't directly Cass/AuDy but kind of imply some Cass/AuDy, and which I may write Cass/AuDy sequels to:

Renunciation, Reconciliation - T - Another post-canon, "everyone lives," fix-it AU that is largely canon-compliant. The Pelagios siblings fake their deaths during the conflict with Rigour and hide out on a backwater planet. It's very introspective and focused on the relationships between the siblings, but there is a little reference to Cass/AuDy. I'm super proud of this one, and if you aren't interested in Cass/AuDy but are interested in Cass character studies, I implore you to read this fic.

When I See You Again - T - Yet another post-canon, "everyone lives" AU that is absolutely not canon-compliant. This is much less introspective and pays some homage to something Art said about Cass being a mediocre leader at best. Cass convalesces after nearly dying in the final battle, with a heavy focus on their relationships with their friends/family. Again, there's some "blink-and-you-miss-it" references to Cass/AuDy, but that's not the focus of the fic. All in all, it's a pretty light-hearted post-canon fix-it, if that's your cup of tea.

And that's it, for now! I may keep this updated, I may not. If you've never considered this pairing before, I recommend checking out this post, which is a taste of why I ship it. Anyway, if you choose to read any of this, I hope you enjoy!

#cass/audy #cassaudy #friends at the table #fatt #f@tt #writing #fanfic #boat party is best party tbh #listen #i love this ship a lot okay?#i love robot/human relationships #i love nonbinary aliens #it's a good ship #please join me in shipping it

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slade-neko · 2 years

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Been reading up on some things about Sims and Maxis... seems they've hit a new low lately with their new pack. Not talking about sales, but low in terms of overall "fan happiness."

{mediocrely ranty}

TL;DR Latest update SUCKS and I NEED NPCC back before I can play seriously.

Lotta people upset with the new pack in terms of quality content. I already came to the conclusion that I don't care about the whole school system so I'll be dropping all of my teen sims out of that mess. They'll just have to do online school. The rest of the new world "looks" cool, but I've barely got to experience it as I'm still recovering from everything that's broken.

This update has seriously messed with a lot of things in my game. My save game is a very meticulously crafted piece of work that I've shaped into my own PERFECT world. I have rules, regulations, and strict standards put in place to keep this world perfect. Many of the mods I used that enforced those standards are quite broken now leaving my world in a bit of chaos. To put this in perspective, I have yet to make a serious hard save to my game since updating about a week and a half ago as I keep finding things going wrong in my game that are detrimental to my overall world. So its safe to say my previous version I backed up is looking awfully enticing to rollback. Though I prefer to stick it out and push forward, y'know my thing, KEEP MOVING FORWARD.

My biggest problem now is waiting for NPCC to update. I knew it was an important mod in my game, but didn't realize how important until I saw this freakazoid showed up to be my club's DJ and not Hatsune Miku or Sonic the Hedgehog or any of my radically cool set DJs.

As if I haven't said it enough times before, but I HATE townies. They're a blight upon the game and must be purged. NPCC kept my town clean of their filth, but without it all of my set sims have lost their roles and the infestation as started. DJs, mailmen, vendors, mixologists, waiters, etc. all monstrosities. I'm scared to send my sims out of their houses because it might generate more. I've been keeping my sims quarantined on The Island Bluffs majority of the time, the last bastion of safety.

I've seen alternative mods for NPCC, but none function exactly the same. Particularly how NPCC allows households to still be played is extremely useful. Alternative mods still require the sims to be evicted and un-played to work. Examples like how with NPCC I could still play as my Mario Bros. household and them still be set as service role repairmen. And Tenya Iida could still be my mailman with my MHA Boys household marked as played too. That was incredibly useful and I kinda can't live without it.

So I can't really work on my world now. I'm still making new sims since I can easily paste them into an old save if I need to, but its annoying not being able to confidently save my game progress after a play session knowing there's a good chance I will have to revert back because something stupid happened to my sims or the world. What kind of things you might wonder? Well worst case scenarios would be my sims' having their body shapes altered (Star Wars Stormtroopers did that to me), having my sims' outfits being altered (Discover University did that too), or random traits/ preferences get assigned (happened a few times before, typically NPC roles, so doubtful it'd be a problem now.) You might not think those to be too big a deal, but if it were to happen in mass to my sims population as a whole, WELL lets just say I wouldn't want to go through and fix 800-900 sims... that's why I'm overly cautious with my save game.

I was building up a pseudo side world to play in, but realized the obvious problem to that solution is that whatever I do in that world won't be real as it didn't happen in my main save. Meaning I edit lots, sims, whatever I'll have to re-save them to my bin to transfer into my real world eventually giving myself more work to do OR I scrap all those ideas and just throw caution to the wind and play my main save with reckless abandon and simply "fix" whatever issues that show up later down the line no matter how dire or time consuming they might be. (i.e. it would be future me's problem.)

Do I play it safe in a secondary world and give myself more work later syncing save files or do I "reckless abandon" my main save and live for the now? Hmmm, choices choices... leaning more towards reckless abandon now because I just want to play my game lol.

#dumb #The Sims 4 #TS4 #rant alert #dang I need NPCC #playing updated Sims is akin to using a Nightly version of an app #its untested unstable and unreliable

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dancefloor · 1 year

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hi regina! i see that you got the ftpanon and i have no idea how that game works 🤣 but i hope you win 😊 how has your week been?

for today’s question(s) you get another hodgepodge! 1) what are four pieces of media (a book, a show, a movie, and an album) that you’d recommend to anyone wanting to get to know you? 2) what three characters do you relate to most? 3) what are two of your favorite snacks? and 4) when you dream, do you dream in first-person (like real life) or third-person (like you’re a character in a movie)? i’m the only one of my friends who dreams in the latter and i’ve found out so many interesting things about how my friends’ brains work so i decided to start asking everyone 😅 i hope you have a good rest of your week and i can’t wait for you to see your gift!

love, 💠🎄

oh i swear to god i dont even know how to play ftpanon. i just fuck around and find out. thank you for the support, if i win i’ll make merch <3

1) oof okay. i’d want to recommend gone girl by gillian flynn for the book but people would think i’m sick in the head so i’d go for the hunger games by suzanne collins, weirdly? it was the first f*ndom i was ever in & it meant so much to me when i was in my pre-teens, and now that i’m older i’m finding more things to love about it that i would’ve never thought of as a kid.

the show i’d recommend would be better call saul. i actively recommend every person i talk to ever to watch this and i need the bitch pack to hop onto the bandwagon because it’s so!!! good!!! it really is!!! it’s also a major inspiration for me to want to start studying film. it’s “only” a prequel to breaking bad but i’d honestly argue it’s better

the movie i’d recommend would be 13 going on 30. this sounds sooo goofy compared to the other choices but imo it’s the best romcom there is, the cinematography is unironically great and it makes some decent points about feminism. for an early 2000s movie starring mark ruffalo.

the album would be punisher by phoebe bridgers or tranquility base hotel & casino by arctic monkeys. i’m not choosing taylor because i don’t feel like any of her albums & my opinions on them say as much about me as punisher and tbhc do? like i love speak now and reputation but the vibe is just different. meanwhile punisher & tbhc have some great production, are conceptually strong & lyrically great. and i’m also just a little pretentious

2) why are you giving me so many hard questions.

3. monica geller

i am also a massive bitch with a superiority complex, an unhealthy sense of perfectionism and a bunch of friends that are really too good for her

2. fleabag

i’m nothing like her on paper or in experience but i feel the same things she feels. i bawled my fucking eyes out at that show like. she Gets it

1. kim wexler

it’s about the need to help people it’s about the fear of being stuck it’s about the fear of mediocrity it’s about needing to be control it’s about trying to be morally just while still respecting who you are. i’m gonna go insane btw

3) an easy one! nachos and maltesers

4) omg i think i dream in first person? but i’m not sure. my dreams are always so weird i don’t pay attention to where i am, i’m just like oh wow i have to call 911 and they’re gaslighting me and my best friend just morphed into my childhood friend without me realizing and why is kendall roy mad at me

thank you for this painfully detailed message, sorry it took so long to answer and i’m so excited to find out who you are. <3 hope you’re well!

#speaks now #ask #bpacksanta

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precisionpiner · 2 years

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I saw black clouds switch

I SAW BLACK CLOUDS SWITCH MOVIE

How you connect with the characters and the moral choices you make along the way will affect what you discover, the journey you take, and the resolution you find at the end.įor every decision you make, every interaction, your character’s decisions, personality and relationships are being tracked. I Saw Black Clouds is an interactive psychological thriller with supernatural elements and branching storylines. The truth turns out to be far more harrowing than she could have imagined… The game is also available on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4.After the unexpected death of a close friend, Kristina returns to her hometown looking for answers, only to unearth a string of dark secrets. TechRaptor reviewed I Saw Black Clouds on Nintendo Switch using a copy provided by the developer. Sometimes, you’re just better off putting the controller down and walking away. I Saw Black Clouds isn’t worth perpetuating that facade for. The controller is off and they’re really in charge but I certainly feel like I’ve done something. As a player, I often felt appeased by the game, like a child pretending to play their older siblings' console. The production is jarring, the audio design is poor, the story is filled with cliches and it simply consistently doesn’t hit the mark. I Saw Black Clouds has far too many issues to really recommend. Though, if you’re really desperate for a good one, I’d check out Dark Nights with Poe and Munro instead. If you’re a fan of FMV games and can deal with those issues, some of the scares can be quite good and there certainly is a mystery to unravel at its core. This being said, I Saw Black Clouds isn’t entirely bad. The lack of real decision makes the mediocre production shine through harder. You can choose whether or not you pick up a necklace but don’t get to decide if you want to explore the hand that just grabbed your leg. Where, occasionally, you can choose to investigate or not, it often leaves out fundamental decisions in exchange for ones that mean very little. Decision design is widely varied throughout. Awkward cuts, poor audio design, and mediocre acting move from, what could be considered charm, to something that takes itself far too seriously. This tone switch shines a lot on I Saw Black Clouds’ worst parts and makes flaws become even more inappropriate. It simply doesn’t have the budget or tact to deal with these with real intelligence and comes off as cheap and insincere. This is when it flips the script and decides to deal with some very dark and personal topics.

I SAW BLACK CLOUDS SWITCH MOVIE

With the jarring cuts and supernatural intro, I Saw Black Clouds provides just enough B movie appeal to work for some audiences. Its best horror moments feel a little more grounded and visceral but even this runs into its own unique problems. Oftentimes, jump scares feel like a cheap way of keeping you engaged and work to alienate instead. This has the unintended effect of making them feel entirely unnecessary. Whilst it does attempt to explain their presence, it doesn’t feel adequate enough to justify their existence. It immediately plays with the supernatural, injecting some ghostly atmosphere into scenes, but they rarely equate to anything better than a cheap jump scare. The same can be said for some of its scariest scenes. Where it could opt to flow scenes together with some transitionary shot, it chooses to sellotape the two and hope the game doesn’t suffer for it. There are a few central beats you must make your way through but it often didn’t put them together adequately enough. What didn’t work too well is the general flow of the story. These change the narrative in a mostly satisfying way reflecting quite well on how we conceptualize and understand our fate. You float in between three central ideas in your story: Denial, Acceptance, and Guilt. Depending on your choices, your relationships can change, your stats grow and the flow of the story changes. It attempts to foster some semblance of choice through a stats sheet and this actually is quite a good idea. When you can choose to stay to hear more information, the scene it jumps from is the same either way meaning, whilst your decisions change, the characters stay the exact same. You are often given decisions where the outcome is functionally the same. Fundamentally, this shows a flaw in the way the narrative is told.

#I saw black clouds switch

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kainissoable · 3 years

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Homecoming but Okayer

I started thinking about how to make Silent Hill: Homecoming more coherent and emotionally satisfying without having to discard too many of the major story beats. What I ended up with was about 2000 words of a half-baked idea, which in fairness is still slightly more baked than the idea the team who were paid to make the game came up with.

We start with a shorter version of the opening nightmare with more of an emphasis on the nurses. It’s hard to tell, but the two or three patients they’ve mutilated all bear a resemblance to Alex without actually using the same model. The dream ends when a nurse stabs him in the chest. Just behind her, he sees Josh, and wakes up shouting for him.

Alex wakes up and winces, putting a hand to his chest. As he takes some nondescript medication and looks around the shabby motel room, we get a voiceover of his mother, reading out the letter she sent to him inviting him back home before his next deployment. She never mentions his name.

When he reaches Shepherd’s Glen, the fog is so thick he can barely see. There are dozens of abandoned vehicles on the road in, and eventually he has to get out of his car and walk.

The town is pretty much deserted, but there are signs of violence on almost every street. Then he recognises someone in the fog – Detective Wheeler. He runs over, but Wheeler doesn’t recognise him, or know of any Alex Shepherd. Wheeler coldly tells him that whoever he is it’s best if he leaves town. There’s nothing good here now.

He leaves, confused and unsettled, but carries on down the empty streets. On his way, he finds one other living person – Judge Holloway. He calls out again. Surely his Aunt Maggie will remember him. There were no ties of blood between them, but he’d been friends with her daughter Elle since they were small, and she’d almost been a second mother to him.

Judge Holloway looks at him blankly until he says his name, and then she’s all smiles. Oh, hasn’t he changed, no wonder she didn’t recognise him in all this fog. Go see your mother, dear, she’s waiting for you. Such a pity Elle isn’t here to greet you but she’s busy.

Alex continues, feeling more optimistic, until he sees the third figure in the fog. From a distance, it looks like someone crawling along the street, but as he gets closer, he sees it’s no human. Armed with only a utility knife, Alex either fights it or flees, and eventually reaches his childhood home.

When he gets there, he can look around a little and pick up a couple of things. There are several pictures of his parents and brother, Josh, and in his mother’s sewing room is a picture of Josh and an older girl. Alex says he remembers that being taken, must be eight or nine years ago by now.

When he finds his mother, she looks like she’s been crying. She looks at him for a long time before hugging him and starts crying again. “I missed you too, Mom.” Alex tears up a bit too. It’s been a long time since he was last home. She glances out the window and hands him his dad’s old pistol. “See if you can find Elle. It’s not safe out there.”

Alex takes the pistol and goes out in search of her. He finds Elle hanging up a missing person poster. Her little sister Nora vanished a few days ago. Alex says he’ll help her look.

There’s no sign of Nora, but once or twice Alex sees Jake in the fog. If he runs towards him, the vision fades and all he finds is a dead end. He finds a hairband at the playground near the cemetery, but then sees Mayor Bartlett in the graveyard. Concerned for him, Alex follows him to a run down hotel.

He doesn’t find the mayor inside, but he does find several more monsters and a room he can’t get into with a woman inside. He sounds like such a nice young man, she says. Would he help her remember? Alex agrees and finds some letters and postcards of hers. As her memories start returning, she becomes distressed and guilty for her infidelity to her dying husband. Alex can choose to comfort her, help her come to terms with her actions, or speak to her harshly. Her ghost may then move on, leaving him a key to find the mayor.

Mayor Bartlett is in a garden that actually looks like a garden. He’s talking to himself, or possibly to the tree in the centre. Either way, he laughs when Alex asks about Nora, then panics. “He” has woken up.

The world changes and the tree twists into something closer to a corpse. It picks up Bartlett in one hand and crushes him. Then it turns its attention on Alex.

Alex fights and kills it, then faints as the world tuns back to normal.

He wakes up in a jail cell with Deputy Wheeler staring at him through the bars. He’s clearly suspicious, and things might have gone very badly for Alex if Elle hadn’t vouched for him. Wheeler releases him because law isn’t starting to mean much in this town now, and Alex and Elle find themselves fighting through dozens of monsters on the streets.

Jake appears again in the distance, but Alex holds Elle back when she tries to help him. He says he’ll explain later, because the monsters are closing in.

They take refuge in Dr Fitch’s surgery after being surrounded and find his daughter Scarlett’s playroom. Elle picks up one of her dolls which has fallen on the floor and asks if now is a good time for Alex’s explanation. He tells her that it can’t be Josh. He died last year in a boating accident. Alex says it was his fault, he should have been watching him more closely, but he was so distracted doing his reading for the army aptitude test, Josh wasn’t a priority. He wanted so badly to make his dad proud, but all he did was fail his family again. Elle starts to say something, but she doesn’t get beyond Alex before the world changes and she vanishes.

Alex explores the Otherworld surgery looking for her. He doesn’t find Elle, but at the bottom of a perilous descent littered with monster nurses, he finds Dr Fitch crying and cutting himself over and over with a scalpel. Alex tries to talk him out of it, but Fitch keeps babbling about his sins and how sorry he is to his little girl. The “little girl” is a disproportionate porcelain doll over twice his height, which kills the doctor and makes a spirited attempt to do the same to Alex.

Once Scarlett is killed for the second time, Alex wakes up in the playroom where he was. Elle wakes up beside him, but instead of a doll, she’s holding a key. She recognises the seal as matching the one in the town hall where her mother works. Elle gives the key to Alex and returns home to check on her mother and let her know what’s happened.

Alex goes to the town hall alone and discovers a ceremonial dagger hidden there. He recognises the pattern on its hilt as matching his mother’s jewellery box. He goes back home in search of answers and walks in on an argument between his parents and Judge Holloway. He doesn’t catch much more than his dad shouting that he failed.

They all turn as Alex bursts in and his mother’s face goes pale. Judge Holloway asks him to come with her. Elle’s tracked down Nora in Silent Hill, she says, what reason does he have to stay here?

Alex wavers, but before he can make a decision, a group of monsters burst through the window. His parents and Judge Holloway are dragged away, the former by more inventive redesigns of Pyramid Head, the latter by a monster taking some design inspiration from the Missionaries in SH3. Another of the same type attacks Alex.

The Otherworld returns once it’s defeated and Alex has to navigate a twisted version of his childhood home. While there, he finds his mother’s jewellery box and inside finds some photos of him and Josh growing up. This is where anyone who hasn’t already twigged finds out that Alex is a trans man, and always felt that he was letting his family down because of his identity. Looking at these photographs with his mother’s neat hand crossing out an illegible name and replacing it with Alex is the first time he feels accepted by her.

Alex escapes the hell house and finds Wheeler, who he convinces to help him rescue his family and loved ones from Silent Hill. Once there, they split up to cover more area. In the undercroft of a church, Alex discovers the shared history of Shepherd’s Glen and Silent Hill, of how his town’s four founding families kept the Otherworld’s influence at bay with a blood sacrifice every 50 years – a child for every family.

He heads deeper into the crypt and finds his parents at the centre of a shrinking ring of fire, two of the pyramid headed monsters looking on impassively. It transpires that his mother had invited Alex back to be sacrificed, but they couldn’t go through with it, not after losing Josh the same way. They hoped that the town would accept the accidental drowning, but realised too late that it hadn’t. Alex has the option to try to save them, but either way he fails. The monsters don’t stop him from leaving the church.

Outside, he finds Judge Holloway. Apart form a couple of bruises, she looks unharmed, and she comforts him as he weeps. Eventually, Alex asks after her daughters. He says he knows what the powers that be want her to do, but they can’t save the town now, but they can still save the people. She agrees, says she knows where Nora was being held and if they hurry, they might be able to rescue her. She leads him to a large open room and runs though a door which locks behind her. Nora was already dead, and this human centipede of hands reaching out to choke him is all that’s left of her.

Alex defeats the monster that was once as close to him as a sister, and when the noise ends, Judge Holloway returns, expecting to see him unconscious on the floor. She flies into a rage, telling him to abandon this selfishness or everything will be for naught. As she speaks, her voice becomes more and more difficult to understand as her body changes and she abandons the last of her humanity.

The monster that she changes into tries to drown Alex and fulfil the final sacrifice. She loved him as much of either of her daughters and she’s willing to sacrifice him just the same. Alex fights for his life and takes hers with a heavy heart. It wouldn’t have worked, he knows. It has to be someone of the Shepherd’s blood to consign him willingly to the water, and now there’s no one else left. He looks into the deep, dark pool he was so recently fighting to get away from, and jumps.

Depending on his actions, there are three fates for Alex. If he lets his self hatred and guilt rule him, his death saves the town in a bittersweet ending. If he chose wrath and vengeance, his body is dragged out of the water by the two pyramid headed monsters to become another judge of the guilty. If he chose to accept himself and come to terms with his actions, Elle and Wheeler pull him out of the water and he survives as well as the town of Shepherd’s Glen.

#ro rambles about silent hill #i don't know a damn thing about how the us army works and don't care enough to look it up for homecoming #so chalk all inconsistencies with timelines up to usual silent hill nonsense #yes i stole the title from those twilight but okayer comics but homecoming really isn't as bad as those books were #it's not good mark you but it's a mediocre game with some good ideas and a lot of bad execution of them #wouldn't play it even if i had the right console but i don't regret its existence

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erodasfishtacos · 3 years

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I fucking love mlb!harry and ceo!harry

Ur so talented

Erm i had an idea (pls feel free to ignore, i know u hv a busy schedule and life outside of tumblr) but what if mlb!harry played badly in a game (or less than how he expected he wld perform) and y/n makes him feel better

Ceo!harry loses an important deal and y/n makes him feel better

CRAMP

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warnings: smut; 18 +

YN knew it wasn’t going to be a fun time when Harry came home that night.

All four babies were fast asleep in their respective rooms and she was lounging on the couch, some cooking show on after she watched her husband play a rough game on ESPN.

He got hit with a fastball to his calf during the second inning and after that, his performance went downhill and he couldn’t get back on track.

He threw three homeruns and only made a few mediocre hits, trying to ignore the shooting pain in his lower leg.

In a typical Harry move, he refused to do the end of game handshakes with the opposing team and stormed off the field.

An interviewer chasing after him to ask him a question and Harry give her a dirty look before muttering, “Get away from me. I’m not answerin’ any questions,” before he disappears down the stairs.

YN knew just the thing that will cheer him up.

Harry trecks into the house with heavy feet and tense shoulders, his eyes are tired and frustrated as he drops his duffle on the ground carelessly.

“Hi,” YN murmurs when he steps into the living room, she was all curled up in a fluffy blanket with a surprise underneath.

“Hi,” He says back blandly, the frown unmoving from his face - almost like a pouty little kid.

“Can you come rub m’back?” She asks, feeling herself dampen a little bit with the excitement of what’s to come.

Harry scoffs, obviously in a sour mood, “I just finished a game, walked in the door, and tha’s the first thing I get is a demand?”

“Okay? And I just dealt with all four of your babies all day today. Ezra refused to be put down for more than five minutes straight,” She tries to bite down the smile, she shouldn’t find it funny when her husband’s bent out of shape.

That makes him melt a bit though, voice soften minutely, “Were the babies good today?”

“I’ll tell you about it after you rub my back.”

Harry grumbles, kicking off his trainers with a irritated edge, and heavy-footed as he makes his way to the couch.

“Take off the blanket and move on y’belly then,” He mutters, eyes boring into hers without reflecting the amusement that she has - if he was in a better mood he would have helped her along.

When she slips off the blanket and quickly moves on her stomach, burying her face in her arms when she hears him sucks in a breath.

“Wha’ are y’naked?” Harry demands, obviously trying to stay irritated because he deserved it for having such a shitty game.

YN makes sure her voice sounds airy and coy, “Just got hot is all.”

“S’fuckin’ freezin’ in here,” He rebukes but sits on the side of the couch with only a little room on the edge - his large hand coming to massage at her back muscles.

“Mmm,” She agrees noncommittally, feeling Harry’s hand wander curiously, further down her back to the lower curve before her bum.

“Y’trying to cheer m’up with sex,” Harry accuses, bent out of shape because he just wants to sulk in his poor performance but also he has the most beautiful woman in the world in front of him - bare and wet for him.

“I didn’t offer sex,” YN smirks, her husband falls into her to tricks every fucking time, no matter how much of bad mood he’s in.

Harry’s voice gets lower, more dangerous and gravely, “No? Just flashin’ y’ass at me for fun now? Decided for absolutely no reason to be waiting for m’to come home naked?”

“No reason at all,” She agrees, excitement building when his gentle massage turns rougher, hands kneading a little deeper into her muscles.

He shakes his head, eyes glued onto her backside where her cheeks are round and hiding what he really wants to see, “So if I dip m’fingers down between y’pretty thighs, your cunt won’t be soaking f’me?”

Harry’s skin prickles when his wife lets out a feathery, delicate moan at his words, he’s desperately trying to hold onto all of his negative feelings but he’s struggling because of the beauty that’s squirmy underneath him.

“Dry as the Sahara.”

It makes Harry finally break a little, letting out a belly laugh, and smacking her bum hard enough to make her squeak in delight.

His fingers travel down between her puffy folds, slipping into the heavenly heat of her where she is soaking his fingers.

In a filthy move, he pulls them back up and rubs them on his wife’s lips, “If y’not wet than what’s on y’lips, darlin’?”

Harry’s cock twitches when she lets out a quiet whine, pink tongue tracing her bottom lip before she laps at her husband’s thick fingers.

“Fuck,” He grunts, pressing down on her tongue,“Y’gonna let m’hit it from behind?”

When she can speak, she shakes her head, “No, want it on m’back.”

“Spoiled thing,” He murmurs, giving her one more smack before helping her flip back over, “Supposed t’be all about me, not you.”

YN’s eyes are sparkling, hand coming to tug lightly at his locks and pull him down into a kiss, her other hand wriggling his shorts down.

“All I had to do was take m’clothes off, didn’t even have to ask for it,” She giggles sweetly, teasingly, “Doesn’t matter what mood you’re in, always want to give it to me.”

“Best I’ve ever had, mama,” Harry replies against her lips, mumbled a bit as she grips him and leads him right to where she needs him most.

“Only one you ever had, only one you ever will have,” YN remarks confidently before throwing her head back when he bottoms out.

“Y’so fuckin’ hot when you’re possessive. You already know y’own me, darling. I bought you this big ole’ house, got four of m’babies sleepin’ upstairs, and got y’under me every night. I’m fucking yours. I have been since we met.”

“Harder, H,” She demands, nails digging into his strong shoulders as he fucks into her at a steady pace.

“Be quiet, let m’do it how I want,” He chides, keeping a slow but hard rhythm as he ducks down the suck at the hard peaks of her breasts before grazing them with his teeth.

“Do it how I want,” YN moans with an arrogant tone, it just drops with how confident she is that her husband is whipped for her. (He is).

But he’s already in a less than great mood so it has him flipping her, putting her onto all four as he wants, and slamming back in.

“We’re gonna do it ‘ow I want it,” He grunts in her ear, his hand gripping her cheek roughly enough to dimple and his other wrapping in her messy hair, “Y’absolutely soakin’ me, pet.”

“Oooh, fuck!” YN hisses but it doesn’t sound like a normal moan from her - Harry knows every sound his wife is able to make.

“Mama? Y’alright?” Harry checks, slowing down but not completely losing momentum as he loosens his grip on her hair.

“Cramp, I’m cramping. Want it on m’back,” YN whines, trying to shake out her leg and Harry obliges, helping her back down to their original position.

Again, Harry isn’t stupid.

As soon as she is back where she’s moaning lowly and with an airy hitch as she goes to pinch at one of her nipples.

“Y’such a spoiled brat,” Harry shakes his head in disbelief, “Y’didnt have a leg cramp, y’just wanted to be a pillow princess.”

“Lies,” YN giggles, eyes bright and happy as she peers up at her husband who is looking down a her like she hung the fucking moon and stars.

No one would ever be able to convince him that she didn’t.

“M’the one who had the shit day. I’ve just spoiled you so fuckin’ rotten tha’ y’just a desperate slut,” He laughs meanly but it sends a full body zip of electricity through his wife and he knows it.

“Harry,” She chokes out, gripping his biceps hard.

“Hands to yourself,” He snaps, taking her hands and pinning them above her head with just one of his hands.

The other comes down and lands a smack right on her puffy folds, once..twice…three times before YN is coming on him.

“Easy f’me,” Harry hums with satisfaction, leaning down to kiss her moans quiet as he fucks in hard a handful on times before he’s filling her up, “There y’go, hm? Marking y’up as mine, all full of me.”

“Yeah, baby,” YN agrees dazed, dated as he comes to a halt as he softens and pulls out - wiping her down with his shirt as she whines, “Sensitive.”

“M’sorry, mama,” Her husband apologizes, trying to be careful around her nerves.

After, they lay on the couch - talking about their day until Briar’s monitor lights up from the side table with high pitched cries.

“Mama, mama, daddy,” The thirteen month old sobs as she sits up in her crib - unable to find her binky in the dark.

“I’ll go get the bub,” Harry offers, sitting up and tugging his briefs and shorts back on.

“Okay, she missed you a lot today. I’m going to go shower.”

When Harry steps into the room, Briar is looking expectantly at the door and her eyes widen when she spots her father.

“Daddy, dadada,” She babbles happily, standing up to clutch the railing of her crib with anticipation.

“Oh, there’s m’lil mama. Hi darling,” Harry coos softly, gathering her up into his arms and taking a step over to the rocking chair.

He pops her pacifier back between her lips and she looks up at him with heavy-lids, it doesn’t take long before her blinks get longer until her eyes shut close.

Harry doesn’t know what he did to deserve such an amazing life but he was sure fucking grateful.

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blackswaneuroparedux · 3 years

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Anonymous asked: I enjoyed reading your posts about Napoleon’s death and it’s quite timely given its the 200th anniversary of his death this year in May. I was wondering, because you know a lot about military history (your served right? That’s cool to fly combat helicopters) and you live in France but aren’t French, what your take was on Napoleon and how do the French view him? Do they hail him as a hero or do they like others see him like a Hitler or a Stalin? Do you see him as a hero or a villain of history?

5 May 1821 was a memorable date because Napoleon, one of the most iconic figures in world history, died while in bitter exile on a remote island in the South Atlantic Ocean. Napoleon Bonaparte, as you know rose from obscure soldier to a kind of new Caesar, and yet he remains a uniquely controversial figure to this day especially in France. You raise interesting questions about Napoleon and his legacy. If I may reframe your questions in another way. Should we think of him as a flawed but essentially heroic visionary who changed Europe for the better? Or was he simply a military dictator, whose cult of personality and lust for power set a template for the likes of Hitler?

However one chooses to answer this question can we just - to get this out of the way - simply and definitively say that Napoleon was not Hitler. Not even close. No offence intended to you but this is just dumb ahistorical thinking and it’s a lazy lie. This comparison was made by some in the horrid aftermath of the Second World War but only held little currency for only a short time thereafter. Obviously that view didn’t exist before Hitler in the 19th Century and these days I don’t know any serious historian who takes that comparison seriously.

I confess I don’t have a definitive answer if he was a hero or a villain one way or the other because Napoleon has really left a very complicated legacy. It really depends on where you’re coming from.

As a staunch Brit I do take pride in Britain’s victorious war against Napoleonic France - and in a good natured way rubbing it in the noses of French friends at every opportunity I get because it’s in our cultural DNA and it’s bloody good fun (why else would we make Waterloo train station the London terminus of the Eurostar international rail service from its opening in 1994? Or why hang a huge gilded portrait of the Duke of Wellington as the first thing that greets any visitor to the residence of the British ambassador at the British Embassy?). On a personal level I take special pride in knowing my family ancestors did their bit on the battlefield to fight against Napoleon during those tumultuous times. However, as an ex-combat veteran who studied Napoleonic warfare with fan girl enthusiasm, I have huge respect for Napoleon as a brilliant military commander. And to makes things more weird, as a Francophile resident of who loves living and working in France (and my partner is French) I have a grudging but growing regard for Napoleon’s political and cultural legacy, especially when I consider the current dross of political mediocrity on both the political left and the right. So for me it’s a complicated issue how I feel about Napoleon, the man, the soldier, and the political leader.

If it’s not so straightforward for me to answer the for/against Napoleon question then it It’s especially true for the French, who even after 200 years, still have fiercely divided opinions about Napoleon and his legacy - but intriguingly, not always in clear cut ways.

I only have to think about my French neighbours in my apartment building to see how divisive Napoleon the man and his legacy is. Over the past year or so of the Covid lockdown we’ve all gotten to know each other better and we help each other. Over the Covid year we’ve gathered in the inner courtyard for a buffet and just lifted each other spirits up.

One of my neighbours, a crusty old ex-general in the army who has an enviable collection of military history books that I steal, liberate, borrow, often discuss military figures in history like Napoleon over our regular games of chess and a glass of wine. He is from very old aristocracy of the ancien regime and whose family suffered at the hands of ‘madame guillotine’ during the French Revolution. They lost everything. He has mixed emotions about Napoleon himself as an old fashioned monarchist. As a military man he naturally admires the man and the military genius but he despises the secularisation that the French Revolution ushered in as well as the rise of the haute bourgeois as middle managers and bureaucrats by the displacement of the aristocracy.

Another retired widowed neighbour I am close to, and with whom I cook with often and discuss art, is an active arts patron and ex-art gallery owner from a very wealthy family that came from the new Napoleonic aristocracy - ie the aristocracy of the Napoleonic era that Napoleon put in place - but she is dismissive of such titles and baubles. She’s a staunch Republican but is happy to concede she is grateful for Napoleon in bringing order out of chaos. She recognises her own ambivalence when she says she dislikes him for reintroducing slavery in the French colonies but also praises him for firmly supporting Paris’s famed Comédie-Française of which she was a past patron.

Another French neighbour, a senior civil servant in the Elysée, is quite dismissive of Napoleon as a war monger but is grudgingly grateful for civil institutions and schools that Napoleon established and which remain in place today.

My other neighbours - whether they be French families or foreign expats like myself - have similarly divisive and complicated attitudes towards Napoleon.

In 2010 an opinion poll in France asked who was the most important man in French history. Napoleon came second, behind General Charles de Gaulle, who led France from exile during the German occupation in World War II and served as a postwar president.

The split in French opinion is closely mirrored in political circles. The divide is generally down political party lines. On the left, there's the 'black legend' of Bonaparte as an ogre. On the right, there is the 'golden legend' of a strong leader who created durable institutions.

Jacques-Olivier Boudon, a history professor at Paris-Sorbonne University and president of the Napoléon Institute, once explained at a talk I attended that French public opinion has always remained deeply divided over Napoleon, with, on the one hand, those who admire the great man, the conqueror, the military leader and, on the other, those who see him as a bloodthirsty tyrant, the gravedigger of the revolution. Politicians in France, Boudon observed, rarely refer to Napoleon for fear of being accused of authoritarian temptations, or not being good Republicans.

On the left-wing of French politics, former prime minister Lionel Jospin penned a controversial best selling book entitled “the Napoleonic Evil” in which he accused the emperor of “perverting the ideas of the Revolution” and imposing “a form of extreme domination”, “despotism” and “a police state” on the French people. He wrote Napoleon was "an obvious failure" - bad for France and the rest of Europe. When he was booted out into final exile, France was isolated, beaten, occupied, dominated, hated and smaller than before. What's more, Napoleon smothered the forces of emancipation awakened by the French and American revolutions and enabled the survival and restoration of monarchies. Some of the legacies with which Napoleon is credited, including the Civil Code, the comprehensive legal system replacing a hodgepodge of feudal laws, were proposed during the revolution, Jospin argued, though he acknowledges that Napoleon actually delivered them, but up to a point, "He guaranteed some principles of the revolution and, at the same time, changed its course, finished it and betrayed it," For instance, Napoleon reintroduced slavery in French colonies, revived a system that allowed the rich to dodge conscription in the military and did nothing to advance gender equality.

At the other end of the spectrum have been former right-wing prime minister Dominique de Villepin, an aristocrat who was once fancied as a future President, a passionate collector of Napoleonic memorabilia, and author of several works on the subject. As a Napoleonic enthusiast he tells a different story. Napoleon was a saviour of France. If there had been no Napoleon, the Republic would not have survived. Advocates like de Villepin point to Napoleon’s undoubted achievements: the Civil Code, the Council of State, the Bank of France, the National Audit office, a centralised and coherent administrative system, lycées, universities, centres of advanced learning known as école normale, chambers of commerce, the metric system, and an honours system based on merit (which France has to this day). He restored the Catholic faith as the state faith but allowed for the freedom of religion for other faiths including Protestantism and Judaism. These were ambitions unachieved during the chaos of the revolution. As it is, these Napoleonic institutions continue to function and underpin French society. Indeed, many were copied in countries conquered by Napoleon, such as Italy, Germany and Poland, and laid the foundations for the modern state.

Back in 2014, French politicians and institutions in particular were nervous in marking the 200th anniversary of Napoleon's exile. My neighbours and other French friends remember that the commemorations centred around the Chateau de Fontainebleau, the traditional home of the kings of France and was the scene where Napoleon said farewell to the Old Guard in the "White Horse Courtyard" (la cour du Cheval Blanc) at the Palace of Fontainebleau. (The courtyard has since been renamed the "Courtyard of Goodbyes".) By all accounts the occasion was very moving. The 1814 Treaty of Fontainebleau stripped Napoleon of his powers (but not his title as Emperor of the French) and sent him into exile on Elba. The cost of the Fontainebleau "farewell" and scores of related events over those three weekends was shouldered not by the central government in Paris but by the local château, a historic monument and UNESCO World Heritage site, and the town of Fontainebleau.

While the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution that toppled the monarchy and delivered thousands to death by guillotine was officially celebrated in 1989, Napoleonic anniversaries are neither officially marked nor celebrated. For example, over a decade ago, the president and prime minister - at the time, Jacques Chirac and Dominque de Villepin - boycotted a ceremony marking the 200th anniversary of the battle of Austerlitz, Napoleon's greatest military victory. Both men were known admirers of Napoleon and yet political calculation and optics (as media spin doctors say) stopped them from fully honouring Napoleon’s crowning military glory.

Optics is everything. The division of opinion in France is perhaps best reflected in the fact that, in a city not shy of naming squares and streets after historical figures, there is not a single “Boulevard Napoleon” or “Place Napoleon” in Paris. On the streets of Paris, there are just two statues of Napoleon. One stands beneath the clock tower at Les Invalides (a military hospital), the other atop a column in the Place Vendôme. Napoleon's red marble tomb, in a crypt under the Invalides dome, is magnificent, perhaps because his remains were interred there during France's Second Empire, when his nephew, Napoleon III, was on the throne.

There are no squares, nor places, nor boulevards named for Napoleon but as far as I know there is one narrow street, the rue Bonaparte, running from the Luxembourg Gardens to the River Seine in the old Latin Quarter. And, that, too, is thanks to Napoleon III. For many, and I include myself, it’s a poor return by the city to the man who commissioned some of its most famous monuments, including the Arc de Triomphe and the Pont des Arts over the River Seine.

It's almost as if Napoleon Bonaparte is not part of the national story.

How Napoleon fits into that national story is something historians, French and non-French, have been grappling with ever since Napoleon died. The plain fact is Napoleon divides historians, what precisely he represents is deeply ambiguous and his political character is the subject of heated controversy. It’s hard for historians to sift through archival documents to make informed judgements and still struggle to separate the man from the myth.

One proof of this myth is in his immortality. After Hitler’s death, there was mostly an embarrassed silence; after Stalin’s, little but denunciation. But when Napoleon died on St Helena in 1821, much of Europe and the Americas could not help thinking of itself as a post-Napoleonic generation. His presence haunts the pages of Stendhal and Alfred de Vigny. In a striking and prescient phrase, Chateaubriand prophesied the “despotism of his memory”, a despotism of the fantastical that in many ways made Romanticism possible and that continues to this day.

The raw material for the future Napoleon myth was provided by one of his St Helena confidants, the Comte de las Cases, whose account of conversations with the great man came out shortly after his death and ran in repeated editions throughout the century. De las Cases somehow metamorphosed the erstwhile dictator into a herald of liberty, the emperor into a slayer of dynasties rather than the founder of his own. To the “great man” school of history Napoleon was grist to their mill, and his meteoric rise redefined the meaning of heroism in the modern world.

The Marxists, for all their dislike of great men, grappled endlessly with the meaning of the 18th Brumaire; indeed one of France’s most eminent Marxist historians, George Lefebvre, wrote what arguably remains the finest of all biographies of him.

It was on this already vast Napoleon literature, a rich terrain for the scholar of ideas, that the great Dutch historian Pieter Geyl was lecturing in 1940 when he was arrested and sent to Buchenwald. There he composed what became one of the classics of historiography, a seminal book entitled Napoleon: For and Against, which charted how generations of intellectuals had happily served up one Napoleon after another. Like those poor souls who crowded the lunatic asylums of mid-19th century France convinced that they were Napoleon, generations of historians and novelists simply could not get him out of their head.

The debate runs on today no less intensely than in the past. Post-Second World War Marxists would argue that he was not, in fact, revolutionary at all. Eric Hobsbawm, a notable British Marxist historian, argued that ‘Most-perhaps all- of his ideas were anticipated by the Revolution’ and that Napoleon’s sole legacy was to twist the ideals of the French Revolution, and make them ‘more conservative, hierarchical and authoritarian’.

This contrasts deeply with the view William Doyle holds of Napoleon. Doyle described Bonaparte as ‘the Revolution incarnate’ and saw Bonaparte’s humbling of Europe’s other powers, the ‘Ancien Regimes’, as a necessary precondition for the birth of the modern world. Whatever one thinks of Napoleon’s character, his sharp intellect is difficult to deny. Even Paul Schroeder, one of Napoleon’s most scathing critics, who condemned his conduct of foreign policy as a ‘criminal enterprise’ never denied Napoleon’s intellect. Schroder concluded that Bonaparte ‘had an extraordinary capacity for planning, decision making, memory, work, mastery of detail and leadership’. The question of whether Napoleon used his genius for the betterment or the detriment of the world, is the heart of the debate which surrounds him.

France's foremost Napoleonic scholar, Jean Tulard, put forward the thesis that Bonaparte was the architect of modern France. "And I would say also pâtissier [a cake and pastry maker] because of the administrative millefeuille that we inherited." Oddly enough, in North America the multilayered mille-feuille cake is called ‘a napoleon.’ Tulard’s works are essential reading of how French historians have come to tackle the question of Napoleon’s legacy. He takes the view that if Napoleon had not crushed a Royalist rebellion and seized power in 1799, the French monarchy and feudalism would have returned, Tulard has written. "Like Cincinnatus in ancient Rome, Napoleon wanted a dictatorship of public salvation. He gets all the power, and, when the project is finished, he returns to his plough." In the event, the old order was never restored in France. When Louis XVIII became emperor in 1814, he served as a constitutional monarch.

In England, until recently the views on Napoleon have traditionally less charitable and more cynical. Professor Christopher Clark, the notable Cambridge University European historian, has written. "Napoleon was not a French patriot - he was first a Corsican and later an imperial figure, a journey in which he bypassed any deep affiliation with the French nation," Clark believed Napoleon’s relationship with the French Revolution is deeply ambivalent.

Did he stabilise the revolutionary state or shut it down mercilessly? Clark believes Napoleon seems to have done both. Napoleon rejected democracy, he suffocated the representative dimension of politics, and he created a culture of courtly display. A month before crowning himself emperor, Napoleon sought approval for establishing an empire from the French in a plebiscite; 3,572,329 voted in favour, 2,567 against. If that landslide resembles an election in North Korea, well, this was no secret ballot. Each ‘yes’ or ‘no’ was recorded, along with the name and address of the voter. Evidently, an overwhelming majority knew which side their baguette was buttered on.

His extravagant coronation in Notre Dame in December 1804 cost 8.5 million francs (€6.5 million or $8.5 million in today's money). He made his brothers, sisters and stepchildren kings, queens, princes and princesses and created a Napoleonic aristocracy numbering 3,500. By any measure, it was a bizarre progression for someone often described as ‘a child of the Revolution.’ By crowning himself emperor, the genuine European kings who surrounded him were not convinced. Always a warrior first, he tried to represent himself as a Caesar, and he wears a Roman toga on the bas-reliefs in his tomb. His coronation crown, a laurel wreath made of gold, sent the same message. His icon, the eagle, was also borrowed from Rome. But Caesar's legitimacy depended on military victories. Ultimately, Napoleon suffered too many defeats.

These days Napoleon the man and his times remain very much in fashion and we are living through something of a new golden age of Napoleonic literature. Those historians who over the past decade or so have had fun denouncing him as the first totalitarian dictator seem to have it all wrong: no angel, to be sure, he ended up doing far more at far less cost than any modern despot. In his widely praised 2014 biography, Napoleon the Great, Andrew Roberts writes: “The ideas that underpin our modern world - meritocracy, equality before the law, property rights, religious toleration, modern secular education, sound finances, and so on - were championed, consolidated, codified and geographically extended by Napoleon. To them he added a rational and efficient local administration, an end to rural banditry, the encouragement of science and the arts, the abolition of feudalism and the greatest codification of laws since the fall of the Roman empire.”

Roberts partly bases his historical judgement on newly released historical documents about Napoleon that were only available in the past decade and has proved to be a boon for all Napoleonic scholars. Newly released 33,000 letters Napoleon wrote that still survive are now used extensively to illustrate the astonishing capacity that Napoleon had for compartmentalising his mind - he laid down the rules for a girls’ boarding school on the eve of the battle of Borodino, for example, and the regulations for Paris’s Comédie-Française while camped in the Kremlin. They also show Napoleon’s extraordinary capacity for micromanaging his empire: he would write to the prefect of Genoa telling him not to allow his mistress into his box at the theatre, and to a corporal of the 13th Line regiment warning him not to drink so much.

For me to have my own perspective on Napoleon is tough. The problem is that nothing with Napoleon is simple, and almost every aspect of his personality is a maddening paradox. He was a military genius who led disastrous campaigns. He was a liberal progressive who reinstated slavery in the French colonies. And take the French Revolution, which came just before Napoleon’s rise to power, his relationship with the French Revolution is deeply ambivalent. Did he stabilise it or shut it down? I agree with those British and French historians who now believe Napoleon seems to have done both.

On the one hand, Napoleon did bring order to a nation that had been drenched in blood in the years after the Revolution. The French people had endured the crackdown known as the 'Reign of Terror', which saw so many marched to the guillotine, as well as political instability, corruption, riots and general violence. Napoleon’s iron will managed to calm the chaos. But he also rubbished some of the core principles of the Revolution. A nation which had boldly brought down the monarchy had to watch as Napoleon crowned himself Emperor, with more power and pageantry than Louis XVI ever had. He also installed his relatives as royals across Europe, creating a new aristocracy. In the words of French politician and author Lionel Jospin, 'He guaranteed some principles of the Revolution and at the same time, changed its course, finished it and betrayed it.'

He also had a feared henchman in the form of Joseph Fouché, who ran a secret police network which instilled dread in the population. Napoleon’s spies were everywhere, stifling political opposition. Dozens of newspapers were suppressed or shut down. Books had to be submitted for approval to the Commission of Revision, which sounds like something straight out of George Orwell. Some would argue Hitler and Stalin followed this playbook perfectly. But here come the contradictions. Napoleon also championed education for all, founding a network of schools. He championed the rights of the Jews. In the territories conquered by Napoleon, laws which kept Jews cooped up in ghettos were abolished. 'I will never accept any proposals that will obligate the Jewish people to leave France,' he once said, 'because to me the Jews are the same as any other citizen in our country.'

He also, crucially, developed the Napoleonic Code, a set of laws which replaced the messy, outdated feudal laws that had been used before. The Napoleonic Code clearly laid out civil laws and due processes, establishing a society based on merit and hard work, rather than privilege. It was rolled out far beyond France, and indisputably helped to modernise Europe. While it certainly had its flaws – women were ignored by its reforms, and were essentially regarded as the property of men – the Napoleonic Code is often brandished as the key evidence for Napoleon’s progressive credentials. In the words of historian Andrew Roberts, author of Napoleon the Great, 'the ideas that underpin our modern world… were championed by Napoleon'.

What about Napoleon’s battlefield exploits? If anything earns comparisons with Hitler, it’s Bonaparte’s apparent appetite for conquest. His forces tore down republics across Europe, and plundered works of art, much like the Nazis would later do. A rampant imperialist, Napoleon gleefully grabbed some of the greatest masterpieces of the Renaissance, and allegedly boasted, 'the whole of Rome is in Paris.'

Napoleon has long enjoyed a stellar reputation as a field commander – his capacities as a military strategist, his ability to read a battle, the painstaking detail with which he made sure that he cold muster a larger force than his adversary or took maximum advantage of the lie of the land – these are stuff of the military legend that has built up around him. It is not without its critics, of course, especially among those who have worked intensively on the later imperial campaigns, in the Peninsula, in Russia, or in the final days of the Empire at Waterloo.

Doubts about his judgment, and allegations of rashness, have been raised in the context of some of his victories, too, most notably, perhaps, at Marengo. But overall his reputation remains largely intact, and his military campaigns have been taught in the curricula of military academies from Saint-Cyr to Sandhurst, alongside such great tacticians as Alexander the Great and Hannibal.

Historians may query his own immodest opinion that his presence on the battlefield was worth an extra forty thousand men to his cause, but it is clear that when he was not present (as he was not for most of the campaign in Spain) the French were wont to struggle. Napoleon understood the value of speed and surprise, but also of structures and loyalties. He reformed the army by introducing the corps system, and he understood military aspirations, rewarding his men with medals and honours; all of which helped ensure that he commanded exceptional levels of personal loyalty from his troops.

Yet, I do find it hard to side with the more staunch defenders of Napoleon who say his reputation as a war monger is to some extent due to British propaganda at the time. They will point out that the Napoleonic Wars, far from being Napoleon’s fault, were just a continuation of previous conflicts that arose thanks to the French Revolution. Napoleon, according to this analysis, inherited a messy situation, and his only real crime was to be very good at defeating enemies on the battlefield. I think that is really pushing things too far. I mean deciding to invade Spain and then Russia were his decisions to invade and conquer.

He was, by any measure, a genius of war. Even his nemesis the Duke of Wellington, when asked who the greatest general of his time was, replied: 'In this age, in past ages, in any age, Napoleon.'

I will qualify all this and agree that Napoleon’s Russian campaign has been rightly held up as a fatal folly which killed so many of his men, but this blunder – epic as it was – should not be compared to Hitler’s wars of evil aggression. Most historians will agree that comparing the two men is horribly flattering to Hitler - a man fuelled by visceral, genocidal hate - and demeaning to Napoleon, who was a product of Enlightenment thinking and left a legacy that in many ways improved Europe.

Napoleon was, of course, no libertarian, and no pluralist. He would tolerate no opposition to his rule, and though it was politicians and civilians who imposed his reforms, the army was never far behind. But comparisons with twentieth-century dictators are well wide of the mark. While he insisted on obedience from those he administered, his ideology was based not on division or hatred, but on administrative efficiency and submission to the law. And the state he believed in remained stubbornly secular.

In Catholic southern Europe, of course, that was not an approach with which it was easy to acquiesce; and disorder, insurgency and partisan attacks can all be counted among the results. But these were principles on which the Emperor would not and could not give ground. If he had beliefs they were not religious or spiritual beliefs, but the secular creed of a man who never forgot that he owed both his military career and his meteoric political rise to the French Revolution, and who never quite abandoned, amidst the monarchical symbolism and the court pomp of the Empire, the republican dreams of his youth. When he claimed, somewhat ambiguously, after the coup of 18 Brumaire that `the Revolution was over’, he almost certainly meant that the principles of 1789 had at last been consummated, and that the continuous cycle of violence of the 1790s could therefore come to an end.

When the Empire was declared in 1804, the wording, again, might seem curious, the French being informed that the `Republic would henceforth be ruled by an Emperor’. Napoleon might be a dictator, but a part at least of him remained a son of the Enlightenment.

The arguments over Napoleon’s status will continue - and that in itself is a testament to the power of one of the most complex figures ever to straddle the world’s stage.

Will the fascination with Napoleon continue for another 200 years?

In France, at least, enthusiasm looks set to diminish. Napoleon and his exploits are scarcely mentioned in French schools anymore. Stéphane Guégan, curator of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, which, among other First Empire artworks, houses a plaster model of Napoleon dressed as a Roman emperor astride a horse, has described France's fascination with him as ‘a national illness.’ He believes that the people who met him were fascinated by his charm. And today, even the most hostile to Napoleon also face this charm. So there is a difficulty to apprehend the duality of this character. As he wrote, “He was born from the revolution, he extended and finished it, and after 1804 he turns into a despot, a dictator.”

In France, Guégan aptly observes, there is a kind of nostalgia, not for dictatorship but for strong leaders. "Our age is suffering a lack of imagination and political utopia,"

Here I think Guégan is onto something. Napoleon’s stock has always risen or fallen according to the vicissitudes of world events and fortunes of France itself.

In the past, history was the study of great men and women. Today the focus of teaching is on trends, issues and movements. France in 1800 is no longer about Louis XVI and Napoleon Bonaparte. It's about the industrial revolution. Man does not make history. History makes men. Or does it? The study of history makes a mug out of those with such simple ideological driven conceits.

For two hundred years on, the French still cannot agree on whether Napoleon was a hero or a villain as he has swung like a pendulum according to the gravitational pull of historical events and forces.

The question I keep asking of myself and also to French friends with whom I discuss such things is what kind of Napoleon does our generation need?

Thanks for your question.

#question #ask #napoleon #french #french history #history #military history #bonaparte #france #historiography #republic #historians #personal

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rosetherandomreblogger · 2 years

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So, I’ve seen Sonic 2. And I’ve had… MANY ideas. Mostly about Echidna culture- after all, they’ve LONG been a culture of warriors- so much so that nearly all of them are warriors themselves from what we can see. So I’ve had a good, long, think. And I’ve come up with some ideas about how their culture may have worked. (Keep in mind this is based purely off of speculation and the events of the Sonic movies that we’ve seen, and my thoughts are highly unlikely to be the thoughts that the filmmakers and crew had in mind when producing. All my own thoughts.)

First off, I find it HIGHLY unlikely that they were all warriors. If that was the case, where do their masks come from? Who provides the food? The weapons? The wraps and paint on their spines? No, it’s far more likely, in my opinion, that they are trained as warriors from a young age, granted a rite of passage around possibly 13, then have the opportunity to learn another craft, such as blacksmithing, weaving, fishing, farming, etc. This would account for why ALL the people of the village went out to defeat Longclaw, instead of those who may be vital to a functioning village staying behind to tend to their duties.

Furthermore, I have a good idea as to how this rite of passage may work. From about the age of… maybe 5, let’s say, to the age of 13, their rite of passage, they are trained by an older, more seasoned warrior. Depending on the skill set and interest of each child, they can get a mediocre warrior who’s good at everything, or a warrior who specializes in one specific aspect (say archery). From there, a major part of their day is made up of training under their mentors. The rest of the day is taken up by, quite frankly, being a kid. Children would still be allowed to have fun, play games, pester their parents, learn how to read, etc. When it comes time for their rite of passage, they face off against their mentor in a ritual battle. If they win, they are considered a fledgling warrior and given easy battles to fight and more time to hone their skills, or they can choose a different path to go down (again, other skills ARE important). Should they lose, they are again given a choice- try again, train a bit longer for it, or choose a different path in life.

I also believe that each skill or job in their village can be figured out by looking at how they style their spines. In the flashback scene, we see that many echidnas have some kind of paint ringing their spines, or some kind of wrap. I believe that simply by glancing at these, you can figure out what job each echidna has within their community. Now, would I be able to tell from a glance at the movie? No, of course not! We do not have the answer key to what each marking and wrap may mean.

It’s also likely that the plumage on the masks means something- either indicating melee fighters from ranged fighters, or perhaps mentors and apprentices. Either way, it’s a fun detail I wanted to point out.

All in all, those are my headcanons. If y’all want to add on, please do.

Also I know many of us look to @welcome-to-green-hills for their anthropology and archaeology expertise, as well as their purely baby representations of our favorite characters from these movies! So if you don’t already know them, go check them out!

#sonic the hedghog movie #sonic the hedgehog 2 #potential spoilers #it’s mostly my headcanons though #headcanons #long post

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felassan · 3 years

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Some DA trivia and dev commentary from Twitter

There’s a lot of different tweets, so I’m just pasting and linking to the source rather than screencapping them all or making several different posts or something. Post under cut for length.

User: Was dragon age 2 your favourite in the franchise?

David Gaider: DA2 was the project where my writing team was firing on all cylinders, and they wrote like the wind- because they had to! Second draft? Pfft. Plot reviews? Pfft. I was so proud of what we all accomplished in such a brief time. I didn't think it was possible. [source] DA2 is, however, also where the goal posts kept moving. Things kept getting cut, even while we worked. I had to write that dialogue where Orsino turned even if you sided with him, because his boss battle had been cut and there was no time to fix the plot. A real WTF moment. >:( [source]

Mike Rousseau: I remember bugging that! And then being told it wasn't a bug, and being so confused. Doing QA for DA2 was an experience. Trial by fire. [source]

DG: So I think it's safe to say DA2 is my favorite entry in the DA franchise and also the sort of thing I never want to live through ever again. Mixed feelings galore. [source]

User: (I personally blame whoever it was for ruining most romance arcs in other games for me; they don't live up to Fenris's romance storyline)

DG: I wrote Fenris, so uh - me, I guess? Or maybe his cinematic designer, who put in the puppy dog eyes. [source]

User: If DA2 had just been an expansion, do you think it would have been better received? There was a lot of great stuff in there, and I think my initial dislike of it was because of the zone reuse. If it hadn't needed to be a full game, would that issue not have arisen?

DG: Hard to say. It was either going to be an over-scoped expansion or an under-scoped sequel. If it had stayed an expansion, it might never have received the resources/push it DID get. [source]

User: I'd love to visit the universe where you had an extra year or so to work on it. You did a very good job as it stands, but it definitely had rough edges. Not just the writing team either. The whole game had hit and miss moments, that just a little more dev time could have fixed.

DG: On one hand, DA2 existed to fill a hole in the release schedule. More time was never in the cards. DA2 was originally planned as an expansion! On the other, if we had more time, would we have started doing that thing where we second guess/iterate ourselves into mediocrity? [shrug emoji] [source]

Jennifer Hepler: This is what I love about DA2. Personally, I greatly prefer something that's rough and raw and sincere to something that's had all the soul polished out of it. Extra time would have helped for art and levels, but it would have lost something too. [source]

DG: Right? I think we could have used some time for peer reviews (and fewer cuts), but I think the rawness of the writing lent a certain spark that we usually polished out. [source]

JH: Definitely. I think the structure (more character-driven) and the tightness of the timeframe let each individual writer's voice really come through. Polish can be very homogenizing. [source]

DG: I should add I'm not, by any means, against iteration. Some iteration is good and necessary. The problem that BioWare often had is that we never knew when to stop. Like a goldfish, we would fill the space given to us by constantly re-iterating on things that were "good enough". [source]

Patrick Weekes: I appreciate your incredibly diplomatic use of the past tense on "had". :D [source]

User: DA2 was my gateway into the series and I’m so happy it is. I love the game the way that it is. It’s one of my favorites of all time. But I am also aware of everything that was said here. If it were remastered, do you think it would change?

DG: I'd be surprised if it was ever remastered. If it was, do you really think they'd change things? Do remasters do that? No idea. [source]

User: Both sides got undercut as I recall. Didn't that whole sequence also end with the mage leader embracing blood magic? It was very much "a plague on both your houses" moment, at least for me.

DG: Yep. Orsino was supposed to have his own version of Meredith's end battle, which only happened if you sided with the templars. That got cut, but the team still wanted to use the model we'd made for him. So... that happened. [source]

DG: I would personally say that DA2 is a fantastic game hidden under a mountain of compromises, cut corners, and tight deadlines. If you can see past all that, you'll see a fantastic game. I don't doubt, however, that it's very difficult for most to do that. [source]

PW: I love DAI with all my selfish "I worked on this" heart, but DA2's follower arcs and relationships are probably my favorite in the series. [source]

User: As I've expressed many times, I love the game, especially it's writing and characters but, for me, the most impressive aspect of it, in consideration of it's lack of time for drafts and revisions, is the 2nd act with Arishok. What amazingly complex character and fantastic duel

User: Just played it again and I have to agree. Though he is bound by the harsher tenants of the Qun, he makes valid points about free marcher society. Though it is obvious that he and Hawke will come to blows eventually, the tension builds gradually and understandably

DG: Luke did such a fantastic job with the Arishok I found myself sometimes wishing the Qunari plot had just been THE plot. [source]

User: What do you think would have changed, story wise, if you had more time for DA2?

DG: I would have taken out that thing where Meredith gets the idol. It was forced on me because she needed to be "super-powered" with red lyrium for her final battle. Being "crazy", however, robbed her side of the mage/templar argument of any legitimacy. I hated hated hated that. [source]

User: I deeply lament that there wasn't/couldn't be some sort of DA2 equivalent of Throne of Bhaal's Ascension mod.

DG: I'd have done it, if DA2 had allowed for anything but the most rudimentary of modding. ;) [source]

User: I mean, and I think I understand where you were trying, but how much legitimacy did the Templars and her as top Templar have after they're keeping the mages locked up against their will in the old slave quarters? Feel free to not reply.

DG: I think it's the kind of discussion which requires nuance, and which discussions on the Internet are not prone to. [source]

User: Was a compromise that the quest lines don’t branch? It felt like it was supposed to be that way but then you end up in the same place later regardless of what you pick. Like I hoodwinked the templars so good to help the apostates escape but in Act II they were caught anyway.

DG: I remember us having a lot more branching in the initial planning yes. Most of this got trimmed out in the first or second wave of cuts, in an effort to not cut the plots altogether. [source]

DG: "If you could Zack Snyder DA2, what would you change?" Wow. I'm willing to bet Mark or Mike (or anyone else on the team) would give very different answers than me, but it's enough to give a sober man pause, because that was THE Project of Multiple Regrets. [source] I mean, it's the most hypothetical of hypotheticals. It's never gonna happen. I wouldn't be surprised if EA considered DA2 its embarrassing red-headed stepchild. We'd also need to ignore that in many ways DA2 was as good as it was bad BECAUSE of how it was made. But that aside? [source] First, either restore the progressive changes to Kirkwall we'd planned over the passing of in-game years or reduce the time between acts to months instead of years... which, in hindsight, probably should have been done as soon as the progressive stuff was cut. [source] I'm sure you're like "get rid of repeated levels!" ...but I don't care about that. All I wanted was for Kirkwall to feel like a bigger city. Way more crowded. More alive! Fewer blood mages. [source] I'd want to restore the plot where a mage Hawke came THIS close to becoming an abomination. An entire story spent trapped in one's own head while trapped on the edge of possession. Why? Because Hawke is the only mage who apparently never struggles with this. It was a hard cut. [source]

User: I would LOVE to hear more details about this! I don’t suppose there’s any chance of a short story?

DG: I don't even remember the details of the story, sorry. There was a fight, and you caught the bad guy and then realized none of it was real and woke up idk [source]

DG: I'd want to restore all those alternate lines we cut, meaning people forget they'd met you. Or that they knew you were a mage. Or, oh god, that maybe they'd romanced you in DAO. So much carnage. [source] I'd want to restore the Act 3 plots we cut only because they were worked on too late, but which would have made the buildup to the mage/templar clash less sudden. Though I don't remember what they were, now. Some never got beyond being index cards posted on the wall. [grimace emoji] [source] As I mentioned elsewhere, I'd want to restore Orsino's end battle so he wouldn't need to turn on you even if you sided with him. And I'd want an end fight with the templars that didn't require Meredith to have red lyrium and go full Tetsuo. [source] Heck, maybe an end decision where you sided with neither the mages nor the templars. Because it certainly ended up feeling like you could brand both sides as batshit pretty legitimately, no? That was never planned, tho. No idea how to make that feel like an actual path atm. [source] Maybe an option to go "umm, Anders... what are you DOING?" 👀 [source] And, of course, a Varric romance, because Mary took that "slimy car salesman" character we'd planned and did the impossible with him. I can feel Mary glaring at me for even suggesting this, tho. [source] Lastly, the original expanded opening to the game which allowed you to spend time with Bethany and Carver BEFORE the darkspawn attacked. And, um, that's about it off the top of my head. Zack Snyder, WHAT PANDORA'S BOX HAVE YOU OPENED. [source] Shit, I remembered two more things: 1) Restore the "Varric exaggerates the heck out of the story" at the beginning of every Act, until Cassandra calls him on it. Yes, that was a thing. 2) Make DA: Exodus. Yes, I am still bitter. [source] God damn it, I meant "Make DA: Exalted March". The DA2 expansion, NOT Exodus since that was DA2's original name and makes no sense. Because the expansion ended with Varric dying, and that will always be on my "things left undone" list. [source]

User: Whaaaat?

DG: Well, you know that scene in Wrath of Khan where Spock goes into the dilithium chamber because he's a Vulcan? Well, imagine that but with Varric and red lyrium and because he's a dwarf. ;) [source]

John Epler: I distinctly remember referencing the bit from MGS4 where you crawl through the microwave corridor in the split screen, while cinematic battle rages on the other half. [source]

DG: It would have been glorious, John. Glorious. [source]

JE: I don't think I've ever been so certain what a shot should look like as I did Hawke coming in and finding Varric in the broken throne, just like when he was telling Cassandra his story. [source]

DG: It would have come full circle! Auggghh, it still kills me. [source]

User: Lord, you folks are a little too good at this.

JE: The true secret behind videogame narrative is knowing how to make yourself seem a lot more clever than you actually are. [source] 'Oh, we TOTALLY planned that.' [source]

User: Ok, this thread [the DA2 regrets thread, which is the big chunks above] but Inquisition.

DG: My regrets about Inquisition are, more or less, the normal kind. Nothing so dramatic, I'm afraid. [source]

User: You can keep your Varric romance, I want a Flemeth romance goddamnit!

DG: I would allow for one flirt option, and then a recording of Kate Mulgrew laughing for three minutes straight. [source]

User: I had a hypothesis about the repetitive caves in DA2. They're repetitive because it's Varric telling the story and he didn't consider them important. They're like sets in a play. (Okay, I really suspect it was a time/money/resources thing but I like my fake explanation better.)

DG: Hang a lampshade on it, maybe? Cassandra: "But that's the exact cave you were in last time?" Varric: "Whatever. They all look the same, I'm not THAT kind of dwarf. Can we move on?" [source]

User: that makes sense, hypothetically to make Varric romanceable and keep his arc—that had to happen for the main plot—I imagine you would have to make double the content (or more)? which would've been a tall order given the time/budget constraints the game was under

DG: Right. When it comes to "romance arc" vs. "follower story arc", we generally only had time to do one or the other. Never both. Romancing Varric would have meant not getting the story of his that you did. [source]

Mary Kirby: The one exaggeration I really, REALLY wanted, that we never got to do was Varric narrating his own death scene with Hawke weeping over him, then cutting to Cassandra's pissed off glaring at him. [source]

DG: Haha! The one I wanted was Varric's plot where he takes on the baddies single-handedly, sliding across the floor like Jet Lee, action movie-style, until finally Cassandra gets irritated and he has to admit Hawke & the rest of the party showed up to help. [source]

MK: We did that one! (He didn't do any Jet Lee moves, though.) Jepler gave him letterboxing to get The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly showdown vibes while he shot a ton of mooks single-handed. [source]

DG: Wow. Shows how much I remember. [source]

JE: I found it! I remember seeing this sequence as my treat for doing a bunch of much more challenging work. It was fun to see how far I could push our limited library of animations. [link] [source]

DG: Heh awesome. I could have sworn it was cut, honestly. I think I was even in that meeting. [source]

User: no disrespect but that’s surprising and rich of Mary “Hard in Hightown” Kirby to think DA2 shouldn’t have had a Varric romance when she wrote an entire book of Varric’s self-insert character pining over his Hawke insert character… HIH is the reason we had VHawke Summer 2018

DG: I can't *really* speak for Mary, or how she feels about it now compared to back then. I only know how she felt about it back then, and I'm not sure it was as much the concept of the romance but that Varric's entire story would be bent to "romance arc" ...a very different thing. [source]

JH: I remember pushing to have the first DLC start with Hawke having an option to ask Varric, "Did you tell Cassandra about us?" and if you picked it, Varric would answer, "Of course not, baby. I told her you were sleeping with X..." and then proceed as if you had had a full romance. [source]

DG: I still wonder how that would have gone over. x) [source]

JE: Okay, one more DA2 thing. Putting together the cinematics for this scene was a blast. [link] [source]

MK: These lines are my greatest legacy. I want "Make sure the world knows I died... at Chateau Haine!" inscribed on my tombstone. [source]

JE: I was so glad no one said 'no' to the crane shot. [source]

MK: It needs that crane shot. It's the perfect icing on that cake made from solid cheese. [source]

DG: The designers were all "we need more combat" and I think we were all "I think you underestimate just HOW interesting we can make this dinner party". [source]

JE: And finally. I think @SherylChee wrote the one-liner. I think we had a collection of like, 20. [link] [source]

Sheryl Chee: Yeah! Something like that! I remember submitted a whole bunch and Frank said you only needed one. Wish I'd kept the other fifteen. [source]

JE: A random chooser where, each time through the scene, you get a different one-liner. [source]

JE: DA2 is the project I'm the proudest of. I also absolutely get that it didn't land for a lot of people. But I don't think it's inaccurate to say that, in a lot of ways, DA2 defined my career. [source] Everyone spent a year working at their maximum ability. I was a fresh cinematic designer and was given all of Varric's content, as well as the Act 1 Finale mission. It was a lot for someone who had been doing the Cinematics thing for literally 6 months. [source] There's some stuff in there I can't look at without wincing. And there's some stuff I'm genuinely proud of. Not to mention, it was my introduction to most of the writing team. Several of whom I'm still working with today! Albeit in a different capacity [source] Also, weirdly, one of my most enduring memories of Dragon Age 2 is how much Bad Company 2 we'd play at lunch. It was a LOT. [source] Every game I've worked on has a game I played attached to it. ME2 is Borderlands. DA2 is Bad Company 2. DAI is DayZ. I, hmm. There's a progression there. I don't know how I feel about it. [source]

User: Is DA4 going to be tarkov then?

JE: I've kind of churned out of Tarkov for now. Probably Hunt Showdown, at least right now. [source]

User: I think people also don't take nuance into consideration -- like I FULLY acknowledge the flaws in my favorite games and will openly criticize them, but that doesn't mean they're not my favorite games anymore??? You can like and thing and still be critical of it.

JE: A lot of my favourite shit is deeply flawed! I acknowledge it and I think it's interesting to dissect the flaws. [source]

User: I still wish Justice was an actual character in DA2 rather than a plot point.

DG: There was a moment during DAI where we *almost* put in you running into Justice with the Grey Wardens, and he's all "Kirkwall? I never went to Kirkwall" [source]

User: Does that imply that Justice was shoehorned in to DA2?

DG: Nah, it was an in-joke where we thought it'd be fun to suggest that "Justice" was simply some demon that tricked Anders in DA2. Wooo those tricky demons! We didn't do it, though. [source]

User: [about templars] except, I don't think it had very much legitimacy to begin with. keep in mind, we interact with other characters with the same argument. The one that comes to mind is Cullen, a sane templar in power. The templar's side of the argument is inherently flawed.

DG: I don't doubt that many people agree with you, and yet people can and do argue on behalf of the templars as well. My place isn't to pick a side, but to provide evidence that players can interpret for themselves [source]

User: Can you shed some light for us on how DA was able to do multiple same-sex romance options for different genders but the Mass Effect team treated them like the plague? What process existed for your team that just wasn't their for the other tentpole franchise?

DG: Different people making the decisions, almost different cultures. I don't know what it's like now, but for many years the Mass Effect team and the Dragon Age team were almost like two different studios working within the same building. [source]

User: It truly boggles the mind. Kudos for doing demonstrably better on consistent queer representation than the ME teams. Y'all never needed us to make petitions to try to get the studio's attention and ask them to do better by us. That's the fight we're once again embroiled in now.

DG: Honestly, I don't feel like tut-tutting the Mass Effect team. They did their part, and if they were a bit later to the show than the DA team they certainly did more than almost every other game out there -- and willingly. [source]

Updates begin here

User: So what was the reason for naming Dragon age 2 "Dragon age II" and not using a subtitle?

DG: As I recall, that was purely a publisher decision. I think they wanted to avoid the impression it was an expansion. [source]

User: Is there no chance of ever remaking DA2 under better circumstances? -Somehow remove the repetitiveness of gameplay by making changes and updating the tech and adding much more to the storyline. It could almost be a new very exciting game.

DG: I'd say there's zero chance of that. Let's keep our hopes up for the next DA title instead. [source]

User: I am a little confused here, help me out here please! How exactly was the cut boss battle with Orsino supposed to work out? How it would've kept him from turning against the player?

DG: It means that, if you sided with the templars, the entire boss bottle at the end would have been against Orsino and the mages. No fight against Meredith. The end decision would have been more divergent. [source]

User: I do remember that one of the reasons going around for that, was that resources were going to the transition to Frostbite. I'm still not fully sold on that having been a good choice. I felt that more time should have been given for that transition considering it was made for FPSs

DG: We didn't transition to Frostbite until DAI. Given our time frame for DA2, I don't think we *could* have transitioned to a new engine. [source]

User: Since your talking about the what could have been for DA2. Could you say what your script was for Anthem? Cause I remember reading that you wrote the plot on that game.

DG: I created a setting for Anthem and scripted out a plot - but, as I understand it, almost none of that ended up being used. So it's a bit pointless to talk about what I'd planned, as that'd be for some completely different type of game. [source]

User: [in reference to the exchange above where DG said “Being "crazy", however, robbed her side of the mage/templar argument of any legitimacy. I hated hated hated that.” re: Meredith] except, I don't think it had very much legitimacy to begin with. keep in mind, we interact with other characters with the same argument. The one that comes to mind is Cullen, a sane templar in power. The templar's side of the argument is inherently flawed.

If I missed a tweet, got the wrong source link or included a tweet twice, feel free to let me know and I’ll correct.

Edit / Update: Post update 22nd April

#dragon age #bioware #video games #fenris #the Fenaissance #long post #longpost #cassandra pentaghast #my lady paladin #dragon age 4 #the dread wolf rises #da4 #mass effect

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gainerstories · 3 years

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Professor Plump

*UNLOCKED*

As a big fat thank you to everyone who has supported this blog and enjoyed my stories, I am unlocking one of my favorite stories off Patreon. This has been a rough year for everyone and y’all enjoy a little treat. Of course, if you want more (20+ more fattening stories in fact) you know where to go. Enjoy.

As much as Robert Daniels loved being a professor, he woke up full of dread on the first day of fall semester. At 28 he was the youngest tenure track faculty in his department and he often felt that all eyes were on him. His first academic year had been rough, exhausting, and tiresome and he wasn’t ready to get back in the game. He just wanted his beautifully sunny and lazy summer vacation to last one or two more months.

As he sat up in bed his belly spilled forward pushing down his morning wood. There was no doubt he’d gained quite a bit of pudge in the last few months. It didn’t bother him, however, as most of his colleagues were plump and he viewed extra weight as a sign of contentment and maturity. During the school year he had actually lost weight from stress and being overworked. His new, rounder form lent a sense of satisfaction.

As Robert stumbled out of bed and into the bathroom to shower he took a close look at himself. He’d be turning 29 soon and was finally starting to look like a man. His face had grown scruffy and his chest hair finally bloomed across his pecs and down to his puffy stomach. The thirty pounds of fat that clung to his belly also gave him a more mature look. He was now firmly within “dad bod” territory and wore that badge with pride. He scooped his fat up with both his hands and gave it a hearty jiggle. He wondered if anyone on campus would comment on his somewhat weight gain.

Turning around, Robert examined his rear which was now fluffy and dimpled with cellulite. He noticed that even his ass had grown a bit hairier along with a small patch of fuzz on his lower back, framed between two bulging love handles. He could recall seeing the same patch on his father and wondering if the same was in store for himself. This memory cemented his perceived transition into manhood.

Robert’s thighs had also thickened up a bit and now touched when he was standing straight. He rubbed his thighs and gave them a slap, admiring how they bounced. Lately, he had no choice but to manspread when he sat down. Crossing his legs was a thing of the past. The added weight on his lower half gave him a sense of groundedness. All around the extra pudge made him feel strong and unshakable, despite jiggling quite a lot when he actually did shake.

Most of this excess poundage had been accrued during a month long cruise down Central America. Robert had spent almost every single day getting tipsy on fruity blended drinks and satisfying his drunchies from dusk ‘til dawn at the buffet. Carbs became his best friend, soaking up the sugary alcoholic concoctions he guzzled during the day. Altogether, cruise life was a much needed respite from the long nights of grading papers and doing research during the academic year.

His salary did not allow him to indulge in fancy foods very often, and so this cruise was an opportunity to go hog wild. He made a conscious decision to eat and live like a king. As a result, he began to notice his body expanding only midway through the trip. It seemed as though out of nowhere he had grown a squishy paunch that jutted out behind his shirts. By the end of the vacation he was even larger, noticing fat accumulating all over his body.

As he stood in front of his bathroom mirror, Robert found himself particularly fascinated by the small white stretch marks that had formed at the top of his inner thighs. He traced his fingers over their subtle indentations. He hadn’t seen fresh stretch marks since puberty when his shoulders expanded overnight one summer. He was shocked to see the same thing happen simply from overeating on a long vacation.

Plump, tan, and satisfied, Robert stepped into the shower with vigor and began to get ready for his first day back to work. He trimmed his wild scruff back to a presentable shadow and styled his hair. He then slipped into underwear that clung more than usual to his meaty rump and resultantly compressed his bulge more than usual. He would have to remember to buy some new pairs. T-shirts had also grown a bit snug but this was not a huge concern for they would be hidden behind a button up. What he hadn’t considered was that his button ups from last year would also struggle to fit around his new body.

Robert sucked in his gut while doing each button. He let his stomach spill forward and was shocked at just how much the shirt did not fit. Scrambling through his closet he found the loosest button up he owned and put it on. It was still snug and would definitely be strained when he sat down, but it would have to suffice. Next, he slid into his stretchiest pair of chinos and was instantly filled with anxiety.

The fabric clung to his thighs and ass leaving little to the imagination. This would have been tolerable except for the fact that the waistband would not button no matter how hard he tried. With no other option, Robert scrounged a safety pin from the utility drawer and fastened the pants closed. Donning one of his bulkier belts he hoped no one would notice he’d outgrown his pants.

His day commenced with a faculty meeting catered with coffee and pastries. Although he had eaten a breakfast sandwich immediately upon getting to campus, he grabbed a healthy looking danish for the meeting. It was dry and mediocre as campus food tended to be, but that didn’t stop him from inhaling it within minutes. A few of his colleagues eyed his bulging waistline although no one made a comment.

Midway through the two hour meeting Robert found that his stomach was already growling to be fed. With no other choice, he would have to eat another Danish despite the fact he would be the only one going for seconds. He stood to grab one more danish and as he sat down he heard the unmistakable noise of a seam busting. Praying no one else heard, he subtly reached down to his thighs where a small hole had formed.

After the meeting he headed straight to the bathroom to examine the damage. It wasn’t too bad, maybe just an inch or so large. Plus, his underwear matched his pants so it was barely noticeable. He figured he could get through the day without anyone noticing. Although no one noticed the tear in his pants, his students were fully aware of his newfound growth.

“Mr. Daniels lookin’ THICK,” someone commented before his first class began.

Robert ignored the comment and got on with his lecture. Still, in the back of his head he worried about his appearance and snug outfit. There was no question he would be investing in some new work clothes. By the end of the class he was hungry once again. At least it was lunch time, so he felt justified in heading to the student union for a big meal. He grabbed a massive burrito, chips and guac, a cookie, and large soda which he brought back to his desk.

Such a filling lunch was exactly what he needed. The food was comforting and satisfying, giving the plump professor a sense of peace. After scarfing it all down he leaned back in his chair and sighed. Just as he did so two buttons on his shirt went shooting across the room. “Fuck,” he said aloud to himself and went searching for the buttons so he could sew them back on. As he knelt on his hands and knees he felt the contents of his belly slosh forward and the seam of his pants rip even further.

Eventually, he found the missing buttons and broke out the sewing kit to get them back on. By the time he was finished stitching himself back into his clothes, there was someone knocking at his door. He’d forgotten about office hours. In a mad rush he cleaned the food wrappers off his desk and greeted the student. As he sat back down at his desk the same two buttons snapped back off and shot under his desk. Although the student overtly stared at Robert’s bulging gut, filled to the brim with his fattening lunch, neither of them acknowledged the embarrassment.

After the student left, Robert took off the button up and slipped his spare sport coat over his tee. The tee was more than a little snug and definitely didn’t hide much- the indentation of his belly button was fully visible- but it would have to do. After a constant stream of students over the course of an hour Robert rushed to his next class. The lecture left Robert feeling exhausted and tired. It was evening and he had grown peckish again, so he decided to grab a bite to eat before he had a meeting with the dean and could go home.

Hawaiian barbecue sounded like a good idea when he ordered it. However, after gobbling up every last morsel, the young professor felt uncomfortably full and bloated. He yearned for to return to the cruise ship where he could take a long nap after overindulging, but instead he sluggishly headed to the dean’s office. His belly had swelled considerably with the Hawaiian food and he found himself having to stretch the hem of his shirt down to ensure his gut was fully concealed.

Once inside, Robert cautiously took a seat in one of the rickety old chairs in the waiting room for the dean. After a few seconds he felt a snap underneath his ass as the seat of the chair gave way. Trying to be as subtle as possible, Robert cautiously lifted himself from the broken chair and casually examined a painting on the wall until the dean greeted him.

Once inside, the dean offered him a home baked muffin that his wife had made. Robert tried to refuse at first but the dean pushed it on him. He began pecking at the muffin and realized it was indeed quite moist and delicious. He polished it off in a couple minutes and resisted licking his fingers. By the end of the meeting the dean persuaded Robert to take one more muffin for the road. Without a second thought, Robert greedily snatched the biggest muffin of the bunch.

As he walked through the campus at night, illuminated by lanterns, Robert gobbled up the muffin while reflecting on the fact that he was in desperate need of a new wardrobe. His belly was stuffed to capacity and the sheer weight of it bulging out in front of him forced Robert to walk slow and steady with his shoulders back and hips forward. Freed from his constricting button up, his rounded gut peeked out from behind the sport coat and wobbled back and forth with each step to his car.

The walk seemed longer than usual, likely because he was slower than usual. Somewhat winded, Robert couldn’t wait to sit down as he opened the door to his hatchback. However, as he did so, a booming snap assaulted his ears and he felt his belly spill forward into his lap. Robert’s belt had completely snapped in half while the thigh of his pants simultaneously split all the way open from knee to crotch. His girth was simply too much to contain.

At least it happened at the end of the day, he told himself.

#gainer stories #professorplump

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yanderenightmare · 4 years

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yandere ! BNHA headcannons

PUNISHMENTS

Support me at KO-FI if you feel like it<3

goodiebag WARNINGS: yandere, abuse, anxiety, blood, guilt, mind control, NONCON/DUBCON, self-harm, slavery, starvation, isolation, torture, violence

BAKUGO KATSUKI - KACHAN

Her fear is much too satisfying to ever feel the need to actually hurt her. He’s still a sadist, don’t get me wrong, however laying off the physical pain and preying on the emotional side of things.

I can take and do whatever I fucking want with you, whenever I want, and you can do nothing to stop me, Pumpkin.

However, his temper will always get the best of him despite him constantly fighting against it. The sad truth is, he doesn’t want to hurt her, he really doesn’t, but a lack of self-control is something that will always burden Katsuki. Where ignoring his building frustrations only get the best of him in the end.

Do you think I want to hurt you?! Well, I don’t! I fucking hate it!

He will stick to threatening for the most part, discouraging bad behavior as it arises. Seemingly unaffected by most of it, given his paramount strength in contrast to his darling, he manages to ignore most of her transgressions and settle for simply ridiculing her pathetic efforts, and doing so with perverted delight. His cock growing heavy and warm at the feel of her meek struggles. In short words: refusal will be met with salacious mockery.

Watcha gonna do about it, princess?

You’re such a crybaby!

I’d think again, if I were you, sweetheart.

So cute, so hopelessly adorable, good thing you’re all mine.

Words will set him off faster than actions. Tell him she hates him, she’ll soon be preaching otherwise, his cock pounding her into a silly hot wet cross-eyed mess, feeling foolish for ever even humoring the idea of retaliating.

What the fuck did you just say, slut? Say that again, I beg you. You’ll regret it, bitch.

Katsuki’s tolerance for unwanted behavior all depends on his mood. Sometimes he’s in a nasty mood, where he might just steer his darling into making a bad decision only to give him an excuse to punish her. These will be light punishments, sexual more times than most. He’ll have her bent over his lap, slapping the bare soft plump flesh of her ass again and again until she’s convincing enough in her apology.

Who owns this ass? Say my name! That’s right, you freak. Mine.

However, other times the smallest thing can set him off, and certainly not in any good way. He’ll be fuming, flames licking up and about his arms, crackles of hellbent fire mingling with his maniacal cackles. She’ll be lucky to come out with minor burns.

Time to learn your fucking lesson. Time for you to understand who here’s in charge.

However, the times where he’s silent, those times where he’s tired and fed up, those are the times she should really fear. Where he’ll be taunting like some haunting ghost, playing with her, perhaps opening the locked outer-door only to find satisfaction in hunting her down and dragging her back to do it all over again.

I’ll give you a reason to cry.

Continue to scream, and I’ll do it again.

DABI - TODOROKI TOUYA

Dabi doesn’t ever need to punish his darling too severely because his presence is an intimidating enough detergent on its own, encouraging her to stay away from doing anything too reckless. He looks like the onset of death, it’s only logical for her to think he might be as well.

Waddya look so scared for, Doll? I haven’t even done anything yet.

However, he won’t shy away from making it clear who’s in charge, something of which he’ll do from the get-go. But again, the fact is in-mistakeable whence he’s large and lanky form towers over her, smiling that crooked grin that have his skin stretching in stiches and staples. Leathery fingers brushing over sensitive areas, cyan eyes intently watching her every move.

That’s right, Babygirl, you know your place. Don’t make me remind you.

Besides he’ll sprinkle a couple path-keeping scares here and there, as in: he’ll correct behavior while she’s committing the crime and prove how idiotic her reluctance really is. Seeing how he’s much larger and much stronger than her, fighting truly is futile. He’ll make it clear she’s being foolish, lacing his words with condescension as he scolds her as though she were a child, while making her bounce up and down the length of his cock.

Silly little doll, thinks she has an actual fighting chance. You’re adorable, Pumpkin.

For the most part he’ll just ignore when she refuses him or fights him, it’s not like her pathetic struggles can do anything to stop him. In fact, he quite enjoys it in some malicious sadistic sense. How her delicious little wiggles have trembles running pleasantly up his spine, nestling somewhere in the bulging tip of his cock.

You’re so cute, begging like anything could get you out of this.

In some ways he’ll actually encourage misbehavior. Leaving her just enough freewill, just enough room to fight back, constantly egging her on and provoking her to retaliate either physically or verbally.

Babydoll, so feisty today. Try that again, why dontcha?

As far as punishments actually go, they’ll never leave out the element of pleasure. Spanking is always fun, hearing her scream his name over and over until it leaves her wet lips like a broken cry. Whilst gifting as well as reprimanding her with thumbprint scorch-mark hearts never gets old either.

Such a crybaby. Come one, cry some more for me, Angel.

Dabi is not the one to snap. He’s very calm, collected, reserved, calculating. Therefore, when his darling crosses the line, as in escapes, he’ll have punishments instore for her, punishments containing of her on her knees sucking his dick like her life is on the line, however… he’ll never go any farther. His darling is precious, he can’t have her getting damaged beyond repair.

Let’s get you home, where you belong, Buttercup.

SHIGARAKI TOMURA

Tomura will try to avoid threats and punishments altogether, knowing how his guilt will ultimately defeat the purpose of correcting his darling’s behavior. He wants to be happy when with his darling, and nothing but happy, but that won’t be possible if he serves as a constant reminder of dread to his darling with the display of fear ever so prominent and gut-wrenching in her eyes.

Don’t look so scared when I’m around. I won’t hurt you.

However, that doesn’t mean he’ll resist his carnal desires. He will resist in hurting her when she tries to fend him off, but he’ll still bury his dick deep inside her and hold her down as he starts rocking his hips sharply into the underside of her thighs, the slap of skin on skin echoing in his barren room.

You feel so good… just relax, I’ll make you feel good too.

He’ll lie more often than not as opposed to spouting threats. Promises upon promises, all bound to break. All in an effort to calm his darling down or to build some unstable trust in their relationship.

I’m not gonna hurt you.

You’re safe here.

He gets more annoyed than actually mad, her efforts mediocre against his lanky slender fingers wrapped tightly around her wrists. Giving mere half-hearted vocal corrections as he keeps her still for his cock to abuse.

Give up already.

Stop fighting.

You’re only wasting your energy.

But… he walks on constant eggshells. He will try to ignore her unwanted retaliation to the best of his capability and reel in the reigns of his temper, but he’s prone to snap at some point, knowing there lies a dormant yearning to touch her in more vile ways than one.

Careful now, don’t tempt me.

He’ll try to the very best of his efforts to be soft and understanding, not realizing before it’s too late that his actions only aided in watering the seeds of his darker desires, soon to be blooming with all hell breaking loose.

I’m a monster? Who’s fucking fault is that?

He’s easily vexed. He doesn’t enjoy her crying and will try to make it stop immediately. Screaming is even worse, piercing his ears making him scratch at his neck frantically.

Stop, stop, stop, stop, STOP! Stop, or I’ll give you a reason to cry.

But, the worst is when she runs. He’ll keep her locked in his room for the most part, but sometimes she’ll manage to sneak away and get lost in her attempt to find her way out of the compound he’s situated her in. He doesn’t enjoy any part of it. Running after her in empty rundown hallways like some monster in a horror-game. Catching her and hugging her close, dragging her back into his cold dark dreary room.

Don’t even look at the door. I don’t want to feel like you’re trying to run away from me again.

Wherever you go, I will find you, and bring you back… even if I have to drag you by your hair.

He’s a sore loser as well. He’s basically a child and will throw a temper tantrum when she beats him in a videogame. This will call for punishment, however he won’t call it that, he’ll call it another game, a game he knows she’s got no chance of winning.

You think you can beat me?

I’ll show you who’s boss.

SHINSO HITOSHI

Here’s one that rarely feels a need to punish his darling, mostly because he finds her struggles absolutely adorable when she’s trying to fend off either his mind-control or his scarf.

How precious, Kitty thinks she has a choice.

You’re so cute when you’re struggling.

But, she can choose to look at it as a punishment when he ties every inch of her body up in tight rope and spreads her thighs so far apart she doesn’t even have room to tremble when he slides his cockhead up and down the slick of the velvety folds on her exposed pussy.

You’re such a pretty little thing, tied up like that, Kitten.

He will threaten her though, if only to see her squirm in discomfort beneath him. See her lips quiver as her mind reels upon his words, her eyes spiraling in complete chaos, not knowing what to expect.

Pussy on a platter, where should I start? I love playing with my food.

Not much can actually anger him, but silence, cold-dreaded pin-drop deafening silence that racks at his mind, that can really bring out the eerie viciousness dwelling inside him.

Kitty, I asked you a question. If you know what’s good for you, you better answer.

Remember the last time you didn’t listen to me?

His lessons leaving her psyche crumbling in their wake. Fucked completely silly, his words rummaging through her mind, ordering her to cum again and again and again and one more time for master.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re begging for me to take control.

Let me show you what happens to little kittens who don’t follow the rules.

True punishments will lack all forms of fun, coming in the form of utter solitude. He knows how ferally and how painfully deep loneliness bites. He’ll leave her alone for days if not weeks in complete abandonment, starving her at times, simply waiting for as long as it takes before she comes crawling back to him.

You must be truly desperate to come to me for comfort, Kitten. I was beginning to think you were incapable of learning.

Saying the wrong thing will also set him off, even more so than silence. He loves noise. She can call him anything, yell and scream and cry until her lungs feel like they’re bleeding, and he won’t mind, but… call him a villain… don’t be surprised when he acts like one.

People warned you about me, didn’t they? Calling me a villain. Should’ve listened… look where you are now.

She never even saw it coming, him and his large hands, how easily they could bruise and choke and scar when truly motivated.

What? You thought you were gonna get away with that? Think again.

TAKAMI KEIGO - HAWKS

Keigo deals out punishment as he sees fit. He’ll punish the crime when it’s being committed. Crimes ranging from ignoring him to saying the wrong thing to saying the right thing with the wrong attitude. But when the punishment is dealt, he’ll forget the whole ordeal ever happened, never dwelling on the past, never holding a grudge and always, constantly talking about the future.

I really can’t take it when you cry like that… smile for me, alright? You’re so pretty when you smile.

I love you, Dove. Just let me love you and perhaps you’ll learn how to love me too someday.

He will grow frustrated and impatient though, and that aggression will bubble up and escape his grip on it at times. But, he’ll yell more than anything, yell and cry and kiss and lick and slobber all over her, pinning her wrists to her sides and hugging her with his massive wings, suffocating her in crimson.

Say you love me. Would that be so hard? I just need you to say you love me. Just pretend, only for a little while. Please, Dove.

He’ll humor other forms of making her more lenient. He’ll wash her hair, message her, carry or fly her places, even though she recoils back and flinches with every touch his calloused fingertips adorn her silky-smooth body with.

Maybe branding you will help.

He has this theory that sex will bring them closer and excuses his advances with this belief each time she starts sobbing when he pries her legs open to plant his sloppy warm worming tongue between them.

I can make you feel so good, Dove, you just gotta let me.

Don't be so difficult, I'm doing this for you!

His real violent nature lies dormant however. It’ll only come out when she crosses the line of trying to leave him. His wings will turn razor-sharp and she’ll catch herself in the heat of her regret, missing the time he would wrap them around her ever so softly and cry into her chest. Now, he’s baring his teeth, feathers coming to slice through her skin as a punishment of a million cuts.

What’s wrong with you!?

Don’t you dare fucking try it, you know you can’t outrun me.

He’ll feel really bad afterwards, cleaning every wound, embalming them with cooling salves, kiss and apologize for each and every one, but on the inside, he can feel the crawling feeling of contentment linger. Seeing her so catatonically compliant is refreshing and such a well-needed break form the exhaustion of fighting all the time.

I’m so sorry, Angel. I love you so much. You know that, right?

She barely flinches when he decides to get in the bath with her, and when he comes to message the anxiety from out of her back he can feel the slight shift of her leaning into the touch. His protective mode fades as he holds her close, and the pure earth-shattering woeful relief comes wafting over the residue of his fear of losing her, leaving him in a fit of rather ugly sobbing.

Nothing. Without you, Angel, I’m nothing.

MIDORIYA IZUKU - DEKU

Izuku acts oblivious to undesired behavior and retaliation. He will very much be aware of it all, yet he believes making her feel safe is paramount. So, he’ll forgive all her nasty words, and respect her wish to keep the intimacy to a minimum. In fact, the only time he sees her completely naked is in the bath, where he actually lets her do most of her own washing.

You’re safe here, Darling.

Other than that, he’ll coo and explain as much as he sees fit when she asks her bitter questions, however… there will always be the slight irking presence of self-righteous condescension.

Cruel, terrible people live out there, Sweetie, people who want to hurt you.

You’re lucky I’m so nice. Anyone else would’ve taken advantage of you and done something horrible, by now.

Although Izuku is a patient guy, he can easily see when something isn’t progressing. Good thing he has plenty of methods to make things go his way. While making her feel safe was plan A, Plan B is not as forgiving. If a soft touch isn’t to her liking, then perhaps a firm touch is what she needs.

I know it hurts, Honey, but that’s what happens when you don’t do as I say.

She’ll wake up with her wrists and ankles tied snuggly together, face in the pillow and her exposed tender tight little pussy raised to the high skies, all for Izuku to touch and feel and suck on.

Be good for me, Baby. We wouldn’t want to see those tears again, now would we?

He’ll be cooing her all the while when she cries out for him to stop, as well as landing a sharp painful blood-curdling smack against the plump dome of ass nudged up and pressing against his throbbing cock.

I think this is what we needed, Baby, for both of us to be reminded of who’s in charge.

He’s far from ever causing her any real pain though, settling for claiming her tight little hole again and again until she eventually understands where she belongs and who she belongs with, or to.

That’s right, Honey. I love you, you don't need anything or anyone but me.

He will eerily threaten her when finding her doing something not to his liking. For example: picking at the locks on her handcuffs when he leaves the room.

What do you think you’re doing, Sweetie?

Give up, Honey.

I’m gonna count to three, Sweetheart.

However, with the sheer strength and adept abilities Izuku is in possession of, he can never truly feel threatened by his darling, and a fear of her leaving fades more and more when he proves time and time again how very impossible it is for her to ever manage such a thing. He’s good at assuring himself she’ll never leave, and therefor he should only spend time making those good memories instead of those foul ones.

No need to be scared, Sweetie. I’m gonna take good care of you, like I always do.

CHISAKI KAI - OVERHAUL

Kai is larger than life when it comes to threats. He puts all his assets into making them clear. Godly golden orbs and hellishly black pupils staring menacingly down into her swirling glossy puppy-dog eyes. Fingers digging manicured talons into her soft and tender cheeks, the feeling of buzzing on his fingertips, threatening to dissolve what found beneath them. Words spoken like the eerie calm found in the massive dark of fog-strewn forests.

I shouldn’t have to repeat myself, Darling. Say you’re sorry, and perhaps I’ll forgive you.

Kai will threaten and promise his darling a life of pain is she ever to disobey him, however… he’s all bark and no bite, never having the heart to follow through on his promises. Not after seeing how sorry she is. Seeing the look of utter tearful fear in her eyes, he cannot help but think that there can be no harm in forgiving her.

You’re the only person I’d make an exception for.

Count yourself lucky. I won’t be as forgiving next time you decide to misbehave.

He soon comes to the conclusion, or comforts himself with the thought, that due to his darlings chaotic and clumsy nature, she’s in fact incapable of following his restrictions.

Such a clumsy mess you are, Darling. Unable to follow the simplest of commands.

Besides, he’s come to find her forgetfulness quite endearing, understanding or choosing to believe that she doesn’t disobey to spite him. If anything, it’s a constant reminder of how in need she is of his protection.

Such a hopeless fragile little thing. How grateful you must be to have me to protect you from your own mishaps.

Chisaki will threaten first of all, biting his own tongue when the time comes to follow through on said threats after never seeing a proper lasting change in obedience in his darling’s behavior. He always tells himself that her actions should be reprimanded sooner rather than later, but those large eyes and that frail body he uses to warm himself each night has a way of strumming his heartstrings.

Please don’t do anything to upset me, Darling. The mess wouldn’t be good for either of us.

He does have his limits though. She crosses the line when she ends up hurting herself with her clumsiness. Tripping when running away from him, falling out the window when trying to escape, cutting herself when throwing broken shards of glass his way, getting dirt and all sorts of bacteria to infect her wounds.

Look what you’ve done now, Darling.

He figures his quirk is the only safe measure there is to correct his darling’s behavior. Safe to pull her apart and safe to put her back together again, and again and again and again with little sympathy battling his fascination.

Run, cry, scream; you’re simply dancing in the palm of my hand. You only have yourself to blame.

TODOROKO SHOTO

Shoto doesn’t view his darling as something to control, at least not on a regular basis. And because of this, he doesn’t see punishment, in its term, as something he has a right to exert on his darling when she fights back. He doesn’t view himself as a master correcting his pet. Admiring her efforts over feeling vexation because of them.

So much life in you, little one.

Freewill and passion he’ll put no chains on, but pain, however, is no unfamiliar pastime for his darling nonetheless. Shoto views pain as a pleasure, as a luxury, as a lifeline.

Don’t think of it as a punishment, Snowflake, it’s more a lesson of appreciation. You’ll thank me later, I’m sure.

When his darling is being particularly impossible, he’ll blame himself over her, knowing how it’s his fault that he can’t properly please her. Figuring more of his attention and care is in order of need, something of which he will happily oblige her with.

Is my little blizzard feeling lonely?

He’ll have her over his lap in no time, exchanging what fingers on what hand he uses when tickling the soft sensitive spot found between her thighs, going from hot to cold and steamy and feverish.

Is this what you wanted, Snowball? All you needed is ask. I’ll give you what you need.

But, during their more unorthodox sessions, Shoto is strict. He has to be, in order to give them both what they supposedly need. Shoto believes his darling needs his firm hand as much as his soft touch, she needs balance, whereas he needs someone to apply his balance to.

Be a good little firecracker for me and hold still.

However, he still doesn’t view it as punishment per se. He believes his darling is asking for the applied pain when disobeying his commands, therefore the pain is something she wants more of, something she’s begging for.

Don’t move, Crystal.

My little snowstorm, I told you. Don’t move…

He can get angry however. Not by words, knowing how many times he screamed at his father in the fit of his rage, never genuinely meaning any of the spiteful words he’d say, he knows his darling doesn’t mean anything by them either.

It’s okay, Wildfire. You’re just frustrated. Let me help you.

But escape… escape is a fragile topic and any attempts on achieving it will be met with stone-cold nonchalant wrath. Safe to say she won’t ever try leaving him again, not if she wants more of those irredeemable frostbite burns across her soft skin.

You think you know pain? I’ll make you long for something as sweet as pain.

Shoto doesn’t easily forgive. He doesn’t easily forget. He doesn’t easily cope at all in any healthy way. And he definitely doesn’t easily trust after being betrayed. He might just do something brash in his strive to feel comfortable again, or else the prickling feeling of uncertainty will linger about beneath his skin. Paranoia is a better word for it.

You think you can just up and leave? Think again, Snowball.

You’re not going anywhere. Nowhere without me. I’ll have you crippled before that happens. Mark my words, Icicle.

His flexibility regarding the amount of freewill his darling possessed will change drastically after his trust is broken. Chains are a great reassurance he’s come to find, and if she ever finds a way out of those as well… bones will break.

I didn’t want this, Snowfall, but… I must say… you do look your best when you’re at my mercy.

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