#there's so many ugly lines in this image

[thewaltcrew]

Director Kirk Wise, screenwriter Linda Woolverton, and actor Robby Benson on casting the Beast [x]

They gave me an incredible amount of freedom. I didn't want Beast to be a cartoon character. I played it as though I were doing a Broadway show. As if this was a living person. And I wanted him to be funny. By funny, I don't mean shtick or one-liners. I am talking about real comedy. When real comedy works, and is truthful, especially with the Beast, it comes out of the fact that he is so pathetic. For some reason, I really understood that. Ha! Because of that, they gave me a lot of leeway. [x]

My first audition was recorded on, of all things, a Sony Walkman. As a musician, I had branched out into recording engineer and loved to play with sound. When I saw the Sony Walkman I knew it had a little condenser microphone in it, and if I were to get too loud, the automatic compressor and built-in limiter would 'squash' the voice— and there would be very little dynamic range to the performance. I did a quick assessment and wondered how many people who had come in to audition for the part were making that error: playing the Beast with overwhelming decibels, compressing the vocal waveforms. I decided to give the Beast 'range.' Because of my microphone technique, and an understanding of who I wanted Beast to be, they kept asking me to come back and read different dialogue. After my fifth audition, Jeffrey Katzenberg the hands-on guardian of the film, said the part was mine…

Beauty and the Beast was so refreshingly fun and inventively creative to work on that I couldn't wait to try new approaches to every line of dialogue. Don Hahn is one of the best creative producers I have ever worked with. The two young directors, Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale, were fantastic and their enthusiasm was contagious. I not only was allowed to improvise, but they encouraged it. It never entered my mind that I was playing an animated creature. I understood the torment that Beast was going through: he felt ugly; had a horrible opinion of himself, and had a trigger-temper. Those are things that, if done right, are the perfect ingredients for comedy. Painful and pathetic comedy— but honest. The kind of comedy I understood...

In the feature world of Disney animation, the actors always recorded their dialogue alone in a big studio, with only a microphone and the faint images of the producers, writers, directors and engineer through a double-paned set of acoustic glass. Paige O'Hara and I became good friends; it was her idea that for certain very intimate scenes, such as when Beast is dying, we record together. We were able to play these scenes with an honest conviction that is often absent in the voice-over world...

The success of this film was the culmination of a team effort but I must say, the honors go to the animators— and for me (Beast), that's Glen Keane — and to Howard Ashman and Alan Menken. This was the perfect example of a crew who 'cared'. And the final results (every frame) of the film represent that sentiment. [x]

#beauty and the beast #disneyedit #robby benson #kirk wise #linda woolverton #actor #director #writer #my gif

[neo-nomatrix]

Rule No. 19

never fall in love with the same person twice, the second time you’ll be falling in love with the memories not the person.

Miguel O’hara x reader

word count: 1056

synopsis: You were Miguel’s wife in another universe and he just can’t come to terms that you’re not his.

a/n: i know a lot of people are asking for part twos of my other stories but i just can’t think of anything 😭

Your death was a horrible day for Miguel. He easily blamed himself for what had happened to you. Shot twice by a random mugger off the side of the street. And he, Spiderman of all people, couldn't save you. How could he even call himself a hero after that? He held your lifeless body in his arms as he came to terms with the incident.

Miguel wouldn’t allow your killer to get away. Chasing him down the block, cornering him in an alley and slowly, almost torturing, beat the life out of him. Miguel tore at his skin with his claws, used all his strength to break his teeth, and practically ripped off the man’s hand from the wrist.

Miguel so desperately wanted him to feel pain he would do anything. But that wouldn’t bring you back, and he knew that.

Miguel had fallen in love with you for many reasons. You were beautiful, smart, funny, and the kindest person he had ever met. He knew that if you saw the person he was now you would not have fallen in love with him. When he looks at himself in the mirror he doesn’t see the man he once was, he doesn’t see the man you loved but a distorted ugly image of that man.

He knew he had changed for the worse but truthfully he didn’t care. If changing meant he got what he was after he didn’t care how it made him look.

The first time Miguel found you in another universe he was ecstatic. You had a family, a beautiful daughter and a life worth being a part of. “Your” Miguel had recently died and he thought he could replace him.

“Oh, I'm so glad you’re home. I was starting to get worried,” You kissed your husband as he walked through the door.

“Im here,” Miguel whispered as a response.

He didn’t know what to do. You were there, in front of him. Alive.

He pulled you in for the strongest kiss he had ever given you. You were slightly shocked but melted into the kiss with such love. Failing to see the tears building up in his eyes.

You were happy, so happy. Until the day it all came crashing down on him. Your world started to collapse within itself, Miguel felt like Atlas trying to hold up the universe on his shoulders. He didn’t know what to do, he was lost. Running from an inescapable situation with you and your daughter. You fell to your knees as you were running. You were glitching. Slowly, in the most painful way he could imagine both you and your daughter disappeared from his arms.

For the second time Miguel lost you, and it was his fault. From then on he vowed to only watch you from afar.

“She isn’t yours, Miguel,” Jess reminded him for what? the tenth time today?

“I know that Jess,” he practically rolled his eyes at her.

“Y’know it’s creepy. You’re basically stalking this girl who has no idea you exist. There are just some things you have to let go,” She offers her advice.

Miguel clenches his jaw at her words.

“I don’t need a therapist, alright? I’m fine dealing with this,” he says.

He’s had enough of Jess and her advice for today. Even though he won’t let himself interfere he can’t help but watch you from the rooftops. He agrees that it’s creepy but he can’t let anything else bad happen to you, he just can’t.

From everything telling him not to, he swings down to try and get closer to you. He enters the coffee shop you just went into. He doesn’t know why. He shouldn’t be here behind you in the long line. It’s not right. He’s about to turn before he’s greeted with your sweet voice. Your voice that sounds like honey and all the good things on this planet and the next.

“Hey, sorry to bother you, but I was just wondering what you usually order? I’ve never been here before and I'm sort of lost,” you giggle. God, he could melt on the spot.

He knows you're lying, of course. He’s seen you in here more times than he can count. And you always get the same exact thing, every single time. In fact, you refuse to get anything different. He wants to believe you’re asking him as a way to flirt but he can’t get attached, not again.

“Oh uhm, i usually get their vienna latte,” His eyes flick up to the first thing on their menu, never having gone to this shop himself.

“And then their bear claw,” if there’s one thing he noticed about you it’s that in every universe you love a bear claw with your drink.

“Great! I’ll get that then!” You smile happily as the barista asks for the next person in line.

He didn’t realize how in love with you he really was until he spoke to you all these years later.

“Do you maybe want to sit down together? I know a park nearby,” You approach him after both of you have gotten your drinks.

“I’d…” he trails off remembering Jess’ words. He can’t, he shouldn’t, no matter how much he wants to. “I don’t think I can. I’m really sorry,” he feels horrible after seeing the look on your face. He wants to crumble up into a million pieces seeing you disappointed like that.

“No worries then. It’s okay,” you smile kindly at him. A clear tinge of sadness in your voice.

You walk off leaving him there unsure of his choice. Would one conversation really do anything? Would it tear the world apart like last time? Was he willing to risk it just to talk to you again?

The truth was yes, he was absolutely willing to risk everything for the chance to have you fall in love with him again. But he couldn’t do that to you. He stands there, heartbroken for a third time.

Even though he loves you he’s well aware you’re not his, not really. He knows that if he were to fall in love with this version of you it would be compensation for what he had lost. He would simply be trying to recreate something he couldn’t have.

Miguel loves you, but he can’t have you.

#miguel o’hara x reader #miguel o’hara x y/n #miguel ohara #miguel o’hara x you #marvel x reader #spiderman x reader smut #spiderman x y/n #spiderman 2099 x reader #spiderman x reader #spiderman atsv x reader #spiderman atsv #spiderman across the spiderverse #miguel o’hara smut #miguel o’hara

[kindnessoverperfection]

I want to break down a common point of conflict when addressing NPD stigma.

A lot of hangups people have tend to be along the lines of "but I DO see a lot of people with actual NPD who are acting in toxic or abusive ways".

This will be kind of long, so bear with me.

Point #1: People are way more likely to be diagnosed if they exhibit "stereotypical" symptoms.

There's this image of NPD as a disorder that is only present in those with patterns of destructive behavior towards others. Many therapists have this conception. (Shockingly, the mental health field is not perfect & without stigma.)

Gonna copy-paste this here from my other blog (so forgive me if you've seen it before), because it's a good example.

Three people are criticized at work. Their boss yells at them for their performance in front of everyone. Person A gets mad and defensive. They yell back, using cutting remarks as a way to try and ease the distress they feel. Person B acts really mature and responsible the whole time, nodding along and agreeing and promising to do better, just desperate to maintain and improve their status. Desperate to be liked. Later they go home and handle their distress through self-destructive means, and spend the next few months overworking themself to the point of illness. Person C doesn't seem to respond much at all. They go quiet and seem distant. They don't lash out or lash in, but for the next month or so, their productivity drops. They simply aren't able to focus on work or self-care, no matter how hard they try. The stress is overwhelming. All three of these people have the same root issues, but only the first would be labeled a narcissist. Outwards behaviors and presentations don't reflect the pain, distress, and difficulties with life that are underlying them.

So, three main things happen.

There ends up being a higher rate of people with destructive behaviors who are diagnosed with NPD

The people who don't particularly exhibit behaviors and are considered ""too nice to have it"" are overlooked entirely (and never get any sort of help for their underlying issues, yayyy)

People are more likely to be more honest about "ugly" symptoms / symptoms that are frowned down upon than they are in other mental health communities.

(Also some people decide to act super edgy about it, which is annoying but here we are. Some of them are trolls.)

(And while I'm at it, some people are misdiagnosed with NPD because a psych sees someone who committed a violent crime and is like "uhh slap them with the Evil Asshole™ disorders!! no further thought given.")

Point #2: People who have messed up are not inhuman monsters who deserve no help or support

While I do think it's important for people to understand that patterns of toxic behaviors aren't the ONLY way NPD can present, I'm not going to let the conversation stop at "some of us are nice though!!"

Human beings aren't RPG characters who can be sorted into "monster" or "ally". Every single person has done something hurtful, has messed up, exhibits some sort of behavior that puts strain on their relationships sometimes.

So I'll bullet point some aspects of this that need to be talked about.

People without NPD also commonly exhibit toxic behaviors, but people ignore that nowadays. Either they armchair diagnose anyone who's slightly rude, or they only focus on it in pwNPD and ignore it in themselves or others. NTs can be jerks too, and they're probably less likely to acknowledge it than pwNPD who are constantly watching and checking themselves and analyzing their behaviors and attempting to do better.

Assuming that NPD makes someone abusive doesn't help anyone. Can it impact behaviors, and make it more difficult for people to be self-aware? Of course. But an important step in healing from any mental health condition (especially personality disorders, ime) is realizing that you're not inherently ""bad"", and that you can take responsibility for your actions and learn to deal with things in constructive ways. Just going "NPD makes people bad, full stop"- other than being a mean shitty thing to say- absolves people of guilt and asserts that there's no reason for them to try and improve.

Yes, it's okay for people to hate their abusers. Their abuser. Not an entire community of people who happen to (maybe) share a trait with them.

Building on the above point, people tend to go in defense mode when they hear things like "pwNPD who have acted in toxic ways can learn to improve their behavior", "people shouldn't be saying awful things about folks with this condition", etc. because they automatically try to apply this to their abuser. Interpersonal situations are very different from society-wide mental health access. No, don't stay with your abuser expecting them to change, and don't hold onto the hope that they will. No, don't censor yourself or your hatred or anger towards them. Just don't make blanket statements about a disorder that they may or may not have- blame their abusive actions, not their mental health.

"I hate you for your abusive actions and the harm that you caused me." =/= "I hate a group of people because of an inherent unchangeable part of them that's tied directly to severe childhood trauma they suffered. Because of it, they're evil and unlovable and are incapable of change. They're inhuman and will never experience real connection with others." ..........See the difference??

Even if there were a disorder with a 100% rate of toxic douchey behaviors, I'd want the conversation around it to be changed. I'd want different words to be used to divide up the spaces and conversations and resources, so that survivors of abusive or toxic behavior can get help, but that the disorder still has space to be treated. Otherwise, there are zero resources for healing. Nothing is being done to help these people or solve the issue. They're just told they may as well not try. They're blocked from healthcare entirely, despite how the entire point of being diagnosed with a condition is supposed to be to treat it.

There's a wide range of people who have NPD- it presents in many different ways, a person who has it may or may not exhibit harmful behaviors- but no one deserves to be denied treatment or told they're unlovable because of a condition they have that was formed from trauma.

Speak out against abusive behavior. Don't destroy healthcare for a medical condition.

#actuallynpd #npd stigma #narcissistic personality disorder

[thevirgincherry]

ASKING FOR IT !

ft. og4 leon s. kennedy x fem!reader

tags. p in v, smut, cheating (not on reader), ooc leon sorry, he’s mean, negging, misogyny, reference to past rape/non-con, unresolved trauma, suicidal thoughts duhhh, he calls reader ugly a lot, leon subs for his gf but doms reader, non-con to consensual sex, manipulation, some .. uh waterboarding? he dunks your head in water, opioid addiction but it’s minor LMFAOO

note. haii… um feedback whether it’s good or bad appreciated really forced myself to write this so im like ack. hating everything i write but! ignore typos :3 it’s not as fleshed out as i wanted .. soooo it reads pretty jolty but yah 😭 and the smut is like not. IDK I’m ugh not into it just couldn’t bring myself to extend stuff that I really wanted to develop n he’s ooc. BUT!! again ignore typos or I’ll cry n feedback/constructive criticism appreciated <3

Leon has a girlfriend. He can never hold down a girl, his ability to scare women away is preternatural, so it’s a big deal. And she’s fucking hot. Not like model hot, but pornstar hot. She’s got tits so firm they might as well be bulletproof. Bottle blonde with eyes that swallow up her whole face. Her stomach doesn’t crease when she sits. It’s the type of beauty that takes its form in slashes of red lace and nylon. Not many women are out of his league, but she is.

They have hot sex like attractive people tend to do, and it goes something along the lines of this.

He goes:

Is that dick good, baby? You like it? Right there, baby?

And she goes:

Fuck, yes, baby! Harder, deeper— Oh, right there!

And then she doesn’t cum.

So there’s that, but he’s working on it.

Leon doesn’t take well to tips on how to fuck. Reading advice columns in the Men’s Health magazine leaves a funny taste in his mouth. It might be the blood from the castrated image of his masculinity. Who knows.

He struggles with that sort of thing. A nice face does nothing for a man who doesn’t actually like anything about himself. Leon’s still that wimpy self-hating loser he was all those years ago. In all fairness to God, there are a few added tweaks here and there. Some bug fixes. Now he’s drunk and shallow too! Misanthropic when he’s at his very best.

As a kid, mom told Leon to be a nice boy so he was a nice boy. Not because he was ever a particularly nice boy, but for her sake. So instead of acting out he would go and crush ants beneath his thumb in the front yard because there is this mean part of Leon that splinters inside of him like cooked bones.

Life to Leon is being fucked into apologising for being alive so it’s no wonder he’s still harbouring the insecurities of a boy he isn't.

When he was eighteen it was by ugly old men who abhorred him for being the embodiment of whatever it was they were hiding from their wives. His legs looked nice thrown over a pair of big shoulders. They were so thin back then, model-type shit. All of those men mildly resembled his dad, but that’s something he wouldn’t quite like to crack down on yet. Leon’s being open enough as it is.

When he was twenty-one it was his headache of a first girlfriend. It was the bullet wound in his shoulder. When he was twenty-two it was being passed around boot camp like a dirty needle. When he was twenty-seven it was Luis who was nothing and everything in between. It was a picture book princess like Ashley. The scar on his shoulder. Stigmata. Glory Be. Whatever.

(And Jack, it was always Jack. Pale all over like a healed scar.)

What Leon is trying to get across, he’s not quite sure. Maybe that he's nice in theory and the reality is he’s a self-confessed charlatan of niceness. Or that he can’t fuck. He can’t fuck because he is deeply traumatised. Yeah. Maybe that’s what he’s trying to say. It’s an excuse, sure, doesn’t make it the truth though. Leon can’t fuck ‘cause he’s useless at most things that don’t include guns. He can’t fuck ‘cause he was unattractive as a teenager and that solidified the way he feels about himself now.

Leon’s got one thing going for him - he fingers her pussy till his fingers prune. Eats her out till he gets lockjaw.

“Oh, you’re so good at that,” she says, kissing his slicked-up lips.

Then her eyes flit to his hard dick and she gives him that strange half-smile. One that seems to say: Not with that. His dick. Obviously.

His shit is big enough, it’s long enough— It’s enough. And it’s pretty. Could put a bow on to make it real cute. Could manufacture a dildo inspired by it. So Leon cannot for the life of him wrap his head around her problem. It’s not his dicks fault her pussy is fucking broken. Her broken pussy doesn’t get to make his dick sad. Doesn’t get to lay devastating blows on his gone-with-the-wind ego.

Another thing is, her sister is an ugly bitch. That upsets Leon and his dick in tow. You’re a student, taking a break for some reason Leon has not bothered to fathom. He couldn’t care less. Go do it someplace else. In this house, you’re nothing more than a cockblock. Leon could forgive you for being a cockblock if you weren’t ugly. Or vice versa.

It would be okay if Leon wasn’t stuck at home with you for hours at a time. Work fucked up his back, so he’s staying here in his girlfriend’s apartment eating her food, running her taps, fucking her badly and shitting on her sister.

You’re sat on the other end of the table with a soggy bowl of cereal while he nurses a juice box like a real man. What do ugly little things like you think about anyway?

When Leon was ugly he thought about forcing his dick into the cute girl next door between his more regular thoughts of what to eat for dinner and whether he stocked up on toilet paper or not.

When he was ugly, his day was made simply by a pretty girl looking in his general direction. So Leon makes sure to look in yours. Y’know, to fuel your perverted wet dreams. Your rape fantasies. What freaks think about when they’re near hot guys. Well, it’s strange actually. You tend to totally ignore him. When the two of you make brief eye contact, you don’t flounder or duck or bow your head like you’re shy— You just move on with your life. That bothers him. Leon’s hot now. He’s not the type of man you just brush over like that. He’s the type you gawk at in broad daylight, he’s the sort of guy you see in soft porn magazines.

“Good morning,” his girlfriend greets, “have a good sleep, sweetie?” She bumps your hip when you stand up to hug her.

She’s wearing stockings today. Oh, he loves stockings. He loves pencil skirts. He loves— He loves office wear. He wants to be put over her lap and spanked raw perhaps.

“Yeah, it’d be nice if your boyfriend stopped moaning like a girl though.” It’s said into her ear, but Leon hears it.

“I’m going now, honey,” his girlfriend tells him.

Like a good boy, Leon stands to bid her goodbye. Her blouse is sheer, shows off her black bra and he eyes it with distaste.

“What’s wrong, Leon?”

He doesn’t speak. Just glares at her perfect set of tits like a baby weaned off milk.

“I can’t take them off,” she snorts.

Leon wishes she could. Hang ‘em up in the closet and pop them back on when it’s time to play. Tits are for the bedroom. Otherwise, they’re too much of a distraction. Instead, he settles on slipping his hand up her skirt to check if she’s wearing panties. (There’s no panty line showing through her pencil skirt and that’s always a bad sign.) She shoos him away.

So Leon leans in for a kiss, and she says, “Nuh-uh, honey, you’ll ruin my makeup.” Then she gives in ‘cause Leon can be kinda cute when he tries hard enough. “Just one, okay?”

“Yeah.” Leon nods. Her kisses are analgesic. Which is unfortunate considering he has an opioid addiction. Almost an addiction.

“One,” she counts, Leon kisses her again, “two, three, four.”

She’s teasing him now.

“Okay, well, keep an eye on her, Leon.”

“I’m not twelve,” you say, exiting the kitchen to spare yourself the sight of him groping your older sister.

Yeah, and Leon’s not a bang nanny.

He wipes the red from his lips, takes his juice box from the table where you’re no longer and decides jerking off in the shower will make him feel better. Leon does. He finishes. Watches his seed wash down the drain and wonders if that was wasteful. A short intermission is taken, then he jerks off in front of her full-body mirror. His biceps flex and his abs tighten, and he looks fucking good.

Why isn’t she cumming? What’s wrong with her? Is she getting too old? Is menopause hitting already? She’s only thirty-something. It can’t be that, and she asked Leon to pick up tampons last week— Unless they were for you.

Nobody in this house tells Leon anything. Another shower is what he needs. No, he needs a smoke. Leon doesn’t smoke. He does the next best thing, rests idly against the railings of her balcony, observing the ballet of D.C. life. Man, he could throw himself over right now. Splat against the asphalt and that would be it. It’d all be over. Hauling his weight over would be no problem. Catastrophizing to pass the time. Men used to do this for a living in Ancient Greece. What happened to philosophising? Leon could be a philosopher, all they did was spout nonsense and he is good at that. Not at fucking, however.

Beer. Yeah. Beer. That’s what he needs. Leon ransacks the fridge to no avail. Health-conscious living is the reason for misery, he believes. See, very insightful, modern-day Socrates right here. Lean proteins, vegan substitutes, low-fat yoghurt— It’s so girly it makes him sick.

“She’s still on a health kick,” you say from behind him, “I thought it was a New Years thing, but she’s still, like, super into it.”

Why are you talking to him? Leon blinks at you owlishly. “Right,” he says.

You give him a funny look, turning back to the counter to use the coffee machine. Don’t you want him? You’re not shy. Why aren’t you shy? Shouldn’t you be shy? Ugly Leon was mute around girls whether they were short, fat, ugly or pretty. Shit, he is clucking for a beer.

“There's Chardonnay under the sink.” Well, that’s unhelpful.

“Yeah, I don’t- I don’t drink that.” He would like to finish his sentence off with ‘girly shit’ but you seem like the type to find that offensive.

“Figured.” The coffee machine whirs. A lobotomised silence ensues. “Good talk.”

You’re so ugly you’re asking for it. Perfect subject for the ‘I can’t make my girlfriend cum, is her pussy broken?’ experiment. Ugly girls don’t count as a fuck, right? Not when they’re sent to the very back of your mind after said fuck. He wonders how many girls counted the uglier him as an official lay.

You’re on your tummy reading a book. The Beautiful and Damned. Leon had no idea they wrote a book about him. The door creaking exposes his creeping against his will.

“Do you need something?” you ask without batting an eye.

The swell of your ass is nice. “Uh, yeah, I do.”

Rolling over and sitting up to face him, you tilt your head to the side. “Go on.”

“I want to have sex with you.” Woah. Okay. That’s a genie he can’t put back in the bottle. Fuck, why does he do this stupid shit? Leon should just kill himself. All roads lead to suicide. Every sign points towards suicide and he is still holding on for dear life.

Think about Sherry. Sherry won’t care, kids hit sixteen and don’t give a fuck about much, he reasons with the voice in his head. How about Claire? Oh, she’ll think good fucking riddance. Redfield? No way. You are truly out of options, Kennedy.

“I’m sorry?”

Oh, god no, Leon’s the one that should be sorry. “You heard me.” The apology comes out incredibly wrong. “I’m helping you out.”

“Helping me out with what? I’m sorry, Leon, I didn’t… I didn’t think I— I don’t know what made you think I wanted this from you, but I don’t like you—“

You don’t like him? Why not? He’d like a list of reasons with a page-long explanation. What’s not to like? The hair. It’s the hair. Blond is too girly. That’s what it is.

“—I mean, you’re with my sister, did you really think I would say yes? I’m sorry, I’m just a little confused, where is this coming from? Gosh, I really… I don’t know what to say.”

“I’m helping you out,” Leon repeats, using his hands to gesture at your face, at your body. “No one else is gonna do it.” This apology has gone way out of bounds. A simple sorry would have sufficed.

“What..?” Something doleful crosses your face, then it twists unpleasantly. “You think I want to have sex with you… ‘cause I’m not cute? Like, you think I’m…”

Ugly, yes. He does. Only a little. Can you turn over? He wants to make you cum. “You’re a virgin, yeah?”

“Oh my god, there’s, like, something wrong with you!” You stand to your full height in a pitiful attempt to appear frightening. That face is enough to scare a man away already. “Get out— And I am so telling her when she gets back home, I told her I didn’t like you, I told her and now you just-“

Leon grabs you by the jaw, squeezes you so tight it clicks. “Okay, sweetheart, here’s how this is going to go,” he starts, taking both your wrists in a single hand, “we’re going to start over, and you’re going to be a good little girl and apologise to me like you really mean it.”

“Apologise for what?” It comes out muffled through your forced pout so he chooses to ignore you.

“I don’t know what you fuckin’ said.” Leon should just end it here, he should let go of you and check into the nearest asylum. He’s hot. Leon is box blond. He’s tall enough to dwarf most girls. His face is nice. His body is nicer. So he doesn’t know what his problem is. Once pinned down, you shrink away from him, expression so sour your skin looks ready to melt off your skull.

And then he fucks you till you stop screaming. He leaves you in a withered heap, heads back to his room to take a well-deserved nap, hides his face in the pillows. They smell like her. He should think about killing himself some more. That gun looks awfully shiny. Nth time could be the charm.

She gets home in the evening, drops her bag on the floor to alert him of her entrance.

“I missed you.” Leon noses at her neck.

“You were sleeping.” She ruffles his hair like he’s a child.

“I still missed you.”

“Even when you’re sleeping?”

In the least creepy way possible, he wants to wear her skin as a suit, and she thinks his body doesn’t yearn for her at every sleeping second?

“The most when I’m sleeping, have bad dreams without you,” Leon mumbles groggily.

“How cute,” she muses, “good day?”

“Great day.” Leon nods. “Real productive.”

“Oh yeah? What’d you get up to?” A singular red nail strokes along his spine.

“Thought about you,” he answers, leaving out the part where he spent half of his time jerking off. Oh, and the part where he fucked her sister into submission. He raped you. He did. Leon doesn’t like that word. Far too harsh.

“Now, don’t push it, mister.” When she smiles there’s a lack of wrinkles— Not even smile lines, it’s artificial almost.

Leon’s good at pushing buttons. He should get paid for it. “It’s true, if you said jump I’d ask how high.”

“You’re so funny, Leon.” She kisses his head and laughs all prim and proper.

“Serious, babe, I’m super partial to jumping,” he says to hear her laugh again. He’s more partial to suicide. It’s great. A one-way ticket off of God’s green inferno. Who would he even be without suicide ideation?

“Alright, but I’d like you all in one piece.” She kisses his cheek. “No jumping, okay, honey?” She kisses his neck and his collarbones and his Adam’s apple and he’s unable to breathe.

“Okay,” Leon says. He gets it now. She’s mommying him. Maybe this is what Leon needs. To play house. A daddy to fuck his throat and a mommy to sit on his dick and tell him that he’s a good boy and he’s needed and he won’t have to think if he has a mommy and daddy to do that for him.

Can he backtrack on the rape thing? Trust Leon to take a good thing and ruin it in the worst way possible. If he kissed you he could’ve wormed his way out of it. Told her it was the medication he’s on, that he had a mental breakdown, a midlife crisis.

At dinner, your silence slips under the radar like cumstains on motel bedsheets. You pick at your food, and when Leon’s knee brushes yours under the table, you excuse yourself. Sometimes he thinks that he is a bad person, this can be backed up by many things. Violating you might outweigh saving the world.

In bed, he thinks about changing, about calling his therapist in the morning, he might take a leap off that balcony, cleaning up his act sounds terribly hard. Leon does this all with his head tucked into the hollow of his girlfriend’s neck. The thinking has killed his boner and now he can’t get it up. So he pretends to fall asleep. It’s an unconvincing performance ‘cause the moment she swipes a hand over his ass he lets out a disgruntled noise. Leon clenches so quickly his stomach caves in.

“You don’t like that, honey?”

He shakes his head, overgrown bangs falling in his eyes. Leon has a nice ass. It’s no wonder she wants to touch it, leg presses have done him wonders, but still, it’s off-limits. She can’t sweet talk her way into this anytime soon.

“Why, Leon?” She’s cupping his ass like he’s a girl. Leon’s not a girl. “You’d look so cute.”

“No,” he whines, and it sounds kind of sexy. He gets it. He can see the appeal.

“I think you just need some encouragement, baby.” She’s taking him apart like a gun. Folding him like laundry. Milks his prostate so well he sleeps like a baby. Not even a shadow of an orgasm to be seen from her side.

She leaves early the next morning and he’s left alone to ruminate. What he finds out today is that you’re pretty diligent at sucking dick when forced.

Leon thinks he would like to break you in a way that only he can fix.

He pushes your head down on his dick till your lips are stretched so far they split at the corners, you gag wetly each time the fat tip knocks the back of your throat, heavy balls slapping against your chin.

“Aww, look at you,” Leon coos, “little girl taking big things.”

Fat tears well in your eyes, a faint tremor betrays your effort to hold them back, a single blink and they roll down your cheeks like dewdrops. It might be the dick lodged in your throat, pulsing under your tongue— Yeah, no, it’s his dick in your mouth. That’s why you're upset. No other reason for it. Leon finds you a little ungrateful. A lot of women would pay for this, to drain his balls. Hell, your sister loves to do it.

“One at a time, sweetheart,” he says as he guides you to his balls, “can’t have you choking, can we?” You look up at him blankly. Leon thought he was funny and that’s all that matters. “Go on, spit on ‘em, get me nice and wet.” The drool pooling beneath your tongue drizzles his balls in clear strings, his drippy tip bumps the bridge of your nose, rests comfy on your brow ridge.

You’re struggling real bad. He’ll take it as a compliment. The thing is, you refuse to just lick them, pulling off each ball with a wet pop! and a dry cough. Leon starts to zone out so he shoves you off and quite pathetically, you fall flat on your back.

“You didn’t shave,” Leon notes in distaste, he was going to do you a favour too.

“No— Not for you.” You squirm like a fish on the docks when he hovers over you.

“Not for me, right.”

“Anyone but you.”

“You're not gonna do it for anyone, sweetheart, know why?” Leon clicks his tongue when you dodge his kiss, twisting your neck to keep a distance.

“Why?”

“No one else wants you,” he states, “you’re lucky that I want you.”

“Well, that’s not true.” You’re stubborn amongst all your other undesirable traits.

Leon scoffs. “What, so you ever had a boyfriend?” He runs his index finger along your slit. Bone dry. Serious? He assumes you’re still sore from yesterday.

“That’s none of your fucking business.”

“Don’t get mad at me, honey, I’m just helping you out.” Leon spits on your pussy, then on his thick cock for good measure, jerks his shaft and presses a thumb to his tip to guide it into you. Your lips fold inwards around him as he breaches your tiny hole. There’s too much resistance for it to be a smooth sailing journey, and you’re new to cock, cunt pushing him out as your body tenses. “I’m being nice to you, so you should say thank you.”

“Oh, god,” you mutter, brows knit in what might be pain or pleasure.

“Yeah, that’s what you’re calling me now?” The look you give him is priceless, small hands settling on his chest as you push at him weakly. “No, baby, you don’t get to do that.” Leon bottoms out, he rolls his hips forward to grind the head of his dick into your cervix, the fleshly opening moulds to his tip and you cry out. He can never tell if you’re enjoying it.

Leon sticks his fingers in your mouth to coat them in spit, you retch and he rubs figure eights on your clit, only then does your cunt loosen up its hold on him. It’s a quick process, the quicker he rubs you raw, the wetter you get, biting down on your tongue to keep quiet, but low groans slip past your cracked lips.

“Oh, there we go, baby, that’s it,” Leon coos, his cock slicked up by your wet pussy, sliding in and out with ease. His hips snap forward, forcing himself deeper into your messy little pussy, so wet you’re dripping down his balls, wetness stuck to your inner thighs.

“Fuck— I can’t, I can’t do it, ‘s too big,” you whimper, a hand slipping between your bodies to lay on your stomach. What you don’t understand is that he is big, yeah, but your pussy just needs to be broken in. Like a new pair of shoes.

“You’re doing it, baby,” Leon says, ‘cause you are doing it. You’re taking it. Body going rigid with each brutal thrust into your sopping wet hole. Whether you can take it or not isn’t for you to decide anyway. “I’m going to stuff your little pussy full,” he tells you.

“No,” you choke out, scratching at his chest, nails too blunt to do any sort of damage. Thank fuck. His girlfriend would go nuts.

It’s a satisfying victory, he covers your mouth to concentrate all his energy into this creampie, fills you to the brim, seed thick enough to stick to your insides. The original aim of his ‘experiment’ is forgotten, Leon doesn’t care if you cum or cry or pass out on his dick.

“I’m tellin’ her when she comes home.” Your threat is weak. He feared the consequences of yesterday, but you said nothing.

“You’re not telling her, you like me too much,” Leon decides, “I know you do, baby.”

“I don’t like you at all.” Your bottom lip trembles, fists balled up by your sides. The contempt only turns him on.

“No, but I think you know I’m right, don’t you?” No one else wants you, and you know that. Leon knows you know that. He’s the only one that is ever going to fuck you.

“Right about what? You’re a fucking psycho— I could get you locked up, I should get you locked up.”

“You should, so what're you waiting for?” If you did report him, Leon would just kill himself, going to prison sounds like a bore. “I think, sweetheart, that secretly, you really like it when I rape you.”

And your silence proves him right.

That report never comes. Duh. You love his dick. You like being roughed up. You know you’re deserving of it. Jesus Christ, Leon needs to call his shrink. Honestly, being around you is hard. It’s like his guilty conscience has developed a human body, shambling around the apartment in the shape of a malformed ghost girl, reminding him of the shit he’s said and done to you. You’re spinning in his necrosed brain like one of those music box ballerinas.

“Leon, be a doll and do me up,” his girlfriend is facing away from him, the smooth skin of her back and shoulders bared to him.

Leon only hears the ‘do me’ part, kissing the nape of her neck, reaching round to grab at her fat tits. “I love you…”

“I love you too, baby, but what do you think you’re doing?”

Leon makes a motion with his fingers, she sees it in the mirror.

“What is that, sign language?”

“No, I want to finger you.”

“Oh, well, that’s lovely, baby, but it’s not the time for that. I asked you to zip me up, Leon.” He zips her up while wondering how she can be so unaffected by him being so stupid.

“Hey, are you ready to go?” You knock on the door, you keep hiding your face from him today. His girlfriend said it’s ‘cause you have makeup on. Apparently that changes things. It’s sort of cute. Like, are you shy? You should be shy.

“Oh, no one likes cliffhangers, honey,” she says, forcing you to swap out some open-toe sandals for a pair of her heels. “Okay, Leon, I’ve left your dinner in the fridge, yes?”

Yes, mommy. “Yeah, babe.”

“And there’s snacks in the cupboard now, oh, and don’t use the tap water, it tastes strange so I stocked up— Leon, will you stop doing that with your jaw?”

Sorry, mommy. “Sorry, babe.”

“He’s totally fucking gurning,” you inform her in a way that screams playground snitch. He’ll choke you out for that.

“Gurning, what’s that?” His girlfriend asks cluelessly. This bitch is in her early thirties, Leon has no idea why she acts fifty. Whatever, it’s hot, he gets a girl with all the traits of an older lady without the sagging.

“Like, y’know, ‘cause he’s on meds.” What a little shit. Is this you getting back at him? Some petty fucking act of revenge? Getting his medication taken away from him by his health freak girlfriend?

“Medication? I didn’t know about this, Leon.” She looks at him like he’s killed her mother. Or raped her sister. If only she knew.

“Yeah, for my back, my back hurts, babe— Th-That’s why I’m on leave. My back hurts.” What a compelling act. Totally not a dude that’s two minutes away from injecting black tar heroin.

“Who prescribed them, a doctor or a vet?” You cock your head to the side. Fine. You fucking got him.

“Same thing.” Leon shrugs.

She makes him empty the bedside desk of pills. “Leon, good boys don’t do this. We don’t take drugs in this household, let me take them off your hands.”

“They’re- Babe, they’re not drugs, they’re for my back— I hurt my back.” Granted, his back stopped aching a few days back, he’s just taking advantage of the break. Also, he’s not a child.

“Your back, honey, I know it hurts.” She waves him off. “We can fix it, huh? I can book you in for acupuncture or cupping— Oh, what about a chiropractor?”

“Fine,” Leon says, voice cracking, watching in devastation as she takes his pills in a black garbage bag.

“Bye, Leon, see you later, honey.” She blows him a kiss and he catches it. He has to catch it.

“Yeah, bye, Leon!” You wave at him, looking happier than you have in days.

The door opens an hour later and Leon takes his hand out of his pants. You stand in front of him with red eyes and messy makeup. Leon, being the gentleman he is, takes you into his arms and rubs your back to soothe you as he tells you, more than a little cruel, I fucking told you so.

At least now you know that some guys aren’t as nice as Leon. Some men will spit in your face without considering how tight your pussy is, they won’t even think about how good your tits look in that push-up bra. See? That’s what the real world is like.

The bath fills as he bends you over the sofa. You’re prettier from behind, dress hiked up, soaked panties around your ankles. His hand smooths down the front of your stomach to cup your puffy cunt, prodding at your swollen clit. You shaved. Funny. Thought you were going to get a dick that wasn’t his.

Leon kneels, he spreads your ass cheeks to lick into your pussy from behind, tongue lapping up the beads of arousal that dribble down the seam of your cunt like sticky honey. He laps at your hole and you arch your back to push into him, his tongue fucking your pussy so well, sloppy sounds fill his ears.

“Been wanting to do this,” Leon says into your cunt, tongue making its way back up the centrefold of your fat pussy, he blows spit bubbles on your clit and then he nips at it until you cry out, startled by the jolt of pain. His dick kicks in his sweats. You taste good to make up for that face of yours.

You cream in his mouth so sweetly, toes curling against the wooden floor. Leon wipes his mouth on his forearm, then he wraps it around your neck, pulling your body flush to his. In his chest, his heart flutters when you press a delicate kiss to his bicep. He feels it and you can’t unfeel that.

“I’m sorry, Leon,” you get out through shaky moans as he sandwiches his shaft between your chubby pussy lips, bumping the tip into your clit as his hips move back and forth. “I’m sorry… Didn’t know-“

“It’s okay, baby.” He kisses behind your ear. “It’s alright ‘cause you know now, huh?”

“Yeah,” you agree tearfully, tilting your head so it rests on his broad chest, he gives your pout some wet kisses.

“Let’s get you cleaned up, hm, baby?” Leon nudges you with his nose.

Your idea of cleaning up might be far from what Leon’s is. He doesn’t think you were expecting something so extreme. But it’s for thinking you’re worth something— For thinking that anyone else would do as little as touch you. It’s to wash off that pitiful attempt at makeup.

He bends you in half over the tub. Your tits hang low enough to be squashed against the edge painfully as Leon dunks your head into lukewarm water. Holy shit. Tomorrow will be the day he overdoses. Why is he doing this?

A strangled noise passes your lips as he lets up, and you re-emerge, Leon wipes a hand over your face to rid you of the streaky mascara and sticky gloss.

“There we go, sweetheart, nice and clean.” He presses the tip into your leaking cunt, it catches on your hole, and you flail, water spilling over the edge, surface tension broken as it ripples.

Honest to god, Leon hasn’t fucked a pussy tighter than yours, and when he holds you beneath the surface? Man, you might deglove his dick. He works his cock into you, and when he’s balls deep in your sloppy cunt, Leon allows you to lift your head to which you pant and gasp and cough. All the shit a drowning person does when they’re tossed a lifesaver.

Your body sags, hanging limp with only Leon to hold you up as he roughly fucks in and out of your poor hole, heavy balls slapping against your skin.

“I love you, Leon,” you tell him, rubbing at your stinging nose with your fist, pussy tightening when he pinches your throbbing clit.

“Aw, do you, baby? You love me?” Leon laughs, the mean smile on his face hidden in your shoulder, “That’s so cute.” He rocks back and forth, shallow thrusts that are more for him than they are for you, rabbiting his dick into your squelching pussy until his balls pulse and his shaft twitches inside of you. “Real— Real fuckin’ cute,” he grits out as he buries himself to the hilt, shooting his load in your willing little pussy.

“I think so,” you whimper, thighs trembling as the knot in your stomach snaps and you coat his cock in your slick. Hey, his dick isn't a problem then.

Leon thinks about calling his shrink. The bad shit he does won’t fix itself like he wants. “Clean up,” he tells you, looking at the wet ground. The soaked rug. Your face.

“What… Leon, where are you going?” You use your palms to mop the excess water from your face. “Seriously, Leon? I just… I told you that…”

He has things to do - Leon’s going to call his shrink and very promptly throw himself over the balcony when she doesn’t answer his call.

#leon s kennedy x reader #leon kennedy imagine #leon kennedy angst #leon kennedy x you #leon kennedy x reader #leon kennedy smut #leon s kennedy x you #leon s kennedy angst #leon s kennedy smut #resident evil x you #resident evil angst #resident evil x reader #resident evil smut

[marvelouslizzie]

i wanna ruin our friendship

summary: James “Bucky” Barnes is a famous actor who just turned 40. He’s getting old and struggling with the fact that he isn’t what he used to be. When he finally opens up to you about how he’s struggling with body image, you assure him in a very unexpected way. Things take a turn after that point.

pairing: Bucky Barnes x Female Reader (Celebrity Bucky Barnes x Actress Reader)

word count: 4.1K

warnings: 18+ NSFW MINORS DNI, long period of friendship, unspoken feelings, minor jealousy, alcohol consumption, body image struggles (Bucky is just struggling because of Hollywood’s unrealistic body standards), fear of aging and losing who you are, misunderstandings, pet names, slight dirty talk and praising if you squint, no use of a condom (the reader is on birth control), Bucky is 40 while the reader is 37, no use of y/n.

a/n: I was reading one of Sebastian’s old interviews where he mentions body dysmorphia and how it affects him. It inspired me to write this story. I hope you like it.

The story is beta-read by my dear @notafunkiller. Thank you so much!

All work is mine, please do not repost or translate without my permission. Every like, comment and reblog is highly appreciated.

The after-party is buzzing with energy. The room is crowded with so many familiar faces, you can’t even start naming everyone even if you tried. Sometimes you wonder how you ended up in a place like this, then you remember that you are an actress, too. It feels surreal because you were planning to stay a theater actress until you found your big break unexpectedly on the big screen.

That’s actually how you met James Barnes, your first on-screen partner. That’s how everyone called him, but you and a few close friends were always calling him Bucky. It makes you feel special. You look at him and see how he’s talking to Natasha Romanoff, his current partner. They are taking pictures together. You are sure it is meant to be shared by Natasha on her Instagram.

You find yourself walking towards the bar and ordering another drink. You usually don’t drink too much, trying to stay sober but having fun. It’s a thin line, but you managed to keep the balance so far. That gives paps less tea to share online. Tonight feels a bit different and you know it’s because of Bucky and Natasha. They are the perfect couple and you can’t help but feel jealous. Even though you have no right because Bucky is just a friend. 

A hundred chit-chats later, you see Bucky in the corner of the crowded room. He seems down for some reason, you can always tell by the look on his face. He’s good at concealing how he feels. It’s almost like a poker face, but his eyes and his posture always give it away. Slowly, you walk towards him and he notices you right before you sit next to him.

“Hey, handsome. Why are you crying into your beer?”

“I’m not.” His answer is instant and you don’t buy it.

“Come on. I know you better than that. One minute you were happy, enjoying yourself, and now look at you: you're sulking in the corner. Something must have happened.”

He sighs. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“You know you can talk to me about anything, right?” 

You think he maybe had a problem with Natasha and she isn’t around right now. Which is rare. Even though everybody’s attention is on her, she’s always around Bucky. You think it’s because of the unlabeled thing they have going on since they started working together. You never dared to ask if they are together or not. You aren’t ready for that answer yet.

“I know, doll. You are my best friend, but I just…” He stops for a second to think how he’s going to say this. “I don’t feel like myself.”

“What does that mean?” You ask with a frown.

“I’m not who I used to be.”

“Bucky, what are you talking about?”

He takes a deep breath. “I don’t feel like I’m that handsome talented guy I used to be, okay? I feel ugly and…” He looks down at his body. “Fat.”

“Oh, come on!”

“That’s the truth.”

“You are being ridiculous.”

“I’m not and I’m not the only one who thinks so.”

Oh. He must have read something.

“Please don’t tell me you looked at the comments again.”

“I… did.” He accepts with a defeated tone.

“We talked about this before. You should never do that.” Your tone reminds him of a teacher scolding their student and it makes him smile so slightly, but you don’t see it. 

“I didn’t do it on purpose, darling. Natasha shared a photo of us together and I just went to like it.”

Oh.

“And you saw some comments?”

“Yeah. Saying that I’m getting older and uglier. I know I’m not a young man anymore but I’m just 40. Not dead yet, you know?”

“Yeah, of course not.” You take a huge sip from your drink.

“But they don’t think so and I started to notice maybe they are right.”

“Come on, Bucky!”

“I look in the mirror and every day I feel like I see a stranger, not myself. Since I stopped acting in those action movies, I’m not working out and dieting as hard as I used to and it’s so fucking visible. My reflection blinks at me in the mirror. Then I look around to see I’m alone. I’m old and alone. I missed my chance at happiness. I’m lucky if I can find someone to fuck me for the night.”

“I would fuck you, in a heartbeat.” The words just fly out from your lips and you can immediately see their effect on Bucky’s face.

“You would?” His expression seems completely different now.

“Yes… I would.” It’s too late to back down. Your long secret of having a huge crush on Bucky Barnes is basically exposed.

Without saying a word, Bucky takes your hand and drags you out of the after-party without saying goodbye to anyone. You have no idea where you are headed. In a matter of seconds, you find yourself in a cab with Bucky Barnes as he simply gives his house address and says nothing more.

The ride is short and silent. He doesn’t even look in your direction, his eyes are fixed on the road. You are regretting everything. Even the decision to come to this after-party. What were you thinking when you decided to take another drink because you saw Bucky and Natasha taking selfies? Where was your mind when you said you'd fuck him in a heartbeat? He must be so shocked. He's probably planning to talk to you in private, for your friendship’s sake. 

I fucking ruined our friendship, you think.

When the cab ride is over, Bucky pays the driver and holds the door open for you. You are glad to see he’s still a gentleman towards you, even after you said something completely stupid. I should’ve kept my mouth shut, just like I did for years.

Finally, when you step inside his place, Bucky closes the door and pushes you against the wall with a kiss. It’s so unexpected, your breath hitches. His lips are relentless, moving between your lips, your cheek, and your neck. You try to breathe, but it doesn’t feel real.

“I can’t believe we are doing this,” he says between kisses.

You can’t either. You were expecting a serious talk. Not this. 

“We shouldn’t do this.” You suddenly say when you remember Natasha. You didn’t even realize you left her behind when you two left the party so suddenly.

Bucky stops kissing you and looks at you with complete confusion. “I’m sorry… I shouldn’t have assumed. Was that… a pity comment?”

Now it’s your turn to feel confused. A pity comment? You pity yourself for exposing your crush, but definitely no pity for him. No way in hell.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“You said we shouldn’t do this.”

“Because you are with Natasha and we left her at the party! This is wrong, Bucky. As much as I want to… we shouldn’t.”

“Natasha?”

“Yeah, Natasha.”

“What does Natasha have to do with this?” You can sense the confusion in his voice. It’s like he has no idea what you mean but… it makes no sense. 

“She’s just so nice and pretty. No wonder you two got paired together.” You don’t even notice you didn’t answer this question.

“You think I’m pretty, too?”

You roll your eyes. “Everyone in their right mind could see you're pretty. Why are you even asking?"

"I am asking you, not everyone, doll." And there it is again. That damn nickname. Doll. You love and hate to hear him call you that. It’s warming your insides up until you remember he calls other girls doll, too. Especially Natasha. 

"Stop with the nickname.” You finally say with a pained voice. This whole night is a huge mistake and you will be the one who gets hurt most. You can feel that the friendship you have with Bucky is slipping through your fingers already, so there’s no point in holding back now. “Of course you're pretty: the best eyes, fluffy hair. Tall. Looking good in suits. Two beautiful people."

“She’s just my partner and a good friend, darling. Nothing more.”

“But… but…” You stammer. “You are always together. She never leaves your side.”

“It’s because we are friends and I am helping her out.”

“Helping her out?” You repeat with confusion.

“She gets so much unwanted attention, she uses me as a shield, so less people would come up to her and talk.”

Oh. 

It makes perfect sense and Bucky is always a gentleman. 

“You thought we were together?”

“Yeah… kinda…”

Bucky moves closer to you and puts his hands on your face. “Doll…” Then he remembers what you said about the nickname. “Sorry. I never realized you didn’t like this nickname. I won’t use it anymore.”

His touch is so comforting and you feel relieved that there’s nothing going on between Bucky and Natasha. 

“It’s not that I don’t like it.”

“Then what’s the problem?” 

“I just… remember that you use that nickname all the time. It just doesn’t… feel special.”

“Darling, have you ever heard me calling someone else doll?”

His question makes you stop for a second. You actually never did. You just assumed he would be calling other girls doll as well because of the way he says it… It’s just so sexy. 

“I… didn’t.” You struggle to answer through your confusion. 

“Because I don’t call anyone doll. Except you.”

You can’t find words to respond, it feels like your mind completely stopped working. All you can think is how unbelievable all this is.

“Just me?” You repeat, trying to collect your thoughts.

“Just you.” He says reassuringly. “Can I keep calling you that?”

“Yes. Yes, you can.”

His hand slowly moves to your neck. It makes it even harder to think straight.

“Can I go back to kissing you?” His voice is deeper somehow. 

You gulp first. Then nod. Your response makes him smile and it warms you up. 

You imagined this moment many times, then put that image into the back of your mind just to keep going. Right now, his lips on yours are real. Not a dream, not a fantasy, and it feels so much better. 

The way his lips move fires something inside you. Something you tried to surpass and forget, but that never happened. Whenever you felt his touch, even something as simple as hands brushing, you felt that fire inside you and now it's back. Stronger than ever.

Finally, your hands move to his face, cupping it as he kisses you with passion. Now both of you know that this has nothing to do with pity or self-assurance. That gives you the confidence you need.

Your fingers move towards his shoulders as you put your hands inside his jacket and push it back. It surprises him, but he doesn’t resist, just letting the jacket fall to the ground. Then your fingers travel to his shirt. The first button is open but the rest… You start to unbutton them one by one. Then suddenly you found yourself turned around and pressed against the cold wall. His lips are on the back of your neck and his fingers are looking for the zipper. You smile to yourself when you realize you aren’t the only desperate one here.

“It’s not on the back.” He can hear the smile in your voice even though he can’t see your face.

“Where is it?” He sounds frustrated and it’s so adorable.

“On the side.”

His hands quickly move to your side and find the zipper. In a second, you are already unzipped and your dress is pooled around your ankles. You give it a soft kick and get rid of the dress while you go back to unbuttoning this shirt.

You look up at him to see that he’s watching you undress him. There’s a slight smile on his face. You smile back in response and go back to unbuttoning him. When your work is done, he takes the shirt off himself and just tosses it on the floor. It doesn’t take him long to get rid of your bra. He unclips it so quickly, it surprises you. Everything's happening so fast that you feel like you're swimming. Like this is a dream. You grab his face and give him another kiss to remind yourself this is your reality right now. That you are free to touch him however you want. Your kiss takes a low moan out of him as his fingers travel down to your body, toying with the waistband of your underwear.

“No teasing.” You whisper against his ear and you see how your voice affects him up close. “This time.” You add and that slight smile is back on his lips.

“Are you promising me a next time already?” His voice is so low, so different you barely recognize it. He’s lost in the lust, because of you, and you can’t believe it.

“I mean… Maybe.” You sheepishly smile. You already know you want a second and a third time. He doesn’t have to know that, yet. 

“Hmm… Depends on my performance, huh?” Before you can say anything he pushes his fingers under your last remaining clothes and you feel his finger brushing against your clitoris. A low moan escapes your lips. 

Between him touching your clit and you finding yourself on your back on his couch is a complete blur. You don’t know how you ended up completely naked and Bucky between your legs as holding on to your dear life. His lips are on your pussy, licking and touching, driving you crazy. He definitely knows how to use his tongue and fingers. Even though his fingers aren’t inside you, his touches are skillful. Not too harsh, not too soft. Just the perfect amount of pressure. Then he sucks on your clit and you let out a half painful moan. 

“Are you okay?” He lets go of your clit and looks at you concerned. 

“No sucking on the clit please. Not that you aren’t good at it.” You feel nervous suddenly. “It just hurts. Personal preference.” 

He smiles. “Noted.” And goes back to licking you. Soon the pain is long forgotten. 

It feels like he’s everywhere on the most sensitive part of your body. It’s either his lips, his tongue, his nose or simply his fingers but the pleasure is overwhelming. Soon you find yourself moaning his name out loud while coming hard against his tongue. 

He gives you a couple of minutes but doesn’t move at all. Instead, he pushes his fingers inside you when he decides you are finally back to yourself. When you feel one finger delicately pushing inside you, you raise yourself on the elbows.

“I said no teasing.” 

“This isn’t teasing, doll.” He looks straight into your eyes. “This is me making sure you are ready for what I am gonna do to you next.” 

“What are you going to do to me?” You ask breathlessly.

“Whatever you wanna do, baby, and I feel like you want to get fucked hard.” He stops for a second to read your expression. “Am I wrong?” 

His question catches you off guard. He is talking so openly and directly, you feel a little shy. You are not used to voice your needs this openly, yet that’s one the biggest problems you had in the past. Partners not communicating open enough and assuming things. He’s doing what you actually need to do. He’s communicating openly and it’s extremely hot.

You nod first. Then you find your voice again. “Yes. I do want that.” He smiles again. That damned smile makes you even wetter. “But how do you know that?”

“The way you kiss me, push your hips up while I play with you and your hungry look. You look like you wanna eat me up.”

You surpass shyness with a breath. “Yes, I want that too.” 

“Next time. It’s my turn now.” He winks at you and goes back to fingering. 

He starts with one finger. Soon second and third follow and you are back on the clouds. You can’t even recognize your own voice, moaning his name. The pleasure takes over you, your back aches and you come hard on his fingers. It’s your second orgasm yet you still crave for more. You crave his warmth, his passion and the pleasure his cock can give you. You find it strange feeling this hungry after two orgasms but you welcome it anyway. 

He moves up, directly kisses you without drying his mouth. His lips are hungry and demanding. His erection is hanging between you two and you can feel how hard he is. 

“Can you taste yourself on my lips?” He asks shamelessly after breaking the kiss. 

“Yes.”

“How does it feel?”

You say the first things that come to your mind with no filter. “Dirty and hot.” 

“Hmm… Good.” He keeps kissing you, his fingers are still in your pussy, slowly moving his fingers between your folds and feeling your wetness all over again. It feels like he enjoys how wet you are for him. Not just enjoying but relishing.

“This is teasing.” You state between his kisses.

“Is it?” His fingers stop like he didn’t know that already. “I just love how responsive you are.”

“And I wanna feel your cock inside me already.” 

Your bluntness doesn’t only surprise him, but you as well. You have no idea when you finally let go of your shyness. Maybe between the first and the second orgasm. You don’t care anymore. You really need him inside you.

“How do you want it, baby?”

“Let me show you.” You move away from him and miss his warmth instantly, but it’s for a good cause. You turn around and position yourself on your hands and knees. He understands what you want instantly.

“Hmm… You really want it hard.” He sounds amused. His fingers go back to your folds, moving up and down. “Just making sure you are ready.”

“I am dripping already, Bucky. How much more ready can I get?” 

You hear him laugh, but before you can say anything about it, you feel his cock right on your entrance. 

“Tell me if it hurts.” He says before pushing inside. 

His cock stretches you out so deliciously. There’s absolutely no pain at all. The preparation is paying off amazingly. The only thing you are feeling is the fullness you have been craving for so long, but you need more.

“Please move, baby.” 

It's the first time you use a pet name and you do it without thinking about it  but the way you say it affects him deeply. He tries to surpass the loud moan which was about to slip and you notice his struggle.

“Don’t hide your moans from me. I wanna hear them.” 

You imagined this moment for a long time. You spent hours imagining how he would talk, moan and come. You are so close to getting what you want and you have no intention to give up on it. Not even shyness can stop you from getting what you want.

“Then let’s make a deal.” He says, sounding breathless inside you. “None of us will try to hide their reactions. It’s only fair.”

“Deal.” You say eagerly and he chuckles. Then without saying anything else he starts to move inside you. 

First, it’s slow. Not painfully slow but still not as hard as you want. Yet you don’t say anything because you know this isn’t only for you. He’s trying to get used to feeling you around his cock. It seems overwhelming especially when he stops hiding his reaction. Low moans and curses spill from his lips. You say nothing, just enjoy the moment.

“Fuck.” This time he’s speaking louder than before. “You feel amazing around my cock, darling. So… so amazing.”

Your only reaction is moaning. The praise goes straight to your pussy. You wanna slam yourself against his cock and force him to move faster. 

“So eager for me. If I knew you wanted me this bad, we wouldn’t have to wait this long to fuck each other.” 

“It’s not like you made it obvious that you want me either.” 

“Forgive me for not thinking so highly of myself.”

The weight of his words crushes you. 

“Look at me.” You say turning your head back and find him looking directly at you. “You are all I ever wanted.” His expression changes. A wave of emotions waves over him. You feel he’s on the verge of getting emotional. “Now fuck me hard so we can finally experience what this feels like.” He smiles, but you can still see the emotions behind his eyes.

“Your wish is my command, baby.” 

From this moment, he is relentless. It’s fast and hard. The room is filled with the noise of skin slamming against skin, your wetness on his cock and your joint moans. It feels good. So fucking good that it doesn’t feel real. You can feel the pleasure bottling up. He’s moving back and forth with long strokes. His cock never leaves you. He pulls himself back until only the tip remains inside you and slams back in. The moans that leave your lips aren't human anymore. You feel desperate to reach that high again. 

“Please.” You beg suddenly. “Please… I’m so… close.”

“Harder or faster?” His voice is hoarse, showing you how close he is to losing control. 

“Faster.” You manage to say between moans. It’s so hard to even say one word out loud.

“I’m gonna come too.” And right then he notices that he didn’t put on a condom. “Fuck.” He sounds so disappointed.

“What?”

“We forgot the condom.” He slows down. 

“Keep going. I’m on birth control.” 

“Thank god!” You can’t help but smile before he picks up the pace again. In a second, both of you are a moaning mess. You come hard, so hard that you feel your muscles cramping with the force of it. Your whole body is electrified, you can feel it even on your toes. The noises you make push him over the edge. He starts to move faster and when you think your high is about to end, a new level opens up. Your mind stops working while your body turns jelly under him. 

He isn’t any different than you. His loud moans, and his desperate pace show how much he is enjoying it, but you are too lost in your own pleasure to notice. 

When you both drop your bodies on the couch, neither of you find the words. 

“Wow.” That's all you can say.

“Wow indeed.”

You turn your face and look at him. He seems completely blissed out.

“We should’ve done this waaay before.” You smile hearing his words. 

“You could’ve made a move, but you were too busy pitying yourself.” 

The words come out without you considering what you are saying and it doesn’t take long for you to regret them. It isn’t the time or place to talk about this. 

“I wanted to ruin our friendship for a long time, doll, but I was afraid. I was scared that I would ruin it for real and you wouldn’t wanna see me again. I was just fine being your good friend. It was a better alternative than losing you completely.”

You know what he means too well. That’s how you felt since the moment you met Bucky. He is such an amazing person, you didn’t want to lose him. Even if it means you have to witness him being happy with other people.

“That’s how I felt too, but look at you. Who can say no to you?” 

His smile is bitter. You sense he doesn’t believe you even without him opening his mouth.

“Come on. That is the afterglow speaking.”

You move your head up and get support from your left hand. 

“Look at me, Bucky.” He does and you see that he really doesn’t believe you. “You are gorgeous. Inside and out.”

“I know I am not what I used to be.”

“And that’s fine.” You quickly add. “You might not be Men’s Health cover material anymore, but guess what? It’s less healthy trying to keep that shape. Don’t let the name fool you. You don’t need six packs and huge biceps to look attractive. You need to be healthy so I can keep fucking you.”

Your last sentence makes him smile sincerely.

“You really believe that?”

“I do and honestly I have never been a six pack girl. You are even more attractive like this to me. A bit older and experienced. Just my type.”

“Hmm…” He says before kissing you deeply. You lose yourself in that kiss. So when he breaks it and asks you out, you are caught off guard.

“Huh?”

“I said: does it mean you will let me take you on a date?” 

A date? With Bucky Barnes? 

“Oh, yes. Anything you want.”

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x female reader #bucky barnes smut #bucky barnes au #bucky barnes fluff #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes x y/n #celebrity!bucky barnes #bucky barnes imagine #bucky barnes one shot #bucky barnes x oc #natasha romanoff #marvel x reader #sebastian stan #marvel fanfiction #dilf!bucky #bucky barnes fic #my stories

[sunshinescribes]

Sanctuary

Pairing: Dracule Mihawk x Fem!Reader

Part 2 of this fic

Rating: None

Warnings: Pining, Angst, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Soft!Mihawk

Mihawk wishes he could make you stay.

If only he were more convincing, less prideful, perhaps he could speak the words he holds in his heart. Within him is a chamber of contained confessions, a world that exists purely for you, and the voices within rage and plead. Do not let her go. Do not let her leave us again. 

But he will. 

You run, and he lets you.

Even if Mihawk split open his chest and handed you his still-beating heart, you would flee. You’ve done it all your life. Slipping between forgotten towns and unknown islands. The concept of home is foreign—belonging, a myth. 

Every place you have ever escaped to has called itself sanctuary, and every time it was a lie. Even Kuraigana Island.

Even him.

Mihawk considers you as you rest beside him on an uncomfortable cot tucked away in a tiny room at the back of the tavern—a room that appears to house you for the time being. His eyes fix on your face, spellbound by that rare, delicate softness that graces your features—a momentary repose before you wake and the world becomes ugly and unfair once more. If Mihawk tries hard enough, he can almost convince himself that you both are back behind the walls of his castle, curled comfortably in a bed large enough to sleep an entire family.

He had loved you most in those predawn hours—how your hands would move instinctively in your sleep, drawing him closer until you both were chest to chest, heart to beating heart. You would bury your face in his neck, inhaling softly as if you needed to breathe him in, and feel his essence in your very lungs. 

Nothing could take him away from you in those moments. The walls of the castle could crumble around him, and Mihawk would still refuse to stir—refuse to be separate from you. 

It had been so lovely, so right…and then he went and did the one thing you could never forgive.

A heavy sigh leaves Mihawk, thinking back on that ruinous day. He should have known better; known the news he was about to share would bring devastation, but he had been blinded by hope and compelled by a fear that haunted him like a tortured soul. 

Mihawk doesn’t want to remember, but the image is forever burned in his mind’s eye. You, nestled comfortably in one of the castle’s many alcoves. Sunlight streamed through the window like holy light, making you the image of divinity. He had called to you softly, and you stirred, prying a single eye open begrudgingly, nearly on the brink of sleep. 

He had lowered himself to the ground, brushing his knuckles against your cheek while playfully chiding you. Your frustration faded quickly as you leaned into his touch, wordlessly demanding a kiss.

Mihawk had been all too happy to oblige, tenderly pressing his lips to yours. He muttered soft words against your mouth—I have something to tell you. 

You had been so unsuspecting, completely at ease, running your finger along the line of his jaw, softly brushing his trimmed beard in a way that made his eyes flutter.

God, he should have just pulled himself into the alcove with you. Crowded into that tiny space and drew you flush against him. He should have whispered against the curve of your neck until you drifted back to the land of dreams.

No. 

It needed to happen the way it did. Even if the image of you pulling back from him suddenly still snags his heart. You had blinked at Mihawk in disbelief when he spoke his next words, as if perhaps you had imagined them—it couldn’t be true; he would never align with the World Government. He would never...

But he did.

They had requested him many times before, but Mihawk had never cared for their offer. He did not fear the marines nor the World Government, and he certainly cared little for the overzealous fools that threw their weight around like children on a schoolyard—the self-important government dogs, warlords of the seas. 

Mihawk had not thought much of it until he had you.

Your bounty posters became a cruel warning, promises of death. Mihawk rarely ever considered his own mortality, but yours haunted him, and his nightmares began to paint tortuous scenes—Mihawk pushing through a crowd that watches with wicked fascination and contempt as you kneel at the execution platform. He calls your name in his dreams, but you never react. All that cheer and fire is stripped from you. Mihawk moves as if wading through water, every step heavier than the last, and he knows he can’t reach you—can’t lift Yoru fast enough to turn the platform into splinters. You are going to die, and there’s nothing he can do. 

The nightmares bled into reality, no longer a possibility to consider but a matter of when. Better pirates that you and him had fallen at the hands of the World Government. 

And so he turned to them finally and agreed to do their bidding, even if he had no such intentions. His immunity would shield you both. His title would be a warning to bounty hunters and marines alike. If you seek to ruin my peace, you will die by my blade. 

Mihawk had expected your apprehension, but he never anticipated your rage. Eyes that had once looked at him fondly now regarded him as if he had pierced Yoru through your heart and swore to drag you to Impel Down. Your words turned viscous, laced with venom and fury and pain.

And all at once, the serenity of a love you both shared had shattered. You left as if you couldn’t stand to be in the same space as Mihawk and swore you could never love him—never share a life with him, not when he served them.

Mihawk blinks through the memory, tries to force it far away, but it’s impossible while you’re sleeping so peacefully beside him, making him painfully aware that he is lacking without you—that the feelings he thought he had mastered had only been lying dormant, waiting for you.

You stir suddenly, a soft sigh escaping your parted lips as your eyes slowly open. You blink a few times, your eyes adjusting to the soft light that pours through the windows of the neglected tavern.

You stare at him, the fog in your mind slowly clearing. Mihawk watches as your brows pinch together and a dissatisfied groan leaves you. 

“Fuck…I thought that was a dream.” 

You try to sound displeased but your voice is soft with sleep.

“Disappointed?” 

You catch the faintest hint of teasing in his voice, so quick and controlled that you almost mistake his response for a genuine question. Mihawk knows you aren’t disappointed—you’re panicking, desperately scrambling to rebuild the wall in your mind that makes it easy to act cold and indifferent. Without it, the playful insults and snide remarks die on your tongue. 

“I thought I wouldn’t have to deal with this.” You lift to a sitting position, fixing your gaze on a tiny crack in the wall to keep yourself from looking back at Mihawk. “I hoped, anyway.”

You feel his sharp eyes considering you in a way that you aren’t sure you can take right now. All this attention and newness makes you feel like a caged animal in need of escape. The creeping unease serves to spark the fire within you, hot flames raging with a need to scald.

"Are you sure you can even be here right now?” You attempt to sound genuine, feigning a curious look as you glance at Mihawk from over your shoulder. “Won’t the Admirals miss their favorite errand boy?” 

You expect that quick flash of fire in his eyes—the bitter twist of his lips that tells you no more honeyed words will pass them. You can navigate that easily; taunt him until he’s shuffling out the door and you’re swearing to yourself that this was the last time.

Mihawk scoffs, but it’s light instead of sharp with malice, more akin to a laugh than anything else.

“I suppose they wish they had such power over me,” Mihawk muses softly, “but no one does. No one but you.”

You blink dumbly at Mihawk, too blindsided to respond. You want him to argue, not pacify—to meet you head-on with the same amount of fire, bite back in a way you know he’s capable of. Make it easy for me to leave. Make me hate you again.

It startles you how quickly you realize that he won’t. You had asked him to kiss you, knowing what it would mean for Mihawk to do so. You had whispered your hatred, fully aware that Mihawk would understand the true meaning behind your words. Both of you had thrown caution to the wind, fully aware of the consequences. You could run as you always do, but Mihawk wouldn’t make it any easier for you, not this time.

“We always would have ended up here,” Mihawk starts, as if reading your mind. “Neither of us is capable of letting the other go.”

You let out a mirthless laugh, furious at how right he is. You two had only ever been lying to yourselves, trying to push away feelings that refused to be denied. The connection between you is inseverable, no matter how hard you scrape and scream. Mihawk holds your heart in his hands, just as you hold his.

“I can’t come back to you Mihawk.” Your voice is low, barely a whisper. You feel worn to the bone, so fucking tired of this charade. Honesty is…terrifying, a vulnerability easily exploited, but there are no lies to tell that will soothe your scarred heart. “Not now. Not…”

“While I’m a warlord,” he finishes for you.

You nod, detesting the lump that forms in your throat and the way your eyes burn. God, you despise the World Government. If only your fury could give you the power to wage war on Mary Geoise and destroy them. Everything you’ve ever dared to love has been taken by them. Your true home. A life you could have lived. Mihawk.

You feel the softness of his mouth against your shoulder suddenly, a small comfort that has you swallowing a sob. 

“I didn't do it to hurt you…” Mihawk admits, pressing another kiss on your warm skin. “But I hurt you nonetheless.”

You feel the apology searing into your skin—words that much like you, he can’t speak. I’m sorry. Sorry I hurt you. Sorry I’ll continue to. 

A rough finger brushes against your cheek, drawing your attention back to Mihawk. You blink, your eyes falling to his lips, as Mihawk lifts his head from your shoulder. You feel your heart seize when you meet his eyes. There it is again. That look of worship—fierce affection, as if you burn brighter than the sun.

“Mihawk—” your voice trembles.

He captures your lips before you can say another word and kisses away the agony that tries to tear you to shreds. Mihawk is gentle, delicate in a way you don’t think you deserve, and you find that you’re grateful for it. Happy he can’t see the tear that rolls down your cheek.

I didn’t do it to hurt you.

You know. Mihawk is many things, but not cruel. Never cruel. You knew the day you left, but it didn’t matter. Your hatred of the World Government is vicious. All-consuming. You can’t see past it, no matter how much you wish you could. 

“You can run. Hide,” Mihawk whispers against your lips, “But don’t pretend you hate me. Not again.”

You hear the masked plea. Mihawk had spent months wondering, hoping like a fool that you still loved him. It’s impressive how well you shield your heart, hiding behind your quick wit and sharp tongue. Last night had been the first time since you’d left that you dared hint at the possibility that your heart had not abandoned him. The thought of being pulled back into the unknown is worse than any punishment you could impose on him.

“Don’t break my heart again,” you retort, leaning back into him. You think you hear Mihawk say never, but the feeling of his lips on yours again robs you of all thought. It’s agonizing how slowly he kisses you—takes his time tasting as if you two have all the time in the world. 

Tomorrow you will be long gone, little more than a sweet memory he’ll hold in the back of his mind as he ventures home, but you’ve given him the one thing he thought he’d lost forever: hope.

Not now. 

But someday. 

Mihawk is a patient man. He can await the day he’s able to find you one last time, not as Hawk Eye or a warlord of the seas, but as Dracule Mihawk—the solitary pirate. Marine hunter. The freest and fiercest man in the world, bound only by his love for you.

divider credit: cafekitsune

#sunny.fic #dracule mihawk x reader #dracule mihawk x y/n #mihawk x reader #mihawk x you #mihawk x y/n #x reader #tumblr got it first cause AO3 is down lmao

[genericpuff]

to add to that last ask about highlights, can you explain how you think the colors don't work now? bc as far as I can tell the colors for the background and characters are still the same as they were in s1, but they for some reaosn don't work now. is because of the lack of values? the lack of shading and highlights? no use of textures? you can explain it better than me

A lot of it comes down to color theory and lack of proper rendering.

Concerning the colors, they definitely aren't the exact same as they were back in S1. Someone on reddit actually did a far better visual breakdown of it than I have time to put together, so full credit goes to /u/LowPHvinegar for the following images!

There's this problem with the undertones and shading used now that makes the characters look very 'plastic'. Before they looked ethereal, now they look rubbery and artificial. And there are a few reasons for this, one of which includes how Rachel shades the comic now compared to S1.

There's also the backgrounds themselves. LO's always been minimal in its backgrounds, but they used to have loads of texture, lighting effects, and glow.

(seriously, when was the last time we got an iconic panel like this? So many of the panels in S3, even the ones that TRY to feel 'iconic', don't come anywhere near the level of the S1 art that was truly memorable).

Rachel's also clearly uh... checked out of the comic in a way that shows through her lineart specifically. Rachel's old art is known for having very thick, varying, distinct lines, and there's been a lot less of that lately.

Rachel's lineart:

Who the fuck:

And what happens when the backgrounds stop pulling their weight? The colors look even worse.

The void backgrounds, unlike in S1, have been VERY muddy and dry. So it makes those hyper-saturated colors look even MORE saturated and ugly.

Now, to Rachel's credit, there have been more backgrounds as of late:

But see how the characters still look whack? It feels like Rachel's making attempts to address the criticism while still avoiding the massive elephant in the room - she's not putting in the same efforts anymore and any efforts she does make feel performative and hollow, and it shows. And this happens a lot with Rachel attempting to address criticism, she's trying to address a specific point that isn't taking into account the larger picture where the grander point is coming from. It feels very "SEE! SEE!" while turning a blind eye to everything else.

And yeah, it means even using some of the same colors from S1 can't and won't save the comic from looking like cheap reproduced garbage. Because just using those colors on their own is missing the forest for the trees, the old colors were only part of a much larger thing. Lore Olympus used to be the sum of its parts - now all those parts have been smashed up with a hammer and left in a mess on the floor, and Rachel is simply trying to pick up those individual parts and call it "fixed".

Frankly, until she understands this and is willing to play a more active part in creating the comic genuinely and with real effort that isn't purely performative or meant to "get back" at her critics, then what LO used to have will forever remain a mess on the floor.

#lore olympus critical #lo critical #anti lore olympus #ask me anything #ama #anon ama #anon ask me anything

[neverchecking]

Hi I love you wirk

And I love how you call totk link sage

Also the cold attack boost outfit I love it my favorite The open back and showing his hips 🤤😋 hot

And I love the zonia

And I have a request

Can I request yandere sage x ruyla ( autocorrect Keeps fixing his name) king of the zonia daughter reader

Smut

Like the reader was sent to the future from her dad with out anyone knowing

And tells link to find his daughter who asleep not to far away from his shrine and go to a the time temple top and the zonia worker will show him the way

And they reade is a sweet flower but looks up to Link.

And link falls for her.

And won't let anyone take her even if it mean Baby trapping her please and thank you

And I love you.

At first I was like Raylu???? Then I noticed you mentioned autocorrect and I was like ah- Rauru.

You absolutely can. I love every part of this idea. I feel like a perfect companion to Sage is one that is just such a sunshiney baby.

Anyway, I meant to get this out last night after work, but I got high instead and spent an hour watching the ceiling fan. I also wrote like the weirdest draft ideas and I'm deciding if they're worth fleshing out at all.

(Sage is TotK Link!)

Also smut so MDNI! 18+

Smut CW: Breeding kink, baby trapping, reader is a little naive. Sage. He's a crusty little bastard. (affectionately) Dumbification.

It had many names, the Legend of the Dragon's Daughter. Many of which titled it as either a legend or a story. A myth. Some warned of great dangers surrounding the aura of the spirit the legend told about. Other's told of the pure divinity that this being held in the palm of their hand. The grace and adroitness that lined their very pores was spoken of so fondly by the older generations who had heard the story from their own grandparents, who had heard it from theirs and so on and so forth. The older Zora especially spoke of her in such a tone he found himself lending a little belief to the legend.

The story told of a daughter, blessed to the first King and Queen of Hyrule by the Three Goddesses themselves. A princess bestowed with the gift of beauty and grace, a beacon to the budding kingdom. There were even carvings under Hyrule Castle, hidden by toppled boulders, that portrayed her image.

And he would admit. She looked like a being having been blessed by the heavens above.

The carvings had showed an ugly side to an already bitter story. How this princess, this goddess sculpted muse, was struck down by the Demon King as a means to get back at both King Rauru and Queen Sonia. The carvings from there had been too worn down to get a clear reading, but it was enough to pique his interest. Besides, what else did he have to do? Save a princess who had no issues with leaving him to die? Deal with monsters that the people of Hyrule already knew damn well how to deal with and were no longer scared of them? Traverse the depths and all the lightroots he had already found?

At least this way, he may get some new power out of it. If nothing else, at least he had a good story for Traysi.

His first area to investigate was the sky island he woke up on. He could still spot Rauru's spirit in certain areas, understanding the solemn look he seemed to wear much more than he previously did.

It was also much easier to travel around the island this time around, which was a bonus.

When prodded for answers, something complicated flashed over the spirit's face before it settled into a Grim acceptance. One Link had worn too often right after remembering the untimely demise of the Champions.

"She was gravely injured. My precious sunshine. I almost lost her that day." He had spoken in a grave echo, eyes glazed and far off, as if seeing his daughter right in front of him. "My sister, Mineru, had offered her services in an effort to preserve her soul. I am unsure if it had worked. I haven't had the heart to look. I would be such a disappointment to her fiery heart and iron strong will to shine in the brightest ways possible. She was kept in the Temple of Time if you are at all curious."

He was. He was curious. He wanted to see this being for himself. If Rauru spoke so highly of you, it had to be worth it. And it was either this or go save Zelda, and he figured she was fine doing what she currently was for a little while longer.

At least until he looked further into this.

Walking into the temple, he hummed to himself as he looked around, spotting the blue glow of Rauru near a wall closer to the exit. He nodded solemnly when Link approached. The hand that matched his own raised to the wall, pulling forth one of those green symbols that chimed at his hand. The bricks shuffled and moved while Rauru faded out, leaving an unactive construct in front of him. It rattled to life, chirping up at him before recognizing that he was friend and not foe. The Construct explained that he was designed to protect the chasm the Princess was being kept in, but since Rauru had deemed him worthy, he would escort the blond to the place. It wasn't a long journey, not at all, just down a spiraling staircase with stone walls curtained by moss.

But the moment he laid eyes on you, he understood why you were hidden.

You face was lax in such a peaceful expression as your body remained weightless, suspended in a bubble of seafoam green and ocean blue. Your hair was splaying up behind you as if you were underwater with your hands clasped around a hilt of a sword. Even the sword itself was divinity in a blade, glowing a bright white from it's place in front of you. You were clad in white robes trimmed in cold with a stone necklace laced around your delicate neck, those same white earrings hanging from your ears.

You were...ethereal. From the curve of your jawbone to the plump flesh of your cheeks, he was enthralled by your very essence. The curve of your shoulders and the toned flow of your arms, even the dip in your collarbone-- all of it had his eyes trailing every bend and curve of your body.

What he wouldn't do to get a piece of you.

He ached to just touch your sun-kissed skin, to feel it under his palms as he held you. To feel the run of your hips, fingers gripping at the dips that decorated them. To paint them a splattering of blues and purples in a lasting reminder of who he was and what he had done to you. To bite and nibble at the flesh just to hear the kind of cries you would make.

Goddess, he couldn't imagine what your voice sounded like, but he wanted to. He wanted to hear what it sounded like while you breathlessly gasped out. To hear what it sounded like when you cried out his name in pure ecstasy as you withered underneath of him. To hear you give yourself to him entirely.

He wanted to feel your weight on top of him, to experience your hands in his hair (Or cupping his cheeks if he chose to allow himself that vulnerability), to live in your orbit, worshipping you as his one true Goddess.

His eyes landed on the same green symbol that unlocked everything pertaining to the Zonai. He raised his hand in response. It lit up a bright green before fading. The bubble shined brightly before growing, eventually popping and exposing you to the elements. Which why? You were so vulnerable like that? Why not just give you to him directly? You were at risk like this. Couldn't they SEE THAT-

Whatever invisible force keeping you suspended gently laid you on your feet, which were bare, only adorned with an anklet matching your necklace. The tip of the sword in your hand clinked against the stone floor. The echo of it made your eyes, your gorgeous, gorgeous eyes, snap open. If he thought seeing you before was captivating, this was downright...enchanting. The light of your irises positively glowed as your silently gasped, hands tightening around the hilt of the weapon. He rushed to your side as he saw your balance falter, cradling you in his arms as one of your hands came to gently hold your own temple. Even just the sound of your groan made him swallow hard, fighting the blood threatening to rush to his (dick-) cheeks.

You blinked before realizing that he was not someone you knew, pushing him away with much more force than he would expect from someone fresh out of a comatose state. The only thing stopping him from wrapping his arms around you once more was the tip of the very blade now prodding at his neck. He swallowed.

"Who are you?" You demanded, hold on the weapon shaking just a tad.

(Which was so adorable. How someone like you, all soft skin and doe eyes, expected to make someone like him, rugged scars and gnarled morals, bend to you was beyond him.)

(But he'd love to see you try anyway.)

"Where are my people?! Or Queen Sonia and King Rauru?!" Oh, you were so cute.

He wanted to decimate that innocence you carried.

With a careful hand, he gently pushed the blade aside with the back of a hand, letting a smug smirk settle on his lips. Your cheeks immediately reddened as your attention remained on him. Just as he liked it, he decided then and there. He liked having your attention (and only yours) on him. But having you acting so hostile towards him just wouldn't stand. But you didn't know any better, not yet anyway, so he'd let it slide.

He gently explained that you had been fatally wounded protecting your people, something that your parents were endlessly proud of you for-- even in death. While it was a direct shot in his, admittedly lacking, heart to be the one to tell you of the passed time and the death of your parents (The sacrifice of your father and the betrayal that lead to your mother's death), he was evidently the best and only option. He understood, on an intimate level, what it was like to loose so much time, healing yourself, while the rest of the world carried on, carrying the loss of friends and family with it. He knew what it was like. It had to be why you two were so perfect for each other.

He held you as your cried, soothing down your hair as your tears (Which should never have been shed) soaked his shoulder. While he was never interested in defeating the Demon King for Zelda's sake, he may have just found another motive.

One much more worthy of his time and attention.

<><><><>

When he first saw you, he understood why you were hidden, on a surface level.

He understood why much more on a deeper, more intimate one now.

You were so bubbly. Even when faced with the devastation of your home, you remained optimistic, greeting the constructs that roamed around happily. Bestowing your cherished kisses (Those should belong to him.) upon their cold exterior while wiping them free of dirt. Even the wildlife that had squawked and charged at him crooned and chirped under your touch, hankering for the scratches you gifted them under the chin. You saw beauty in the overrun weeds and fauna, taking great interest in the new species that had popped up.

When he took to the mainland, via shrine travel because he would be damned before you got down the same way he originally did, it seemed like you couldn't see everything fast enough. You loved exploring the caves, despite the Like-Likes baring their disgusting teeth and innards (Which he quickly disposed of), ached to get as close as possible to the chasms (Which wasn't very as he refused to risk you falling in), yearned to traverse the mountain peaks and snow dunes of the mainland (Which killed him on the inside since didn't you know how dangerous those were?!).

You were quite the adventurer, full of inexperienced naivety and unpoised curiosity. The exact opposite of the princess he knew. He forgot you were royalty have the time with your mannerisms, nothing like Zelda. Which was so refreshing.

If only you weren't so fragile. He would never admit it (Too your face at least) that he's thought of just tying you down and keeping you in his (He saw it as your shared home these days) home. It was on the far outskirts of Tarrey town (Far enough no one would hear your cries for help should it come to that) with a pasture out front so you could keep a horse nearby as a friend (Should you behave).

(It wouldn't be a young, steady horse. No, most likely an older horse who had long since retired from any sort of running or getaway attempts.)

He just needed a way to keep you stationary.

And it hit him like a Hinox. You two were walking around Hateno (It was deemed safe and far enough from Tarry Town that it was still new to you), when you stopped, let out a high enough squeal his ears pinned to his head as his head snapped towards you. You were always in his peripheral, but now you were right in front of him with his hands quickly holding your arms, checking you over for injury. There were none, but you were beaming like someone had handed you a million rupees (He would. He could. He'd do it just for you), instead redirecting his attention with a call of 'Link, look!'. He had followed your line of sight just as you began squeezing his own hands, expecting you to be aweing over a cow or goat or, Goddess forbid, a dog again (You very nearly took one of stable dogs home last time). But you weren't.

And that's when it hit him.

You were loosing any semblance of a mind you had over a small infant, strapped to their mother's back by a wrap of some sort. The babe smiled at your reaction, letting out a small cascade of giggles that had you squealing in pure joy.

That was it.

The answer was right there! How could he have been so blind?! It was right there. If he gave you a baby, his baby no less, you would have no choice but to remain dormant. You would have to stay right where he put you to not only protect yourself, but to your protect your child. He had no doubt you would do it. You were too kind, too naive, for any other option. Once you figured out you were carrying his child, you'd fall for thing, claiming it as your own before it was any bigger than an apple seed.

And from then on it would just be a matter of formalities. You'd be his for the rest of your lives.

Exactly what he wanted.

Exactly what had led up to this moment. You were nothing but a babbling, crying mess underneath of him, pulling at the roots of his hair as he folded your legs against your chest. You were pleading with him, some mindless demand that he wasn't even sure you knew what you were asking, but it was background noise. He was too focused on watching the way he disappearing into your cunt, a milky sheen coating the shaft of his cock as heavy dollops of past loads dripped past your gaping opening. It was mesmerizing the way your body reacted to him, sucking him in and fighting him every time he pulled out. Even on an unconscious level, you ached for him. Not nearly as much as he breathed for you, but that would come with time. He knew it would. He'd ensure it.

The cry of his name on your lips had the coil in his gut steadily tightening as his pace picked up, thoroughly hammering your insides. He needed to make sure he was prodded right against your cervix for this to work. He needed to get this right. He needed to father any and all of your children. Starting here and now.

Whether you knew about it or not.

You had babbled something about him pulling out too long ago, but he had...distracted you with long laps at your clit and soft nipples along your thighs. He didn't even think of truly ruining you until you were clenching your thighs around his head and drenching his bottom jaw, too gone to properly process anything going on around you.

And he'd keep it that way.

His thumb, rough and calloused, rubbed harsh little circles into your clit, feeling it pulse in time with his ministrations. You whimpered beneath him, chest arching up to push against his own as you cried out, squeezing around him. You were positively milking him for every drop he had to offer.

There was no way you didn't want his children. Not with the way you were clenching around him as he jutted as far as he could go, filling your womb once more. You laid boneless beneath him, hands dropping to hang around his neck as he took a moment to breath. Your cunt spasmed once more and his cock twitched inside of you.

"You're not done yet, are you, Princess?" He purred into your ear, making it flicker as he rolled his hips against yours, even if overstimulation rocked his entire system in a flash of shot nerves.

None of that mattered to him. He had a mission. A mission he would do anything to accomplish.

Anything to keep you as his.

Yes, the reader was holding the Light Sword. Yes, I know that's not how you get it. I just thought it would be a cool tidbit bc YES, Sage seems like the type to get turned on by a hot princess threatening with a sword.

#linked universe #linked universe x reader #yandere linked universe #yandere linked universe x reader #linkeduniverse #yandere legend of zelda #legend of zelda #loz #link x reader #cindersins #yandere sage #yandere sage x reader #yandere lu sage #yandere lu sage x reader #lu sage #sage is totk link

[bogleech]

Ok but I have seen you talk about this so many times, even referencing it in your old cartoons, so I gotta ask - when and how did you fall in love with neopets, like that?

Wait, is it that obscure now? I didn't know a single person from its inception to roughly 2010 who didn't have a neopets account. It was the single biggest gaming-esque name on the internet for years. Celebrities casually mentioned playing it, it got mainstream marketing tie-ins, it had plush toys people waited in line to buy up and a TCG made by the same company as Magic the Gathering. It's not that I especially "fell in love with neopets" like it's a niche thing but that there was a time it was almost outselling Pokemon, so it's just another huge cultural phenomenon that was a big part of everyone's lives during my teens to twenties, and hits my special interest in creature design since it has THOUSANDS (beyond the pets alone) ranging in quality from extremely creative to just plain heinous. I personally only got invested in it when they introduced the mutant pets, though, because it started out having almost like a "rule" against making any pets that were "ugly." They'd joke about it as a prank for instance, and originally only featured the mutants as part of a storyline they never intended players to actually adopt. They even had a fake alternate version of the site with fake "adoptions coming soon" and somehow didn't anticipate the userbase genuinely wanting the slime creatures.

The Chia and Aisha were my favorites but mainly the chia because that kind of "scuzzy" creature was already my own design aesthetic, polar opposite of the site's established style and reminded me of if Jeff Goldblum got fused with a tardigrade instead of a fly:

Is that just me? I feel like the tardigrade similarity jumps right out but I think it was an accident and they were possibly actually thinking of the rotting giant from Nausicaa:

The fact that they intended its design to be unlovably ugly and were surprised anyone wanted it only made it more sympathetic. Eventually they made mutants available and I got fully invested into playing, at the time having to spend hours a day on their little flash games until I could afford a mutant after months of labor. But then a couple of years later they just abruptly decided they really didn't feel like having its design around anymore and "updated" it, which back then was automatic for all pets owned by all players with no going back:

It had unfortunately been fairly common that they'd just completely, totally redo a pet like this with no warning and no user poll to make sure it's what anyone wanted. You just had to pray they never did it to your favorites.

All the other mutants in that earlier image would also get completely changed or never released at all. They still kept some of the other "gross" mutants and would make even grosser, so that wasn't even part of the reasoning. Just the random whims of mad gods I guess. I think what killed the game for a lot of people was actually when they did this to basically everyone at once, standardizing almost all the pet artwork so they could wear clothes in their new dressup system. It wasn't as drastic as replacing a sludge guy with some kind of hairy leaf guy but it did eliminate hundreds of technically unique designs from the site, and I found someone else's examples they put together so I thankfully don't have to do it myself:

If anyone's not familiar enough with neopets or didn't figure that out from the last paragraph, the ones on the right are just recolors of the same exact art as all members of their species with added accessories (now wearable items) Players used to work hard to get pets they wanted based on their unique poses and personality, but you could only keep the original art for a small number of these. The customization feature kind of attracted a different new fandom, from what people say, but it never approached a fraction the site's peak, which is probably how the brand wound up getting sold to some NFT bros who aren't even involved in the site itself and supposedly never even spoken to its remaining staff outside some business emails? This is unrelated to the brief period it was bought by scientologists and the siterunners had to fight back against their propaganda leaking into it. I really didn't expect to turn this response into a mini article, I should really just make a thing on bogleech.com about it sometime. Some of my tumblr mutuals to this day are people I met through the neopets fandom and probably have equally lengthy memories/complaints.

#neopets #pokemon #scientology #nft's

[ouroborosorder]

Do you have an instance of Arknights VFX that gets frequently praised that you as a VFX artist think is mediocre or bad?

EBENHOLZ' SKIN "EINE VARIATION" IS A CRIME AGAINST ME SPECIFICALLY.

Look. I love Ebenholz, a lot. His effects are really strong, too! Some of my personal favorites. But this skin. Jesus Christ this skin.

I have seen so many people praising this skin as having good effects or being better than his original and it genuinely makes me wonder if half of the effects are actually rendered in some sort of shrimp colors that everyone but me can see.

There is not a single part of this skin's effects that I don't hate. Not just because I find them ugly, uninteresting, and unclear, but because I think they fundamentally misunderstand who Ebenholz is.

You asked for this.

Part 1 - The Colors.

The actual art for his skin has a beautiful striking blue and light gray background, with the light pink Arts accentuating it, and then the blood red and pitch black of his outfit meant to draw the eye to the center. This works perfectly in the art, so what's wrong?

First problem. Ebenholz doesn't have the blue background in gameplay. Meaning that his effects are red (not pink, like the art, they are red) and his skin is red. So there's extreme monochrome happening, with absolutely no interesting contrast between him and his Arts. His Elite Charge is blue, at the very least, so his signature gimmick stands out uniquely, which is quite nice! That's a great decision that won't cause any problems down the line at all.

"Oh, but Keys, it's so that the red Arts stand out when he uses his S3 and summons that giant goat spirit in the background!" That's a great point, person I just made up. Please remember this excellent point for later.

Part 2 - General Effects

The effect starts with a deploy animation wherein Ebenholz is surrounded by sparkles like some sort of magical girl. The deploy effect is genuinely bad in so many ways, mostly related to timing and motion, but this rant is going to be long enough. And I'm gonna need to focus and talk about the sparkles.

The biggest thing to know about Eine Variation is this image. Get acquainted with it. If there was a recurring visual motif in Eine Variation, it is this piece from the original art.

And yeah, as an effects artist, I'd be amped to work on this. This looks fucking sick as shit. It's dynamic, it's chaotic, it's got harsh lines to contrast the flowing music staff, it's great. So let's see how this texture looks in g- okay what the fuck.

In the game, it looks nothing like the art. It's literally just the stock glimmer effect. It's not even a new texture. This thing's been in the game since release. It looks. Bad. It's way too simplistic. Because it wasn't meant to be the center of attention, it's meant to appear for an instant and then fade. Like, you know. A glimmer.

What you just saw in the screenshot above is one of Ebenholz' Mystic Caster charges. And it is easily my least favorite part of the entire skin.

Ebenholz (Original Flavor)'s Mystic Caster charges has one of my favorite visual touches in the entire game. Ebenholz fights using artifacts from the Witch King whose power he inherits - a wand and a set of five Originium dice. So he wields the wand, and has die rotate around him as he fights. In-game, they represent this by his charges being the dice, rotating around his hand. This is, as we say in the vfx industry, fucking badass. So naturally they removed the dice entirely in Eine Variation.

Fuck.

Fine, alright. Maybe it's him... moving further from the Witch King's influence, then? We'll go with that hey stop looking at his S3 what are you doing don't get ahead of me.

Now, I know what you're thinking. "hey, Keys, this is unfair. You're asking us to judge an animated effect based on a static picture of it." Well, my dear reader, I have bad news. You just saw the entire charge's visual. The whole thing.

They are a glimmer of light that does not pulse or twinkle. They just. Sit there. Floating. Again, it's just so simplistic, it's not even interesting to talk about.

The only good thing I can say about it is that it's way easier to tell how many charges he has since they're bigger, more spread out, and not moving. Also the Elite charge is WAY more distinct, since it's bright blue now to contrast with the red normal charges. Which is nice! A good decision! It would sure be a shame if it bit them in the ass later!

Part 3 - Attack and Skill 1

Did you think I was kidding when I said that the sparkles are the sole visual motif in this skin?

I hate these attack trails. Not only are they too simplistic, they're just too cute. I joked about magical girls before, but dear god, this just doesn't fucking look right. This skin is literally described as him being apathetic and miserable as a noble, so why are the effects so... Colorful and cute? Ebenholz isn't a cutesy goofy music-themed magical girl, Ebenholz is a sad gay goth kid who would create a fake My Immortal confession for attention.

I also hate the musical notes. I know I complained about the glimmers being too one-note (pardon the pun), but they just don't interact with the rest of the effect at all. There's nothing else musical about what is happening here. They feel added to remind you that he is casting music.

God I fucking hate the sparkles so goddamned much. I also find it really funny that one single musical note bursts forth with each hit. These shapes are just... So boring, so simple. But put a pin in that for a later.

His S1 uptime comes with an awful aura. he glows red. There is only red and white. this is all there is. This is all there will ever be. That's all I've got about S1.

Part 3 - Skill 2

Oh jesus go back to the red and white

First off, I find these goat so fucking ugly. The synths are a truly terrible choice, because synths and digital music don't come up in any capacity throughout the rest of the effects. So. Great work. This doesn't make sense.

Anyway I hate the color here. The original has a great two-tone black smoke with bright blue glowing eyes, contrasting with Eben's orange Arts. In the skin they slapped an awful blue glow haze over them. This makes them just completely draw visual attention, while they don't match up with Ebenholz' aesthetic at all. if you could see the black, there would be a clear visual link between them, but... Nope. It's ONLY blue, motherfuckers.

Also, they passively emit triangles, which is the only time in this entire effect that the Arts = Geometric Triangles visual idea appears in the entire skin based around an arts caster. Yay for recurring game-wide motifs!

Shockingly, I hate the explosion. It's passable, it's fine. But the timing is absolutely awful. The original's feels like an explosion that is pulling the target in, but the skin's feels like an explosion followed by absorption. It makes it feel less like an explosion and more like a contrivance. Also, it spawns only like, four notes total, which is just so low. Please have more notes, you even have the musical staff, you're so close to having this look like musical arts. I also hate the random swirl of red. The goat didn't have any red in it. Why does this have red. Monochrome would have actually worked better, this is just a summon.

Part 4 - Sound of Silence

Eine Variation S3 features Ebenholz getting hoverhanded by a goat.

I wish I had any other way to put it. But he gets hoverhanded by a goat for the entire uptime of this attack.

What even is this thing? Obviously, it's the goat behind him in his splash art, but what is it? Is it the Witch King? That would make sense, but why is the Witch King's avatar blue? The Witch King has literally never been blue, he's always been associated as being red. Unless this isn't The Witch King, in which case, what the fuck is it then?

I hate this effect more than anything else in this game. The ghost looks absolutely awful. it is very blatantly just the art from the actual skin, slapped behind him with no regard for aesthetic consistancy. Or even regard for if the image is readable at the distance Arknights is played at. The goatghost.jpg is not animated at all, but the hands move up and down, which weirdly only further reveals how static the ghost is. Also the hands aren't animated outside of going up and down which is just so uncanny and uncomfortable. It just reveals how desperately they needed to have some animation to make it not look like absolute hot garbage, and they still failed.

After an entire skin of absurdly simplistic geometric shapes and basic ass textures, suddenly they think they can pull off some shit that looks like a granblue render. This doesn't even look in-line with the rest of the skin's effects, let alone with the chibi artstyle.

Now. Why I truly, truly hate this attack.

When you activate S3, all of Ebenholz' Charges become Elite charges. Meaning they all become blue.

The charges all finally become blue.

In the only part of the skin where you have a blue background.

I just. I can't figure out how you'd fuck this up this bad. If the Elite Charges were red, it would look like the fucking skin art, with the red notes on the pink staff. They'd stand out, or at least look fucking decent. How many charges does Ebenholz have? Oh I don't know THEY'RE FUCKING BLUE ON BLUE.

WHY. WHY ANY OF THIS. WHY ALL OF THIS. I'M IN HELL. THIS WAS MADE TO TORMENT ME PERSONALLY RIGHT

anyway I will give credit where credit is due. I actually quite like the trail when he casts his stocks in S3.

The slight orange two-tone and complicated trails add a lot of nuance and depth to the effect, and the glimmer is toned down to the point where I can see the diamond shape hidden underneath. There is one singular silver lining to this cloud. It could use more musical touches and less fucking sparkles but at this point I need to compliment something.

Finale - Why Do I Give A Shit

Eine Variation launched as part of the Bloodline of Combat skins that came out with Lone Trail. It released alongside Specter the Unchained's Born as One; my personal favorite skin in the entire game. It is a skin that perfectly conveys Laruntina's love of natural beauty and Specter's love of poetry and recitation, bringing them together into poems reflected in a starry lake. The effects are serene and dreamlike, peaceful yet chaotic. It conveys who they are going into the future, who they are together.

Born as One is Bloodline of Combat at its best. Bloodline of Combat is at its best when it tells you something about who this character is at this part of their life. How they change, how they grow, how they look at the world in this point of their life. This is the story that good effects can tell.

So I ask you: What story does Eine Variation's effects tell?

If this an Ebenholz who is growing further from the Witch King's legacy into his own man, then why does the avatar of the Witch King appear behind him? Why does the flavor text describe this as clothing worn by every Graf Urtica? Why does it not lean further into the synth aesthetic to separate himself from the classical music of Leithanien?

If this is an Ebenholz who is currently stuck within the confines of nobility, why is he not wielding the dice associated with his title as Graf Urbica? Why do his fucking goats have synths instead of traditional instruments? Why is the Witch King the wrong color?

And most importantly to all of this: Why are all the shapes so simple?

Yes, Arknights' Arts are geometric. They're usually represented by simple triangles. This is true. But think about who Ebenholz is.

Ebenholz is not a simple and elegant person. Ebenholz is a man who nails complicated, difficult, strange flute solos, but who fails to do simple rhythms and scales. He excels at the complex, the elaborate, and the detailed, and fails at the simplistic. This is always how Ebenholz has been.

So a skin full of simple shapes, easy language, and flat colors... Isn't how he'd fight. It's not who he is. It's not how he'd act. It doesn't just feel wrong, it feels like it's not made for him.

I don't just hate this skin because I think its effects are bad. I mean, I do, and they definitely are.

I hate this skin because it just... Fundamentally does not understand who Ebenholz is. And it definitely does not understand why he is so special.

#(feel free to skip to the ending if you don't want to read an unhinged amount of text about something I hate) #arknights #arknights vfx breakdown #emphasis on breakdown

[muzsmoux]

MHA headcanons bcuz the show brings me a lot of joy

If you don't agree with them or they clash with canon that's ok just scroll on, peace and love on the planet earth and whatnot.

⭐Iida is straight but is openly into BL. He's up to date on new releases, mostly pg shoujo stuff. Except for one fantasy comic that is hella explicit at some points but he is VERY passionate about the lore and characters.

⭐Bakugo has Inosuke levels of androgyny going on. He would give Shouto a run for his money in the "class 1-A's resident prettyboy" vote that was held if he 1. wasn't too scary for people to vote for him. and 2. if he stopped scowling for like two seconds.

⭐Aoyama is some flavor of nonbinary but doesn't use any labels because he HATES them. He is an ✨experience✨, a piece of art up for interpretation.

⭐Pro hero Red Riot has a line of menstrual hygiene products with cool and manly packaging because he's very popular with transmasc people and wanted to give back something helpful and validating to them.

⭐Kirishima once called Bakugo his "brofriend" and he just about had an aneurysm.

⭐ Before they got together, Kirishima wrote half the valentine's cards Bakugou recieved anonymously because he "just had so many feelings it couldn't fit just on one card!!"

⭐Bakugou is a secret romantic. He hates talking about it because it's "bad for his image" but he has a big collection of shoujo manga and internally melts whenever Kiri does something soft for him like buying flowers or holding his hand in public.

⭐Aizawa regularly gets intrusive thoughts of becoming a househusband whenever he has a particulaly annoying time. Like after his 7th parent teacher conference of the day or after a full week of falling asleep in uncomfortable beds in seedy hostels he stares at the ceiling like "Hizashi is a celebrity. He has three jobs. What am I doing here? I love him. I can't cook but I could learn 😫"

⭐Kaminari hits on Bakugo's mom every chance he gets. Bakugo's tries to blow him up, Mitsuki thinks it's fucking hilarious.

⭐Allmight has a crush on Midoriya Inko but is scared to do anything about it because A. it might upset Izuku and B. he thinks he's too old and ugly for her.

⭐You'd think Midnight would be a bad teacher based on her general sexy nature but actually she's well loved because she's the only teacher who the kids trust with advice on relationships and intimacy, especially after the dorm system set in. She has time set aside each week where she's available for anyone to pop into her office and chat about whatever they're worried about. Aizawa is endlessly thankful for this because one time Todoroki asked him what a backshot is because he heard Sero make a joke about it and he's still healing from that conversation.

⭐Since both of their quirks are food based Sato and Momo often bake together. Sato's the master decorator, Momo buys good quality ingredients and is a beast at chiffon cakes.

⭐Denki can't swim. After The Incident in primary school where he almost electrocuted a whole swimming pool of people he's been scared to try.

⭐Kirishima has two moms. His birth mom had him at like 18 and his biological father wasn't ready for that yet. Her best friend immediately stepped up to help with the baby, and that's Kiri's mama now.

Thank you for reading!! I am incredibly late to this fandom but hey I'm having fun now so. Sick.

#bnha #mha #my hero academia #bakugou katsuki #kirishima eijirou #kiribaku #denki kaminari #erasermic #aizawa shouta #headcanon

[copperbadge]

lustfulpasiphae

What do you mean when you say birch sheets? The cabinets in my apartment are kind of rough inside and I've been trying to find better liners than the kind of rubbery stuff

I hope it's okay that I pulled this out to turn into a post of its own, because I took some photos to share :D When I say "birch sheets" I'm just referring to thin 1/8" (3mm) sheets of birch plywood, cut into planks. Here's what they look like installed:

[ID: Two images of cabinets in my home; one, stocked with toilet paper, the other with a large bin in it. Both have long, thin planks of wood covering the original floors.]

I was having an issue with my bathroom cabinet (on the left) because the bottom of the cabinet was water damaged before I moved in, and wasn't molding or anything but had begun to sag. I wanted some stiff thin boards I could pop into place to make a clean, flat floor without having to replace the entire cabinet. I found these birch sheets that were the perfect length, but I had to order like 10 of them and only needed 3 for the bathroom, so I put the rest in a cabinet in the kitchen that happened to have an ugly-looking floor (and apparently misplaced several, not sure what happened to them). It really spruces up the look of a grotty cabinet.

Anyway, this year I was contemplating re-lining my upper kitchen cabinets; I put paper liners down when I was renovating before I moved in, but those only last so long and that was five years ago. I thought I'd install some birch sheets instead, which wouldn't warp or shred the way the paper liners have. My plan is to cover them in freezer paper, pop them in, and then just pop them out every so often and re-line them, which is easier than trying to put the paper straight into the cupboards (awkwardly located for that kind of work) or trying to remove the shelves.

I ordered the ones for the cabinets from somewhere new to me, so can't vouch for the quality yet; I was able to order them custom-cut to the size I wanted at that page, and while it's slightly more expensive per piece, I also only have to buy as many pieces as I need and they should fit snugly, so it's less expensive overall as a purchase. I'll post up when they arrive and I install them!

#naclyoho #home renovation #lustfulpasiphae

[canmom]

canmom's notes on fixing the colours

ok so if you've been following along on this blog for the last week or two i've been banging on about colour calibration. and i feel like it would be good to sum up what i've learned in a poast!

quick rundown on colour spaces

So. When you represent colour on a computer, you just have some numbers. Those numbers are passed to the monitor to tell it to turn some tiny lights up and down. The human visual system is capable of seeing a lot of colours, but your monitor can only display some of them. That's determined by its primaries, basically the exact colour* of its red, green and blue lights.

(*if you're wondering, the primaries are specified in terms of something called the CIELAB colour space, which is a model of all the different colours that humans can possibly see, devised by experiments in the early-mid 20th century where the subjects would turn lights at different frequencies up and down until they appeared visually the same. Through this, we mapped out how eyes respond to light, enabling basically everything that follows. Most human eyes tend to respond in pretty close to identical ways - of course, some people are colourblind, which adds an extra complication!)

Now, the problem we face is that every display is different. In particular, different displays have different primaries. The space in between the primaries is the gamut - the set of all colours that a display can represent. You can learn more about this concept on this excellent interactive page by Bartosz Ciechanowski.

The gamut is combined with other things like a white point and a gamma function to map numbers nonlinearly to amounts of light. All these bits of info in combination declare exactly what colour your computer should display for any given triplet of numbers. We call this a colour space.

There are various standard sets of primaries, the most famous being the ITU-R Rec.709 primaries used in sRGB, first defined in 1993, often just called the sRGB primaries - this is a fairly restricted colour space, intended to be an easy target for monitor manufacturers and to achieve some degree of colour consistency on the web (lol).

Since then, a much wider gamut called Rec.2020 has recently been defined for 'HDR' video. This is a very wide gamut, and no existing displays can actually show it in full. Besides that, there are various other colour spaces such as AdobeRGB and P3, which are used in art and design and video editing.

What you see above is something called a 'chromaticity diagram'. the coordinate system is CIE xyY with fixed Y. The curved upper edge to the shape is the line of monochromatic colours (colours created by a single frequency of light); everything other colour must be created by combining multiple frequencies of light. (Note that the colours inside the shape are not the actual colours of those points in CIE XY, they're mapped into sRGB.)

In this case, the red, green and blue dots are the primaries of my display. Since they are outside the green triangle marked sRGB, it qualifies as a 'wide gamut' display which can display more vivid colours.

Sidebar: you might ask why we didn't define the widest possible gamut we could think of at the start of all this. Well, besides consistency, the problem is that you only have so many bits per channel. For a given bit depth (e.g. 8 bits per channel per pixel), you have a finite number of possible colours you can display. Any colours in between get snapped to the nearest rung of the ladder. The upshot is that if you use a higher gamut, you need to increase the bit depth in order to avoid ugly colour banding, which means your images take up more space and take more time to process. But this is why HDR videos in Rec.2020 should always be using at least 10 bits per colour channel.

in order to display consistent colours between different computers, you need a profile of how your monitor displays colour. Yhis is something that has to be measured empirically, because even two monitors of the same model will be slightly different. You get this information by essentially taking a little gadget which has a lens and a sensitive, factory-calibrated colour meter, and holding it against your screen, then making the screen display various colours to measure what light actually comes out of it. This information is packed into a file called an ICC profile.

(Above is the one I got, the Spyder X2. I didn't put a lot of thought into this, and unfortunately it turns out that the Spyder X2 is not yet supported by programs like DisplayCal. The Spyder software did a pretty good job though.)

Wonderfully, if you have two different ICC profiles, and you want to display the same colour in each space, you can do some maths to map one into the other. So, to make sure that a picture created on one computer looks the same on another computer, you need two things: the colour space (ICC profile) of the image and the colour space (ICC profile) of the screen.

Now different operating systems handle colour differently, but basically for all three major operating systems there is somewhere you can set 'here is the icc profile for this screen'. You might think that's the whole battle: calibrate screen, get ICC profile, you're done! Welcome to the world of consistent colour.

Unfortunately we're not done.

the devil in the details

The problem is the way applications tell the operating system about colour is... spotty, inconsistent, unreliable. Applications can either present their colours in a standard space called sRGB, and let the OS handle the rest - or they can bypass that entirely and just send their numbers straight to the monitor without regard for what space it's in.

Then we have some applications that are 'colour managed', meaning you can tell the application about an ICC profile (or some other colour space representation), and it will handle converting colours into that space. This allows applications to deal with wider colour gamuts than sRGB/Rec.709, which is very restricted, without sacrificing consistency between different screens.

So to sum up, we have three types of program:

programs which only speak sRGB and let the OS correct the colours

programs which aren't colour aware and talk straight to the monitor without any correction (usually games)

programs which do colour correction themselves and talk straight to the monitor.

That last category is the fiddly one. It's a domain that typically includes art programs, video editors and web browsers. Some of them will read your ICC profile from the operating system, some have to be explicitly told which one to use.

Historically, most monitors besides the very high end were designed to support sRGB colours and not much more. However, recently it's become easier to get your hands on a wide gamut screen. This is theoretically great because it means we can use more vivid colours, but... as always the devil is in the details. What we want is that sRGB colours stay the same, but we have the option to reach for the wider gamut deliberately.

Conversely, when converting between colour spaces, you have to make a decision of what to do with colours that are 'out of gamut' - colours that one space can represent and another space can't. There's no 'correct' way to do this, but there are four standard approaches, which make different tradeoffs of what is preserved and what is sacrificed. So if you look at an image defined in a wide colour space such as Rec.2020, you need to use one of these to put it into your screen's colour space. This is handled automatically in colour managed applications, but it's good to understand what's going on!

(*You may notice a difference in games even if they're not colour managed. This is because one of the things the calibration does is update the 'gamma table' on your graphics card, which maps from numeric colour values to brightness. Since the human eye is more sensitive to differences between dark colours, this uses a nonlinear function - a power law whose exponent is called gamma. That nonlinear function also differs between screens, and your graphics card can be adjusted to compensate and make sure everyone stays on the standard gamma 2.2. Many games offer you a slider to adjust the gamma, as a stopgap measure to deal with the fact that your computer's screen probably isn't calibrated.)

For what follows, any time you need the ICC profile, Windows users should look in C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color. MacOS and Linux users, see this page for places it might be. Some applications can automatically detect the OS's ICC profile, but if not, that's where you should look.

on the web

Theoretically, on the web, colours are supposed to be specified in sRGB if not specified otherwise. But when you put an image on the web, you can include an ICC profile along with it to say exactly what colours to use. Both Firefox and Chrome are colour-managed browsers, and able to read your ICC profile right from the operating system. So an image with a profile should be handled correctly in both (with certain caveats in Chrome).

However, Firefox by default for some reason doesn't do any correction on any colours that don't have a profile, instead passing them through without correction. This can be fixed by changing a setting in about:config: gfx.color_management.mode. If you set this to 1 instead of the default 2, Firefox will assume colours are in sRGB unless it's told otherwise, and correct them.

Here is a great test page to see if your browser is handling colour correctly.

Chrome has fewer options to configure. by default it's almost correctly colour-managed but not quite. So just set the ICC on your OS and you're as good as it's gonna get. The same applies to Electron apps, such as Discord.

To embed a colour profile in an image, hopefully your art program has the ability to do this when saving, but if not, you can use ImageMagick on the command line (see below). Some websites will strip metadata including ICC profile - Tumblr, fortunately, does not.

For the rest of this post I'm going to talk about how to set up colour management in certain programs I use regularly (Krita, Blender, mpv, and games).

in Krita

Krita makes it pretty easy: you go into the settings and give it the ICC profile of your monitor. You can create images in a huge variety of spaces and bit depths and gamma profiles. When copying and pasting between images inside Krita, it will convert it for you.

The tricky thing to consider is pasting into Krita from outside. By default, your copy-paste buffer does not have colour space metadata. Krita gives you the option to interpret it with your monitor's profile, or as sRGB. I believe the correct use is: if you're copying and pasting an image from the web, then sRGB is right; if you're pasting a screenshot, it has already been colour corrected, you should use 'as on monitor' so Krita will convert it back into the image's colour space.

in Blender

Blender does not use ICC profiles, but a more complicated system called OpenColorIO. Blender supports various models of mapping between colour spaces, including Filmic and ACES, to go from its internal scene-referred HDR floating-point working space (basically, a space that measures how much light there is in absolute terms) to other spaces such as sRGB. By default, Blender assumes it can output to sRGB, P3, etc. without any further correction.

So. What we need to do is add another layer after that which takes the sRGB data and corrects it for our screen. This requires something called a Lookup Table (LUT), which is basically just a 3D texture that maps colours to other colours. You can generate a LUT using a program called DisplayCal, which can also be used for display calibration - note that you don't use the main DisplayCal program for this, but instead a tool called 3DLUT Maker that's packaged along with it. see this Stack Overflow thread for details.

Then, you describe in the OpenColorIO file how to use that LUT, defining a colour space.

The procedure described in the thread recommends you set up colour calibration as an additional view transform targeting sRGB. This works, but strictly speaking it's not a correct use of the OpenColorIO model. We should also set up our calibrated screen as an additional display definition, and attach our new colour spaces to that display. Also, if you want to use the 'Filmic' View Transform with corrected colours (or indeed any other), you need to define that in the OpenColorIO file too. Basically, copy whatever transform you want, and insert an extra line with the 3D LUT.

Here's how it looks for me:

in games (using ReShade)

So I mentioned above that games do not generally speaking do any colour correction beyond the option to manually adjust a gamma slider. However, by using a post-processing injection framework such as ReShade, you can correct colours in games.

If you want to get the game looking as close to the original artistic intent as possible, you can use the LUT generator to generate a PNG lookup table, save it in the Reshade textures folder, then you load it into the LUT shader that comes packaged with Reshade. Make sure to set the width, height and number of tiles correctly or you'll get janked up results.

However... that might not be what you want. Especially with older games, there is often a heavy green filter or some other weird choice in the colour design. Or maybe you don't want to follow the 'original artistic intent' and would rather enjoy the full vividness your screen is capable of displaying. (I certainly like FFXIV a lot better with a colour grade applied to it using the full monitor gamut.)

A 3D Lookup Table can actually be used for more than simply calibrating colour to match a monitor - it is in general a very powerful tool for colour correction. A good workflow is to open a screenshot in an image editor along with a base lookup table, adjust the colours in certain ways, and save the edited lookup table as an image texture; you can then use it to apply colour correction throughout the game. This procedure is described here.

Whatever approach you take, when you save screenshots with Reshade, it will not include any colour information. If you want screenshots to look like they do in-game when displayed in a properly colour managed application, you need to attach your monitor's ICC profile to the image. You can do this with an ImageMagick command:

magick convert "{path to screenshot}" -strip -profile "{path to ICC profile}" "{output file name}.webp"

This also works with TIFF and JPEG; for some reason I couldn't get it to work with PNG (you generate a PNG but no colour profile is attached.)

It's possible to write a post-save command in ReShade which could be used to attach this colour space info. If I get round to doing that, I'll edit into this post.

video

In MPV, you can get a colour-corrected video player by setting an appropriate line in mpv.conf, assuming you're using vo=gpu or vo=gpu-next (recommended). icc-profile-auto=yes should automatically load the monitor ICC profile from the operating system, or you can specify a specific one with icc-profile={path to ICC profile}.

For watching online videos, it seems that neither Firefox nor Chrome applies colour correction, even though the rest of the browser is colour-managed. If you don't want to put up with this, you can open Youtube videos in MPV, which internally downloads them using Youtube-DL or yt-dlp. This is inconvenient! Still haven't found a way to make it colour-corrected in-browser.

For other players like VLC or MPC-HC, I'm not so familiar with the procedure, you'll need to research this on your own.

what about HDR?

HDR is a marketing term, and a set of standards for monitor features (the VESA DisplayHDR series), but it does also refer to a new set of protocols around displaying colour, known as Rec. 2100. This defines the use of a 'perceptual quantiser' function in lieu of the old gamma function. HDR screens are able to support extreme ranges of brightness using techniques like local dimming and typically have a wider colour gamut.

If your screen supports it, Windows has a HDR mode which (I believe) switches the output to use Rec.2100. The problem is deciding what to do with SDR content on your screen (which is to say most things) - you have very little control over anything besides brightness, and for some reason Windows screws up the gamma. Turning on HDR introduced truly severe colour banding all over the shop for me.

My colorimeter claims to be able to profile high brightness/hdr screens, but I haven't tested the effect of profiling in HDR mode yet. There is also a Windows HDR calibration tool, but this is only available on the Microsoft store, which makes it a real pain to set up if you've deleted that from your operating system in a fit of pique. (Ameliorated Edition is great until it isn't.)

Anyway, if I get around to profiling my monitor in HDR mode, I will report back. However, for accurate SDR colour, the general recommendation seems to be to simply turn it off. Only turn it on if you want to watch content specifically authored for HDR (some recent games, and HDR videos are available on some platforms like Youtube). It's a pain.

is this all really worth the effort?

Obviously I've really nerded out about all this, and I know the likely feeling you get looking at this wall of text is 'fuck this, I'll just put up with it'. But my monitor's gamma was pretty severely off, and when I was trying to make a video recently I had no idea that my screen was making the red way more saturated and deep than I would see on most monitors.

If you're a digital artist or photographer, I think it's pretty essential to get accurate colour. Of course the pros will spend thousands on a high end screen which may have built in colour correction, but even with a screen at the level I'm looking at (costing a few hundred quid), you can do a lot to improve how it looks 'out of the box'.

So that's the long and short of it. I hope this is useful to someone to have all of this in one place!

I don't know if we'll ever reach a stage where most monitors in use are calibrated, so on some level it's a bit of a fool's errand, but at least with calibration I have some more hope that what I put in is at least on average close to what comes out the other end.

#colour #color #color management #blender #krita #firefox #chrome #mpv #3dcg

[tendergraphite]

Bunny Corcoran: Neglect In Plain Sight

Bunny was the baby of his family, and you'd of thought this meant he received endless fawning—In reality, this had been far from the case. Many emotionally abusive parents like to lament on how attentive they are, but in all truth the Corcoran's had purely been self serving: As Henry famously put it, Buns parent's were ''Like certain reptiles who hatch their young and abandon them to the elements.'' He hadn't received enough for textbooks, I find it hard to believe that hadn't extended to item such as clothes, or worst of all food.

It places a rather rancid lens over the comments on Buns weight, as he wouldn't have been fed consistently threw out his childhood; He'd have constantly been questioning himself where exactly he would be getting his next meal, and when you have experienced this type of consistent neglect you don't suddenly brush that of when your older. It wouldn't have mattered how much he ate now, or how often—Because what if this one would be his last meal?

It makes one wonder, has Bunny actually been taught how to do much of anything? His family saw getting a job as disgraceful, so he wouldn't have been taught invaluable life skills on how to get a job, only how he should/needed to mooch of others. Maybe that's why in so many scenes he's snatching things from others, and why he let's everyone else do the work (Does he know how to cook, even?) Richard had described how Bunny had a major habit of stealing, and when taken out of context from the rest of the above information it sounds as if he'd done it for the sake of doing so.

These ideas are shown to be even more so plausible when we take into account Bunny's Mother's eagerness for an autopsy—Something a family member should hardly want due to it's invasive nature: But she had requested one, because she feared her son would disowner the family; Not even because she feared foul play.

The family only cared for their image, not for the work it would've taken for that image to be true.

To add another layer, because Bunny never gained a job he never would've understood the value of money in the real world. No wonder he felt so free to request large sums of cash, he doesn't have an actual concept of money nor it's worth only that having an expensive taste is the right taste; and of course Richard whose had to work for a lot of his early life would look down on Bunny for such an action, he actually understands moneys worth and has to trifle with it for so long—Bunny was never taught moderation, so whenever given the chance to consume with no end, well what would you think likely to happen?

Now I must address the elephant in the room, Bunny's blatant homophobia and sexism. As distasteful as it was, it cannot be used as a reason to justify his murder—The entire group believed what he had, mayhaps not in the exact same way but in their own mortifying ways: Julian was classist, Francis sexist—All of these characters are just as bad as one another, one was just more vocal than the rest.

Take for example the ''Death is the mother of beauty'' Scene, where they'd all been describing how they'd be revered as Gods—But as soon as the comment of ''Common crackers'' Was made, that had crossed the line; Because it failed to fit into the idea of the picturesque.

Bunny was the bird that sung truth, and don't we all hate truth? For truth as Julian assures, is not a virtue./sarc

Abuse gets romanticised, let's admit it; if it cannot be wrapped up in a pretty box no one wants it—Whenever someone actually faces the effects abuse can have on a person, they squeal like piglets and run away from it because they cannot face how ugly abuse can make a person. No one magically becomes a dead beat, nor somehow is simply lazy by nature. We all want control over our livelihoods, but some of us believe we lack the capabilities to do so.

It's easier to be a Richard Papen, to demonise people like Bunny and say: At least I am not them, I am something better—When really, we should all be aiming to put ourselves on the same level as one another; because in reality, we are all equals.

That is not to say tolerating another's behaviour is the right thing to do, you are meant to speak up and set boundaries; to communicate and come to an equal understanding. But what is the one thing discouraged by Henry? Discussion; Richard isn't allowed to talk to Bunny ''Because he'll make it worse.'' Richard was an entirely autonomous person who'd been forcibly dragged into this situation, but chose to lay back and simplify Bunny to such a degree he could excuse murder; Richard picked a side, when there is no side.

But that's the wonder of this book, it convinces you murder was the only escape—That we should kill those who inconvenience us, who harm others with seemingly no reason. It's easier than patience, that's for sure.

#the secret history #bunny corcoran #henry winter #richard papen #dark academia

[kronkk]

RE: Female artists "preaching to the choir"

today I read this response to a Barbara Kruger's video installation Untitled (No Comment), a video that claims that she is "preaching to the choir". The funny thing is is that usually when I see a critic claiming this about a feminist artwork its usually a man, but in this case it was a woman.

I've found a lot of things accusing feminist artists now-adays of 'preaching to the choir' with their artwork, hell, I've even had this critique of my own work. And yet the same person who asked me if I was preaching to the choir with my liberal audience say that feminism wasn't necessary anymore in the same conversation of discussing FGM and that women making artwork in response to sexual assault was essentially trite.

The idea that the art world and the audience to art is more liberal and therefore less misogynistic is insulting. I've heard from several other artists that "those women knew what they were getting into" when discussing Picasso's rampant misogyny and wife beating, chewing and spitting out younger lovers like sticks of gum before exploiting their image under the pretense of 'muse' status.

how can it be preaching to the choir when as recently as 2012 and far back as 1989 the Guerilla Girls have pointed out that women only make up 4-5% of the artists in the modern art section of the Met Museum but 76-85% of the nudes.

Is the art world and its audience somehow removed from the rest of society at large? Is the art world even more liberal when the primary patrons and purchasers are the 1%?

Ive also already made a post about this that got heat from the misogynists on this website about the amount of art depicting rape that lines the walls of the met museum. They claim that because it's fine art, that because its the masters, that its okay. That its just a historical document. But why has the scene "The rape of Europa" been done over so many times it could be the equivalent of a 'standard'? Why is it that sexual violence is so glossed over? What does making such glorified art about rape do to a population? Why are depictions of rape made by men heralded as high art?

I wonder if the connection can be made between the fact that we know violent pornography lowers men's empathy towards rape victims, making them more likely to believe rape myths, and the fact that our museums are lined with men making rape scenes 'beautiful'? And if that connection can be made, the idea that women making art about their own trauma is 'preaching to the choir' is ridiculous. Why can male artist after male artist make 'beautiful' fine art about rape but when women make 'ugly' 'visceral' 'trauma' work about their own experience with sexual violence that its no longer okay?

super corny response and shift of the original assessment these critics are making is how can that be preaching to the choir when the supposed choir is made of up crusaders from the opposition?

#kronkk art ramblings #i will probably rewrite this and beef it up #like with sources and better analysis

[dwyntwo]

Okay, so... as a collective fandom, we can agree that bullying Kaz is fun, yeah? There's just something about seeing the guy down at his lowest and then prodding him with a stick and going "Come on, do something."

But I'm going to stand in his corner for a bit in this post.

Something that never really sat right with me is the collective implication that Kaz isn't good enough for Inej (and never will be).

I'm totally with you: he didn't deserve Inej in the first book and maybe not even yet in the second because he didn't give her anything to work with. He didn't even visit her after she was stabbed, or show her how relieved he was when she recovered. And this is just the thing: he didn't deserve her because of his BEHAVIOUR, not because he's inherently less important or less valuable or less of a person than her.

However I've read so many post-CK fanfictions where Kaz has been working on himself, is openly communicating with her, basically kisses the ground she walks on, treats her as his equal and goes above and beyond to make her as comfortable as possible, and still everyone INCLUDING Inej (and Kaz) goes "I/she deserve/s so much better than me/him". And THAT implicates that the reason Kaz wasn't good enough for her was not his behaviour towards her, but the fact that he as a whole human being is just "not enough" and "less valuable" than her, and that viewpoint has always made me super uncomfortable, especially considering his trauma.

Now I know what you're going to say, and I absolutely agree: trauma never excuses abhorrent behaviour. But there's just something icky to me about looking at a traumatized person who has not only been making an EXTREME effort to overcome their issues, but also shown amazing results, and going "They don't deserve X", "They're less than X" etc. just because they haven't fully healed yet or might never fully heal. It gives "Traumatized people are damaged goods"-vibes, which is especially weird considering my next point: INEJ IS TRAUMATIZED TOO AND HER TRAUMA GETS IN THE WAY OF A GOOD AND LOVING RELATIONSHIP JUST AS MUCH AS HIS.

She literally admits to herself that she wears as much armor as Kaz does and was being kind of hypocritical when she told him to remove his. Inej is a flawed character (which somehow seems to be a controversial take in the fandom), and to put her on a pedestal because of how virtuous and "better" she is than Kaz takes all the nuance out of her. There are definitely some parts in the books where I felt like she was in the wrong or toeing the line, but the others never really call out her behaviour the way they do with Kaz, not even in their internal monologue, so we're left with this image of an Inej who can do no wrong and a Kaz who simply got lucky.

The fact that in aforementioned fanfictions (that I still absolutely adore btw) Inej too thinks he isn't good enough for her despite everything he does for her and for himself, and despite how far he's come also turns her acknowledgment of her own self worth into something ugly and vain in my eyes. She loves herself, but she also loves Kaz, so I don't think she, or any good partner, would look at her boyfriend who clearly already thinks very little of himself and go "Yep, this fucker isn't good enough".

So often people will look at a healthy happy couple and go "He/she could do so much better than her/him". Like that's a whole person you're putting in a competition of "Who's more worthy?" as if they were some object that is of better or worse quality.

I don't think I articulated this too well and there's a lot more to be said about this, but I hope you understand the gist of it. Post CK-Kaz who works on himself and openly communicates ABSOLUTELY deserves Inej, and I will ROT on this hill.

Now I've been nice to him for long enough I think *whacks him with a crow bar*

#wtf is wrong with me omg #kaz brekker #six of crows #soc #inej ghafa #ck #crooked kingdom