#when the sci-fi channel was still around

[literal-cask-of-amontillado]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Original Work Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Samhain Epistaxis, Heresy Silvertongue Additional Tags: The Thing (1982) - Freeform, Immortals, Kineticist, Kineticism, setting the stage for heresy to be the mischevious mercenary we know and love!, no beta we die like men, out of context Summary:

John Carpenter's The Thing is on the lesson plan tonight. Beware of UFO chasing cats, and a teenage girl with a nail polish hoard.

#the thing (1982) #Samhain epistaxis #heresy silvertongue #my dad showed me the thing at the tender age of 6 years old #when the sci-fi channel was still around #what an incredible film ngl #rj macready gives me gender envy to the extreme y'all

[bogleech]

Also going to finally make a pinned post for all my stuff:

BOGLEECH - my tumblr blog is named after this website I created around 2002 and still update. Thousands of pages worth of content focusing on creature design as well as real biology. My review of the original Legend of Zelda monsters might be the most straightforward example of my articles. Links to some of the most popular content:

POKEMON REVIEW ARCHIVE: - I rate and review each and every single Pokemon, in Pokedex order, on its merits as a creature design. I also do so as someone whose favorite animals are all parasites.

DIGIMON REVIEW ARCHIVE - same, but more chaotic.

CREEPYPASTA COOKOFF ARCHIVE - for several years I hosted a yearly writing contest before it grew too big for me to keep up with. There are over a thousand user submitted horror, fantasy, sci fi and surrealist stories here emphasizing unconventional, original ideas you seldom see from the "creepypasta" community!

The original "MORTASHEEN" Monster Archive - since the early 2000's I've created and illustrated more than 800 creatures and counting for my own monster-catching world, now set for release as a tabletop RPG setting.

AWFUL HOSPITAL: SERIOUSLY THE WORST EVER (page one): an interactive comedy-horror-sci-fi webcomic I started in 2014 about a medical facility that could maybe be better.

Some of my other internet stuff:

PATREON - constant work makes my patreon updates inconsistent, but the content backlog goes back years with a huge amount of exclusive art and writing. I try to put up new exclusive stuff whenever I can.

ETSY - I design all sorts of original enamel pins like these, plus I sell zero-maintenance terrarium plants (just leave them in a jar!), original books and other things!

COLOR THE ABYSS (available on the above etsy!) - a 30 page educational deep sea coloring book! Includes a few famous favorites like giant isopods and hagfish, but mostly focuses on less popular, often much weirder animals.

UNBELIEVABLE BUGS - also regularly restocked in the etsy store, 30 of the strangest and most surprising arthropods most people have likely never heard of, illustrated by myself and @revretch, written for even the youngest kids to understand (but will likely teach you something new at any age)

My Itch.io and Ko-fi - both sell digital versions of my books, including some creepypasta collections and my first novel, "Return of the Living," about a world of entirely ghosts suddenly dealing with the appearance of ghost-hunting monsters.

TWITCH CHANNEL - I now try to stream something at least monthly, sometimes weekly when possible, from horror games to books and art.

YOUTUBE CHANNEL - archives my twitch streams and other little things.

INSTAGRAM - look at pictures of my huge weird collection of toys and Halloween collectibles

BLUESKY - I'm going to put mainly just updates to my stuff on here. SEE ALSO:

HUMANS-B-GONE - a science fiction animated series by my partner @revretch, about a world of kaiju-size, technologically advanced insects and arachnids to whom vertebrates like us are just pesky little "gubs." Also has a tumblr account @humansbgone

#art #pokemon #digimon #biology #animals #halloween #monsters #creature design #creepypasta #horror

[simply-whump]

Gyeongseong Creature (경성크리처) - Whump List

Whumpee : Jang Tae Sang played by Park Seo Joon

Synopsis : Jang Tae Sang is a wealthy man. He is also a reliable source of information around the area. His talents, including the ability to react quickly to situations, a keen insight, and sociability, have led him to his current position. He soon gets involved with Yoon Chae Ok who arrives in Gyeongseong to find her mother. They follow a series of mysterious missing person cases, and they come upon a terrible reality. (MDL)

Genres : Action, Thriller, Historical, Sci-Fi

Note : I made an edit on this show that you can watch on my youtube channel >> Here

Warning! Possible spoilers below!

Jang Tae Sang

Ep 1 : (11:13) Tortured by electrocution, tied to a chair, shaky breathing, electrocuted again, screaming in pain — (16:50) Splashed with water, still tied to a chair, kicked repeatedly — (20:26) Threatened — (22:11) Comes home looking really bad, concern for him — (43:05) Fighting, hit multiple times — (47:10) Slapped

Ep 2 : None

Ep 3 : (34:43) Beaten up, at sword point, fighting, cut by a sword, beaten again — (43:48) Comes home once again looking beaten up and hurt, treats his wound, in pain, concern for him, refuses to go to the hospital

Ep 4 : (06:27) Wincing in pain — (37:52) Wincing in pain — (39:45) In pain because he keeps moving around while injured — (50:12) Wincing in pain — (51:12) at gunpoint, kicked, pistol whipped, fighting — (53:32) Heavy breathing, bleeding, looking exhausted — (55:07) Wound treated, in pain (Gif Set)

Ep 5 : (07:26) Attacked, arm injured, running away — (14:47) Captured — (19:50) Tied, manhandled — (29:20) Put in prison

Ep 6 : None

Ep 7 : (02:48) Appears and seems injured and in shock, half collapse, starts mutating (it was all in the female lead’s dream) — (04:51) Unconscious in an unknown place — (15:05) Shot at, arm hurt — (22:35) Stays behind to allow his friends to escape, concern for him — (26:02) Shot at, glass falls on him, in a desperate situation — (30:00) Running away, chased, falls through some vents, lands unconscious — (37:46) Wakes up, heavy lidded eyes, in pain, gun at his head, gunshot heard but nothing shown — (55:20) Wakes up, gets up with difficulty, shaky breathing, can barely walk 

Ep 8 : (09:19) Bloody and just not in good shape, exhausted, heavy breathing — (14:00) Barely standing, passes out (poor guy has been through a lot) (Gif Set)— (22:31) Wakes up in bed, told he was unconscious for four days — (27:25) Reappears when everyone thought he was dead — (42:30) Female lead’s reaction to seeing him alive and well — (51:00) Attacked, choked 

Ep 9 : (58:10) Teary-eyed — (59:25) Sits down in shock, crying 

Ep 10 : (26:05) In an explosion — (47:05) Attacked, fighting, stabbed, cut, keeps fighting, surrounded, saved — (53:30) Worried for someone, panicked, screaming — (01:06:00) Teary-eyed

>> More Whump Lists

#gyeongseong creature #whump list #whump #asian whump #park seo joon #kdrama #korean drama

[morallyinept]

The Pit - An Ezra One Shot

^ Sound on 🔊

Summary: Ezra and you stumble into an ominous pit on a prospecting mission for coveted azure diamonds on the Narillan moon, and find more than you bargain for.

Pairing: Ezra x F!Reader (No name or physical description of reader. It’s you, bub.)

Word Count: 11.9k 👀 'Issa long one!

Scoville Smut Rating:🌶️🌶️🌶️ “You tell me I’m doing well, and then, you try to kill me.”

Check out my Scoville Smut Ratings here

Explicit - DARK-ISH themes/kinks/smut. Possibly an attempt at macabre/gore type horror? Ezra being a roguish douche (but that’s why we love ‘im). Tentacles. Lots of tentacles. Sex/Unprotected PIV (wrap up, folks!) Oral/insertion/pregnancy/birthing some weird stuff/alien life forms/interspecies intercourse/some mild dubcon/anal/slight hints of cannibalism, because at this point, why not? 🥴 And some other fucked up shit that my brain rot conjured up. Did I mention the abundance of tentacles?

Sci-Fi/Horror-esque. There’s some plot in there somewhere, I swear to Kevva.

NSFW. MINORS DNI! OVER 18’s ONLY. YOU ARE SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT YOU READ. ☝🏻Don’t come at me; you’ve been plenty warned.

Author’s Note: Had this idea slithering around the ol’ noggin. Figured Ezra would be down because he’s fancy like that.

I am well aware that this won't be for everyone. If it's not for you, that's absolutely fine. Just quietly slip out. No need to make a fuss.

I'll have more Ezra that's coming soon, in different varieties/genres.

I'm pretty happy with the way Ezra talks in a manner befitting for him in this. I took my own advice. But I'll let you guys be the judge of that. Let me know if I captured him.

Enjoy! 🖤

MASTERLIST | EZRA MASTERLIST

“... Blasted, shit-eating things, channel rats. Did I regale you with the time my crew and I were subject to an unfettered infestation?”

Ezra prattles on ahead of you, further up the caverns, the light from his helmet casting an eerie glow about the dark boulder formations.

As far out as he is ahead of you, stepping oafishly over a knuckle of rocks, his voice is sound and droning inside your ear and there is no way to drown him out. Unless you garrotte him, of course.

Now, there’s a thought.

“Yes,” you sigh wearily. “I’ve heard all about the fucking channel rats.” Clubbing him to death with a rock sure sounded like a mighty fine idea about now.

You’re blinded by a small, white light flickering into the back of your retinas when he stops and turns to look back at you.

“Irritation becomes you, Birdie.” Ezra observes with a breathy gruff. It sounds like the crash of the ocean on Lau inside your ear. "Still captivating though."

You're beyond irritated having had the misfortune of listening to him rabble non-stop on this Kevva forsaken journey into the back end of the universe’s rectum it feels like. One that you’re beginning to regret inherently.

“We’re lost, Ezra. We’ve been lost for hours now. I thought you said you knew-”

“-Know these caves like the back of my right paw, yes. That is what I confirmed.” He offers a crooked smile as he waves his stump at you as you catch up to him. "Well, that's not at all disconcerting now is it?" He teases as the place where his right hand should be is filled with an obvious emptiness.

He frowns when you fail to laugh. “I may have offered you a partial truth. But I'm fairly certain I can navigate us to the root of our coveted gain unscathed.” He adds.

“Fairly?”

“It’s a diminutive guarantee.” Ezra affirms with a serious face. “Although, if I’m to be completely notwithstanding, Narilla is a place I’ve not set foot on before myself. But I've conversed greatly with those who have.”

“Fucking great.” You gripe as you reach him.

Your hair sticks to your face with sweat inside your helmet and it irks you that you can’t simply wipe it away as it catches on your lip tiresomely.

Traipsing around this dank, humid cave system on the forgotten moon of Narilla, with the wily and grossly unpredictable prospector as your guide, is not exactly the mission you'd envisioned when he’d lured you in over strong stout on Puggart Bench of such a daunting, yet rewarding charge.

You’d sat bemused, a few tables away with your scuff booted feet up eavesdropping, as you nursed your own beer, at vicarious tales of skulduggery and betrayal - his own included.

His aquiline face was well known around these putrid parts. As much as you’d love to avoid a feculent swamp like this on The Pug, populated with unsavoury characters in their swarms, it was a necessary evil to hear of good places to prospect now they’d closed up the Bakhroma route for good.

Kevva knows that prospectors could pilfer and loot better than anyone in The Fringe, and your own talents attested to this. Ezra too, had garnered himself an erudite reputation, even if marred in deceit, and a small fortune to retire from past ills that haunted the creases around his sullen eyes.

But yet he was still greedy for more as he bewitched you with promises of riches that would weigh down your pockets despite the preposterousness of it all. Such is the nature of a prospector; their greed knows no bounds. Cannot be satiated. And he could certainly talk the alluring talk, that was for sure.

Something more had drawn you in though; something about his Southern loquacious snap in which he weaved the threads of the fable about his eventful escape from the green moon of Bahkroma; an arm lost to it as well as some semblance of sanity it appeared.

He spoke through glassy, dark eyes, wide with tenacity, sluiced with the oncoming inertia from the hops and grains, and his story pulled a crowd of fellow miners and prospectors keen to hear the anecdotes pouring from his foam drenched moustache, as ludicrous as they were.

Most dismissed it as the drunken ramblings of a mad man quacking into his drink; scarred by his time on the haunting moon and her secrets, and perhaps it did drive him crazy to some extent.

However, Ezra rambled on animatedly about plentiful azure diamonds to anyone that would listen that were hidden in the caves under the frozen surface of Narilla. His story was backed up by those who had heard their own quips. Someone who knew someone who had garnered the moon's wealth for themselves, it was all the same spiel.

Like the twinkle in his eye, you simply couldn’t resist the temptation of their siren call and offered yourself up to accompany him on the collection of such rare, precious gems - Kevva knows the fortune was needed on your part - when a scant few turned away unconvinced. Gems that would fetch much more than Aurelac on the black market anyhow.

Whilst some of the gnarly men expressed their keen interest, Ezra denied them, setting his deep eyes on you.

I require a right-hand… woman, Ezra had stated, looking you up and down with something else inside of his vortex gaze as he supped at the foam from his weighty glass.

He’d shooed away the other potential partners in favour of you and your shapely form that he drank in as much as the beer.

You’d discussed with him the terms and your share of the haul, insisted on absolutely no impropriety, (for which you fell short on later that evening) and here you both were now, docked and stationed on the frozen moon and wandering around the intestines of the caves listening to him harp on about everything and nothing, and all that was gassy air in between.

Your teeth ache from all the grinding.

“Can you attach a slurry? I'm irrevocably parched, pet.” Ezra asks you, panting a little. There's condensation frosting around the rim of his helmet and sweat beads glistening on his forehead.

"I'm not your pet."

"Merely a term of endearment. An otherwise befitting compliment may be too fruitful to assume your acceptance into anything more than acquaintance." He shrugs.

"You assume much." Sighing, you busy yourself with the idle task as you attach the pack to the back of his cargo belt and cap it into the feeding tube for him.

“Do you have any idea where we are?” You query, checking your chronometer and scanning the vast dark abyss that presents itself to you.

The green icons and symbols are blurring faintly through the invisible static, fading like emerald apparitions.

Back on the lander, the static interfered with everything as soon as you entered the atmosphere, and it only unnerved you that, if things should go awry, you would be out here by yourselves.

“Shouldn’t be much further ahead, I’d wager.” Ezra breathes around his straw inside his helmet. He licks his lips as he watches your scornful look tossed back at him. He simply offers you a knowing smirk.

“Lead the way,” you instruct with a knitted brow.

You follow him further into the breach of the dark; the strobes from your mutual head lamps making eerie patterns on the rock walls that claw and silently growl as they come to life like shadow puppets.

A while later Ezra stops dead in his tracks, raising his singular left hand. You hadn’t noticed he’d stopped; too occupied with convincing yourself that you weren’t seeing ominous things slithering around in the shadows.

You walk right into the back of him; your helmet bonking against the back of his. You utter some annoyed profanity that fuzzes into his ear piece.

“Kevva! What's that smell?” You question, wrinkling your nose as it seeps through your respirator. It smells like tar, coating the back of your throat in its thickness like amber tobacco as you inhale.

Ezra studies the wall beside him carefully, noticing the ominous sheen and runs his gloved hand through the goop that coats it.

“The stench emanates from this peculiar secretion.” He pries apart his velvet fingers and the sticky substance is stringy between the fibres. He lances you a look with keening eyes.

Your mind is flooded with skewbald images of your cunt slick beading over his lips, making them shine up at you as your thighs cushion either side of his head. Your groans, his lavacious grunts, batter around the back of your skull and leave broken contusions.

The shiny strings snapping on his gloves serve as a harsh reminder, which you're certain he's recalling in all it's sordid vividity too. Your pussy certainly is as it clenches involuntarily.

“Gross.” You declare as he tries to stifle a wolfish grin at your reaction.

“We push on, Birdie.” Ezra announces, wiping the slime down on the thigh of his olive flight suit.

“Stop calling me that.” You mutter, following behind.

“Well, you won’t tell me your name so I have to call you something.”

“No names.” You remind him.

“I recounted mine freely.”

“No names.” You confirm.

"Kevva's sake, you are stubborn as you are loathsome, woman." He mutters.

“That’s not what you said the other night." You smirk.

"I divulged a lot of soundbites that eve." Ezra can still hear the sounds you made around him, not put off by his apparent incapacitation. “As did you. But yet a mere name seems implausible.”

"Do you ever shut up?"

Ezra thought for a moment then smirked brazenly. "Only when a succulent quim takes throne on my face."

You roll your eyes. "Look, we get the diamonds, we leave and I don’t have to suffer your intolerable, repetitive anecdotes ever again. My name is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things." You growl, sucking your bottom lip into your teeth.

You can hear him chuckling away in your ear piece with a wheezy rasp. “Desperate to be rid of me already? I might flirt with the offended.”

“Pfft. You’ll get over it.” You mirth.

Although a shifty flush creeps insidiously into your already overheated cheeks, as uninvited images of him grunting as you sat on his hawkish face invade your mind like knives at a target board.

He could certainly put that mouth to good use. The thoughts your mind still conjures makes the inside of your helmet stifling.

The smell gets stronger as you meander closer to wherever the heck it is that Ezra is leading you into. A wider cavern opens itself up and you climb upon its slope exercising caution at his instruction to follow.

“One slip and the void will take you,” he warns with a simper rolling around his dry lips.

“Don’t tempt me,” you reply sardonically. You both step slowly and carefully along the ledge as the vertigo sways you towards its jaws. Steadying yourself, you push on behind him.

The tar-like smell intensifies when Ezra announces you’ve both arrived. Although you're hardly impressed - it's just another cavern like the million you’ve already hiked through to get here. You watch as he unclips his helmet spokes and the hiss of his respirator sounds snakelike inside your ear.

“Can we breathe down here?” You question warily at his flippancy.

“Assist me, would you?” He asks as he inhales through a toothy grin, nodding.

Once your own helmet is off, the subtle breeze of clean oxygen hits your face, cooling it. It's incredibly warm down here, considering the moon is in the midst of a deep freeze on the surface.

You watch as Ezra steps forward to another ledge and looks down. “There,” he points.

You step forward yourself and shine a light and are aghast at what you see.

A writhing mass of black, wet tentacles, twisting and undulating in an eerie dance. The glistening surface of each tentacle reflecting an otherworldly sheen, while they move with an unsettling fluidity.

Unfathomable thrumming spirals are spilling out around the pit below the ledge, moving in a coordinated, yet unpredictable manner, in various girths and lengths. Slick as they writhe against one another, pulsing like a singular heartbeat.

“What is that?” You mouth incredulously.

Upon closer inspection, faint iridescent patterns shimmer along the length of the tentacles, creating an illusion of ethereal beauty amidst the stark darkness, like they almost glow in places. The patterns shift and change as the tentacles move.

As the mass undulates gently, it seems to emit a low hum, barely audible, but one that can be felt deep within your chest, resonating with a haunting melody. It's a sound that stirs emotions buried in your subconscious, eliciting a mix of awe and wonder, tinged with an underlying sense of unease as you feel prickles shoot down your spine.

“Our entrance. Hmm. Bigger than I was infromed. No bother. We'll go through it.” Ezra pulls down the zipper of his flight suit and begins shaking it off of his only arm clumsily.

“Wait, what? Through it? What the fuck is it?!” You query, wide-eyed.

The enigmatic display of black, wet tentacles in this mysterious mass is a surreal and haunting sight, one that leaves you captivated by its beauty, while your rational mind reminds you of the depths of the unknown that lie within.

All you can envision is teeth. Sharp, piercing teeth.

“Take your suit off, pet.” He instructs calmly.

“Ezra.” You shake your head concerned.

He rolls his suit over his stump and down to his thermals. “It protects the diamonds. We need to go through it. We’ll pass right through, out to the bottom when they see we're not a threat to them. No harm done.”

“Are you fucking insane?”

“That's yet to be determined officially.” Ezra responds nonchalantly. “Although, I’ve been reassured that this is-”

“Wait, you’re basing this off of hearsay? How do you know that thing won’t fucking eat us?” You're sweating again.

Ezra rolls his suit down to his ankles and begins pulling at the lace of his worn boot. “I don’t.” He simply retorts.

“No.” You shake your head adamantly. “You can go and die if you want. I’ll wait here.” You’d encountered many odd alien-like entities in your time prospecting, but this? This is something else entirely.

You peer carefully over the ledge, seemingly unable to look away at the mass of tentacles that are free of suckers. They're just smooth and slick in their perfection. Lost in the horrific beauty and mystique of the scene, you feel a magnetic pull, as if the mass of tentacles beckons you to join its dance.

A part of you yearns to step closer, to unravel the secrets it holds, and yet another part hesitates, fearing the unknown consequences of such a connection. In the midst of this ghastly display, a heavy feeling of dread envelops you, like an invisible hand tightening around your heart that crushes.

“Nu-uh, Birdie." Ezra warns, darkly. "We go together as agreed upon in our oath. You need to play your part and help me to retrieve the diamonds. Can’t embark on this without you, given my infernal impediment.” Ezra turns to look at you with those muddy eyes, and it's beguiling as it is dangerous.

You stare down at the pit unmoving.

"No harm will come to you under my watch." He reassures, but it fails.

"Don't make promises you can't keep."

He simply offers you a small smile. "Can but wait, Birdie. Let's get a leg on."

“I must be fucking insane…” You mutter, shaking your head. Sighing, you take off your own suit and strip down to your undergarments.

“Good girl,” you hear him say.

You catch Ezra glancing at your bare legs as you're dressed in nothing short of flimsy shorts and a thin camisole that barely covers your modesty under your thermals.

His own undergarments are a frayed t-shirt and some fusty long johns that sit awkwardly under the small paunch of his soft belly.

But he seems to pull them off as your own eyes sway towards the memory of his body on the fraying futon as it writhed and shuddered whilst you sucked down the swell of his cock, back in his dingy bunk apartment nestled in the Noki District on The Pug.

For a man of his advancing years, you think him to be attractive in a roguish kind of way; a scummy diamond in the rough. Scummy enough to have let him eat you out, anyway.

Breathing calmly - or at least trying to - you sit beside him on the edge of the pit staring down at the glistening appendages that swam in a hypnotic pulse against one another.

The sounds of their wet slick can be heard as they slide and pass over one another in heaving waves; a wet shine evident on their alien corium that glimmers at you.

You’re not sure why you're doing it, but you reach forward instinctively and feel the skin of one as you run your palm over it gently, awed by the sensation that leaves prickles flooding down your spinal cord.

The electricity creeps up each nodule and into the bottom of your neck. It feels comforting, soothing as the previous hesitation you felt is washed away in a calming opacity that soon melts your eyelids shut.

The tentacle arches up into your palm, bumping it benignly as its secretions coat your skin with a cooling, thin substance that feels miry as it greets you.

As you attempt to retreat, the allure of the scene grips you, holding you in a trance-like state, unable to tear your eyes away from the eldritch horror that unfolds before you. It's as if the entity, sensing your fear, seeks to draw you deeper into its realm, to become a part of its ancient enigma. To whisper it's secrets in your ear.

The luminescence now reveals disturbing images etched into the tentacles' surface - visions of cosmic terrors, nightmarish landscapes, and grotesque creatures. Each tentacle seems to bear the collective knowledge of the horrors of the universe, driving you to the edges of precarious sanity.

A cacophony of unnerving sounds emanates from the mass - the raspy whispers, unnerving wails, and an ominous heartbeat that seems to reverberate through your own veins. The dread within you intensifies, and an overwhelming feeling of claustrophobia engulfs you as it reaches its zenith; as if the darkness itself is closing in on you, and it has snapping jaws.

“Birdie,” you can hear Ezra bleed into your ominous tranquillity, but he sounds so far away. Like his voice is at the bottom of a metal wire, sounding tinny and ruptured.

The sudden panic in his voice shakes your foundations leaving you unsteady. But it's not him making you sway as you open your eyes to see yourself falling, face first.

You’re tethered by the tentacles wrapping around your ankles and wrists and pulling you forward into the mass of them.

“Ezra!” You gasp trying to repel them as they reach for you, but the combined strength of the slithering organs is undeniable.

You're both immobilised as you're dragged down into the pit. Ezra disappears first; the whites of his wide eyes are the last thing you see before you're blinded by the black.

The stickiness coats your face, your eyelids. It slicks through your hair; a clear, thin mucus that smells like musky, rich leather and allows you to move freely through the tentacles as you descend further.

"Birdie!" You hear Ezra call out to you and you call back frantically. "Just relax, it will pass you right through."

"Relax?!" You splutter when you feel the prevalent tightening around your waist. It's too tight as it starts to bind and crush against your pelvis.

"Trust me!" He calls again. Oh, if it were that simple, you snarl to yourself.

You try to calm yourself, relax as he so eloquently puts it. But it’s hard; the panic seeds and flowers in you and the coil only tightens under your rib cage in response. It knows your fear.

As it embraces you, tentacles wrapping around every limb and numbing them out, you feel the weightlessness of your body as it travels to the back of your cranium and ignites. You can't see anything, just the never ending void of black that hurts your eyes to try and strain them to reach beyond it.

A sense of foreboding lingers, as if a malevolent entity from the mass of tentacles watches from the shadows; its sinister presence ever-present in the periphery of your senses.

As you sink through the darkness, the very air seems heavy with an oppressive weight, and the pulsing surroundings of the tentacles appear distorted, as if the boundaries between reality and the unknown have blurred.

Each sound in the darkness makes you jump, fearing that some other force might be lurking too close.

A small glimmer fizzes somewhere in the distance, blink and you’d miss it. Purple, maybe blue flashes that spark through a plasma network of neuron pathways that fire and snap ahead. A brain that grows in size and expands. A dying star implodes and blinds you for a moment.

You gasp out in awe and are then fully weightless; floating in the violet nebula that’s haunting in its brilliance, its swirling tendrils stretching across the cosmic canvas like an ethereal tapestry.

As you gaze at the purple nebula, a sense of calm washes over you, momentarily easing the fear and tension that had consumed your senses previously.

The swirling clouds of gas and dust seem to dance with grace, performing an elegant ballet that holds you in rapt attention. You forget everything, you forget it all.

You can't feel your limbs, you can't feel the weight of your bones or the blood in your organs. You can't smell or taste. You're deafened by bubonic silence save for the heavy whooshes of your own breath inside your ear canal.

And then the nebula shrinks, collapsing upon itself into two tiny balls of light that morph and shape into eyeballs with irises the colour of those tasteless Bitz Bars you’d endured on lengthy missions.

The eyes stare at you, they see into you; unblinking and you can feel them rifle around inside the deepest trenches of your mind, picking and rummaging with spidery fingers. And you can only let them as they see all of your sordid secrets and lay them out like sharp medical instruments.

Then thin, wiry nerves root and track from behind them; a skull forms around the eyeballs. Muscles and viscera wrap and coil around a skeleton as the skin grows over it like fungi and tans in colour.

Ezra is before you; naked and plump in his lower belly fat and a thick, flaccid cock hangs between his legs. He’s staring back and floating like you are in this chaotically still space. His stump bears no scars, just perfectly smooth, taut skin around the missing bone like marble.

You can only watch as his cock stiffens and begins to drip mercury. You’re not sure where it comes from, maybe something in the stratosphere, maybe something in your core, but the overwhelming feeling of desire bubbles and courses through your veins making them burn under your skin.

You feel the tentacles again, pulsing and vibrating around you.

There is no other sensation except the feeling of his only arm pulling you towards him and then his lips are crushing against your own, smothering.

You're not repulsed as you taste him; his invading tongue filling your mouth and sliding down your throat that opens willingly for him.

You let him in, you want him to be inside you like this, even though somewhere inside of you, your voice is shrieking and howling at you to resist the ratty bastard. It’s a need that requires satiation.

Any resistance is smothered by the heat between your legs; the wetness that leaks from your swollen cunt lips and mashing into the meat of your thighs as you squeeze them together deliciously to equally appease and chase that desire.

You feel his ever-growing tongue reaching into the back of your oesophagus and expanding; sliding deep down into your guts as you choke and splutter around it as it restricts your airway.

Breathing through your nose is impossible as it fills with the sticky mucus that attaches to the fine cilia suffocating you further.

You try to resist now, to pull away but your limbs still won't work. Your fingers won’t cooperate. You can't feel them. All you can feel is Ezra invading your body through your mouth and licking out every crevice of it with his elongated tongue.

You can feel the cramping in your stomach as he prods around down in there, pushing against your muscles and fat; crushing your offals and lapping at your stomach acids.

You want to scream so badly, but all that comes out around his tongue is moans of abject satisfaction. Your own voice, your own sounds are so alien to your ears. You're enjoying this and you want more, so much more from him.

You feel your mouth fill from your gullet upwards; something warm rising up from the back of your throat from around his tongue as it floods you. Its viscosity bubbles and pools out the side of your lips and down your chin.

Ezra pulls back and you see it; his tongue now black and shiny and no longer pink and fleshy - or human. The flippering tentacle disappears back into his smiling mouth as you gasp for air.

You cough up a thick, white substance that projectiles from you, choking you as you heave it out down your chest.

Somewhere, you know this taste; familiar from your own experiences of swallowing unworthy men’s loads on your knees as they ejaculated into your eager mouth on lonely nights around The Pug.

Somewhere through the heady confusion, you know this is wrong on so many levels as you belch and splutter through bringing up the seminal pearl flow in droves.

A subtle yet unsettling change occurs. The glistening black, wet tentacles from the malevolent mass re-emerge in the scene, twisting and snaking their way into the cosmic display as you splutter.

At first, the juxtaposition of the tentacles against the cosmic backdrop seems incongruous, like an intrusion of darkness into the splendour of the nebula.

However, as you watch, you begin to sense a strange harmony between the two that bleeds into your skin.

The tentacles are back around your body, cinching and curling around your waist, clamping around your wrists. You feel the alluring tickle of something travelling up your thigh and your eyes widen.

“Ezra… It’s-it’s-” you stutter as you feel it snake up your inner thigh and under the hem of your shorts.

“Let us in, Birdie. It’ll feel so good.” Ezra drenches the promise inside your ear, licking and sucking the shell of it. His fingers skim your clit, furrowing inside your shorts and opening your lips for the tentacle to slip fully inside, filling you up. “We’ll make you feel so good.”

You cry out as it slides in, slippery and thick. It stretches you wide, a slight burn from the jarring friction that soon settles into undulating pleasure.

It shouldn’t feel like this, it shouldn’t feel so… good.

You feel a mix of emotions - fascination, fear, and an inexplicable sense of reverence - as you feel it penetrate you deeply. The tentacles, once harbingers of horror, now evoke a different kind of awe.

“Fuck, it feels so good...” You chime falling backwards into the universe.

“Mmm, there you go,” Ezra smiles and you feel his fingers slipping quicker over your engorged clit making you flinch and breathe out dust each time he flicks it. “Let us fuck you, little bird. We’re one now.”

You can hear Ezra; the haunting groans and gasps fill your ears like lead. It’s everywhere around you, echoing and you can’t escape the sounds of his pleasure on loop as you’re fucked by the rogue tentacle stretching you out the further it whelves inside of you.

You can see yourself, devoured by the coils slipping all over your skin; watching yourself get dicked by this entity that knows what you want, knows how to pleasure you like no man could.

Your pussy welcomes the deep thrusts it gives you and you writhe and moan, losing your eyesight. The features on your face dissolve away leaving you a faceless putty for them to remould and sculpt, and you twist and bend to their will.

You’re lost to it; succumbed fully by an invading desire and heat, and the sounds of Ezra’s grunting hammering inside your ears as it rocks through the nebula; a big bang of grunts and heady snarls that rip through the very seam of existence.

But when you finally open your eyes as they grow back into your sockets, he’s no longer there.

All you can see is the nebula again. All you can feel is the fullness between your thighs; the never-ending release it offers as it pumps you full of its seed. The nebula winks back at you and pulses around the edges.

You feel the bunching behind your stomach walls, the fluttering of your pussy spasming and squeezing as you’re pulled apart and smashed back together again, at one with the cosmos.

You cry out; you can see your voice as it shatters into metallic fragments and rains chrome glitter all over you that coats and nicks your throat.

Your gasps birth new stars from your mouth as they find their place in the dust and gases that swirl around your body, completely obliterating it.

And when it’s come and gone, the waves settling as you fall still from the exhausting aftermath, there’s nothing once more; just the never-ending expanse of black.

You breathe out through soaked trembles, and just as he advised, the grip falters and you descend again slowly through the pulsating coils that slide sticky against your face and gums.

You drop and land clumsily onto something solid; the hard, real ground. Your tailbone hits it first and you wince.

Your fingers shakily register the feel of something you recognise and yet it doesn’t seem entirely real as you scrape your brittle nails into the rock beneath your face to be sure.

But your cunt is still contracting; squeezing around a vacant space where you were sure you were penetrated and filled by something thick and binding, and oh so fucking good.

Something that felt indescribable and you mourn its loss irrevocably.

You eye him carefully as he looks back at you with a singular outstretched palm laced with blisters and callouses lanced towards your face.

Ezra helps you up onto jellified legs and above you the tentacles writhe a lowly metre or so above your heads in a hypnotic dance that seems to defy and mock gravity.

Ezra reaches up, his only hand brushing against the swell of the membranes that roll and curl tightly around one another.

"Curious…" He mumbles as the slick glides effortlessly through his calloused fingers; a cosmic ballet of twisting and pulsing.

“What is it?” You ask, dumbfounded and awed.

Your voice doesn't register as your own. You feel like you’ve been swamped in a heavy sleep, plagued by dreams of untold, lucid delights that you can still feel throbbing on your clit.

You’re unsure if it really happened or not and try to shake the delusion, yet you feel yourself pining for it.

You peer at Ezra carefully, looking for any sign that he endured a similar experience, and yet his face is as unreadable in its mischievousness and stoniness as usual.

Your skin feels wet and sticky, your mouth remembers the taste, and his body mirrors your own, coated in the shiny lacquer from passing through the tar coils. His hair is slicked back and darker, almost black, save for the white patch that is stark in its platinum yellow glow; a tiny sun being swallowed in a sea of putrid oily tufts.

The undergarments cling to his skin, saturated and binding and making no attempt to hide the swell of his cock inside of them.

As he glances at you with an astonished smirk, you feel something pull tight in your abdomen; a distant hunger gnawing at the edges of rationality and the sense that you’re unable to get a firm grip on reality anymore.

“A cephalopod of some origin, or many. I've heard tales of Krakens before, but not like this.” Ezra admires bewitchingly as he strokes above him. “It feels…” He closes his eyes and you watch him rise on his tiptoes with a small smile blooming over his mouth. “Sentient.” He concludes through a nasally breath lost inside his thick drawl.

He drops his hand slowly as a lone tentacle feeds down from the others in front of him. You watch rooted as it rubs itself across his broad chest and slithers around him. It runs between his thighs and he moans as it brushes against his cock.

"Uh, this one seems incredibly obliging," Ezra exclaims as he glances at you with astonished mirth bleeding into his ratchet peepers.

You watch it disappear down inside the back of his long johns.

He groans out, his body jars forward but he doesn’t fall; the tentacles have him secured by his arm and back as he becomes weightless in front of you.

“Ezra,” you start forward to assist him, but are stopped when he hisses out, baring his teeth.

He loses his eyes as they roll back into his skull.

“Fuh-uck,” he whines loosely as though his teeth are no longer in his mouth, and you realise you’ve heard this sound before; the sounds of pleasure bursting through the cavity of his chest into your ears.

The same noises he made under you on The Pug with mouthfuls of your seeping cunt.

The tentacle penetrates him and you're drawn into the vortex of his mouth pulling your eyes from their trenches to drink their jelly. You can only watch, body pulsing, skin fraying, as it fucks him right in front of you.

"Kevva, that's deep," he groans, with a blissed out smile.

Then you feel it; it's warm as it glides over your navel and across your skin leaving a moist, sluggish trail. The tentacles bring you together, cocooning you both as Ezra pulls you towards his chest.

And you're not resisting again, instead letting him welcome you into his one-armed embrace.

His body feels good against yours, too good. Like the slats in your rib cages were meant to interlock.

It seems as if he can hear your thoughts and you watch as he opens his chest from the centre; fingers ripping through flesh as he pries open his bony cage and welcomes you into the balloons of his lungs.

Your nose wanders and inhales through his papery bronchioles; they dust into your face like fluffy dandelion seeds and float into the ether.

"Need you inside of me," you groan to him as if in a trance as his sticky heart jostles against your lips as it beats.

You lick across it, sucking on a throbbing ventricle delicately as his blood coays your teeth, and he whines out louder as he ejaculates into his long johns.

“I already am,” Ezra grunts, eyes rolling to the back of his skull again like loose marbles as the crest of his hips buck forward.

You pull back to see him whole once more and glance at the huge, black shape filling you up, fucking into you.

His own cock is hard and weeping pearly globules of come as it rubs against the tentacle with fantastic friction. Your fingers peel him apart; stripping him down to the hard, muscled core of his dick, and he writhes and groans under your touch as you obliterate him.

You look back at his face and he’s swallowing down a thick tentacle inside of his plush mouth before yours is invaded again by the wet velvet.

He fills your holes, all of them. You can feel him stretch out your pussy, sliding in and out with his thick appendage that makes you buck uncontrollably. He feels so plentiful and thick. He slips into the tight crevice of your ass, filling and stretching you wholly and he's inside your mouth; feeling him graze at the back of your throat as he thrusts and chokes you.

He's everywhere, and yet Ezra pulls you close into his scarred chest again whilst he himself is filled in every orifice he possesses and it's still not enough.

He wants to climb inside your skin. You know it, because it's exactly what you want. It’s what you crave. To rest in the sponge of his brain.

You can hear him insipidly rambles to you all the ways in which he wants to devour you for eternity.

His whines set your skin alight; the oil burning you up as it sears and chokes you. That tar-like smell wafting around you both as it smokes you out and leaves you breathless.

“I can see it,” he mutters, but it doesn't come from his mouth, no that’s full of the pulsing thick membrane that fucks him like they fuck you.

Instead, you can see his voice, moving across the nebula as he sings on music scales, lighting up the treble clefs with supernovas.

“Can you see it, Birdie?” He asks you, each red giant twinkling with his din and tone before it dies, and you can. In their dance, the tentacles reveal a deeper truth - that even the most terrifying entities can be transformed by the beauty and wonder of the cosmos.

They are a reminder that in the vastness of the universe, there is a balance between darkness and light, chaos and order, horror and beauty and you understand that now as you approach another climax.

“It’s so fucking beautiful.” You gasp, tears filling your eyes.

You arch your back; your spine cracks through each vertebrae as they pulverise into dust and you collapse in on yourself, boneless and spent once more.

You can feel it and it feels exhilarating to die and be reborn over and over.

You gush around the tentacle and onto Ezra’s soft stomach swell as you come unrestrained, and for what feels like for infinity.

You’ve never fully understood the meaning of the word euphoria until now.

Soon Ezra lets go of you; his own body arching grotesquely and crushing inwardly. His mouth opens as the tentacle ejects, spewing out thick, creamy liquid in a silent scream as he rolls back into the mass of pulsing coils to be devoured all over again.

He twists and turns and you see his left hand come down his shoulder, tugging at the skin below his blade that houses his clipped stump.

Then another hand, and another; more human hands that are his own with the thumb on the left side and all with the tiny bullseye tattoo inked and faded on the web of skin between his thumb and forefinger.

His various left hands are pulling the skin open so you can see his spine through the tears. Small, onyx tendrils move under the bones and he bleeds out that thick, seminal fluid between his contracting muscles.

Ezra removes his skin like removing a sweater and you scream into the void.

Birdie.

You hear him through the sludgy goop inside your ears; a faint rumble of your body as you are gently shaken awake by thick fingers pulling you out of inertia.

You're on the ground again and the pit of writhing tentacles is still a dark swarm threatening to rain upon your heads. You stare at it, watching it pulse and simper. Trying to understand its secrets, its desires.

Trying to detest it with every fibre of your being but not quite managing to.

There's a chasm where that feeling should be.

Ezra's worrisome face pulls your senses towards him and you clutch onto his arm, reassuring yourself that he's real. Real muscle and bone.

You flinch when you think you see something move under his skin, but it’s just his vein as he tenses.

"What did you see?" He asks you darkly. His eyes are as black as the darkest corners of the universe.

"See?" You ponder it dumbly for a moment as it all floods back to you.

“You were screaming.” He explains.

"I... I'm not sure." You mumble.

"I've deduced that this creature can telepathically link itself to our minds in a mere quest of bewitchment. It can show us our wildest, unarmed desires, or toss us into a gully of the most sordid nightmares." His eyes have shifted into something that you’ve never seen on his face since meeting him - fear.

"What did you see?” You prompt him instead, sitting up. Your head feels like it’s been split into two and neither of your brains can comprehend this scenario fully.

His eyes drop to you and he helps you to your feet clamping his singular hand around your elbow as he yanks.

"Felt so real," he utters through a clenched mouth. Or surreal. You're not quite sure what he says as your face draws up to his.

He glances at you and touches your cheek, cupping it gently. You feel the thick pad of his thumb pull on your bottom lip as he admires the wet, pink flesh of your gums with some irreverent hunger.

"So real." He repeats with darker, hooded eyes.

"Ezra," you steer, peeling his fingers delicately from your skin, despite them soldering into your flesh, and he seems to snap out of it.

He recoils back as though he has been stung. "We need to find a way to leverage our exit." He announces flatly.

"What about the diamonds?" You rub at your arms and they don’t feel like they are attached to you anymore. Neither do your legs and it takes you a moment to realise you are standing freely on them.

"They don't appear to be harbouring any gems down here. I fear we may have been taken in by a ruse." He scowls bitterly.

"You mean you were." You mutter. “I just stupidly came along.”

Ezra sighs loudly and sharply and steps forward craning his head up to the tentacles. He mutters something that you don’t quite catch.

"You're expecting them to give us a ride?" You scoff at him.

"Do you have a more eloquent stratagem? I'm all ears."

"Yes. I'm not going in there again." You say with an inherent coldness prickling at your skin. But yet it’s still hot and dense between your legs.

"Tell me woman, what's rattled you with the visions they gave you?"

"It doesn't matter," you say, turning away from him.

Although you’re not entirely sure if they were just visions. You search along the sharp rocky walls and follow them round with your eyes and there is no obvious sign for escape.

The only way out is back up through them. If they will allow you to leave, that is. The thought makes you cold.

“Birdie, I…” Ezra starts and pauses for a moment. “I know this outcome isn’t what we forecast when this expedition matriculated between us.”

“You think?”

��But I must riposte, that we need to find a way out and the only one presented to us is from whence we came. So if you would find it in you to trust me, then I believe I can lead us out of here fully intact.”

“Trust you, you say?” You snort flippantly.

“Yes. A big ask, I am well aware of its weight.” He scowls at you this time.

“We did things.” You breathe. "You and I, we... copulated."

The words roll off your tongue and you want to shove them back into your mouth and suck the fat from them, but he’s already heard them and is mentally clipping them apart in his bank of memories to keep the best of them - the most sordid.

“I remember vividly our foreplay on The Pug, but you insisted on no penetration and I kept my word. I may not be a gentleman, but I'm no cavalier scoundrel."

"Yes, I know-"

"-Was a satisfaction garnered for us both as I recall. No-one has ever... ” His head snaps towards you with intrigue. "Are you keen to indulge the liasion?"

“No. I mean... Here. That’s what I saw. We didn't just play this time. Us. It’s what I-”

“Felt.” Ezra finishes for you and you nod as you realise that’s what he felt too. His cock, still tenting against his undergarments, reassures you of that.

“And then we were apart. Like, pulled apart from the insides. I watched you remove your skin. Was it real or did we dream it or…? Kevva, I have no idea what is fucking real or not right now.” You mutter, running your hand through your damp, disgusting hair.

“Did you hit your peaks of satisfaction?” Ezra asks.

"What?"

"Did you come, pet?"

Your cheeks feel hot and you fold your arms sighing. “Yes.” Your stomach pulls tight and it makes you grit your teeth.

“As did I.” He admits freely. "Felt like I couldn't stop. It was kinda nice. Tingly."

He closes his eyes and you watch as his free hand drifts down his sternum and palms his cock over the wet fabric with a soft squeeze, clearly not deterred by your presence.

“It wasn’t you. I mean you weren’t inside me, but you were all the same. It’s confusing. What does it want?” You ask looking up at the swell that seems to hum again. Your palm is running gentle circles against your gut that feels hot.

“I don’t believe it wants anything insidious. It just feels and thrives like we do. It has cravings.” Ezra explains, wandering closer under the centre of it.

You shudder and ponder the creation of such an organism, that you summarise mentally and agree, is not too dissimilar from yourself or Ezra. It exists in the most basic of forms, to feed, to fornicate, to-

You feel a sharp twinge in your lower belly and groan.

“You creamy?” Ezra asks.

“Yeah just… Aaargh!” You hiss and double over clutching your stomach. Horrific cramping churns inside of you and you watch aghast as watery blood trickles down your thighs and legs.

“Ezra!” You shriek hysterically, but he’s wrenched away from your aid as the tentacles swoop down and grab you up in their clutches.

His frantic voice is drowned out as the black takes you again.

This place is too bright.

It glitters and glares at you in a striking cobalt like you’ve never seen before. It takes a while for your eyes to adjust but when they do, you find yourself sprawled on a never-ending bed of sharp diamond pieces.

Millions of them are scattered over the ground, around your feet; cutting into your buttocks and back as you’re spread over them like you’ve been dumped in here carelessly.

They’re protruding out of the rock walls and you can see them sparkle above you, twinkling like distant stars through a kaleidoscopic blue galaxy.

Your fingers rifle through them and clutch them, squeezing the shards. You watch as your skin is pierced and bleeds, yet you feel no physical pain.

The beauty stuns you for a moment and you forget your predicament for a while as you just marvel in the perplexity.

But you’re soon shoved back into it when you feel the cramps twist up your cervix and you scream out in agony.

“Ssh, it’ll soon be over, dove.” You hear Ezra’s soothing drawl and see a million of his hawkish faces in every facet gleaming at you.

He crunches over the diamonds as he walks, bare feet bleeding and he’s naked. Cock lithe and hard, dripping with a pearly secretion you long to drink from.

He no longer has a stump where his right arm should be, but a long thick tentacle that pulses and squirms excitedly as he strides towards you.

He crouches down at your feet, parting your thighs and runs his tongue up the sweaty streaks of them.

“Ezra, what the fuck is happening?” You gasp and grunt through a fierce contraction. Your insides feel like they’re ripping open and your cervix tightens in a way you’ve never felt before.

“Hush now. You give it what it wants and we can have what we want.” He runs his tongue over the bubbly seam of your dilated cunt and sucks upon your clit hungrily for a beat, pulling a convulsion out of you. “Play your part, Birdie.”

You hum out, head lolling backwards as you can’t help but succumb to the intense sucking on your bud from his lips.

“We knew you’d taste so good.” He whines and the thick black of his arm scales your throat and wraps itself around you, choking you as you gasp.

You cry out as another contraction bears down on your uterus and you can feel a heavy rush followed by a saturated squelch.

Ezra draws back and watches keenly as you birth the pupate azure eggs planted inside you. You scream through it; the agony makes your cunt and womb feel like they’re on fire and he coaxes you through it, lapping up the amniotic fluid each time you disembogue it out.

Sparkling diamonds fall from your hole and Ezra leads you into a jubilant climax as he sucks on your clit and furrows his fingers inside to help pull them out.

The diamonds shatter as the tiny organisms inside birth and slither away into the walls; the glittery shells they leave behind are your trophy.

You watch, astonished and soaked in sweat, as they vacate the discarded diamonds to join the mass of tentacles where they’ll grow and eventually breed another like you who should be so gluttonous as to seek their treasure.

You give it what it wants and we can have what we want.

An exchange. A life cycle. A quid pro quo.

Play your part, Birdie.

“Mmmaaaah!”

Your attention is diverted by Ezra pulling another orgasm from you into his mouth. Then, he’s climbing up your body like an arachnid. His tentacle arm slithers behind you and he spreads you open with his thick cock.

He brutally fucks your spent, stretched hole; his seed soothes the pain, numbs it out almost like a leeches bite.

You cling onto him as he grunts and wheezes inside of your ear.

“You did so good for us, Birdie.” He praises and you can’t help but smile and welcome him in fully as he drills so deep inside of you that you can feel the tip slither out of your mouth between your teeth and into his as he kisses you; becoming an entwined ouroboros of unrelenting pleasure.

It feels like it will never stop as his hips crack and hammer into yours, and you pass out, weighted down by exhaustion of all extremes.

Puggart Bench, 4 cycles ago...

“I feel some convival attraction to you, despite my infructuous emancipation of it.” Ezra says as he sups at his glass of golden suds. "Your pluckiness appeals to my better nature, Birdie."

"That's the beer talking." You smirk.

He eyes you with a slightly arched brow and wet pink lips. The foam of his beer drags along his moustache and you watch him lick it clean with a quick flick of his tongue. "A siren, no doubt... I'll willingly drown in you."

"Stop with the sweet talk, prospector and get to the point." You mirth. Although his carnal wooing leaves sweat beading on your skin.

“You understand the objective?”

You nod. “Seems simple enough.”

You’d discussed it at length despite the slight buzz you’d gotten from the beer intake, and yet the plan came together without as much input from yourself. He knew the route, he knew the place. He knew where the diamonds were.

And he did all the damn talking.

All you had to do was assist him with the manual labour of it all, as he put it. Mine and prospect. Fly you both in and out too. An extra pair of hands where he only had half.

But it seemed a little too good to be true and you went to question him further when you felt someone knock into your chair from behind.

A wayward hand was felt trying to cup your breast and you grabbed it and squeezed it in a tight crush.

“I’d rethink that, friend. Unless you still want this hand to jerk you off tonight?” You spoke over your shoulder to the drunk assailant trying to grab at you.

He dribbled something shy of an apology onto your shoulder and you let him go, not before removing the ring on his middle finger that encased a shiny, expensive looking gem. Might fetch some credits for your inconvenience.

“Fiery one, aren’t you?” Ezra mused as he observed the whole thing.

“Just another night in this squalor. I can hold my own.” You replied, stuffing the ring in your pocket.

"Good. I require you strong. You play your part, Birdie. I'll see that you're rewarded handsomely for it."

"You speak as if mining diamonds is a dangerous art. It isn’t. I’m fairly astute in the work of dirty hands."

"These aren't just ordinary diamonds to cut your teeth on." He leaned in, placing the glass down on the table with a heavy thud.

You could smell the stink of the alcohol on his breath and that putrid musk of sweat wafting from him, mixed in with something else sweet and foreboding.

He smelled like death - sweet, alluring death.

His scruff was oily and scattered across his ageing, tan skin and throat, and his dark brown eyes bore into your own for a few moments, contemplating.

Ezra ran his hand around his grazed chin, rubbing at the stubble there now peppered with scabs and grey whiskers as he mulled over the thoughts about you accompanying him in his mind.

Black gunk was embedded in his nail beds. His hand was large for his frame, like a great big shovel for a palm; one that could crush a human skull with little effort, you thought. Once armed with two, you could only speculate as to what vile menace those hands could have caused.

“Where do you come from?” You ask him curiously as you sup. That stark blonde streak at his hairline catches the light and looks like it shimmers at you with tempting promises and false conviction.

Ezra looks up at you from his position at the table and smirks. “Where do you come from?” He challenges back.

He looks at you with a haggard expression that is unchanging. It begins to creep you out a little bit the more you see it, making prickles rise on the back of your neck. He suddenly has a way of making you feel nervous for no reason at all.

And men usually don’t make you feel nervous.

You draw back with a contemplative hiss. “The less we know about each other, the better.” You taunt. “No names, for instance.”

He's already haunting your blood as you feel it warm under your skin, and the slick bubble of sweat upon the back of your neck makes its presence known.

“Why the ambiguity?” He questions with a glass stare. "My name is Ezra." He casually tosses his name in front of you on the table, expecting you to return.

But you don't.

You're feeling prickles run all over your skin. You just want to wash him away with the grime and murk that coats his breath.

A spooky, amaranthine being regarding you from opposite the table and he smirks crookedly again through those swollen lips, pursed out, yet remains tight-lipped. You wonder what they taste like.

You wonder whether his foreskin his clipped, what his come tastes like.

“Getting cosy isn’t my style, Ezra.” You mutter, gulping back more foam and blinking the wanton haze away.

“Well regardless, what a delightful romp it would be to charter to Narilla with you, pet. I’m in if you’re in.” Ezra says after some time of eyeing you.

“I’m in,” you agree, sealing your fate. “Although, wouldn’t you rather have some strong muscle to offer us some leverage in case things go awry? There’s plenty of dick-for-brains to choose from.” You glance around the bar at the crass prospectors and miners in all their lunkhead glory.

“Nothing will go awry.” Ezra shakes his head. He clears his throat. “You’ll do just fine. You're Kevva sent for it.”

You feel his eyes drink you in as they wander over your body and you consider for a moment if you’ll end up back at his place tonight riding his face.

The idea isn’t as heinous as you’d like.

“A quick expedition then.” You confirm.

“That it is. We needn’t linger on the moon in the throes of a harsh winter.” His eyes dart away as though recalling something execrable as he struggles to swallow his beer. “In and out.” Ezra clarifies. "It'll be over quickly."

You nod once in agreement.

“There is a price for what you seek, prospectors. Especially you, girlie.” A foreign voice comes from beside you on the adjacent table.

A man with one eye glares under the shroud of his hood at you. A horrific scar as deep as a magenta trench replaces his other eye. Encrusted with old yellow skin like scales that were in various decays of flaking.

“Balderdash and frivolous superstition.” Ezra simply rebuts and knocks back the remnants of the amber beer down his throat.

“What do you mean, a price?” You query with a lazy smirk over your own numb lips to the creepy eavesdropper.

“He means nothing. Just trying to rile you, Birdie, is all. Come on now, we’ll drink some more. I insist. Celebrate our impending agreement.”

"Are you trying to get me drunk?" You muse.

"Why? Is it working? Am I attractive enough to you yet that you'll let me…" he looks up and down your body and licks his lips. "Indulge?"

"You're so presumptuous, Ezra" You smirk. "Maybe I'll be the one to indulge."

Ezra sways you up towards the bar with him and you think no more of it.

Later, you do indeed indulge, and ride hard on his hawkish face as he makes you come hard through juddery breaths as he fucks you with his serpent tongue relentlessly.

You can feel that heady pull on your clit as he sucks out your pleasure greedily in droves whilst you fist through his greasy hair in rapture as you grind your cunt against the furry graze of his chin.

As you suspected you would.

But now, that odd stranger is here, in the diamond pit with you; staring you down with his singular ragged eye watching as the glory of Ezra buries himself inside of you, and that man is whispering to you and now you know.

He was right, there was a price for Narilla’s diamonds.

You know everything now.

“You knew, didn’t you?” You question Ezra as his silhouette fuzzes into clarity.

The look on his face tells you all you need to know.

Of course he did. It all makes sense now.

“It’s why you favoured me over the other miners to accompany you; because I have a fucking womb!” You spit. "This was my part to play, wasn't it?"

You throw the diamonds you’d been holding at him, and he flinches as they pelt at his feet; his coveted prize.

“Birdie-” He holds up his palm, open in surrender.

“Don’t. Fucking. Call. Me. That!” You launch yourself at him and you both clatter to the stony ground.

You claw at him, aiming for his bastard face, but his free hand captures your fist. He clamps his legs around you to stop you gaining height over him and rolls, pinning you beneath him with ease.

For a man with one arm, he's still incredibly strong and slippery.

“No harm done.” Ezra sneers as you falter; his grip on your wrist flexing it backward a little until you feel a subtle crack and you hiss. “You fulfilled your part, yes. That is true. You got yourself remunerated. We’re free to depart now. It’s how this arrangement works.” He says, darkly.

“I should kill you, you piece of shit!" You seethe at him.

He looks offended. “Now, now. You weren’t saying that earlier when I was buried deep in the hilt of you.” He smirks sinisterly.

“You weren’t,” you shake him off and he rolls onto his back and snickers though rasps. “It wasn’t real.” You affirm, sitting up and flexing your wrist.

"Are you sure?" He questions you smugly.

"No. It was just-" You shake your head.

“Real enough for you to gestate and birth its offspring in droves.” Ezra reminds you.

“You want to lose your other fucking arm?” You warn through a snarl.

He sighs, the smirk dying. “You can’t simply procure the diamonds; you have to replenish your fill. They won’t let you leave if you just take from them. You have to have something to offer in return.” His eyes fall on your body, hungrily. “As I man, I can’t replenish. But you can.”

“You're not a man, you’re a fucking insect!” You rile.

“If I had delineated you the truth, you would never have accompanied me on this treacherous quest.” Ezra mutters, annoyed with clicked lips. “You were an unwitting comrade in my mournful web of deceit, I admit. I'm the arachnid, and you the fly..."

"Fuck you."

He snickers breathily. "I harbour no ill will towards you. You’re quite amiable despite your folly. I would have never let any permanent detriment come to you, Bir-.” He stops short of the moniker as he witnesses your stony glare.

“That’s fucking noble of you.” You growl.

“You’re still alive, yes? All supple appendages intact?”

You glare at him some more.

“Then we completed our charge fully unscathed and significantly richer for it.” Ezra simply says with a casual shrug of indifference.

You really want to punch him and feel his large nose shatter under your knuckles.

“What we possess now is incredibly rare. So few venture here because of the down payment required. You'll be a queen among mere men. You should think yourself fortunate.” He puts, examining one of the diamond shards carefully.

“Tell that to my insides!" You snap. You can still feel the ache; the rawness from the unexpected birth.

"It's what your glorious body was made for. To bear the fruit of life, is it not?"

"That," you point towards the swarming cluster "is not fucking fruit, Ezra!"

Ezra sighs and reaches for you gingerly. "I am burdened with my part in this. I am a host to belligerent shame. Honesty is a skill I do not possess in its entirety. But you and I, we make a damn hoot of a team."

"The prospector and her pimp!" You scoff.

"I'll make it right, if you’ll permit me?"

His deep, brown eyes bore into you and you feel something wobble inside you.

“I meant it when I said I liked you, pet. That clandestine night on The Pug with you? Kevva, it replays in my mind and won't let me have no peace. Your cunt stink is still all up in my sheets." He licks his lips, sucking on the bottom and recalling your taste for a beat with a satisfied murmur - a groan that your skin ignites to in response.

"Who would desire me like this now aside from the whores on Luxillion who take my credits and don't remember my name? They just remember this..." Ezra glances down at his missing appendage.

"I ponder if it was pity on your part, and I would not linger in offense if it was, but regardless, it was something. To me. And I do not take the pleasure you offered me so freely, and with an inkling of that desire for yours truly returned, lightly and with regret." He finishes.

You sigh and shake your head, unable to ignore fully the fizzing inside your veins as he says it, how earnest he suddenly appears.

Despite yourself, that night with him was indeed... something.

There was something so deliciously unkempt about him. Frivolous around the seedy murk. Something that your better nature repelled against, and yet caved to all the same.

“How the fuck do we get out of here?” You groan, looking up at the swarm of tentacles engulfing the only means of escape.

You're not sure if you can take another mind fucking, or a physical one. But your pussy clenches and it zaps on your clit regardless.

“The way we came in, I have already iterated that escape route to you, despite your reluctance to partake. It seems appeased, I think. Satiated. Might pass us up without further incident.”

"Well, I guess we have no choice." You utter.

Ezra gathers the diamonds and shoves them into his wet pockets until they bulge. He looks at you forlornly. “Thank you,” he notes.

You soften despite yourself. “Hold my hand this time. I don’t want to be separated from you and left behind now you’ve gotten what you wanted. I would expect no less from you.”

You can feel it on your skin. The dread. The desire the pit had for you. The fact that, despite his slimy betrayal, you still feel it burn in your core when he smiles crookedly at you.

"I would gladly leave these treasures here, if it meant not taking you with me." He says through molten brown eyes.

"You're so full of shit." You sigh, smirking.

Ezra reaches out with a timid grin of his own and you step forward, interlocking your fingers tightly in his.

“That's as may be, but I won’t let go.” He promises and you believe him as his thumb strokes over the ridge of your knuckles.

You feel his sincerity crush the bones in your hand.

“Once we get out of here, I think I never want to see your face again.” You warn him, but you can feel that your resolve already has cracks in it as you offer him a small, twinkly smile.

“That might be difficult…” Ezra holds up your interlocked hands and they are no longer hands in a muscled knot.

Instead, they are a singular arm that starts from your shoulder and ends at the ball joint on his. The skin is perfectly smooth and there is no separation on where you begin and Ezra ends.

“What the fuck?” You gasp.

“Embrace it, Birdie. It’s the only way we’re getting out.” Ezra smirks. "One last hurrah." He laughs and his breath suddenly smells like the dead Trogs on Ajaxia, as you inhale it into your stomach where it soils and grows roots.

You feel your toes leave the ground as the tentacles lift you upwards. Your joint appendage with Ezra stretches as you feel them try to separate you both.

Somewhere under the muscles and sinew, you grip onto him and he grips you back just as hard.

The nebula rises above you both and you cover your eyes with your free arm as it swells in intensity and size.

Your hand is pulled out of his from under the skin, like taking off a glove and Ezra desperately pulls you into his lap. You wrap your legs around his waist tightly locking you in and he grunts at the welcome intrusion from the crest of your pelvis crushed against his own.

"Not letting you go," he assures. Or warns. They sound one in the same.

His free fingers now push into your skull, sinking into the soft jellied mass of your brain and your own hands grip onto his shoulders, sinking into the bone beneath his flesh.

They slide in so easily, like fluid and you gasp out as he fills your cunt; that pulsing cock free from his undergarments and pumping his spend liberally into you and doesn’t stop. It floods your pussy, leaking out around his fat shaft and dripping down your thighs in thick globules.

“You taste so good, Birdie.” Ezra rasps and his voice is sulfuric. “We could devour you for eternity.”

He pulls back and his mouth is full of your milky flesh; your blood pooling from the corner of his lips and you hear his molars crunch through your bone fragments.

“Stay,” he wheezes. “Stay with us here and let us live inside you.” He pleads as he takes another bite, consuming you whole; his cock thrusting deeper into you and you groan and wail as he drowns you.

You can feel it filling you, that thick seminal fluid pouring from your ears, your nostrils and your eyes.

You're slipping, fading.

You want to stay but you know you should be somewhere else. Somewhere you’re not sure is real and you only dreamed of it.

But the nebula… it’s so fucking beautiful.

To never see it again wrenches your heart. You pluck it from your chest; a mass of sloppy ventricles and offer it out to the amethyst abyss.

You watch as it disintegrates into ash in your palm. You can still feel Ezra filling you, drowning you and you know this is where you belong.

You belong with them; this mass of tentacles that feeds you everything you could only ever imagine and crave. At one with the universe and home inside of the purple nebula that speaks the same language as you and shares a brainstem and-

“Birdie!”

You’re wrenched and you surface; spluttering as your grapple for the ledge with slippery fingers.

Ezra pulls you over, groaning with the strain as you topple onto him and gasp out. The diamonds spill from his pockets around you both and he pants into your face, his own reddening from the exertion.

“I got you,” he says, his face shiny and wet. "Easy now."

Your shaky fingers around the familiarity of his brackish features as you realise you're back on solid ground and out of the pit.

You can feel his chest heave against yours as you're crushed to him; his arm tight against your back.

“You didn’t leave me in there.” You marvel at him with those pink cheeks around his scruff.

“Do you think me completely unscrupulous, woman?” He frowns.

You lean in and kiss him, planting a deep relieved smooch onto his chapped lips and he’s taken by surprise.

You suck on his tongue and your kiss erupts into something unfinished. He groans back into your mouth as you can still feel how hard he is, how he pulses under you with need and it spreads into you.

“So, I assume by this mere token of affection, you no longer wish to gut me?” He gasps around your mouth.

“No, I still very much wish to,” you smile. “But right now, I just want you inside of me, Ezra. Fuck me.”

His grip on you strengthens. “I can certainly oblige to that,” he gruffs. "Seeing as we almost perished today."

"Almost," you growl.

He pushes his head up to kiss you again. He wastes no time and reaches down as you both fumble around your sticky, cloying undergarments.

He shimmies his long johns down his thighs as best as he can, pulling out his turgid cock that's pulsing with need and slippery with pre-cum.

You pull your shorts to the side as you sit down on him, sinking all the way down to his swollen balls.

“Fuck, Birdie... Better than the visions,” he whines, the cords in his neck straining and pupils blown wide. “So tight..." He gasps as you start rocking on him. "Oh, forgive me, pet. I won't last.”

"I don't care." You grunt wanting him and taking him, as you grind your hips back and forth sloppily.

He feels fucking divine; packing you out and stretching you through this frantic, clumsy fuck you’ve instigated, and you deduce you’re probably still out of your mind on whatever it was that had you feverish and delusional in the pit.

But it's of no matter; you’re too riled up to give a damn about anything else other than your release. And you want nothing more than to soak him.

It’s fast approaching as you grind down harder on him. You can feel him in the places where you’re still raw and tight, but you push through it; the pleasure is your driving force and it bubbles under your abdomen muscles and makes your toes spark.

"In Kevva's name, I swear you're magnificent," he rambles, reaching up with his free hand to grope and palm your breast over your camisole. He watches as you slide up and down on his cock, bewildered and in awe as your slick oils up the dark hairs around the base of him.

"Oh shit," he cants.

You suck on his deceitful tongue as you ride him and milk his cock for all it’s worth. Your peak is so close, quick and bursting like colourful strobes under your eyelids as your clit rubs deliciously against his fuzzy groin curls.

Your walls tighten and flutter around his girthy muscle buried to the hilt in you.

“Mmm fuck, Ezra, I’m going to-” You pant.

“Me too, come for me. All over my cock.” He hisses. “Now! Gah, sweet mother of Kevva,” he groans. “Ohshitohshitohshit… oh-oh shit!"

You tense and shake over him like an earthquake; eyes rolling back into your head and fingers digging into his chest meat.

Your thighs smack against the soft paunch of his stomach as you slow your pace and ride it out until the stars dissipate and that purple nebula fades into the black for good.

A small part of you is sad to see it go.

You feel Ezra pulse and fill you with his own warm heat and it spills out of you as you collapse onto his sternum, your cheek sticking to his wet clothed nipple, satiated and exhausted.

You glance at your discarded flight suits, after what feels like an eternity later of just laying stuck to him and listening to his heartbeat ebb, before you’d entered the creature's pit and realise this was all so very warped and that you actually made it out unscathed, like he had said.

Like he'd promised.

You’re still unsure if it all really happened or if your mind is playing tricks on you. All you can remember is the violet beauty and the feeling of being filled so deeply.

You feel his thick fingers run through the oil of your hair gently rousing your focus. "As much as I'd enjoy staying here with you on this idle precipice, it appears we should make haste to depart before anything else untoward occurs."

You nod and glance up at him, placing a gentle kiss on the scarred skin of his stump poking out under his t-shirt, which makes his eyes glisten at you.

You shuffle off of him and reach for your suit, careful not to eye him and a small part of you wanting to forget it all.

But you can’t forget a man like Ezra so easily - he’s furrowed in too deep already; got those grubby, thick fingers embedded deep into your skin and poisoning you with the dirt that constantly lives under his nails.

He bore witness to your ruining down in the pit, your undoing.

He was there with you as your skin was flayed down to the bone. The complete annihilation of your soul as it tarnished before him. He sought to devour the nerves under your flesh, the depraved delights that the pit drew out of you and into his waiting and willing mouth.

He didn't choke on you like you wanted.

Ezra regards you with a shine in his dark, beady eyes and offers you a small, creeping smile which you can’t help but return as you both dress and reattach your helmets.

The diamonds glitter all around your feet and the euphoria of knowing they’re yours is a little overwhelming.

"I would kill for a shower right now." You say as you follow him back the way you came through the internalised cave systems. Your body stills feels sticky and wet under your flight suit.

You hear him guffaw inside your ear. "Is there not a sanitation pod housed on your lander?"

"No," you frown. "Was too expensive to rent one with luxurious amenities."

"A shame." He concurs. "Although, we can bathe in the waters with the nymphs on Luxillion now if we wish."

"Luxillion?" You snort. "Burning a hole in your pocket already?"

"A man can but dream." Ezra husks inside your ear. "What of your ambition, Birdie?"

You shrug. "Haven't really thought about it."

"You can afford to mull it over some." He crackles.

"Yes I can," you smile, realising that both Ezra and you can simply afford anything you want right now. No matter how ludicrous a thing it is that you desire.

Back in the confines of the lander, you take the controls as Ezra tucks your share of the diamonds into your knapsack.

“If you’ve short changed me, I’ll hunt you down, prospector.” You warn him though a short side glare.

“Perhaps I should recount if you make tempting promises such as those, Birdie.” Ezra quips and smiles at you like a dim light bulb before it runs out of juice.

The thrusters roar into life and the lander pod launches into a frosty orbit. The static still blocks everything out as you fly blind up into the ether. The radio comms crackling and tinny in their off-beat drones.

“Don’t call me that,” you simply say; a small smirk of your own breeding across your lips that you lick away.

“Then what do I call you? I wish to let it roll off my tongue when I fuck you some more back on The Pug.” He simply croons.

You scoff. “You’re so presumptuous, Ezra.” You shake your head with a breathy snuffle of a laugh. “Perhaps, I’ll be the one to fuck you."

And the thought makes your clit throb excitedly, despite it's over-stimulated ache.

"I'll ensure you're held to that bold proposition, pet." Ezra simply clicks his tongue around his teeth, the taste of you still in his gum meat somewhere.

"I would expect no less from you." You quip.

You feel his singular hand creep onto your thigh and give it a good gentle squeeze. Instead of being disgusted, you smile and enjoy the pleasure it evokes through your bloodstream as he warms you.

You then surprise him by caving and finally revealing your name, casually letting it flow from your lips as you release the landing gear.

"Well, it's nice to finally meet you." He grins slickly at you in some deft accomplishment. "Wasn't such a hard endeavor now, was it?"

Ezra sits back in the nav seat smirking as you launch fully into The Fringe, leaving the delectable nightmares of Narilla behind you both.

MASTERLIST | EZRA MASTERLIST

I really hope you enjoyed reading this Ezra story of mine. I had a lot of fun writing this and really wanted to challenge myself with this genre. Please let me know your thoughts. I'll be writing more Ezra for sure. 🖤

#ezra prospect #prospect ezra #pedro pascal characters #pedro pascal #ezra prospect x f!reader #ezra prospect x you #ezra x female reader #ezra prospect x reader #ezra prospect smut #ezra x you #ezra x reader #prospect film #prospect 2018 #prospect movie #prospect #pedro pascal smut #pedro pascal character fanfiction #pedrostories #pedro pascal stories #jett's pedro boys #jett's writing

[cumulo-stratus]

MASTERLIST

(absolutely lovely dividers by @cafekitsune <3)

Fluff- ☀️ Angst- 🌧️ Angst w/ comfort- 🌦️ Moodboard- 🌨️

Requests- closed :(

last updated- 4/15/24

FLUFFTOBER-

one fic for everyday of october based around a fluffy prompt, (im sure we all know the drill by now <3)

Long Gone[e.p] ☀️ - emily and reader share their first kiss in the after hours of the bau

Rainy Love [s.r]☀️ - y/n has always loved the rain, and decides to share that love with spencer (ps this was idea was inspired by a fic by the lovely user @ssa-atlas-alvez <3)

I’ll Remember for us [s.r] ☀️ - the team goes to Los Angeles, and y/n (the ever emotionless and stone cold profiler with a soft spot for spencer) is chasing an unsub when they fight and falls, getting a concussion and fractured wrist, spencer is there for him. (no prior romantic relationship, just friends)

Rain Soaked Sleep [s.r] ☀️ - Y/n and Spencer get home after a long week at the BAU and a rainy drive home, ready to fall asleep to the sound of rain.

Oh How I Love Loving You[s.r] ☀️ - Y/n and spencer share their first dance as a married couple at their fall wedding in y/ns hometown in new england

Softest Curls in All the Kingdom [s.r] ☀️ - Y/n enjoys playing with spencers hair on jet back home

“They’re Ours!” [s.r] ☀️ - My HC's around Spencer and sharing clothes over the course of your relationship.

There’s nothing wrong with being different[s.r] ☀️ - Spencer and his husband talk to their daughter when she gets in trouble for punching someone (daughter is 10)

Soaked in Adoration[s.r] ☀️ - My HC's around spencer and bathing/showering with his partner

“For Me?”[s.r] ☀️ - Y/n brings spencer an early Christmas gift relating to their shared special interest of the sci-fi fantasy series Dune

“You do this everyday?”[s.r] ☀️ - y/n has a pretty popular cooking channel and one day after y/n doesnt edit out spencer givving y/n a kiss when he gets home the fans go crazy wanting a video where you bake together so you make a vid answering questions while making a fall recipe

Love in the form of paper[s.r] ☀️ - Spencer tries to teach his best friend how to make an origami heart- but y/n still struggles

“Lend me some vanilla?” [s.r] ☀️ - Y/n goes to spencers house to ask spencer if he has any vanilla extract when theres a possible gas leak and no ones allowed to leave their aparment until the morning when someone can come check it out...

Sneaky snuggles [s.r] ☀️ -y/n is woken up to a surprise of his boyfriend being home- despite the fact that his case was supposed to run at least another day or two.

The good days [s.r] ☀️ - spencer and y/n go stargazing, and y/n indulges spencer with facts about his special interest- astronomy

Protector[s.r] ☀️ - after an unsub tries to hurt y/n, spencer steps in.

Lover -

the love story of y/n l/n and Spencer Reid

Ours ☀️ - Spencer finally has a conversation with the boy on the train

Enchanted 🌦️ - Spencer's insecurities grow in his friendship with y/n when he finds out about Gina

More coming soon…

Criminal Minds -

“They’re ours!”[s.r] ☀️ - Sharing clothes with Spencer Reid

BAU/Autism [s.r] ☀️ - How the team supports you and your autism

Soaked in adoration [s.r] ☀️ - Bath time with spencer headcannons

Dating Aaron [a.h] ☀️ - what would it be like to date Aaron Hotchner?

More coming soon…

Criminal Minds -

Like we always do [s.r] 🌦️ - (request) after Spencer proposes to his partner they decide they have to tell Spencer what they had been thinking about for months- and Spencer is always ready to support his partner

Communication issues [s.r] ☀️ - reader is from France and lived there until he was 11/12 and then moved to america and his first language is french. He also has a little bit of an accent. Basically reader is new to the team and it is their first late night back home on the jet with him. And basically they learn that when hes tired he reverts back to his mother tongue.

The fencer [s.r]☀️ - reader is a fencer and is competing in the 2023 mens saber nationals and spencer invites the team to cheer on his boyfriend. (Could be read as ftm) (Also spencer is like low key autistic in this)

Smart cookie [s.r]☀️ - (request) reader asks for readers help with a new tattoo he wants, and when reader calls Spencer a smart cookie Spencer gets flustered, and reader can't help himself

Love like a fathers [s.r]🌦️ - (request) Y/n gets hurt protecting spencer from an unsub, and they spend some time together in the hospital.

Flashback [s.r]🌦️ - spencer discusses his thoughts around having kids with his spouse after putting their daughter Diana to bed (written for @cmgiftexchange)

New Years Kiss [s.r]☀️ - You and Spencer share a New Years kiss at Rossi's house to celebrate

The Little Things [a.h]☀️ - (request) you notice all the little things Aaron does for you everyday (could be read as romantic or platonic)

Fantozzi [s.r] ☀️ - (request) The BAU decides to have a movie night at Rossi's house, and Spencer you and Spencer find a quiet corner to sit in. You both fall asleep and cuddling ensues..

Glitter Girl [p.g] ☀️ - (request) Penelope and her best friend share some banter over the phone

French Press Coffee [s.r] 🌦️ - (request) Spencer insist you take a break despite your objections

Embrace [s.r] 🌦️ - spencer doesnt feel like hes anything more than his intelligence, but ethan proves him wrong.

More coming soon…

MCU -

Ill always be here [m.j]🌦️ - you come out to your parents and they kick you out after your dad slaps you but mj comforts you and lets you stay with her. 

“You know your really pretty?” [m.j]☀️ - its late and y/n cant sleep so theyre ranting to MJ, its basically just a bunch of fluff crammed into a couple paragraphs

More coming soon…

Criminal Minds -

Paranormal [bau] 🌦️ - (request) y/n has a secret, can he keep it despite the circumstances?

Picture to Burn [s.r]🌧️ - (part of lover series) Everything's falling apart, but will Spencer have the strength to put it back together?

More coming soon…

Criminal Minds -

An indie fall with Spencer [s.r] 🌨️ - (request) A moodboard for an indie fall with spencer <3

A rainy day in with Spencer [s.r] 🌨️ - a moodboard for a rainy day inside with Spencer <3

College professor AU [s.r] 🌨️ - a moodboard for a college professor spencer reid <3

One car [b.a.u] ☀️ - in which all the members of the BAU are stuck in one car for a little while

"your my pillow now" [s.r] ☀️ - spencer reid x male reader

"I can still feel you" [s.r] 🌧️ - spencer reid x gn!reader

More coming soon…

#criminal minds #spencer reid #bau #bau team #fluff #gay #spencer reid x reader #flufftober #spencer reid x male reader #criminal minds master list #BAU master list #spencer reid master list #master list #master post #moodboard #fanfic #angst with comfort #oneshot #headcannon #marvel #MJ #Michelle jones #spider man #spencer reid x gn reader #spencer reid x ftm reader #mj x gn reader

[fauxfickle]

We now return with your regularly scheduled and all too familiar feeling of malaise and the search for "The Great All American Pizza Show!"

So it's been a little under a month since my last post and I've been skimming through commercial compilations from the LA area. I've found some cool YT channels that archive old ads from that area but I obviously don't have anything to show for it. The ads are either too early or too late to be part of this campaign which is a bit frustrating. Something I neglected to mention last time was that I was also looking through Colossal Pictures demo reels to see if they had a snippet of the animated commercial but of course, there's nothing. There seems to be a cutoff point in the early 80s as most demos only show things from that far back. I was able to find some obscure, silent, avant garde, sci-fi film possibly connected to Colossal but I don't think that'll help me much.

Colossal had some sort of "meet the crew" type video where all the employees said they're names but only their first name so I can't really track them down or anything. I'll keep looking, I didn't look all too hard as I was kinda at my wits end at that time looking through ad comps for hours.

I took a bit of a break for a while before reading through the old Pizza Times newsletters from Dec 79 - May 80. The May 1980 newsletter had some cool info about commercials and news features filmed at the various stores. Some of these aren't technically part of TGAAPS campaign but ehhhhhh I don't really care. They're part of early PTT history and I wanna see them damnit!

Let's go through these starting with Citrus Heights. The Citrus Heights section is loaded with info regarding lost media, 3 in fact! Sacramento's Channel 40 (KTXL), which has since been bought out by FOX in the mid 80s, did a Newsplus at 10 feature on the cyberamic systems at the new store during it's opening week. If we consult the ever so useful Chuck-E-Pedia, we can find that this feature would have been shot and most likely aired on Christmas week of 1979. A perfect pin point set of dates to look through! Next, Chuck was seen in the lead up to the United Cerebral Palsy Telethon which also gives us some idea of where to look. Finally, a TV commercial was filmed, possibly with TGAAPS slogan. Bob Wilkins' ad agency produced it but I couldn't find ANYTHING regarding this company. It's mentioned on his wikipedia but not named, and a even his own website doesn't mention anything about it. It's surprising that someone who seems like a local celeb in there area could have an ad agency that goes almost entirely undocumented.

Next, we move to Sparks, Nevada. Channel 2 (KTVN) filmed a feature on the store for the PM Magazine. The store was visited by reporter Keith Hirshland. Now I'm actually pretty sure I've found this dude! I found a local online article talking about him and the timeline works perfectly. Assuming this was filmed in early 1980, Keith would of been still fresh out of college with a degree in journalism and around 23. He also says he grew up running down the halls of the KTVN office. As a little aside, I'd just like to say don't bother this man or anyone/company mentioned in any of my posts. The last thing we need is to scare off these people.

This last little piece of lost media probably has the best chances of being found out of all the rest. Ben Wattenberg's 1980, from what I can find, is a dry, uninteresting TV news segment hosted by an equally dry and uninteresting host, the neo-conservative Ben Wattenberg. Ben Wattenberg's 1980 itself seems to be almost entirely lost media as only a few stills, episode descriptions, and TV listings exist online. However, this show was on PBS which no doubt has it somewhere in it's archive. What's better is that that there not only an exact date of when the episode will air, but also the name of the episode itself! One user on taptalk was able to find a TV listing which unfortunately doesn't lead anywhere and isn't archive on the WayBack machine. Luckily people actually said the name of the supposed episode which would of been "Silicon Valley: The New Entrepreneurs". We can also find evidence of it in a newspaper from that June 15th.

I sent e-mails to KTXL-40 and PBS on 2/24, so far no responses. I'll wait a little longer and in the mean time look for more leads and contacts. As I said before, don't bother these people/companies. I don't want them to be swamped with calls and e-mails and clam up on us. Bye for now!

#chuck e cheese #pizza time theatre #the great all american pizza search #the great all american pizza show #pizza time theater #lost footage #lost commercial #lost media #bob wilkins #ben wattenberg #oh god why is there a ben wattenberg tag on tumblr

[prettyboyhowl]

so i made a song because yes i have the @infamous-if brainrot and i have it bad 😭

'where the flowers grow' is a leaked song from synthpop band Sunhopper Shopping Channel, who take inspiration from 'sci-fi, romance novels, and Saturday morning cartoons' to create their genre-blending songs.

The song was written by frontman Kasen Yun, known to fans as Skip. He has strongly denied all rumours that the song is related to ex and former bandmate Seven Lawless, despite certain lyrics suggesting otherwise.

*Disclaimer: i tried my best but while MC is a singer i am NOT lmao (also i don't like my voice and idk how to sing with an american accent besides changing the pronunciation of 'can't' so just putting that out there first lol)

Lyrics:

'why am i still on your wrist' the thought lingers like a chaste kiss on my mind how do i get over this? i keep thinking back to when you were still mine

somehow you wake up all the best and the worst parts of me hate how you take up all the spaces i can't seem to reach

tell me do you know that you still live in the part of my memory where the flowers grow? i'll never know just how to let you go

how do you remember us? wish i could hop onto your memory bus hitch a ride, look around to see where those secret thoughts of yours all hide

and if do, and if i find something that maybe, just maybe i don't like would you mind, if i closed my eyes pretending like everything's fine

(prechorus)

tell me do you know that you still live in the part of my memory where the flowers grow? i'll never leave this spot where you've left me standing

always pause, when i count to ten but i know i'd do it all over again spend my time with an empty hand hoping you'll come back and hold it again

tell me do you know that you still live in the part of my memory where the flowers grow? hope you're happy you hurt me I’ll never forgive you

and i hate that i love you hate that i miss you

#posting this before i sleep so i don't stress over it all day ahahaaa #my boy kasen is very much not over his ex... but can't stop flirting with victoria lmaooo #anyways shoutout to seven for motivating me to complete a song for once in my life #it's not perfect but i learned stuff while making it so that's a win! #also ngl it was a battle to reign in the twang on 'knoOoOow' #i had to practice pronouncing it skdjfh #fan music #infamous if

[moghedien]

I've seen you say a few times that a lot of modern magic systems aren't really magic and are basically science or math (or sci-fi), and specifically mention Brandon Sanderson's systems. Maybe it's just because I'm not very familiar with his work (I've only read mistborn era 1 and the first 3 books of the stormlight archive) but it seems to me his magic systems are god-given, explained to death, video-gamey magic with basically an energy bar, and I don't really understand how that'd be science, math or sci-fi. Would you mind explaining that to me? (I also don't really understand the whole hard magic vs soft magic thing. E.g., to me classic spells and wot weaving seem functionally the same yet the former is generally considered soft and the latter hard)

Describing it as video gamey is actually exactly it, because video games and even table top games that use magic are basically the same thing, because they have to be. They have very specific rules that are always going to the constant. Once you know the rules, you can minmax and manipulate scenarios around those rules, but the rules are still very much in place and very constant.

Video games are like that because they have to be, they’re programs. Table top games are like that also because they have to be to be useable for a general audience, but a GM can in theory decide to throw out said rules and decide something else happens based on vibes. That’s the simplest example I can give on the difference between hard and soft magic. Magic that follows rules is hard magic. Magic that follows vibes is soft magic.

When it comes to Sanderson, I call his magic systems math because they’re so intentionally formulaic. Doing X thing will always cause Y action. You may be able to manipulate situations around that formula in unexpected way. You may be able to throw in unexpected variables or you may unexpectedly encounter something you didn’t account for that throws off the expected outcome, but the formula is always going to be the same. No matter how many times you do it. No matter who is doing it (as long as they have the basic ability to use the magic), x+y will always equal z

The reason why I say that isn’t magic is because it’s extremely orderly and predictable. If you look at like, most magical representations in antiquity, it’s very much a chaotic force. You can try to harness it and do things with it, but you can’t control chaos and you’ll probably end up with some unexpected outcomes even if you’re skilled and careful. Also it’s largely used in like stories just to like, deliver some moral or cause some problem so it’s literally just a tool to add chaos that can’t otherwise be accounted for.

People can write “hard” magic all they want and I like Cosmere and all, but Branderson specifically as well as a lot of other fantasy writers have a problem with thinking that any magic that isn’t clearly defined for readers is bad. Branderson specifically seems to think that it’s poor writing and a mistake on the writers part if they somehow forgot to come up with never changing magic rules for the readers to obsess over.

If that’s the case though then the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit were the worst fantasy books every written because Tolkien is like THE best example of soft magic in fantasy. No one knows what the fuck the rules of magic are in those books, but somehow it still isn’t bad writing when Gandalf comes back from the dead or dropping a ring in some lava kills Satan. Like even when we get explanations it’s just like “accept this is the case for this one situation but apply it to nothing else.” A more recent example of soft magic is in the Poppy War, which is a book I would love to hear Branderson or his fans try to say is poorly written because of the magic

Wheel of Time has a sort of combination of hard and soft magic though, which is where a lot of the criticism toward Branderson came up because he seems to ignore this when discussing the books/show. Weaves and channeling and such are on the harder side and have rules that do largely remain constant (except when they don’t), but then there’s things like Tel’aran’rhiod and the Ogier and ter’angreal in general and the horn of Valere and the heroes attached to it and taveren where it’s just largely like “yeah this is how it is don’t worry about it”

Anyway, all this to say I really do actually hate the terms hard and soft magic but they’re the most useful terms we have

[alexbraindump]

the optimism of mundanity in sci-fi

[word count: 980]

Mundanity serves my favorite role in worldbuilding. Beyond fictional politics, cultures or races sits the - often overlooked - role of the mundane. The things we do in our day-to-day lives. Where we keep our keys, our routines before going out for the day, the junk we may leave lying around. It’s part of a tiny picture that lingers in the shadows of the vast worlds we build and stories we weave. Yet from that snapshot blossoms a viewpoint dripping with relatability, one that places you into the shoes of a character living in that world to a capacity far beyond that which anything else could even hope to achieve.

When I’m writing a character introduction, it’s about more than just the character’s current position and desires. It’s about integrating the world into their life. If space travel is a commonplace fixture of their world and they own a spaceship, what’s the role of that ship to them? Is it like a car, a mobile home, a flying armory? If it’s like a car, have they left it stock, or have they modified and tuned the way a car lover would in real life? If it’s like a home, what furniture do they deem priority, do they keep it clean, is there any decoration? If an armory, what’s the weaponry of this universe like, what kinds of weapons do they want to keep loaded, how organized is it? (check out the first chapter of my story 501-b, also on this blog, if you wanna see where that though process brought me ;3)

Opportunities for both character and worldbuilding are already pouring out from that simple hypothetical. So many things can be said right away with the mundane relationship between a character and their mode of transport. To them, that’s just how it is, nothing special. The same way you’d look at a car. To the reader, though? That’s a nuclear bomb of information you just detonated in their face and they probably didn’t even realize. If you get how a character views their ship, you already start to understand their personality and the role of space travel in that world right off the bat.

It’s always been alluring to me, an element my mind would hook its foxy paws onto right away. While the lack of it wouldn’t bug me much, I’d always start to wonder about it later. Where does this character live, what’s their home look like? By no means am I arguing that this is an absolute necessity to make a good story. Every story has its own unique needs that can be filled however the creator sees fit. But for me, what I want to see and make more of, is something more down-to-earth. And while a good chunk of that is - admittedly - just me being a neurodivergent nerd, I feel like there’s something more to it. Forgive me for getting a little pretentious from here on out, but-

Mundanity in sci-fi is optimistic. It’s this tinge of reassurance that, no matter what happens, no matter how bad things get or how far we make it away from our home planet, we’re still individuals. Whether its huge, bombastic threats like scary evil aliens, or depressingly real ones like corporate overreach and profit motives, we will persist. There’s comfort in that.

When I get to see a character doing their morning routine in a world separated from our own by anything between decades to centuries, it feels good. Like the artist/writer is patting me on the head and saying “there there, things may be shit, but life isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.” And maybe there’s a nihilistic twist on it, like propaganda on a television or corporate products lining a comfy home’s shelves, but that’s still a television or a home. They may come home from the Sub-Minimum Wage Employee Pulper 9,000™, and that will inherently be sympathetic, but when we get to see them toss their coat aside and go to the kitchen to make a lazy, unhealthy meal and slouch on their sofa and pick up a television remote to flip to their favorite channel, the connection that forms is irreplaceable.

And I feel that it’s severely underutilized. When I watched Andor for the first time (amazing show btw, check it out even if you aren’t the biggest fan of starred wars) and we got to see a character return to their mother’s apartment and eat space cereal with space milk, it was somehow one of the most jarring moments I’ve seen in a Star Wars thing. Living situations are oftentimes such an understated part of popular sci-fi media that I actually felt jarred upon seeing one. And I loved it.

That’s just how uncommon they can be. And I hate that. I hate that sci-fi loves to dismiss the mundanities of life, because those are when I feel the most at-home in a universe. I can immediately feel a character’s vibe if I see them kick their feet up in a messy impromptu living room in their spaceship. While you can put in the work to make me feel that same thing through dialogue and actions, it’s arguably even more work.

So next time you’re making a story, why not save yourself some trouble and show your audience a little snippet of day-to-day life in your world? Show us what a character’s phone looks like and how they use it, or maybe if they have a wallpaper (if applicable) or any stickers on the back of it? Or give us some tiny details about how they get from place to place. Is public transport a thing, do they own their own vehicle of some kind, or do they just walk? Hopefully these thoughts conjure the same kind of inspiration in you as the ones that run around wreaking havoc in my little fox brain.

#alexbraindumping #writing #scifi writing #science fiction #scifi #sci fi writing #scifi worldbuilding #worldbuilding #creative writing #space fiction #fiction

[tiffanys-aus-and-headcanons]

I'm really curious about where exactly Doctor Who & spinoffs fit in to the 'scrambled universe' framework

So it's 2012. After a series of mental health events, Dan Harmon is on the rocks with his sitcom The Big Bang Theory, and is looking for a new project to do. He decides to call up his old friend Justin Roiland, who he met almost a decade earlier running Channel 101, and asks if he has any ideas for a cartoon. Roiland decides to file the serial numbers off of his old shock comedy short Miss Wonka, and the result is Adult Swim's Ms. Frizzle. Dan Harmon brings the systematic approach to story structure he honed working on The Big Bang Theory to elevate the project to something with some actual redeeming value someone could care about. The show premieres the next year, in 2013. It is acclaimed and beloved, and for a brief and golden moment in history it isn't even considered cringe.

It's 2018. Year after year, season after season, Harmon's people have edged out Roiland's people in the Ms. Frizzle writing room. Roiland has grown bored and disruptive; the show's staff only really see him anymore when he comes in to record the voices, or when he decides to play some inscrutable Epic Funny LOL Prank on them and waste their time. Meanwhile, Disney's main streaming platform, Hulu, is looking for exclusives that might draw people to subscribe, in a streaming environment that's quickly and unsustainably growing bloated. They have an easy time convincing Roiland to divert his attention to a second project. Roiland announces Dr. Who in an interview; it's the first Dan Harmon has ever heard of it. Mike McMahan (also getting picked up around this time by CBS All Access to do There And Back Again: Gollum) is the cocreator this time. Roiland has learned various bad habits while stagnating on Ms. Frizzle, so he won't put much effort into Dr. Who either, but he will at least get it going.

It's 2020. Granted a sort of captive audience by the recently-started coronavirus pandemic, Dr. Who premieres on Hulu. At a glance, it's a low-effort off-brand version of Ms. Frizzle; Roiland isn't even bothering to do a girl voice this time. If given a deeper look, there is something worthwhile there. It's a riff on an old subgenre of soft sci-fi TV, the idea of an immortal celestial time guardian figure - you see it in the BBC's long-running Quantum Leap, in Constance M. Burge's A Wrinkle In Time, and there are even elements of it in Ms. Frizzle, though they're much more concentrated in Dr. Who. The show is very episodic, though there are more serialized subplots and hints of a deeper-running plot; like Ms. Frizzle, the show is full of undisguised references to other media.

It's 2023. A legal case in which Roiland is accused of domestic abuse becomes widely publicized, followed by the dissemination of various inappropriate text messages he had apparently sent to fans. It becomes common knowledge that Roiland is a nightmare to work with, and every single project he's involved with drops him nearly simultaneously as a brand liability, even the video game development studio he founded to make Gone Home.

Every unaired project on which Roiland was set to do a voice comes up with a different strategy to replace him. Science Time: Rita & Morticia hires a new up-and-coming voice actor to play assorted versions of King Tommy, without comment. Season 7 of Ms. Frizzle replaces Roiland with Jinkx Monsoon; it's a very noticeable change, but she's still basically playing the same character, she's just doing a better job.

Dr. Who is the lesser-known knockoff living in Ms. Frizzle's shadow, so it has less to lose; it decides to make a meta joke out of the whole thing, and whips up a new sketch to start off season 4, in which the Doctor trips, falls down the stairs, and dies in front of his companion Rose Tyler. We are thereby introduced to the just-invented openly-bullshit process of "regeneration", in which the Doctor can come to the brink of death but dramatically cheat it, with the only consequence being that he'll now look and/or sound like a different guy. So, as of the opening scene of season 4, the Doctor is now voiced by Dan Stevens.

And that's how the Doctor on Dr. Who became British.

#the scrambled timeline #credit to zedalpha for the There And Back Again idea

[megamindsecretlair]

It Started With a Whisper - Chapter 7

Chapter 6 Chapter 8

Pairing: Sam Wilson x Black!Fem!reader / Plus Size reader

Warnings: 18+. Minors DNI. You are in charge of your own reading experience. Some sentences are intentional AAVE. Cursing, Angst, mentions of violence, medication for anxiety, guilt. Hurt/Comfort, some fluff. Sorry if I missed some!

Summary: You are the front desk clerk who started a few months ago and you have a major crush on Sam Wilson, the handsome and sweet trauma counselor. You witness some of the battle at the Triskelion and you fear for Sam's safety.

Word Count: 3,022k

Masterlist

A/N: Sam still makes me SICK!!!! He's so adorable. LOL. Likes are always awesome. Please consider commenting and reblogging to help support writers! I love hearing your thoughts!

Taglist: @multiversefanfics @chaos-4baby @leahnicole1219

You didn’t know what you would do without Ariel. For the past two days, she had been by your side. The irony wasn’t lost on you. You needed supervision just like your mom did. You tried to be less needy, less worrisome, or less in general. You were no stranger to putting your needs on hold to make everyone around you feel better. 

“Stop it,” Ariel said. You were folding laundry while sitting on the couch. She had thrown on a trashy movie and you were half paying attention. 

“Hm?” You asked.

“You haven’t taken a proper breath since you spoke to Sam. It’s okay to miss him,” she said.

“I know. I’ve said I missed him,” you said. You didn’t know what she was on about.

She snatched the shirt out of your hands and pinned you with a glare. “You always disappear in your head when you’re feeling some type of way. Then you start piddling,” she told you. 

You opened your mouth to argue but no words came. She was right. You hated being a burden. You were the one who took care of others, not the other way around. Your mom was napping upstairs and despite your protests, your dad had gone off to work anyway. Your siblings were in school so the house was as quiet as it was going to get.

“I can’t help it. I feel useless just sitting here, waiting for news. I can’t ask him to update me every minute of the day just because I’m worried,” you admitted. You had facts to fall back on to combat your growing panic. They were trained soldiers. And you were just a lowly civilian who didn’t even know how to throw a punch. What could you possibly do to contribute? 

“No, but it’s okay to talk to me about it. You’re not alone,” Ariel said. You sighed. Per usual, she was right. Annoyingly so. You put the shirt into the laundry basket and placed it on the floor. You sat back on the couch and folded your arms. This felt so weird but you were determined to “relax”.

You made Ariel tell you about what’s going on in her life. It had been your show for the past few days and that wasn’t fair. She was an incredible friend. An amazing friend with the patience of a saint. 

She told you about the new woman she was seeing and she was hopeful that this one wasn’t crazy. You snorted with laughter. Ariel lived for the drama and that extended to her significant others as well. Male or female, Ariel attracted crazies like bees to flowers. 

Ariel took a call while you focused on the TV. “What?!” 

Ariel snatched the remote from the couch and flipped the channel to the news. There was shaky camera work pointed at…three enormous ships floating in the air. What kind of sci-fi shit was this? Aliens didn’t like the defeat in NY, so now they’re back? 

You prayed that your mom was still asleep. If she woke to this…there would be no calming her down. Your dad was the only one who managed it and it took its toll on him. 

The news was reporting a massive dump of information from SHIELD, a spy group used to protect the world from otherworldly threats. So much for that. They couldn’t even stop those aliens. 

They were reporting more news about Steve being a fugitive but already, they were mining information about his missions and how he was still a hero. Fancy that. The news were reluctant to say they were wrong. Clearly it was because they received false information from Hydra. Clearly. 

The camera was blurry as it tried to catch all of the action. You saw fighter jets flying and shooting at the ships, helicopters, and some kind of…bird thing flying around. 

“Shit! Girl, I think that’s Sam!” Ariel shoved her phone in your face. Some idiot on the internet close to the battle was live-streaming it and providing stupid dude-bro commentary. But, the bird-like thing looked like a man. Like a familiar Black man.

“He can fly now?” 

“Hell if I know!” You fought the urge to pace. You were not a pacer. You will not turn into your mom. Sam wouldn’t be in that thing if he didn’t know what he was doing. He had so much explaining to do when he made it back. And he will make it back. You believed it. 

“Are…we sure Sam is a good guy? Tangling with whatever this is?” Ariel asked softly. It had to be asked. But fire roiled in your chest. Sam was the epitome of good. He would not be part of a racist organization. You didn’t pay too much attention to the Steve exhibit when you went, but you knew Hydra was a splinter from the Nazis. The exhibit smacked of further good ole boy propaganda. 

You believed Steve really did those things. You believed he was a hero. But you also knew that there was more to the story. You were content to let everyone believe in the fantasy. But now that you sort of knew Steve, you wondered if he’d be open to questions. You just wanted them for yourself. You wouldn’t blast it to the internet. 

You watched out for Sam as much as you could but the guns on the ships started to turn. They were going to shoot? Shoot at what? The news was no help. They were too busy drooling over SHIELD private files. And the guerilla journalism of civilians on the street were rife with unconfirmed reporting, guessing, and some outright lying. The racist idiots were praising Hydra. Praising them. 

The guns started to fire on each other. Sam was still somewhere in there. Your throat went dry as you watched. Fires exploded on the ships. The screen cut to the news anchors who shuffled papers, looking solemn. They said it was too graphic to show on screen. 

You watched more from Ariel’s phone but debris started to rain down so people were starting to run for cover. You made a strangled noise in the back of your throat. Ariel idly rubbed your back. She told you that Sam was fine.

You sure as fuck hoped so. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He wasn’t supposed to get hurt. Help Steve and Natasha, sure. But not like this. Not endangering himself like this. Again, you were helpless watching and waiting. You hated this feeling. You wanted no parts of it. 

Did that mean you’d have to give up Sam? The thought alone made you sick. Physically ill. Your stomach churned and flipped. Your hands shook. In a short amount of time, Sam got under your skin. He consumed your thoughts. You didn’t want to give him up. But you didn’t know if you were strong enough to endure not knowing.

The news flipped back to the battle. The ships had fallen. The three sided building had collapsed. The death toll and casualty rates were starting to roll in. You didn’t want to see Sam’s name on it. You turned the channel and Ariel tried to distract you with more drama about her love life. 

You felt like you were out of your body. It felt wrong, like it fit wrong. You picked at your nails and your leg bounced. It was going to be a long fucking day.

Later in the evening, Ariel had to run out but promised she’d be back. You told her that she didn’t have to but she knew you. Your siblings were sent home due to the events that happened at SHIELD headquarters. The stupid teachers actually showed it on TV. How was that appropriate? They weren’t babies, they were nearly adults, but still. You were an adult and you barely stomached it.

Then again, the teachers turned on 9/11 for you as a kid. It wasn’t a smart decision but after everything that’s happened the past few years, you were worried what would happen to this generation. Would they be desensitized to the violence? It seemed like it was constant now. Was it any better to bury their heads in the sand? 

You didn’t have the time nor energy for philosophical debates at the moment. You got dinner started. Your dad came home and he was relieved that you managed to keep your mom from the news. It wasn’t hard. She passed out all day. On the off chance that she actually took her meds, they usually evened her out. Which meant she was finally ready to sleep. 

You lost yourself in the mundane task of taking care of your family. You listened to your siblings talk about their day, careful to avoid the huge battle. Poor kids. They shouldn’t have to protect their mom like this. It was supposed to be the other way around. 

Your phone rang and you looked at the caller ID. It was a hospital. 

“Hello?” You rushed to answer.

They confirmed your name. “Sam Wilson directed us to contact you. He’s stable and awake,” they said.

“Oh, god,” you said. You told your family that you were leaving. You had no time for thinking, just moving. You shoved on your shoes, grabbed a jacket, and headed out to your car. You texted Ariel that Sam was fine and you were going to see him.

You didn’t care about obeying traffic laws. The streets were a mess. Emergency vehicles were screaming down the street trying to deal with the aftermath of the battle. The dark streets felt like an omen. But you shook the thought. Fuck that. The hospital said he was awake and stable. And he asked for you.

You made it to the hospital. It was insane. There were emergency workers clogging up the place. A new ambulance rolled through every three minutes. The staff were harried as they directed everyone around like drill sergeants. 

You managed to get a nurse at the front desk to notice you. You told him you were there to see Sam. “Relation?” 

“I’m his…” You sighed. What were you to him? Friend seemed too small. Not after the incredible night you spent together. “I’m his girlfriend.” 

The nurse nodded and told you his room number. You took the elevator up and went to his room. The room was dark and you wondered if he fell asleep while you were on your way over.

“Hey gorgeous,” he said. His voice was strained. But he was there. In the flesh. Where you could reach out and hug him. 

You pushed into the room and half closed the door to block out the frantic chaos outside. You fought yourself, hard. You wanted to crush him. You wanted to slap him. You wanted to kiss him until your lips were swollen and numb.

You crossed the room and caressed his head, his cheek. He had darkening bruises on his face and a few nasty cuts. But he was here. You smiled at him and leaned down to hug him. “You bastard,” you said.

He chuckled and then groaned. “Oh, don’t make me laugh. God, I missed you.” His voice was muffled in the crook of your neck. You didn’t want to let him go. 

He must’ve sensed it because he scooted over in bed and patted it. “You’re joking,” you said. That little ass bed was not big enough for your big ass and Sam’s bulk. You folded your arms. You didn’t always want to call attention to your weight, but you were not some dainty flower that could scoot in anywhere you wanted. There were limits.

“Lay down with me. I’m hurtin’,” he said. He gave you puppy dog eyes. “You wouldn’t want to leave me hanging, would you?” 

“You can’t lay it on any thicker?” You asked and giggled.

“I could try if you really want me to,” he said and grinned. It only drew attention to the cuts on his face. 

You sighed and put your purse down on the nearest chair. You climbed into the bed with him and he scooted over to the other side to allow you more room. You still had to throw a leg over him. But he never grunted. He never complained. He just wrapped you in his arms and sighed. It was a deep sigh that communicated a thousand words. 

You breathed him in. He was still him underneath the faintly medicinal scent and cleaning products. You were on his right side, but you still dimly heard his heartbeat pumping away. Keeping him alive and in your arms.

“You scared the hell outta me, Sam,” you said.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I worried you,” he said. He kissed the top of your forehead. You closed your eyes. You pretended that you were back at his place, in his bed. That he had only left you long enough to get food from the delivery driver and he had slipped back into bed. You could almost picture it in your mind’s eye. The heart monitor was nothing more than his air conditioner. Right.

“I’m just glad you’re safe,” you said.

“Hey, I’m always coming home. Always.”

“You can’t make that promise,” you told him. 

“Yes, I can. If you’ll have me, I promise I’ll always come home to you. Hell or high water,” he said. 

If you’ll have him…that was the million dollar sentence. It took all of your willpower to not be a coward. To stay pressed against him. This was supposed to be casual but there was nothing casual about what you felt for Sam.

From the moment he whispered to you after your first few days at the VA. You had your back turned. In his soft, deep voice, he whispered so he didn’t startle you. It still startled you. You were so nervous, trying not to mess up badly. You had been having a shitty day. You couldn’t get the copier to work and it was spitting out weird ink streaks all over the paper. 

But that whisper. Ever since then, you wondered if your reluctance to go out with him had to do with you knowing on some level that this was bigger than just you two. You didn’t believe in that love at first sight crap. But you knew that he was important. You just didn’t realize how important until you thought he was gone. Ripped away from you forever.

“I’ll hold you to the hell or high water, Sam. Otherwise I’ll have to find you myself,” you said.

He sighed as if he were waiting on your answer. He chuckled and lifted your chin to look into your eyes. You stared into his warm brown eyes. He leaned in and placed a gentle kiss on your lips. Reverent. Like you were precious glass freshly cooled from the furnace. 

“I’ll be here. You won’t get rid of me that easy,” he said. 

“Good. You’re not getting rid of me that easy either,” you said. It may be a stupid decision on your part. You had a chance to end it right here and now. However, there was no other place you’d rather be. Being in his arms was the safest you’ve ever felt. Truly safe. Like nothing and no one could touch you. He wouldn’t let them.

You stayed in his bed for quite a while. No one came to bother you while you were there, talking and getting some clue as to what he’d been up to. He promised to tell the whole sordid affair when you had some privacy. Some things, he wasn’t comfortable sharing where anyone could hear. You understood that. Even though you were dying for answers. 

“How quickly do you think I could make you cum before another nurse checks on us?” Sam asked, after a lull in conversation. You tapped his chest and he grunted, but you got the feeling he faked it.

“Absolutely the fuck not! I’m not having sex with you while you’re lying in a hospital bed!” Did this man ever not have sex on the brain? Maybe he hit his head too badly during the battle. 

“Come on!” He groaned. “I missed tasting you. It wasn’t enough last time.” His voice dropped into a seductive whisper, tickling your ear. Your body instantly reacted to him. 

“No!” You said and giggled. 

He sighed. “You’re no fun.” 

You laughed and shook your head. “Why don’t you hurry and heal and then I can show you exactly how much I’m glad you’re okay,” you said.

Sam looked at you and grinned. “Where the nurse at? I’ve had a full recovery.” 

You snorted with ugly laughter as Sam moved as if he were going to stand up. You pushed him down and he playfully tried to get up again. You moved until you were practically laying on him. He peppered you with kisses. You were still worried about him and you were sure it showed on your face. 

“I’m fine, I promise. Just a little ass whuppin’,” he said.

“Yours or the other guys’?” You asked.

“His! I was winning that fight. ‘Till the damn helicarrier came crashing through the building,” he said. 

You squinted at him and he laughed. “I’m serious,” he said.

“I believe you,” You said in a tone that made it sound like you didn’t believe him. He tickled you until you relented and yelled out that you really believed him. Once settled, you took note of his furrowed brows, sweat, and his heart rate increasing.

“You in pain, baby?” You asked and caressed his head. It was on the tip of his tongue to deny it. You could tell because he smiled. But it was more of a grimace. He nodded. 

You moved to get up but his arms tightened on you. “I don’t want to let you go yet,” he whispered.

You kissed his forehead. “I’m not going anywhere, Sam. It’s you and me,” you said.

This time, he did smile for real. “I like the sound of that.”

You liked the sound of it too.

Masterlist | Chapter 6 | Chapter 8

#Megaminds Secret Files #The Secret Sam Wilson Files #marvel smut #Sam Wilson x Black!reader #Sam Wilson x Black reader #Sam Wilson x Fem!reader #Sam Wilson x Fem reader #Sam Wilson x reader #Sam Wilson x you #Sam Wilson imagine #Sam Wilson #Sam Wilson falcon #Sam Wilson fanfic #Sam Wilson fan fic #Sam Wilson fanfiction #Sam Wilson fan fiction

[l393ndjean]

El Headcanons because why not?

• when it comes out, El reads Matilda by Roald Dahl and instantly falls in love with Matilda. She loves that there's this little girl with telekinesis just like her but she's not a superhero. She uses her powers to get rid of Ms Trunchbull but then Matilda lives a pretty normal life (except for the fact that she's a child genius).

• Dustin introduces her to the concept of Musicals and she loves them too. Imagine her delight when Matilda the Musical is first produced.

• other than star wars, El's not a huge fan of Sci-fi films. She says it's not as fun when you've been the protagonist of a Sci-fi film in real life. She also doesn't like how few girls there are in Sci-fi. (At least when she's young)

• she likes using her telekinesis for everyday things like changing the channels on TV or cheating at basketball with Lucas. It's nice to do fun things with her powers. She doesn't have to use them to save the world anymore.

• she steals everyone's clothes. But not on purpose. See when she gets them they're in Will’s closet but originally it was Steve's sweater. (Robin stole it from him. Nancy borrowed it from her. Mike picked it up in a rush. Will was cold and Mike wasn't having that.) She loves Max and Will’s clothes, but her fashion idol is Argyle.

• she's really good at maths. In contrary to Will who can barely add 2+2. She, Mike and Dustin are in the top Math class together, she always sits between them in the front row.

• she takes woodwork, after seeing things that Jonathan made she decides to try her hand at it. And she's really good at it! She makes a coffee table to replace the one she and Will accidentally broke. (It was a long story involving an unseen cushion and the last cookie...) In her senior year she makes a plaque and engraves the whole party’s names into it. The beautiful wooden shield hangs proudly in Mike's basement, above the old card table that saw many campaigns over the years.

• Together she and Will designed her dnd character. Princess El the Brave hearted. A mage who wears beautiful gowns and cloaks but kicks ass with her magic. Nothing wrong with being feminine and powerful-- that's what Nancy taught her.

• she was allowed to pick her birthday date. Unfortunately for everyone around her, she decides to change it every now and then. Every new years day she decides when and lets everyone know. Sometimes it's her estimated birthdate, sometime in February. More often than not it's the 22nd of March so she and Will can be like twins. (Will doesn't mind, he likes seeing her plan their parties. It's a very chaotic business and usually involves a lot of eggo waffles and Reese's pieces.) If she’s feeling particularly funny, sometimes she decides it's the 11th of November.

• when she realises that girls can have short hair and still be feminine she cuts hers so it's short enough to curl, but long enough that she can put clips in it. When she's older she dyes the ends purple.

• she loves Joan Jett. Says she's bitchin. She's listened to just about everything Joan Jett ever played.

#el hopper byers #el hopper #stranger things #will byers #mike wheeler #max mayfield #el hopper headcanons

[anotheruserwithnoname]

Remembering the early days of the DW revival in North America

(You never saw this in the UK or US) (Source)

With the return of Russell T Davies upon us, there’s a lot of nostalgia for the early days of the Doctor Who revival, the years before ... well, name a controversy. Lots of hope in the fanbase that RTD will be able to bring back the feels of the early days (and not just among those who were too young to remember the heady days of 2005-2010). There’s also a lot of hand-wringing over the fact that outside the UK the series will be part of the Disney+ family. But non-UK networks have always influenced the show in a lot of ways. 

Not everything was good - I have some real negatives below - but here’s a quick list of memories of the early years of the revival, which began at a time the mainstream in North America was still very much of the mind of “Doctor who?” and dismissed it as a grainy old series that usually aired after Monty Python on PBS after midnight on Saturdays.

I remember:

* When we had to wait months between UK and Canadian broadcasts. Just imagine trying to avoid spoilers today!

* When the Sci-Fi Channel in the US allegedly rejected the show for quality reasons. So many American fans didn’t get to see the first series with Eccleston for about a year (or had to order the DVDs).

* When Series 1 did air in Canada, the CBC had Christopher Eccleston record intros, commercial bumpers and “final comments” that included a mixture of trivia and promos for a “visit the set of Series 2″ contest being done with the Canadian edition of TV Guide (ironic, I know). By the time Christmas Invasion aired, Chris had left so they had Billie Piper do the intros and bumpers for it. They dropped the gimmick for Series 2. Thanks to the TV Guide tie-in, Doctor Who also got its first-ever cover on the iconic magazine, albeit only in Canada.

* When most episodes of Series 1 ended on the CBC with short documentaries and interviews with the Canadian DW fan club; one of them I believe was responsible for spreading the notion that the 1996 TV movie was titled “The Enemy Within” (which was just a suggested title apparently).

* The difficulty in getting the Series 1 DVD sets in Canadian stores due to the “Doctor who?” factor. I recall I had to special order and it cost me close to $100 in 2005 or 2006 money. And at the time only one DVD retailer (back when they could be referred to in the plural sense) would touch it. Amazon wasn’t a thing yet.

* The CBC not airing the part of “World War III” that resolved the cliffhanger of “Aliens of London”. For the CBC that was their “dancing animated Graham Norton” moment.

* How the CBC, after the initial flurry of interest, seemingly forgot about the show (a charge made by the main Canadian DW fan club a few years later), resulting in Runaway Bride airing after Series 3 began, the main CBC never airing Voyage of the Damned at all (leaving the Series 3 cliffhanger unresolved), and airing a 42-minute edit of “Journey’s End” that was totally incomprehensible (and delaying the broadcast until after the DVD release of Season 4). Torchwood likewise was bounced around. Soon after, the CBC cancelled Doctor Who and Space Channel (now CTV Sci-Fi) picked it up, eventually airing Voyage of the Damned and moving to same-day broadcast with the UK. They also picked up Torchwood. (Sarah Jane Adventures only aired on the BBC Kids cable network and either was cancelled or the network folded so we mostly saw it on DVD only; K9 never aired here at all, but again was on DVD.)

* The CBC also never showed the Children in Need minisodes, so I believe we had to wait for DVDs before seeing the prequel to Christmas Invasion and the Time Crash crossover.

* The sea-change when Series 5 arrived; Sci-Fi (Syfy) in the US and Space were now airing it the same day as the UK, though for here they added a US-style prologue to the opening credits with Amy explaining the concept of Doctor Who.

* When Sci-Fi aired Let’s Kill Hitler in the US with a special animated mini-episode during the commercial break promoting a sponsor - something that would be absolutely unheard of on the BBC! (It used to be on Youtube but I can’t find it anymore.)

* The “good old days” when most of the “good stuff” (basically anything involving video or gaming) on the BBC’s main Doctor Who website was “geolocked” and inaccessible to North American visitors. Fortunately this didn’t include the minisodes created to promote Series 2, but people had to sail the high seas (or later turn to Youtube) to obtain stuff like the mini-episode Karen Gillan made as a tie-in with an Amy Pond game and some of the scripted stuff Sarah Jane Adventures had on its site, and the Captain Jack’s Monster Files webseries starring John Barrowman.

A lot of this is in the past - as far as I know there are no longer restrictions on BBC website content (or if there is, it ends up on Youtube in about 10 minutes anyway); same-day broadcast is the norm; it’s easy to get DW-related DVDs and Blu-rays (though it remains to be seen if we ever see anything from RTD 2.0 on permanent media here in North America with Disney+ in the picture); and the idea of Syfy or CTV Sci-Fi - or certainly Disney+ - taking a 75-minute episode and trimming 30 minutes out of it for broadcast as was done to Journey’s End is impossible to imagine. Sadly though, at least for now, the enthusiasm for the show where people did care that Let’s Kill Hitler had an extra scene for the US only, or that Billie and Chris recorded exclusive materal for the CBC ... it too is in the past. I hope RTD is able to restore it and prove you can go home again.

#doctor who #doctor who revival early years #billie piper #nostalgia

[shkika]

re: Not having kids, the ancients at their peak were masters at building both mechanical and organic lifeforms, so at some point they probably created some sort of sci-fi Ultimate Birth Control that everyone was on. They mention that they have parental obligations towards the iterators, and Moon even calls them her parents, so I suppose they channeled their instincts to raise children into the iterators/other lifeforms they created. (I think you touched on this with UI?) Why make kids when you have "kids"?

Ohh godd I don't know! That's a cool idea!! Still sounds unethical, there's no way every single ancient was fine with that!! I think!! How do you enforce that!! Does it just?? Oh man!!!!

As for iterators being their kids? Well yes, but I wouldn't say they are a replacement. Iterators have been around for MANY MAAANY generations. Aka when ancients could still have kids, iterators aren't a replacement to that. And it is very different to have a child in your household and to have an iterator who honestly takes care of you more than the opposite. I imagine they could interact with their iterators kind of like you can just call up Alexa, but that's not as personal as adopting or having a kid you raise into an adult, I'd say? I doubt it could satisfy everyone that's for sure.

The joke I drew with UI was that ancients missed having kids around so much they designed an iterator after one. Not like they stayed around for her at all.

Jokes aside UI IS really designed with the concept of a child in mind. The thought process was that perhaps the solution required a special kind of approach. So they made her super small and child shaped and named her Unparalleled Innocence as that's what you connect with kids. Their lack of experience and naivety has them approach things in a specific/unique way. And the last iterator ever made will inevitably be the one lacking the most context about the world.

Perhaps the solution required some out of the box thinking other iterators couldn't reach anymore. Either way UI didn't find the solution anyway so what can you do.

#ask #cloverlady #kiki rambles #its not the same to have a kid in your home you watch grow #and to live on their back while they are an ai arguably way more intelligent than you alone #i dont doubt there were cases like that though i think.. #its not impossible #i dont think everyone was satisfied though

[doverstar]

It's such a fun story about how I got into Doctor Who. I was in highschool (around 2007-2008). I'm not sure of the exact date since back then there was a huge delay when the episodes aired in the UK and in Canada. My math teacher kept talking about this sci-fi show and he kept talking about it and it piqued my interest a little. Eventually I was flipping channels (or actually I think this was when you still went to that channel that scrolled through all the stations and showed what was on) and saw Doctor Who was about to be on so I thought 'oh hey. I should check this out!' and put it on. So... that very first episode I saw was 4x12: Stolen Earth... yeah. To say I was confused is an understatement, but 16-year-old me was so intrigued by the characters and setting. The tall, dark-haired man in a suit that said funny things, the creepy robotic voices coming from the transmission, planets in the sky!?, and I could feel there was lots of context I was missing out on. Therefore, after watching Journey's End the following week, I borrowed series 1-4 from the library and was completely caught up by the time The Next Doctor aired. I actually think I started with series 2 not understanding the regeneration thing, but I got there in the end.

I remember when Matt Smith was announced as the next Doctor. (17-year-old me was smitten (and I still am)). I was in grade 12 when Eleventh Hour came out, and I immediately liked his Doctor. I loved the new opening titles, and as soon as he said 'basically run' I was sold to him being the Doctor. By the Pandorica speech in the season finale he became my favourite Doctor. I remember seeing the series 6 premiere with my family and we were all freaking out. I also saw the 50th anniversary special at the movie theatre in 3D!

Fast forward 3 years to Time of the Doctor, I was not ready for him to go. I cried. To this day I still can't watch the behind the scenes stuff for that special.

I couldn't connect to Capaldi in series 8 and I stopped watching the show before the end of that series. Over the years I heard bits of information about what happened over the years.... I remember not being sure about a girl being the Doctor at the time since I also was uneasy about Missy... and then last summer I saw a clip with David Tennant returning and I went '...what!?'. And that re-sparked my interest because WHY is he back!? So I've been rewatching the show from series 1 to current since July 2023 and getting myself all caught up. I saw the 60th specials and Church on Ruby Road, but I'm still working through the Flux season currently, and I regret not watching the show over the years. Capaldi became my second favourite Doctor by the end of his run (I cried just as much as when Matt regenerated), and Jodie is a lot of fun so far There's still a few surprises in her run that I've managed to avoid spoilers about, so I'm looking forward to this last stretch.

That's the end of my story.... but fun tidbit, I got the rest of my family into the show. Their first episode was Silence in the Library.

I especially like that your teacher got you interested in it! I can't imagine Stolen Earth/Journey's End being your introduction to the show; that would have been so weird and so confusing for me. I'm super impressed you decided to catch up and watch the show! It's no surprise you were/are smitten with Matt Smith's Doctor. I'm the same way, especially the older I get. How can you not love him? He was absolutely magical. I got my whole family into the show, too! They loved Silence in the Library, but I remember I actually got my parents interested first with Blink, but I realized my siblings liked it when I saw them watching Fear Her with enthusiasm. This show is so much fun. Thank you for sharing! Loved this.

#asked #answered #doctor who #rainrose-things #I love your username #ask doverstar #eleventh doctor #matt smith

[thelivingautomaton]

hello time of wheelies, i am still livetweeting the books but i am now done with book 2 and figured you all might want an update, the most important being: y'all were right about the religious freaks with coffee, good god

yeah so let's start there with the seanchan because hooooooooly fuck

literally every time any of the seanchan are on the page i just sat there open-mouthed going "oh my god these guys are such FREAKS". but it's also so galaxy brained of robert jordan to introduce another antagonistic faction but have them be completely unconnected to the ongoing battle of dark vs light + unrelated to all the other factions in the setting?

and all the insane details about their culture. the nails! the blood! the insect-like armor! THE GROLM? (they're dimension-hopping colonizers????) also i only picked up on it b/c i was on the lookout but when lord turak is talking about "caf" and saying that the aroma is almost better than the taste, i literally sat up and yelled THOSE FUCKS HAVE COFFEE

for real though it is so unbelievably funny/based for rj to be like, okay, the prophesied last battle between the forces of good and evil is about to take place, world-shattering apocalypse, make or break. meanwhile, some guys from across the ocean are gonna invade and Do A Colonialism.

also, the damane? UNBELIEVABLY fucked on every conceptual level. special shoutout to renna's cloyingly patronizing treatment of egwene though, that shit actually made my stomach churn. (also also, shoutout to nynaeve for immediately seeing the damane/sul'dam/a'dam for what they are and reacting with the extremest revulsion when she has to put the bracelet on, love u bb girl <3)

kinda wanted at least one comedic interaction in the battle of falme where a bunch of seanchan soldiers run into The Actual Ghost Of Artur Hawkwing and lose their shit though. actually i thought it was soooooo funny as a narrative choice to have the horn blown but you barely see what happens in the big clash on the ground cos you're in rand's pov and he's too busy fighting ba'alzamon in a giant laser light show in the sky

(i still. don't really understand how that worked exactly but WHATEVER, it's fine. sad about the heron blade though ;-; but at least rand got to "prove" he has/had the right to it beforehand when he defeated turak. without channeling, even! which makes it 5x more badass)

also i thought it was interesting that by around the midway point of the book you have the pov characters dealing with three different factions whose way of doing things seems strange and alien: the seanchan, the aiel, and the cairhien nobles with the great game. just thought it was an interesting parallel

also, rand trying his best to Not Participate in the great game and just getting pulled in deeper was never not funny, sorry not sorry. rand and co infiltrating barthanes's mansion to try and grab the horn and the dagger was Peak D&D Heist energy and i loved it

the other big thing that had me losing my shit was surprise! parallel dimensions

LITERALLY WHAT THE FUCK. the moment that the realization hit that the washed-out otherworld that rand/hurin/loial found themselves in was an ALTERNATE UNIVERSE where artur hawkwing didn't defeat the trollocs, i fucking went crazy. and then loial talking about the excerpt from "mirrors of the wheel" and going on about worlds that are shadows of the real world! i was hooting and hollering and going "this is just like chronicles of amber" (which i highly recommend for y'all, VERY different vibe compared to wheel of time but they're super fun and you'll love them if you like the whack-ass stealthy sci-fi/genre blends in WOT)

and then the escalation to rand actively trying to use the stone and flickering through countless permutations of his own life? utterly fucking bananas. also: unbearably tragic! literally what if you lived out hundreds of versions of your life but despite the seemingly-infinite choices open to you, they all really boil down to one choice: play the role that's meant for you and be doomed by the narrative, or don't play and be doomed anyways. like. FUCK

robert jordan i am begging you to give me more insane alternate realities for your made up fantasy universe, i am begging you for more insane creepy shit like the otherworld being devoid of people and all the color washed out since it's a "weak reflection", it is SO GOOD

this is tangentially related but: i knew who """selene""" really was going in, but i did NOT know her introduction in the books was this fucking batshit, and also that she comes across as literally the shadiest motherfucker alive. "oooh, here i am in my pretty white dress being attacked by a beast, come save me! no i don't know how i got here, i was just riding! don't mind how i know a surprisingly specific amount about the portal stones! you're my hero! you can blow the horn and be a great man!" unironically i love her so much for this scheme, and how it plays off so well vs rand's insistence that he's just a shepherd + his starting to settle into the position of "lord" and/or "dragon"

but fr though i think this conflict is sooooo interesting as a central narrative theme, i.e. the choice to seek out glory and heroism for its own sake vs taking it upon yourself as your duty because there's no one else who can vs running away from that duty and responsibility. "We may be a poor pair of heroes, but we are what there is." "It was not what I was made for, but all was breaking apart, and they were alone, and I was all they had." everything with rand feeling the "threads" of his duties and "death is lighter than a feather, duty heavier than a mountain" and the idea of choosing to sheathe the blade in yourself when the moment comes. and how that ties in with ingtar's final choice and his sacrifice!

it's all about the CHOICE!!! this is literally me irl rn:

oh my god what else. i loved getting so much more detail on the aes sedai (who are basically underfunded academics constantly squabbling among their respective departments, i have decided) and how channeling works/feels. (the parallel between the girls imagining saidar as a flower vs rand feeling saidin as the flame and void with a sickly light in it. chef's kiss!!! but also, rand simultaneously craving saidin and being sickened by it? chewing glass about it, nbd) verin mathwin aka The Aes Sedai Ever is unbelievably great. a lot of this book felt like buildup so i'm hype for things to start popping off, especially now that rand has apparently accepted the mantle of dragon. these books are crazy and i love them

#wheel of time #the wheel of time #wot book spoilers