#I liked the cropped version much better but thought I should post the whole thing anyway | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

heliads · 3 months

Note

Praying I’m not too late because of school!!

Anyways, post undivided/unbound, grace and argent reunion fic please? Like, after the events of Unbound, Grace and the rest of the main gang meetup again and they’re all hanging out on some unknown port. Meanwhile Argent’s there running errands for Divan. The two bump into each other and hurt/comfort reunion ensues!! Also I wanna see Argent grovel for Grace’s forgiveness hehehe (Also the Grace Redemption Arc continues wooo)

'one more game to play ' - grace skinner

masterlist

Grace Skinner is doing well, all things considered. She is not dead. No one wants her dead, either, except perhaps some of the adults down at the park, the ones who sit in front of their chess boards rain or shine in search of a good opponent. It’s not Grace’s fault if they fell for her strategical schemes. Perhaps they should practice more.

Aside from the chess players, though, Grace is fine. She’s doing well as a new entrepreneur of tissue synthesis technology. Her friends, for the most part, are still whole, although Connor Lassiter has a new crop of scars that he doesn’t seem all that keen to show off. They’re getting better, slowly, and everything is fine.

It’s like a game that Grace can play, and she’s excellent at games. Whenever she catches herself slipping, she thinks about good things, like the health of her friends and the success of her latest enterprise. She takes walks. She clears her head, and she doesn’t think about what she shouldn’t. There are topics that are off-limits. Grace knows the rules, and she follows them.

Right now, she’s on her way to meet up with some of her friends. They’ve arranged for everyone to gather at a nearby pier. Apparently, the sea air will do them some good. Plus, the fresh breeze tends to restore all of them to finer spirits. Farther away from the city, they won’t be exposed to things that bring back bad memories, like the precise scent of smoke that burns down an antiques shop, or the routine shuffle of police footsteps outside a hiding place.

No, no. Grace reroutes her thoughts again. She was close there, but she won’t lose the game. She’s been playing it steadily for a while now. They all have. They stick to their houses or go somewhere so far away that no one even knows who they are, but it’s just different versions of the same idea. Different rulebooks, maybe, or different players, but the same damn thing in the end.

At the crosswalk in front of her, two children carefully walk into the road, eyes wide to avoid any cars. There isn’t that much traffic this time of day, but the older one still takes the hand of the younger anyway, ushering them across with far more gravity than the situation perhaps requires. She sees their faces, a boy and a girl, maybe siblings. Grace can remember when she had a brother who would do the same thing for her, before–

Her breath catches in her throat, and Grace remembers.

She’s lost the game again.

Grace doesn’t realize she’s stopped walking until she starts attracting funny looks. Quickly, she starts moving again, picking up the pace. She doesn’t want to be late to the meetup. Tardiness will attract questions, like just what she was doing to cause her to be distracted. Grace is always precise, perfectly on time. She doesn’t usually make mistakes like this. She doesn’t usually lose the game when she’s so certain about winning.

She keeps walking, passing the two maybe-siblings and leaving them far behind. They don’t matter. They’re just kids. Grace is older than them by many years and many memories. She does not have to look at them and wish that she could have her brother back, even for the time it took to cross the street, even for one half-moment when she could just talk to him and say–

Something, maybe. Grace doesn’t even know. She doesn’t have to know. Grace doesn’t know where Argent Skinner is and she probably never will. Connor told her that her brother was alive, but even he didn’t know where Argie had ended up. Her brother is pretty good at keeping to himself, even if he’s better when he has someone to talk to. That person used to be Grace. She doesn’t know who’s taken her place, but she hopes they’re good enough.

Most of her friends have arrived by the time Grace shows up at the pier. She waves hello to the ones she knows best, and casts a hopefully warm glance towards the ones that are more like acquaintances. Connor gestures for her to join him and Risa in a lively debate; apparently, they encountered an open-ended riddle while traveling here, and wish to have her input.

The discussion is broadened to the group at large, and in between trying to figure it out, people start talking about where they’ve been and what they’ve been up to since the last time they were all together. Hayden’s trying his hand at public speaking, although he says it feels different when many people are actually watching him instead of just listening along. Lev has been working with Miracolina on how to prepare past tithes for the future they never planned on reaching. And Grace, of course, has the organ printer. All good things.

Still, she can’t help her gaze from drifting listlessly from the many faces on the pier back towards the bustling business of the port. Grace likes spending time with her friends, really she does, but having this many people here gives her the expectation that she’s got to perform for them in some way, be a better version of herself without quite knowing how, and it tends to stress her out a little. Looking at the bricks of the low buildings, watching the cars driving back and forth across the roads, is a lot easier to focus on than the discordant harmonies of so many voices.

Grace can feel her pulse starting to come back down again, and then she sees a silhouette slipping out of an open door. Their back is to her, so she can’t make out their face, but the advantage of spending one’s entire life around one single person is that you tend to remember them, and Grace swears she knows this person perfectly. The swing of his arms as he walks, the absentminded tilt of his head. This– this is Argent. Impossibly, it’s Argent. Grace’s brother. The reason she has to keep distracting herself from the awful truth that the closest part of her family is gone.

Grace’s breath catches in her throat. Truth be told, she didn’t even know if Argent was alive. He certainly hadn’t reached out to her, but then again, he would have no way of doing so. Vividly, Grace’s mind flashes back to a terrible night in Ohio, when she had seen a man she had thought was Argent, only to see part of her brother’s face on a different guy’s body. What if this is the same thing all over again? What if he really was unwound, even despite being old enough to avoid the limit, and one recipient just happened to get all of her brother.

Grace should look away and spare herself another horrorshow. She can’t take another brother-based heartbreak, that would go beyond losing the game to losing herself. Still, the silhouette mocks her silently as it walks away. It looks an awful lot like Argent, doesn’t it?

She can’t take it anymore and murmurs an excuse to her friends before heading off back down the pier towards the town. The young man who could be Argent Skinner isn’t walking all that fast, ambling in the vague direction of his destination, wherever that may be. By contrast, Grace is setting new records for speed walking, fists pumping as she hurries towards her supposed brother.

Just before she reaches him, Grace hangs back a little, giving herself time to judge the situation. If she’s wrong, she’s wrong now, and she’ll know it. However, the more Grace looks, the more she’s certain that this is indeed Argent. She steadies herself slightly, curling her hands into tight fists, and says uncertainly, “Argie?”

The figure stands stock-still, all momentum blown out of him like a limp sail on dead seas. Slowly, he turns around. There’s a moment before he completely faces Grace, a moment in which time feels as if it takes twice as long to pass. The instant of hesitation lasts for infinities, and then the figure stands directly in front of her and she knows– she knows it’s her brother. Knows it like breathing, like plotting out the winning move in a chess match. This is Argent, and she is Grace, and they are back together again.

For a while, they don’t say anything at all, just taking in the sight of each other. At last, Grace understands just what was done to her brother– half of his face is still scarred, as it was when Connor Lassiter attacked him when escaping his capture, but half of it is even more so damaged, still vaguely pink and irritated from the lingering aftereffects of a biobandage.

“Your face,” Grace says uncertainly, then immediately wishes she hadn’t.

Argent’s hand rises up instinctively– not to the fresh scars, as Grace had assumed he would, but to the old ones, the wounds Connor had given him. It’s as if he’s afraid that the other side of his face, too, would be ripped away when he least expected it. Dear God. What have they done to him?

“Never trust a parts pirate,” Argent growls.

So that’s what had happened. It makes sense that the man with Argent’s face that Grace encountered before he burned down the antique store would be a parts pirate. It also makes sense that Argent had tried to trust one. Lonely, hopeless Argent, who kidnapped the Akron AWOL then lost it all because he just had to post a selfie of the two of them together, who had joined up with a disreputable parts pirate because he wanted some grand expedition of revenge. Faceless Argent, who bears a countenance of wounds marking both times he learned his lesson.

“I missed you,” Grace says unexpectedly. “You didn’t call.”

Argent squints at her. “How could I? You left home and so did I. ‘Sides, I didn’t think you’d want to hear from me, on account of you running off with Connor and me trying to hunt you two down.” Upon seeing Grace’s crestfallen face, he adds hastily, “That didn’t mean I didn’t want to, though. Christ, Gracie, you’re my sister. That might not mean a whole lot at times, but I’ve felt rough about it ever since. Seeing you is good, though.”

“Thanks,” Grace whispers. All of a sudden, she feels eleven again, never quite saying the right thing to her cooler brother, not enough to make her one of his friends but enough to be a sister, as always. Well, maybe that’s not the worst thing in the world. Being a sister. It means she would feel less alone than she had before.

“I owe you more than that,” Argent confesses. “I’ve treated you something awful, haven’t I? Enough to make you run off with Connor and not come back. I’ve overlooked you, Gracie. I’ve treated you badly. It just tore me up inside, thinking that maybe you’d get hurt because of stuff I did. Say you’ll forgive me, won’t you?”

Grace hesitates a bit, mulling his words over, then nods at last. “I do forgive you, Argie.”

Her brother’s face washes over in relief. “I’m mighty glad to hear that, I have to say.”

She chuckles. “I’m mighty glad to hear you apologize. Thought you never would.”

“So did I,” he admits.

They stand for a few moments in awkward silence, not sure what to do now that the obvious has been taken care of. Then, in a sudden flash of reality, Grace remembers the group still bunched out on the pier. “A couple of us are hanging out past the docks. Do you want to join us?”

There’s a careful light behind Argent’s weatherbeaten eyes. “Are you sure? I reckon they might not be the happiest to see me right now.”

“Don’t mind that,” Grace says with a wave of her hand. “You saved Connor when he was unwound, right? He told me about that.”

“The Akron AWOL is saying I saved his life?” Argent asks, unconsciously puffing out his chest a little.

“He is,” Grace confirms. “Come on, you can hear him say it for yourself.”

With that, she turns and starts walking back towards the pier. A few moments later, she hears Argent following her. He catches up when they’re about to cross the street, insisting on going a half step earlier so he can watch for cars. Grace instantly remembers the younger pair of siblings she’d seen just an hour or so earlier. She’s got her brother back, she realizes with piercing clarity. They’re together again, the two Skinners, watching out for each other once more.

And with that, Grace wins the game.

requested by @sirofreak, i hope you enjoy!

unwind tag list: @reinekes-fox, @locke-writes

all tags list: @wordsarelife

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karenandhenwillson · 1 month

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One last post from my side about this

I've been pondering how to do this post for the last couple of days, and also if I should write it at all. My thoughts went from being really vicious and unrepentantly calling out a couple of people to just not bother with wasting my energy on it to feeling very unsatisfied with some of the things that have been said or not been said despite also being relieved about the turn this situation took on Tuesday.

(The rest is under the break because this turned out long. Much longer than I expected.)

I honestly believe that any kind of call out post is always a form of cyberbullying. Because in the end, what you are doing with that in social media isn't informing people about a problem. What you are doing is trying to get people blindly to agree to your point of view by twisting the information you present. And sadly, all too often it works.

It did work this time, too. I have seen several people state, publicly but also privately, that they saw one of the call-out posts from Monday and reblogged without looking at the publicly available conversation with the artist. When they then looked at it later, they were appalled with themselves to have blindly followed the accusations. I hope for those people and also at least a fracture of the people seeing their posts about it, this is a lesson: Always double check the information you are fed. (And honestly, that goes for news outlets as much as any social media post. But I don't want this post to be about media literacy.)

I'm aware that this is a kind of call out post all on it's own. The version of this post from Monday would have named all the names and at that time I wouldn’t have felt sorry about it. But that's the thing about reacting and posting something while the emotions are high, isn't it? A version from Tuesday doesn't exist, because I thought it not worth the energy and time the would be spend on it.

In the meantime, I have come to the conclusion that while I will be addressing a certain group of people, this post wouldn't have ever been about them, not even the first version from Monday. It's about fandom as a whole, preserving information for those who'll join the fandom in the future or who'll be attacked or witness an attack in the future or those who'll stumble over what happened this last week later on who are completely unaware of it right now. Because thankfully, for the fandom as a whole it didn't go very far.

I'm aware that in a way, I'm contradicting myself, that I might be participating in cyberbullying with this post. I'm rationalizing this for myself by the circumstances that it's a conclusion of a bullying campaign and that I won't feel responsible for those who started it being now attacked themselves. Some people will tell me I'm still wrong, some will shrug about it, others will agree with me. It is the reason, though, that I have decided not to name any names even though it will be stupidly easy to find the names I'm talking about. For that reason, I have cropped the screenshots I'll share about things I feel I need or want to address or blacked out the names on those screenshots.

To everyone who'll feel encouraged to seek out those names and spam their ask boxes or DMs with provocations or hate: Don't do it! It might feel satisfying in the beginning (the thought alone of the Monday-version of this post felt on Monday very satisfying for me, too), but it won't accomplish anything. They have proven they don't want to have a conversation, no matter how much they claim differently. Nothing will make them overthink and judge their own actions. (Also, I hope not providing the names here will make most of those who first like leaving anon hate to have lost interest once they have found the names because it will give them time to think better of it.)

And of course, the people who started this, have repeatedly stated they don't believe a call out post to be bullying. So they really won't be in a position to have a problem with this post. (They still will cry about it and claim the unfairness of it all, no doubt.)

An anon sent this to someone involved in this debate:

I've realised that I will never convince anyone by publicly shaming them. I might be able to silence them, but I won't convince them.

I fully agree with these words. I think everyone involved in this situation should take these words to heart. In other posts of the last view weeks, I already shared some thought about communication and teaching. I’ll elaborate on those thoughts in a later part of this post.

I realized this post is getting long. So I'm breaking it up in several parts and I'll add links to this post as soon as the other posts are up.

The actual call out part of this whole thing

Some thoughts about learning and communication

The usual aftermath

#911 abc #911

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batman-daily · 1 year

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Big Updates Coming Soon!

So it’s come to my attention that the links to the story arcs in the pinned post are broken. Yay. Welp, rather than try to restore them as they were, I’m taking this opportunity to do something a little different.

Coming soon, I’ll be posting the COMPLETE story arcs, including all color Sunday strips! Well, I’ve needed to scan those for ages anyway, so this is a good excuse to finally do that!

This way, I can present the most accessible, readable version of the Batman comic strip, much better than scrolling backwards through the archives like everyone had to do before. I’d thought about trying to rework the whole thing in webcomic format (y’know, tabs for “first,” “next,” etc), but I don’t know how to do that. So we’re going the big-ass masterpost route! Hopefully that will be okay with everyone.

It’s going to take me a while, since scanning, cropping, and color-adjusting the Sundays alone is very time-consuming and… well, you know me, I’m prone to burnout. Subject to moods.

A note about scan quality: I’m still using my old scans for the black and white, and the color scans are turning out to be… okay. I’m trying not to be too much of a perfectionist, between all the extra work it’d take and the fact that I still want DC to publish these with the care and quality they deserve. I’d hate to think that my posting these might hinder any potential for a collection, but DC has still shown no internet in reprinting it, so I’m taking this next step to hopefully spread more awareness of this forgotten Bat-gem.

The only thing to decide is if I should post them in reverse chronological order so they can appear in chronological order on the main page (if that makes sense) or if that’s silly. But I’ll worry about that after I’ve drafted all the posts. The first arc with Catwoman is already in the bag!

For everyone who has already read the strips, despite the awkward format, THANK YOU! And whether you’re already a fan or curious to read it for the first time, these masterposts will hopefully give you a fresh, accessible way to read this saga! Now, let’s just hope I actually manage to pull this off!

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kkusuka · 3 years

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HQ Middle blocker kinks <3

@xxxxtanaxxxx request hq kinks but middle blocker version please 🥺

I'm gonna be honest i wasn't gonna do this buuut here it is

i have a setter one in the works and here is the ace version!

here is the setter version <3

Characters: Tsukishima Kei, Kuroo Tetsuro, Suna Rintaro, Satori Tendo, Taichi Kawanishi, Issei Matsukawa, Takanobu Aone,, Shoyo Hinata, Lev Haiba Shugo Meian (MSBY captain), and Yutaro Kindaichi

Mentioned female anatomy, but mostly gn

content warning: consensual non-con, humiliation, public sex, exhibitionism, voyeurisms, degradation, bondage, sex toys, cockwarming, edging, soft priamal/prey, mentions of house break-ins, pegging, size kink, overuse of the word Daddy, face fucking, hickeys

i think thats all?

buckle up, this is gonna be looooong.

Tsukishima Kei

Degradation

This is a given, my mans has a mouth on him, AND HE KNOWS HOW TO USE IT

He says the most vulgar things in your ears (and you love it)

His nickname for you is Cum-dump, and he calls you that so much that you’ve started to respond to it. “Hey, Cum-dump! Come here” “ok Tsukki”

And when he’s cumming? A slew of insults just come out

“You whore, oh, you fucking cum-slut, you’d let anyone do this to you won't you”

And it's not limited to this!

“You're just a hole”

“You only exist for me to fuck, Right? You're just a glorified fleshlight”

“You're only good for sucking my cock”

“I should just leave you chained to the wall so I can fuck you anytime I want, that's all you're good at so you should love it”

It won’t even be only during sex

You could literally be just studying with him and he’ll just lean over and say “ you want to be fucked right now don't you? In front of all these people, I bet you’d love it Cum-dump”

Humiliation

Goes with a dirty mouth

He’ll flip your skirt while walking in front of groups of other students

He purposely sucks hickeys where your uniform does not cover and then laughs at you because you're just such a slut.

One of his favorite things to do is have you wear a vibrator in school, only on days where you have to do something in front of the class

No worries he has the remote and turns it alllllll the way up during the middle of your presentation, you just look so cute all red!

He’ll make it better!!

You can cum in front of the class, let everyone know how much of a whore you are!

Purposeful neglect

He wants you so horny you can’t think

If that means not giving you attention for FIVE DAYS so be it.

No touching yourself and if he finds out you did he’ll ignore you for longer and you don’t want that do you?

You will wait for him to touch you.

He’ll also just ignore you.

No begging, he doesn't care, he doesn't want to hear it.

Don't touch him, stop being a brat or you won’t get off for a whole week.

Bondage

It's all about control <3

Having you tied up and immobile is the best way to show how little you are.

He’ll tie you up and put you on the couch with a vibrator and just watch movies, unable to rock your hips

This seems cruel but he’ll tie your hands up and make you eat dinner with just your mouth <3

He’ll make you watch tv with a ball gag in

He’ll have a riding crop in his hands when you study and he’ll hit your little clit/silt with it every time you get a question wrong

Kuroo Tetsuro

Pet names

Literally any kind o endearment, but mainly switches between Kitten and Baby Girl/Boy(i am swooning right now)

He WILL call you these in front of people and out loud in public

He’s called you them in front of your parents in front of Kenma in the middle of the grocery store.

So you're wondering, why does that matter? People do that all the time!

Well, he calls you them so you remember how he completely ruined your little body and how his cum is still dripping out of you <3

And its cannon that he has a sexy voice, and it drops and gets deeper when he calls you them.

Thigh highs

It doesn't matter in you have the biggest thighs ever or just a bone, if you wear any kind of thigh highs (bonus points for Cat ones) he will be ready to bust a nut

It's not only him that gets off on them, especially when he takes them off

He’ll climb over you and use his teeth to pull them down to your feet and he’ll kiss and bite his way back up to do the other one.

He also will sometimes leave them on to rail you into your bed, when this happens he puts your legs over your shoulders and squishes his head between them.

(kuroo loves thighs, and that's that)

Caregiver

He's taken care of Kenma all his life, and you bet your ass he’ll do it for you

This means he gives the best aftercare you could imagine, I’m talking bubble baths

He’ll cook for you in nothing but an apron, and he’ll tease you when you get all flushed and cute!

You had a bad day? He’ll eat you out for hours until you’re all cuddly and tired.

He’ll fuck you slow where you need it and he’ll kiss all the pain away <3

He just loves having you dependent on him makes him so happy and thankful to have you!

Threesomes

Mainly for Kenma, but he let bokuto have a turn and even convinced Tsikki to give it a try!

He really just wants to show off that you’re his what better way to show you off then let some of them get a taste of something they’d never have.

Favorite position for this? Split roasting/ Eiffel towering

He's the one who you're sucking on, and he’s so far down your throat making him suck you deeper and deeper until you’re drooling all over his balls like a good Kitten

Whoever he sharing you with would be in you following whatever Kuroo tells them to do

Rub your clit? Yes Sir.

Faster. Yup

Slowdown Kittens being bad so she doesn't get to get off <3

Suna Rinatro

Purposeful neglect

Just like Tsukki, he wants you hot and bothered all the time

He will just sit around and scroll on his phone while you’re whining :(

Just let him watch this video and he’ll get you off!

Will never tell you but you just look so cute, all needy and horny for him.

Sometimes he’ll slip you a libido pill and just watch the world burn.

He will wait until you have ruined whatever shorts you’re wearing (and he’ll take them) and THEN he will help his poor needy baby

Cockwarming

Almost every time he games, he puts you on his dick

you already know it’s happening when he takes the controller out

He says it's because he doesn't want to “leave you out”

No moving on him though, if you8 move it could distract him and you do not want him to lose, losing means being pounded into the floor until you can't think, then being ignored the rest of the day “horny sluts can sit on the floor until they need to be used”.

But if all goes well, he’ll go soft in between rounds and will suck on your neck and will let you cuddle into him during the rounds

But when Suna if feeling a bit more adventurous he will put his headset on you and fuck you with all of his friends listening

And if that's not bad enough they all clearly know what’s happening id Osamus soft coo’s and Gin’s little comments (but it's not like they want it to stop anyway)

Edging

Will literally just do this out of nowhere

You thought you were finally gonna cum, then nothing

HE WILL just do things for hours to see you cry and begging or him to just let you cum

He’ll stick four fingers in you and bring you to your climax and just leave you on the edge

He won't even have a reason, you were being good, you let him play his game and he does this?

Que pouty bby

Video/Photography

We all saw this coming-

But he takes it a step further than just having a photo collection of you

He has a personal private story with just you in it where he put videos of you riding him or sucking his dick fo you to “see how slutty you are”

that's not even it, he sends you a picture of you naked in the middle of work, with no shame either

Thus one time you were showing a coworker a shirt you had bought and he texted you and the picture showed up. It was awkward for the next few days.

But these don't even compare to how he has an entire Instagram account (private of course) of your nodes and videos of the two of you fucking.

One extra little thing is that you both watch porn together for ideas.

Satori Tendou

(i could make him a post of his own-so so many kinks for Satori)

Humiliation (mentions of pee)

This can range from calling you names to making you touch yourself in public

He’s called you a pillow princess in the middle of class, in front of your teacher

It had gotten so bad they Ushijima had to ask what a “cum-dumpster was” because Satori had called you that in front of the team.

He doesn't even introduce you as his S/O, hw=e would call you an escort or that you were just his personal fuck toy.

This kink goes so far that when you were on a double date with Semi, under the table Tendo had his hand literally in your pants.

**One of his favorite things is to make you hold your pee in until you are almost peeing yourself, isn't that embarrassing that you're a grown adult who’s about to wet yourself?

Overstimulation

He wants to see you a complete mess all over him

The main goal of all of this is to make you squirt or begin to have dry orgasms

He will not stop until he’s happy or you say your safe word (which is rare)

One orgasm just isn't enough for him :/

And it's a big boost of confidence for him!

he‘s proud to know he can make you cum so much you cant even think!

Dacryphilia

This AND overstim?

Good luck

He can't even explain why it turns him on so much.

You just look so beautiful with tears streaming down your face all fucked out

It always hits him at the worst times too, you crying over a bad grade? A pretty tear falling over your soft cheeks. Hard.

Just watched a sad movie, he’s ready to pound you into the couch.

Anal

Oh ho ho

This can be one of two things, he does it because it feels good

He does it as punishment

That means no lube

No adjusting to his dick

And no extra pleasure to help you get off

He’s so mean </3

Taichi Kawanishi

This man screams pornstar

Public sex

This man is unstable

You could just be walking in public and he just decides he wants to fuck.

Who are you to stop him?

Just let him get this out real quick you can shop later.

Exhibitionism

The thought of being in the open? This man loves it

And you don't really have a choice but to love it

Every time you go to the beach he just has his dick in you, in the ocean sitting in his lap while eating lunch

He doesn't even care who sees

Children? Who cares, look away or whatever

Getting caught

It doesn't even matter who it is

If someone walks in when you're doing it he’s cumming

It's just hot

He doesn't need to explain it to you

he also makes u take nudes and had them as his homescreen for a while

Issei Matsukawa

I’d let this man kill me-

Leather/ latex

LEATHER GLOVES

He wears them when he fingers you so he can make fun of how wet you made them.

He dresses you up in these pretty little pastel dresses (gender to heel, he doesn't care, you look hot weather your a boy, girl, or not) and he wears all black (goth daddy Mattsun) and his gloves to fuck you in his leather-covered fist.

That's not even it

He has an entire bin of different colored chokers and leashes just for his pretty baby

Along with that, he has a shelf of latex thigh highs for you to wear and even has an entire outfit for you to wear and show off to him.

Ddlg/b/n-Lifestyle

This is why he has a lot of things that you wear!

He loves to take care of you all the time!

He loves to make his baby food and love to watch movies with you

And you love him so much too!

You would do anything for Daddy!

And he takes you shopping and to restaurants, and if you want literally anything big or small all you have to do is look up at him with puppy dog eyes and a “Daddy, please!!” and boom his credit card is already out.

Size kink

Big dick Mattsun-

This all comes back to the fact that you are so beautiful

And big dick little hole, who doesn't love that??

He sure does, don't worry though he always makes sure to prep you

Except if it's punishment- he doesn't like it he swears! He’d never want to hurt you!

And you’d believe it until your crying on his cock and it throbs ://

But if it still hurts, and it does, he’ll let you go your pace and sink all the way down onto his cock<3

Fun fact the first time he went into your ass he tried to with no lube and you couldn't sit for DAYS

Voyeurism (receiving)

Makki Makki Makki

I would say he was into Cuckolding but its always him doing the watching while Issei fucks you

And Makki loves it too if his constant praises and coo’s said anything about it.

And Mattsun just gets off on the fact his best friend is watching something he’ll (maybe if you're not into it) never fully have

Mattsun also likes having you tied up an watching him fuck a fleshlight of just jerking off

You look so pathetic :)

extra for big dick mattsun, he Shows all of his friends <3

I am a whore for the Seijoh 4

You bet Makki has an entire folder of pic of you, whether they are of you dripping cum or just with your legs open.

Even if he says he doesn't save them, you know Iwa has gotten off you a recording of you moaning and asking for Daddy’s cock

And Oikawa is always asking for more (the little manwhore), he says they are “references” for him, liar, he jerks off to them in his bathroom.

Takanobu Aone

It's always the quiet ones-

I just gotta get these first two out-

Consensual non-con

I can just TELL he like to pretend to break into your house

Pretend you're so scared and you don't like it

Tying you up and listening to your little cries, awwwwweeee

You were just too pretty to ignore

Just let him have a taste, stop crying he knows you want it just as much as he does

Primal/prey

He wants to feel like he earned his reward

A perfect little trophy for him to use as a toy

His dick in your tiny dripping hole is all the reward he needs

It's like you're a pretty innocent bunny and he’s a big fox just waiting for the right time to strike :)

Soft sex/ praise

I know what I said up there

But none of that means he doesn't love just setting you down on the bed with candles and rose petals and just making love

Soft music in the background and worshipping every inch of your skin

You need to be vocal though!

Tell him how pretty he is when he cums, and how perfectly his dick fits in your hole!

Tell him how soft he looks and how he is making your nipples feel like heaven.

Aftercare- bc I am also soft for aone and he is a good guy

Bubble baths and chocolate

Movies and cuddling

All of this makes him so glad that he found you

Especially when you cuddle into him all sleepily and tired.

Shoyo Hinata

oh he is so pretty-

Mutual masturbation

It's the perfect way to experience pleasure

He can see you in all your glory

All of the faces he sometimes misses when he’s fucking you!

He also learns from it!

He sees the angle your fingers go to hit that sweet spot so the next time he’s in you he knows where to aim!

(he is so precious-)

Pegging

You wanted to try it so he almost immediately agreed-

But it felt good!

The two of you reserved what one you wanted so the one he picked was almost made for him.

Plus, you look ridiculously good with the strap on-

And he voices that as much as he can!

And sometimes when he rides the strap he just watches it going in and out and in and out

(you also think this is SUPER hot but won't tell him :/)

Riding

It doesn't matter if it's you or him

Watching you fall apart on his cock without him doing a thing makes him cum harder than anything

Sometimes he gets so excited that he comes before you and makes you stay there until he’s hard again, which doesn't take long at all.

when it's him?

he’ll go for hours just to hear you tell him how good he is and how pretty he looks

Lingerie

Especially pastel babydolls

But nothing you wear could ever make you look bad in his eyes

Ok he likes it when you keep the lingerie on too like he’s fucking you and you till have a little nightgown/crop top on

Lord he will BUUUUUUSSSTTT

Lev Haiba

Size kink

Unintentionally too

He didn't even know it, but he did know that he liked that you were so much smaller than him.

He likes to put your hand to him and just look at the difference and before he knew it he was painfully hard

On the occasion, he makes fun of you saying his dick is just too big for you and you can't handle it, but then you get on your knees and he shuts up real quick

Praise kink

A given

He wants to know how good he makes you feel at all times

It doesn't have to be words either!

loud moans explanations of pleasure all drive him to move faster and faster!

Even yelling “oh god!” gets him off

He makes you feel that good huh?

Wall sex

Just playing on the size kink thing

He loves to just pick you up and fuck with reckless abandon

Gets a way better angle too- bet you didn't think he would realize that

He also likes to watch the combination of your juices drip to the floor-

Shugo Meian (MSBY captain)

Sexiest team-

Daddy/ Captain kink

Just look at him, he screams Daddy louder than you do when he’s fucking you

He takes pride in being Captain meaning he’ll fuck you for hour if the word even falls from your lips

And yes you have said it (daddy) front of the team and he did get hard, and the both of you did fuck in the locker room of the gym for an hour before you got kicked out

Even in arguments you better call him daddy, he will stop and fuck you into the ground for it

Angry or not you WILL use his title

Spanking

Will threaten you with this almost everyday

He just uses it as an excuse to touch your ass

He makes you count after each one and makes you thank him

It would look a bit like this

“Five! Thank you Daddy!” “Good Baby, five more”

But that doesn’t mean when you really deserve it that he won't unleash the wrath of god onto your poor ass

But after he’ll kiss it all better and Daddy will reward you for taking your punishment well

Controlled orgasms

By this i mean that you wont cum unless he says so

And you have to ask

Aka “Daddy please let me cum, I really want to”

And depending on what he’s feeling maybe you’ll get to cum then

And if not you’ll have to wait like a good Girl/Boy and cum when he does, which could late literally forever.

but its better than disobeying his orders, which could lead to him completely pulling out and just jerking off to cum on you :((

Deepthroating/ Face Fucking

Nothing is better to him than coming home to you on your knees and mouth open and ready

But when he’s all pent up from practice and he sees you?

Rip your throat, you aren't talking for a few days

He’ll literally fuck your face no question

He’ll put his dick so far down your throat you could feel it in your stomach

Yutaro Kindaichi

Hate sex

He just makes everyone angry

And he gets off on it

You look so fucking delectable all red faced and angry

Makes him want to just slam into right then and there

Dom/Sub

Clearly he wants to be in control

Controlling someone is just such a turn-on for him

Looking all pretty doing exactly what he wanted you too <3

Hickeys

Wants to show off that you are his

What better way than marking up your neck with pretty bruises

Plus he likes how you get all shy when people look at them

2K notes · View notes

spencers-renaissance · 3 years

Text

you know that a boy who likes boys is a dead boy

Summary: Spencer's gay. He joins the BAU and befriends the team, but it is 2003. It's a secret he has to keep. He just didn't expect it to be this hard.

Tags: gay!spencer, coming out, hurt/comfort, insecure!spencer, misunderstandings, angst with a happy ending, dad hotch, protective!hotch, protective!derek, childhood trauma TW: one instance of explicit homophobia, but it is referenced a lot, as is Spencer's internalised homophobia at the start of this fic. A shit ton of heteronormativity but tbh that's just canon lol

Pairing: Spencer Reid/OMC, Spencer Reid & Derek Morgan, Spencer Reid & Aaron Hotchner, The BAU Team & Spencer Reid

Word Count: 6k

Masterlist // Read on AO3

Consider this my contribution to pride month 😌 I've waited so long to post it and I'm so glad I'm finally doing it because it's definitely one of my all time favourites <3 Gideon is here somewhere but just like with all my early season fics he's not really part of the plot I combined my moreid and gen taglists bc it was hard to know the audience for this, but just ignore it if you're not interested!

you know that a boy who likes boys is a dead boy, unless he keeps his mouth shut, which is what you didn’t do, because you are weak and hollow and it doesn’t matter anymore. — richard siken, a primer for the small weird loves

Spencer has only told one person in his whole life.

His mother guessed. For as long as he can remember, she’s used gender neutral pronouns when talking about his future partner, read him all the gay literature she could find, promised him that he’s perfect just the way he is.

The trouble is that Spencer only believes her until the first grade, when Ryan Sampson shoves him over in the playground and calls him gay. His mom had only ever used that term in a sweet, loving way, taking care to associate such words with positivity, as long as his dad wasn’t around to hear. When that word comes out of Ryan Sampson’s mouth, it is not said with sweetness and love; it is said with venom, and Spencer learns quickly that his mom is wrong. He is not perfect just the way he is.

And so, he keeps it a secret. When his mom notices him getting uncomfortable at the mention of future partners, she stops bringing it up, though she refuses to give up the diverse education she provides for him outside of school. His dad tells him that one day he’ll be a strapping young man and marry a nice girl in a church, and Spencer nods along. He ignores the way his stomach turns with anxiety at the thought. Ignores the screaming match his parents have that night. Ignores the fact that it started because Diana chipped in with ‘or boy’.

He’s in high school by the time he’s twelve, and the only part he’s grateful for is the absence of pressure to get a girlfriend. His dad’s out of the picture now, and Spencer tries not to let himself think that maybe if he wasn’t like this he might have stayed. Diana’s so out of it most days that she doesn’t remember what she noticed about him when he was a child, only recalling the last few years of shoving himself so far back in the closet he can hardly see the door anymore.

It feels like he’s lost his last ally.

(He hates that a small part of him feels relieved she doesn’t remember; that he almost feels assured by the fact that the last person to know who he really is has forgotten. There is only this version of Spencer Reid now. No other exists.)

He makes the mistake during his second undergraduate degree. He’s just turned eighteen but he is already a doctor and, fortunately, this alienates him from most of his peers, but someone manages to slide past his defences. Ethan Miller is twenty, in the second year of his (first) undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering, and he’s nice. Spencer doesn’t have a lot of experience with friendship, but they get on well and Ethan makes him laugh. For the first time, he feels comfortable in the presence of anyone other than his mother.

They slip into an easy friendship: waiting for each other after class — Spencer back in the undergraduate buildings now he has his first PhD under his belt — and going out for ice cream and pizza and Thai food. Ethan goes to parties while Spencer studies, and then they reconvene to watch Doctor Who and play cards.

For almost a year, Spencer keeps his secret carefully locked up, hidden behind the mask he’s perfected after so many years. Even though he’s eighteen, nearly nineteen now, he doesn’t try and explore that side of himself. No, that’s far too risky. He doesn’t try and pretend any other way either, he just stays silent and lets people’s assumptions lie for him, but he can’t help the longing that claws up his throat when he locks eyes with a passing guy on campus. One time, he’d seen two men kiss on a bench in the city, and he’d run back to his dorm and had a panic attack. Why couldn’t he have that?

The feelings don’t stop, and he doesn’t know how to make them. He hates that he isn’t normal, but still longs for the touch of a man, the feeling of being wrapped up in strong arms, of being kissed by dry, chapped lips, and falling asleep to a heartbeat approximately 11% slower than that of a woman’s.

It’s a constant battle inside him, emotions raging, and he struggles to control it, suppress it, tame it.

He pays a sorry price.

Ethan makes him feel comfortable, and that turns out to be a detriment. He relaxes around the other boy: he tells him about growing up as a pre-teen in a high school, about how a child feels living 260 miles away from home, even about his mother’s illness.

And one day, it slips out. They’re on the beach, lying on towels as they look up at the blue sky, talking about what their futures will look like: Ethan will be a successful chemical engineer in Berlin, and Spencer will work for the FBI, profiling serial killers.

“You’ll have to marry a German girl,” he tells Ethan. “It’ll be tough to convince an American girl to move all the way to Germany as soon as you graduate.”

“Yeah, and what about you? You’ll be off fighting crime around the country, not much of a life for a family.”

“Oh, I imagine my husband will be the type to—”

“Husband?”

Spencer freezes. It shocks him as much as it shocks Ethan. He doesn’t even pay much attention to Ethan’s disgusted face and his outraged tirade. He hears slurs and insults, hears him say that he can’t believe Spencer tricked him like this, that he was probably waiting to make a move on him, that he was never to look in Ethan’s direction again, but Spencer is frozen in time.

He’s never allowed him to think much about what his personal life might look like in the future, but he’d said ‘husband’ on instinct, without thinking, and it’s clearly something he actually wants. Ethan’s words sting, but the moment brings about a realisation Spencer is thankful for; it instigates a journey of self-discovery and self-expression, of the joy of living as your true self.

He loses his first and only friend, but he gains something much more valuable. He visits gay bars — nervously sipping a non-alcoholic drink in the corner at first, before soon becoming confident enough to respond to the men who sidle up to him and ask for his name. He lets go and dances the night away, sometimes going home with one of the many dance partners he acquires during the night, sometimes heading back to his own dorm happily alone.

Makeup and dresses and skirts and heels make their way into his wardrobe, and he befriends girls and drag queens and other gay men who encourage him to be exactly the way he is. And the best part is, he never has to come out to any of them. All of them know, and that’s good enough for everyone.

The fun comes to a sad sort of slow, however, when he joins the BAU. Everyone knows law enforcement’s relationship with the LGBT community is less than adequate — Spencer’s seen it with his own eyes: butch lesbians and men in dresses getting roughed up by angry police officers for ‘lewd behaviour’ or ‘drunkenness’ when they’re just being themselves. It’s not safe for him to tell anyone, so he doesn’t.

He still goes out with his friends when he’s in town and wears makeup and dresses and crop tops when he’s at home, but presents as rigidly straight Dr Spencer Reid to his team at the BAU.

The hardest part about it is that he loves his team. He’s known Gideon for years — and he wouldn’t be surprised if he suspects something after coming over to his house unannounced one night, only to have a man other than Spencer open the door — but he settles into a comforting dynamic with Hotch. He can’t help but see him as something of a father figure, and he knows Hotch has a soft spot for him, always looking out for him and taking him under his wing without a moment’s hesitation.

Elle, JJ, and Penelope all take a shine to him, too, teasing him without a hint of malice in their tones, only the kind of playful kindness that reminds him of his mother. He forms a special bond with Penelope and they spend hours watching Doctor Who together and geeking out on all the areas their interests overlap, and the comfort he feels with her matches the comfort he’s found with his new group of queer friends.

(She doesn’t hold a candle to Ethan, he decides one night, after he’d cried at a movie she’d made him watch and she felt so bad she made him hot chocolate and jam toast and cuddled him until he felt better.)

Derek becomes a brother to him. He puts him in a headlock at least once a day — which Spencer has been reliably informed by multiple sources is a very brotherly thing to do — and teases him relentlessly, while simultaneously being fiercely protective of him. Enough so, that Spencer sometimes wonders if he even has Hotch beat in that department.

He loves his team and his team loves him. It should be simple. It is still 2003.

He comes in one morning late for a briefing, his shirt buttoned wrong and his hair is a mess, and he’s fairly sure that his attempt to cover the hickey at the base of his neck with concealer has been ultimately unsuccessful. It’s obvious why he’s late. Gideon is too engrossed in the case file to notice, but Hotch raises an eyebrow, an amused look on his face as everyone else immediately takes to teasing him.

“Who’s the lucky lady, pretty boy?”

Elle raises an eyebrow to match Derek’s shit-eating grin, “Someone definitely got some strange last night.”

“When do we get to meet her, Spence?” JJ asks, smirking as he takes a seat.

He’s bright red — as if he needed to look any more debauched — and Spencer tries to ignore the hurt that seizes his chest at the reminder of his need to stay quiet. This team respects him, and he can’t throw that away just because Spencer gets too comfortable.

God, he wishes Penelope was here.

“None of your business,” he mutters, trying to keep his tone light. He fails.

Naturally, Hotch notices and swiftly moves the briefing on, and Spencer keeps his gaze locked on the case file, not missing the absence of a reprimand from his superior. He’s constantly thankful for the older man, but in this moment, he wishes he could hug him.

(A voice that sounds dangerously close to Ethan’s rises up and taunts him in his ear: he wouldn’t want a dirty homo like you anywhere near him—)

Derek doesn’t let up on the case, continuing to bug him about the special lady in his life. He does concede that it could’ve been a one night stand, which is one front he’s right on, but a couple more concessions are necessary before Derek comes close to the truth of last night.

Eventually, Derek stops, and Spencer notes that the cessation of comments comes suspiciously close to the last time Derek and Hotch were alone together. He doesn’t have it in him to feel angry at Hotch for stepping in when he had it handled; doesn’t have the energy to act as though his pride is wounded, because really, neither of those things are true, and he doesn’t need to add another item to ‘Spencer Reid’s List of Things He Pretends to Be.’

The situation is forgotten, and time moves on.

Things change when he finds his first proper boyfriend. He doesn’t know what he was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t the giddying rush of emotions it turns out to be, and Spencer spends his days smiling as he daydreams his time away.

His name is Oscar Wilkins, a History professor at Georgetown University, and Spencer falls quickly in love with him. Ever since their mutual friend had introduced them at a gay bar one evening, they’d spent all their free time together. He’s kind and gentle and understanding of Spencer’s hectic and unpredictable job, and he finally has the chance to experience everything he quietly and shamefully longed for as a teenager.

The only downside is the silent breaking of Spencer’s heart that the most important people in his life can’t meet his boyfriend. He longs to show Oscar off, to hold hands in front of his team, lean up to press a tender kiss to Oscar’s lips. He wants to put a framed picture of the two of them at the Washington Monument on his desk to remind him of why he needs to get through the hard days; he doesn’t want to have to sneak out of the hotel room he shares with Derek to whisper hushed, loving goodnights over the phone.

But he’s too scared. Too cowardly.

It’s different being who he is with his gay group of friends littered with wlws and drag queens and other gay and bisexual guys. They understand.

But Derek and Hotch are two extremely masculine, alpha men: Derek’s a ladies’ man and Hotch is married to a woman he met in college with a baby on the way and both have a strong and dominant energy that still sometimes manages to intimidate Spencer even after all these years. And Elle and JJ are lovely — some of his closest friends, really — but sometimes they remind him a little too much of the mean girls he went to high school with.

The hardest person to keep his secret from, though, is Penelope. She’s his best friend and he desperately wants to give her all of him, but he’s so scared. He’s lost a best friend to this secret before, and even though he’s certain she’d be fine with it, what if she accidentally let it slip to Derek? What if Hotch found out and didn’t see him in the same light anymore? What if the girls started teasing him? What if Gideon didn’t want to mentor him anymore?

The fear paralyses him. And it’s a cycle he doesn’t know how to break.

Fear, though, doesn't stop everyone from noticing his daydreaming, his dopey smile when he checks his messages, his urgency to get home where he would’ve stayed until the small hours of the morning before. As excellent as he is at hiding his sexuality, he’s fucking terrible at hiding the fact that he’s in love: it was easy enough to pretend he was straight, but hiding something this all-consuming is an impossible ask.

Derek comes over to perch on the edge of his desk one afternoon, sighing as he sits down. “Pretty boy, this is getting ridiculous,” he says, snatching Spencer’s attention away from his phone. “You’ve been grinning like an idiot for the last twenty minutes as you’ve texted Future Mrs Reid. When are we going to meet her?”

(He hates the new nickname the team has given his mystery significant other, although Oscar had found it hilarious. “It’s funny because when we get married, we’ll hardly be able to tell,” he’d argued through his laughter. “Neither of us will change our name because of our academic profiles, and we’ll both still be ‘Dr’. Our wedding rings will be the only indicator.”

Spencer hadn’t argued back, because he’d been too tongue-tied and flushed pink at Oscar’s use of ‘when’ in regards to their hypothetical nuptials. It was only made bearable by Oscar kissing him gently and tucking him under his arm, not embarrassing him any further as Spencer had sort of anticipated, warmth settling over his chest at the thought of their future together.)

“You won’t,” he replies, perhaps a little too curtly.

Derek starts at that, clearly not expecting it. He definitely should’ve tried to play it off as a joke. “What— should I be offended, pretty boy?”

You wouldn’t call me that if you knew who I really am.

“That’s up to you, Derek,” he says calmly, although he still can’t meet his eyes, “but you won’t meet the ‘Future Mrs Reid, so I think it would probably be best if you left it alone.”

“Damn,” Derek mutters under his breath, clearly pissed off and probably more hurt than Spencer ever intended. “Suit yourself.”

And with that, he gets up and leaves his desk. Spencer’s only solace is the text message he sees on his phone when he picks it back up: I love you so much. You know that, right?

The light-hearted ridicule comes to an abrupt halt after the incident with Derek, and it’s clear that he had been the biggest contributor to the teasing. He’s thankful that the jokes have stopped, but he wishes desperately that it didn’t come with the growing distance between him and his team. Loneliness takes the place of his previous irritated anxiety, and he isn’t sure what’s worse.

It all comes to a head at the end of a case in Michigan. They’re stuck in the lounge of the small inn they’d stayed in the last few days, a snowstorm having blocked them in and grounded the jet, although Gideon had long since retreated to his room. The fire’s going and they’re the only guests around, so it’s cosy enough, but Spencer can’t help but feel sick at the idea of another night away from home.

It’s only been two weeks since he’d snapped at Derek, but the chasm between him and the team is only widening with each passing day. He knows it’s not a case of ‘pick a side’, but the team’s morale relies on light-hearted banter and teasing, and him not being a part of that anymore has only brewed awkwardness. Everyone’s trying to give him space when space is the last thing he wants.

Oscar’s keeping him company over the phone at least, but it’s not quite enough to quell the loneliness swimming around his stomach, and the 'discrete' sideways looks he gets from the team only make him feel worse.

“At least it’s nice and toasty in here,” JJ sighs as she takes a sip of the hot chocolate the kindly inn owner had made for them all.

Elle hums in agreement. “There are worse places to be grounded.”

“I dunno, man, I just wanna get home,” Derek says, not taking his eyes off the fire. Spencer can’t help but agree.

“Oh, come on,” Hotch muses, considerably more jovial now the case is over, “we’re here, and that’s not going to change any time soon. We should make the most of it.”

“It’s at least nice to be somewhere sort-of Christmassy now it’s December,” Elle points out. “We could be stuck in a dingy police station like we probably will be next week.”

“Ooh, I noticed that Jemimah and Kiran started planning the Christmas party last week,” JJ says, smiling at them. “I offered my help, but they seem to have it covered.”

Hotch raises an eyebrow“That’s probably a good thing. You don’t need more work on your plate.”

“Not gonna argue with that,” she murmurs, smiling as she brings her mug to her lips again.

Spencer doesn’t miss that Derek is still stewing on the opposite side of the room.

“Are you looking forward to the Christmas party, Spencer? Will you come?” Hotch asks, clearly trying to rope him into the conversation, which he appreciates. He’s been making a lot of effort with him the past few weeks, and it’s just about the only thing that’s getting him through each day.

Before he can reply, though, Derek erupts from the other side of the room; an already pissed-off man being pushed over the edge. “He won’t even let us meet his fucking girlfriend, Hotch, he’s not gonna want to come to the Christmas party!” he yells, throwing his hands in the air as he glares at Spencer with a stormy expression raging across his face.

Suddenly, Spencer can’t stay silent anymore, and his retort shocks himself just as much as it does everyone else. “I don’t have a girlfriend!”

It might be the loudest he’s ever shouted in his whole life. He’s always been quiet and restrained, the type to state his feelings as calmly as possible no matter how he’s feeling on the inside. Even in the biggest fight he’s had with Oscar, his voice was barely loud enough to qualify as a shout.

There’s a brief stunned silence, but Derek quickly slices his way through it, voice raising to meet Spencer’s fiery emotion, fierce and loud. “Oh, don’t even go there, Reid, you’re really gonna try and argue that? You’re gonna lie about her as well as not let us meet her? What a boyfriend you are.”

“I don’t! I don’t have a girlfriend!” he repeats, voice catching this time as tears rise unbidden to the backs of his eyes and all the emotions of the journey he’s taken with his sexuality over the years flood him in a wave of intensity he’s not prepared for.

“You’re fucking lying—!”

“I have a boyfriend!” he yells. “Alright? I have a boyfriend. I’m gay.”

The anger and emotion quickly dissipates, and he’s left standing alone in front of the team he’s put so much effort into hiding this from, watching shock spell out across everyone’s expressions. He’s never felt smaller than he does in that moment, and he quickly grabs his phone before running upstairs to his room, locking the door behind him.

“Oh God, Oscar, I fucked up so bad,” he cries over the phone as soon as his boyfriend picks up.

“Hey, hey, breathe, baby,” Oscar says gently, but Spencer can hear the anxious concern in his voice, “it’s gonna be okay, I promise. I’m here. Do you want to tell me what happened?”

“I just— Oh God, I just told the team.” A new wave of horror rolls over him as he realises what he’s done. Times might be changing, but it’s still only 2006, and he doesn’t know each and every nuance of his team members’ political positions and, fuck, he hates that his existence is a fucking political position.

Oscar’s been so understanding of his reluctance to not tell the team, even though Spencer’s met pretty much everyone in his life. He isn’t sure what he’s done to earn such a gracious and understanding boyfriend, but he’s not about to question it.

“Baby, I know it’s scary, and I know you’re really worked up right now,” he counsels, voice soft and reassuring, using the nickname he knows Spencer loves the most to make him feel as safe as he can from 700 miles away, “but it’s probably not as bad as you think. From what you’ve told me about the team, they love you so much, and even in the case that in the past they've had some issue with gay people, I can't imagine they’d ever actually think of you any differently when it comes down to it, Spencer.”

He’s crying too hard to reply, and Oscar understands immediately, gently transitioning into a story about his day that slowly starts to calm him down, and by the time he’s wrapping it up, his tears are starting to subside.

“Thank you, Ozzy,” he whispers into the phone, lifting himself up off the floor and making his way to sit on the bed instead.

“You know I’d do anything for you, sweetheart,” he murmurs warmly. “Do you want me to stay on the phone for a bit?”

“Yes please,” he whispers again, holding it as close to himself as possible, drawing all the comfort he can from his boyfriend’s voice.

He lies there listening to Oscar’s voice and trying not to think about the disaster downstairs for a good ten minutes before there’s a tap at the door.

“Oz, there’s someone here,” he says, voice panicked.

“I think you should probably speak to them, baby,” he urges. “I’ll stay on the phone with you while you do, if you like?”

“Please.” He gets up from the bed gingerly, keeping his phone tightly gripped in his right hand as he slowly unlocks the door with his left, revealing Hotch on the other side.

“Hey, Spencer. Do you mind if I come in?”

He’s riddled with nerves, but Hotch is smiling warmly, and he’s never said a harsh word to Spencer, so he steps aside and lets him into his room.

Hotch quickly notices the phone in his hand, visibly still on a call. “Is that your boyfriend?”

Spencer nods.

“Do you mind if I talk to him?”

His brows knit in confusion and his lips part slightly in surprise, but it’s all he can do to hand the phone over, watching Hotch carefully.

“Hi, Spencer tells me this is his boyfriend?” Hotch inquires politely into the phone, his tone still warm. “I’m Hotch, Spencer’s boss.”

He can vaguely hear Oscar speaking on the other end of the line, and he worries slightly that Oscar will somehow give away the familial feelings he holds for Hotch, but the conversation doesn’t last long enough for the anxiety to really take over.

“Everything’s fine here, I just want to have a conversation with Spencer, so is it alright if we hang up and I talk to him alone for a minute? He can call you straight back afterwards.” After a brief pause in which Oscar says something, Hotch looks back up at him. “Are you okay with that, Spencer?”

He nods hesitantly, and Hotch says a quick goodbye to Oscar before surging forwards and wrapping Spencer in a hug. It catches him off guard, but he doesn’t waste any time in burying his face into Hotch’s neck and soaking in the comfort and warmth that always radiates from his father figure.

“Come on,” Hotch says softly as they pull away a good minute or so later, “let’s sit down, shall we?”

“You’re not mad?” Spencer can’t help but ask, the question burning his tongue as anxiety — however quietened from Hotch’s hug — still swims around in his stomach.

“There are many things that could make me mad, Spencer,” he says earnestly, “but this is not one of them. I would never be angry at you for being who you are, okay? I might… I might be overstepping here, and if I am, then tell me and I’ll back off, but I’ve always seen you as a mentee, and over the years that’s developed— well, I see you more as a son these days. And part of that is wanting to protect and support you no matter what you do or say or who you are.”

Spencer wastes no time in diving back in for a hug, clinging onto Hotch for dear life as he hugs back, rubbing his back gently.

“I’m so sorry you didn’t feel like you could tell us sooner, Spencer,” he says in a voice soft with affection and regret. “But I’m so glad you’ve told us now.”

He only presses closer at that, tears springing back to his eyes. “I didn’t want to lose you.” He knows what he’s implying, and even in a roundabout way, he’s glad he’s telling Hotch.

“Oh, Spence,” he sighs sadly, “you couldn’t do a single thing to lose me. I’m in it for the long haul.”

“Really?” he asks, hating how insecure he sounds.

“Really,” Hotch promises, pulling away as Spencer does. “Now, you have a whole team of agents downstairs who are feeling very sorry for themselves and really want to see you.”

Nausea rolls in his stomach and panic springs back up as he looks at Hotch, desperate for some sort of grounding. “Are they angry at me? Do they hate me now?”

“No one hates you, Spencer,” he says firmly. “I promise you that. Everyone just wishes that they’d made you feel more welcome and comfortable. We all hate that you felt you had to lock up something so integral to who you are, and we can’t help but feel we played a part in it.”

“No,” he protests — the last thing he wants is family blaming themselves when it has nothing to do with them, “it’s not your fault, it’s just…”

Hotch nods. “I understand, it’s okay. Now, do you want to go down and see them? You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but it might help ease your mind to see that they really don’t hate you.”

Spencer pauses, taking a moment to think. “Can I see Derek first?”

“Of course,” Hotch says understandingly, and the comforting smile that crosses his face makes Spencer feel safe and taken care of. “I’ll send him up?”

Spencer nods and Hotch hugs him once more before leaving the room almost reluctantly. He wastes no time in picking up his phone and sending a text to Oscar. You were right. Hotch is fine. He’s just sending Derek up before I go and see the team but he says that no one’s angry and I think I believe him. Thank you, Oscar. I love you.

Not even half a minute goes past before his phone lights up with a text back. I’m so glad, baby. Call me later, okay? I want to make sure you’re okay before I go to bed. I love you more.

Before Spencer can argue that actually, he is the one more in love with the other, a hesitant knock sounds on his door. Nerves suddenly flip his stomach, and he clenches and unclenches his fists a couple of times before forcing himself to cross the room, revealing a very worried and regretful-looking Derek.

“Oh, pretty boy,” he says sadly, before crushing Spencer in a warm and tender hug. Immediately, he relaxes into the arms of one of his best friends, and relief courses through his blood at Derek’s reaction. “I am so sorry that I ever made you feel like you couldn’t tell me that you were gay or had a boyfriend. That’s completely on me. I don’t care who you love, Spencer, I just want you to be happy, okay? And if this guy makes you happy, then that’s fine by me. But if he ever lays a hand on you or—”

“Derek, Derek,” he laughs, “it’s fine I get it. Thank you, though, I’m… I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you earlier and for snapping at you in the bullpen that time…”

“I understand, Spence,” he promises. “It’s in the past, okay? And I’m sorry for pushing so hard. I mean, I’d love to meet him but if you don’t feel comfortable or you don’t want to, that’s fine, too. It’s your life, man.”

“No, I… I think I want you guys to meet him. It’s been so hard to keep him away from the people I consider my family, you know?”

“Yeah, I know. Maybe after Christmas, we can all have dinner or something.”

Spencer smiles shyly. “Well, Oscar’s a great cook, so I reckon we could work something out.”

Derek grins, throwing an arm around his shoulders as he immediately jumps back into teasing him as they make their way to the door to go downstairs and see the rest of the team. “Ooh, lover boy’s got him a chef, hey? What else does this Oscar have going for him?”

Spencer chatters eagerly about his boyfriend to Derek, barely skipping a beat when he joins everyone downstairs, his friends taking his cues and joining in with the conversation seamlessly. He’s had enough fuss for one night, and the warmth and understanding on everyone’s faces tells him everything he needs to know.

“Do you have any pictures of him?” JJ asks, raising an eyebrow with eager expectancy as they all settle back into their seats by the fire, a warm and unbelievably happy feeling settling in Spencer’s stomach.

He blushes, digging out his phone from his pocket and unlocking it. “More than a few, I think.”

He finds the most recent picture of his boyfriend — a candid shot of him cooking in the kitchen, spatula aloft, and a huge grin on his face — and hands the phone around.

“Oh wow, you like them buff, huh, pretty boy?” Derek teases as soon as he gets his hands on it, and Spencer’s stomach twists in a sudden bout of fear, expecting to see some hesitancy or even disgust on his friend’s face. What if he thinks that Spencer has a crush on him? What if he’s uncomfortable around him now?

But if Derek’s having any of those thoughts, they don’t show on his face. He’s smiling widely and openly, all the pent-up anxiety and frustration borne from hurt gone from his body language, and he looks completely comfortable sat next to Spencer, his arm stretched out behind him on the back of the sofa.

They sit happily around the fire for a couple of hours, settling into a happy, intimate familiarity Spencer hadn’t realised was missing when he was hiding something so integral to his being from his family, and he’s still smiling when they finally part ways to head to bed, the clock ticking closer and closer to 1 am.

He gets ready for bed quickly, brushing his teeth and throwing on the top he’d stolen from Oscar the first time he’d stayed at his place; a welcome change from his worn and wrinkled suit. As soon as his teeth are brushed and the lights are all off except for his bedside lamp, he pulls out his phone, knowing there’s one more thing he has to do before he goes to sleep.

“Spencer?” Penelope’s voice sounds down the line, clearly concerned. “It’s almost 2 am here, are you okay?”

“I’m gay,” he says, getting straight to the point. The main reason he ever kept it from her was because of his fear of it accidentally getting out to the team rather than fear over her reaction. After all, multiple of his drag queen friends are also hers.

“Oh my God,” she says in that small voice she uses when she’s not actually talking to you, before finally actually replying to me. “Spencer, I’m so happy you told me!”

He doesn’t miss her choice of words, or the way she says them and he tilts his head suspiciously. “You already knew, didn’t you?”

She sighs. “Yeah. I’m sorry, a couple of months ago I saw a text from Oscar on your phone when you went to the bathroom during one of our Doctor Who marathons, and it wasn’t hard to figure out the relationship.”

“And… wait, you’re not mad at me for not telling you sooner?”

“Spencer! Of course not. I was waiting for you to be comfortable enough to share it with me. I felt awful that I knew without your consent but I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want to catch you off guard or make you feel uncomfortable. It’s fine that you waited, baby genius, I’m just so happy you told me now. What finally gave you the courage?”

“Well, it might have slipped out in front of the team this evening,” he admits sheepishly, “and the only reason I never told you was because I was scared that it would slip out somehow — accidentally, of course, I didn’t think you’d tell anyone on purpose — and now everyone knows. It’s been killing me not to tell you, Penelope, it really has because I love you so much and you’re my best friend and I trust you with my life, it’s just…”

“Whoa, slow down, Spence,” she laughs fondly, “you don’t have to explain yourself to me, I understand. But I’m glad you finally told everyone and you can be yourself completely with us, now. We all love you no matter what, you know that right?”

“I do now.”

“Good. You should get some sleep, baby boy, it’s late and you’ve had an emotional evening.”

Spencer smiles. “Yeah, I know. You should, too, Pen. I’ll see you when we can finally make it home, okay? Love you.”

“Love you, too, 187,” she says softly, and Spencer can hear the smile in her voice. “Goodnight.”

As soon as he hangs up, he settles down into the bed, turning off the light and pulling the duvet up over his shoulders before dialling one more number.

“Hey, baby,” Oscar says, voice as gentle and caring as it always is, although thicker with tiredness now. “I take it everything went okay?”

“Yeah,” Spencer murmurs, already feeling tired as the safety he always feels at the sound of Oscar’s voice settles into the fibres of his being. “It went so well. I can’t wait for you to meet everyone.”

“I can’t wait either, sweetheart. Are you in bed now?”

“Yeah,” he sighs. “Can you talk to me as I fall asleep?”

“Anything for you, Spence,” he says softly, before transitioning seamlessly into a story about the professors on campus, and his gentle comfort and the knowledge of the unconditional love his family has for him finally lulls Spencer into the best sleep he’s had in weeks.

taglist : @criminalmindsvibez @moreidstrobed @suburban--gothic @strippersenseii @takeyourleap-of-faith @negativefouriq @makaylajadewrites @iamrenstark @livrere-blue @hotchseyebrows @reidology @i-like-buttons @spencerspecifics @bau-gremlin @hotchedyke @tobias-hankel @goobzoop @marsjareau @garcias-bitch @oliverbrnch @physics-magic @sbeno22 @temily @enbyspencer @im-autistic @anxious-enby @kuolonsyoja @reidreids (add yourself to my taglist via this form!!)

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hunxi-guilai · 4 years

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It seems like no matter how I try there's no escaping the mdzs vs cql fan war and I'm so sick and tired of it. It brings so much negativity and makes me always feel like I'm somehow a bad person for preferring the version I do, that it's wrong for me to like the version I like because it's somehow the wrong version to like (I don't dislike any of the adaptations.) Have you been able to avoid it? If so, how? What are your thoughts about this whole thing?

oh! that’s unfortunate to hear — I think I’ve been fortunate in that I haven’t really observed a fandom war going down, but once again, I barely know how to use this website, so would I even notice a fandom war unless it came straight into my askbox? Unclear.

I think this is particularly tricky in the MDZS/CQL fandom(s), because we have so many different adaptations of a beloved source text, and each of these adaptations take liberties in embellishing or re-interpreting novel canon. Especially with the surge in CQL’s popularity and the influx of fans who adore the show but lack the background knowledge of the novel, I can absolutely see how it can be pretty grating to folks who have been in the MDZS fandom for a while.

That being said, I think it should be perfectly possible for fans of different adaptations to coexist, even if they have their own preferences for which version they like better. The hard part is not making your opinion prescriptive of other people’s, like “this version of the story is superior to all other versions, and you’re wrong if you disagree with me.” Perhaps one version has more thematic resonance with subjects you’re interested in, or you simply like the narrative pacing of another version, or you think your favorite version is just prettier. All that is fine! I think the disagreements start cropping up when people go around declaring that their preferences are undeniable fact, and all other takes are invalid.

And even then, a lot of it comes down to literary criticism and interpretation! Literary critique and discussion, arguments and glorified metas, form the stuff of academic journals; fandom wars are similar, just much more fast-paced and much less peer-reviewed. Disagreement on the interpretation of a shared text points to the complexity of the original work, and I think that’s pretty kickass, honestly, even while I continue to disagree with other people’s takes (while trying to respect their takes. It’s a fine line).

I’ve tried to make it really clear on this blog that this is CQL-specific — I haven’t read the novel, am not qualified to speak on the novel, and try my best not to give my opinions or understanding of the novel (considering that I lack both). I’ve been asked to adjust my tagging system, and I’ve tried to do so going forwards. I haven’t always succeeded in doing so in the past, but if folks are looking for unproblematic perfection, my blog isn’t really the place for them, either.

There have been other posts making their way through tumblr fandom space recently, but it bears repeating — fandom should be fun. Fandom should, ideally, be a positive and rewarding space for those who engage in it. Of course, all of this is also dependent on appropriate conduct — don’t be an asshole on the internet, don’t get into flame wars, and be open to criticism and correction, especially if you’re walking into a pre-existing fandom or a new cultural space.

And also — protect yourself! Tumblr is a site that gives you content that you can curate, so make use of the filtered tag/filtered post content to keep stuff (and spoilers) out of your life. Recently, I’ve discovered that I don’t actually have to read every long text post on my dash — I can also just scroll really fast. And guess what! No consequences!

Make sure to take care of yourself, anon! And if that means taking a break from tumblr to do so, then sometimes that’s what it’s gotta take. Can confirm, it works well for me when I need it.

#ask and ye shall receive #disagreement and discussion are great #flame wars and ad hominem attacks are not #this post may be a lot more conciliatory than I strictly believe in but also this is the place I've reached after a few months #of having my posts critiqued and corrected with varying degrees of kindness #just in case #tw fandom discourse

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ohwereusingourmadeupnames · 3 years

Text

Give In To Me

Pairing: Peter Parker/Tony Stark (Starker) Rating: Explicit (E) Notes: This is my post for the “new love” square for the @starkerfestivals January event. I listened to the song Give In To Me a stupid amount of times to get this one just right. Word Count: ~6.6K Warnings: There is some homophobic language/actions and a bit of violence in this one. It’s not the fluff fest most of my fics usually are, so approach with caution! Summary:

Tony always knew he was a little different - and growing up on a ranch in the middle of nowhere Wyoming didn't leave room for that type of uniqueness. College is supposed to be a godsend, and for a while - it is. Things start to spiral out of control when Tony's father dies and whiskey takes the wheel.

Twenty something years later, Tony is still struggling with the aftermath. It's not until the gorgeous cowboy Peter Parker walks into his life that Tony starts to feel like living again.

Or, the one where society sucks and Peter makes it all better.

Read on AO3 here.

In all 45 of his years, Tony never thought of himself as weak.

There were times when shit got hard and the walls felt like they were sinking in on him – even then, the feeling of weakness never even registered.

From the second that Peter Parker walked into his life – everything changed. The feeling of weakness came from the way the tan Stetson sat so temptingly on his head; the brim tucked down over his eyes that made searching out his gaze something of a mission. It came in the way his heart picked up when he saw the lean cowboy, his face and body still giving off the slightest hint of youth that Tony could only fondly remember in his later age.

Most importantly, the weakness came when it was just him and Peter – the two of them tackling the stalls or discussing the latest specs for the crop rotation they meticulously planned. In all his life, Tony didn’t once feel that earth-moving feeling of rightness like he did when in Peter’s orbit.

All of Peter’s finer attributes and deeply engrained intelligence compiled together could easily bring him to his knees – Tony fought with himself daily to simply stay standing under the strain of what Peter made him feel so easily. After almost fifty years of repressing all of his emotions, especially the hard ones like love and attraction, Tony found himself both fearful and excited by the immensity of his plentiful feelings for Peter Parker.

He wanted to burn from the fire of it all, while melting Peter down and taking him into the blazing madness together.

Of course, his thoughts were much braver than his actions and behavior.

It was never easy – coming to terms with his differences. From an early age, Tony could feel how other he was. Though he loved ranch work with all of his being, the thought of learning and getting so much more from the world settled in him before he really understood what it all meant. Where his daddy didn’t give a shit about his schooling, Tony strived to excel. Information and knowing things came pretty easy to him, and he reveled in it.

He studied so much, he figured the cows would start mooing all of the different facts and tidbits of information he always recited to them during his fence checks and daily feeds. There was always a craving for more that settled deep within him – the thing taking home in him in a way that held tight and wouldn’t come close to letting go.

Things got even more interesting when he figured one of the biggest differences between him and all his other buddies was the fact that he wanted to kiss them, and not the girls they were always whispering and gossiping about. He found out pretty early how off the wall those feelings were and desperately tried to stamp them down.

For a lot of his childhood, Tony did a lot of that – stamping things down. Whether it was his smarts or the warmth in his stomach he got when looking at certain boys, Tony did whatever he could to let those things fly under the radar. He figured the best way to stay hidden was to blend in with the normality of the crowd.

The one thing Tony wasn’t ever going to compromise on was his future, however – it was one thing to hide his brain and all the things he could do with it, but a whole other thing to waste it, just because someone didn’t like it. His daddy fought tooth and nail to get Tony to ditch the educated man dreams and stay exactly where he’d always been.

Taking over the ranch could wait – there were so many things to learn and tons of opportunities for Tony to do it.

When the acceptance letter for UT Austin came, Tony hid the envelope away and quietly went about the process of getting himself set up for attendance that next fall. Like most things in his life, Tony put his entire life together after high school by himself – making his own decisions and following the dreams that he never let anyone else know about.

Austin meant more acceptance – besides the amazing university, Texas’s capital was rumored to be amongst the more liberal parts of the state. For someone who held a whole piece of himself back in fear of what might happen, escaping to a place that wouldn’t condemn him for his preferences felt pretty sweet.

Against his parents’ wishes, Tony left for college immediately after graduation – his work ethic and know-how getting him a fellowship within the agricultural engineering department that got him to school as early as possible. Getting away meant everything after such a long time being cooped up in a small town with people who had narrow minds and an even smaller range of interests.

His introduction to all of the other things the world had to offer came hard and fast. His Levi jeans and cowboy boots were a hit amongst the people that never stepped foot outside of the big city – and the boys who liked other boys were not quiet about their appreciation. From nothing to everything all at once, Tony fell headfirst into the life he never knew existed.

And it was nice – for a long time, it was really (really) nice. Tony felt right under his skin for the first time ever and didn’t have to hide himself away – his brain or his lust for beautiful men that could take him apart and put him back together in a way that was much better than what existed before.

He flourished in the classroom, the lifetime of ranch knowledge edging others out in the application and understanding department. Tony used all of the pieces he accumulated over the years to absorb all of the information he could and quickly found himself with a double major in Business and Agricultural Engineering. Though he wasn’t actually planning to go back and take over the family ranch, knowing how to run one from all angles seemed like the right thing to do.

Austin felt like a dream – everything Tony ever wanted was right in front of his face just waiting for him to reach out and take it. And while he could, Tony clung tight to all of the things he never had before and probably never would again.

Things came crashing down when his dad died eight weeks before graduation. The night before he finally got ahold of his mom after noticing more than forty missed calls, Tony was out with his latest fling – Clint Barton, who could do things with his hands that Tony couldn’t get enough of. When he finally stumbled his way back to the dorm, Tony found his answering machine completely full – each one of his mother’s messages more desperate than the last.

Unable to just rush home, Tony settled his mom down and made a few calls to get himself a flight back to Wyoming as soon as he could. As much as he wanted to feel bad about the sudden death of his father, there wasn’t much in him that made Tony ache the way he probably should. His father never understood him – never even took the time to do so. There was sadness, but the idea of missing his very last midterm to mourn couldn’t be processed. Not when he worked so hard to get where he was.

He never planned to go back home – and rushing back just wasn’t in the plans, either; no matter the reason.

Of course, karma had a way of proving that not all decisions were the best. The very next night, while out with Clint and a few of their friends, Tony found himself in a sticky situation. Taking to the bottle the second he had everything in order, his blood was more whiskey than red blood cells by the time they hit one of their favorite bars – the word belligerent sat in the back of his head when he let himself think about just how much the world was tilting and his words were slurring.

While Austin was relatively liberal, there were still many people that came to the city that didn’t share the local attitude about the world. Most people Tony spent his time with were pretty accepting of his preferences and never shied away from him, especially when he brought his dates around. In a lot of ways, Tony felt stupidly lucky; the level of understanding his close friends were capable of surpassed all he received throughout the years of his childhood combined.

That wasn’t to say that the strangers on the street felt the same as his friends, however. Sober Tony understood that piece of information; he logically kept his personal and private business to himself when out in public. That Tony was long gone, replaced with the recklessly drunk version that didn’t keep his hands to himself and couldn’t care less about what other people thought of it.

When he pulled Clint into a kiss without a care in the world, Tony should’ve known he was asking for trouble. There was a beat of time when he pulled away with a smile where Tony felt like he was floating on air – he was just drunk enough to forget the world, just for that single moment. Then, the chocked-out word he dreaded his entire life rang in his ears. ‘Fag’ sunk into his skin, the heat of shame radiating down from his stomach until his legs felt molten with anger and fear. His fists clenched tightly by his side, the alcohol boosting his courage beyond anything reasonable.

“What the fuck did you just say?” Tony roared, his hand pressing flat against Clint’s chest, pressing him back and out of the way. He shifted his body until he was between Clint and the guys now closing in on them.

“I called you a fag. Out here in public, doing something like that – “ the guy was able to get out just enough to push Tony past a breaking point. He didn’t get to finish his thought – Tony’s fist connected with his jaw; then, all hell broke loose.

For what it was worth, Tony gave just as good as he got. After the initial punch, Tony threw himself into the first of the three guys that were gathered around. Searching for Clint’s eyes, Tony nodded his head towards the exit when he caught them. They shared a scared look for a second before the other man was gone, the sound of a fist hitting his cheek covering up the shuffle of Clint’s boots as he fled.

At least he was alone in the beating he took when a swift punch to the back took out a couple of ribs, the pain pulling all the fight from him in one swift breath. By the time his eyes were shutting with blissful unconsciousness, everything felt numb – his body, heart, and his already tarnished soul.

After almost twenty years, thinking back on the experience still took his breath away.

He regained consciousness in a hospital bed with his hands wrapped and one eye swollen completely shut. The thought of not being in jail was the only comfort he felt as every other injury made itself known. Fractured ribs, a dislocated jaw, and bruising everywhere. It hurt to breath and if he pressed too hard with his tongue, his front tooth felt like it might pop right out of his mouth.

Tony stayed hooked up to the machines just long enough to make sure there was no lasting damage, then checked himself out against everyone’s orders. Canceling his flight on account of not being able to handle the pressure of breathing, let alone at thirty thousand feet, Tony put his shit in a bag, packed up his truck, and hit the road. Fourteen hours stood between him and the distance needed to maybe mend his brokenness.

Instead of going back to Austin after putting his daddy in the ground, Tony took to his old room in the house he grew up in and dug into the ranch work as deeply as he could. He finished his degree with a couple trips back to the city to take big tests and put the whole experience behind him the second his diplomas came. All that education, all the time it took, and the effort he put forth – it all seemed a little flat after the huge crash back down to reality. The world wasn’t the big place he so desperately wanted it to be. The realization of that hit so close that he bottled everything inside, put his head down, and finally gave into wishes he’d been resisting for as long as he could remember.

In letting himself fall into the work, Tony found his enjoyment of being around the ranch again. His forethought in school put him in a good position to make some good moves and bring all the land back up to speed. In just a couple of years, Tony brought their profits up and made some decent headway into getting the soil ready and willing to spring up crops to at least sustain them throughout the seasons.

Little by little, Tony took to running the ranch the way his daddy always wanted him to. His mom let go of her work around the place one small chore at a time, her old age catching up to her after so many years of ceaseless work. In the last couple of years before she passed, Tony created the best memories, actually letting himself get to know the woman who raised him and allowing her to see him in return. When he came out, she simply looked at him with a knowing smile.

“I’ve always known, boy. As long as you’re happy, I’m happy.”

Those words echoed within him every time he thought of her after that. She succumbed to pneumonia and joined his daddy late in the spring of his thirtieth year. Now completely orphaned, without any family at all, Tony turned to building up the ranch – the place now one of the only ones in the world he could feel some semblance of home.

He started the change with an initial push to bring the ranch into the latest decade. He bought a new herd of cattle and got a few work horses that could maintain the load of the work about to come. Next, he increased the staff on the property. Where Howard got by with only one hired hand, Tony brought on a foreman and three other hands to help with the new livestock. There were several empty bunkhouses on their many acres of land, and with a little bit of fixing up, they made adequate workers’ quarters.

With the manpower and the ability to give up some of the physical labor for the brainier work, Tony watched the land flourish before him. The livestock brought in good profit year after year – the turnaround on the cattle almost enough to bring in new herds almost every year. When the need for a wider stock occurred, Tony wheeled and dealed until he bought out both of his neighbors, their land adding beautifully to the well working operation.

As the years past, Tony got more ingenious and found ways to keep everything organic, the cattle were grass fed, and the small round of crops they were able to sustain year after year grew chemical free. Despite rebelling against it for so damn long, Tony took to ranching like a natural – the land belonged to his family for generations; it was in his blood.

When the crop production started to pick up, Tony figured it was time to bring in a professional with the know-how and education needed to maintain the soil and produce bigger numbers during every yield.

Steve, after years of being Tony’s right hand man, brought up a young agriculture guru that was quickly making a name for himself in the farming business. Without blinking an eye, Tony took his name and number, making the needed calls to get the best in the business there as quickly as possible. In all his years of running things, Tony understood what it meant to tap into potential, and if Steve was right, they were getting someone more than qualified that could easily hit his stride under their care.

All thoughts of business rushed out the window when he first took in all the glory that was Peter Parker. The cowboy hat that sat low on his head made it hard to determine how old he actually was – the word young could be applied to many age groups now that Tony was getting up there in years himself. There was a seriousness to his eyes that made him seem a little older, yet the beauty of youth clung to him like it may never let go.

Then, their eyes met – the crackle in the stare shared between them obvious in the way that both men shifted; brown eyes were glued to him from that moment on. Tony automatically stuck his hand between them, a sudden eagerness in his blood that made his fingers itchy for contact. He wasn’t disappointed when the shock of eyes catching magnified when skin met skin. Peter’s hands were rough, callouses adorning them – they were workers hands, ones that knew what it was like to spend long hours sweating for the cause.

Though the touch was brief, Tony felt it on his skin for the rest of their brief meeting. Tony was enamored from the very beginning but kept his business pants on and listened with interest to Peter’s extensive background and experience with soil analysis, crop rotations, and the like. While he was an aggie where Tony was a longhorn, he figured he could forgive the cowboy for his follies of youth – if his credentials were to be believed, they were getting a real asset to their team.

It didn’t take much convincing on Tony’s end when all was said and done – Steve did a good job selling the place in his initial rundown and Peter was signing the employment contract before the meeting was even finished. Unable to stamp down his excitement, Tony let a rare smile flit across his lips when he looked up to see Peter watching him. There was a glint of happiness bubbling up, and for once, Tony wondered what it would be like to allow himself to enjoy it again.

Realistically, choice wasn’t in Tony’s hands – from the second he saw Peter working on the ranch that first day, his fate was sealed. It’d been so long since the last time Tony allowed himself to look, let alone feel, that he was having a hard time controlling himself. Whenever they were within distance of each other, he found his eyes roving over Peter, his brain desperately attempting to remember everything for later. He figured that Peter could feel the weight of his stare and was later assured of that when he finally brought his eyes back up to Peter’s face after a lengthy perusal to find a shit eating grin on his lips.

They didn’t talk about it – not at first. Tony felt too much shame in the simple act of looking, the last thing he needed to do was rush the process and fuck them both over. Instead, they took to sharing looks and small quips when they were lucky enough to bump into each other. Tony’s love had always been the livestock, so he stuck to the barn and stables the times he decided to get his hands dirty. There wasn’t a lot for Peter to do in that neck of the woods, but they ran into each other often enough, anyways.

One such evening, Tony was cathartically finishing up bedding a few of the horses when Peter walked into the tack room, his eyes roaming over the gear hanging on the wall. In their ever-increasing conversations, Tony came to find out that Peter spent most of his childhood on horseback and liked to be amongst the familiar animals. Leaning up against the door of the stall he’d been mucking, Tony whistled lightly, getting Peter’s attention.

“Want to actually saddle up and ride tonight?” Tony asked, his forearms leaning against the top of the stall. “I haven’t settled Midnight or Cocoa if you’re interested.”

Seeing the flash of hope in Peter’s eye had Tony standing up a little taller, his hand moving to push his cowboy hat up a little further on his head so he could see Peter better. His lips rebelled against him, the corners reaching just under his eyes in the most genuine smile to ever grace his face. He was sweaty and tired and knew that taking the horses out now would make for a couple hours of work later – but it was all worth it. Peter nodded his head excitedly, his long legs already carrying him over to the saddle on the wall he eyed on a nightly basis.

Saddled up and ready to go, Tony clicked his tongue and shifted the reins in his hand enough to get Midnight on the move. Peter followed him closely, their feet a couple inches apart from each other with every shift they made in the saddle.

The cool night breeze moved around them; the trails beautifully lit by the moon casting its glow all around. It was a gorgeous night for a ride and an even better opportunity to get to know the handsome cowboy a little better.

Pulling up on the reins, Tony settled Midnight into a light trot, Cocoa following along seamlessly. He felt comfortable enough to shift forward a little, his stare moving to Peter across from him. “How are you settling in? This is probably a big change from College Station where you’ve been the past few years.”

“I love it out here. I grew up in the middle of nowhere Kansas. My uncle had a few acres that he made last until he couldn’t anymore. Being out here reminds me of the slow days I used to spend out on the range with him. A&M was just a stop along the way. Out here, it’s where I’ve always wanted to be.”

Sucking in a breath, Tony felt the words hit him hard – the vast openness drew him home all of those years ago; there was just something about being able to look up and see nothing for miles. Instead of replying right away, he let the peace of the words and the environment around him settle; it felt good to just be out here, especially with Peter by his side.

“Seems like you’re in the right place, then. It’s real quiet out here and everything moves a little slower than the rest of the world.” He stopped for a second, shifting his fingers in the leather of his riding gloves. “I’m real glad you’re here, Pete. Glad that you don’t dislike the slow stuff.”

Peter didn’t say anything else for the rest of their ride, the silence between them light and easy – like Tony’s admission was the pin needed to break the little bubble of tension that always surrounded them. They made it up and back across the trail before it was too dark – and with an extra pair of hands, Tony got the stable ready for the night much quicker than he initially anticipated.

Without really thinking, Tony placed a hand on Peter’s shoulder, pulling until they were pressed side to side. The contact felt amazing yet forbidden – Peter’s heat against him a craving he kept at bay for so, so long. “Thanks for the help closing up. I would’ve been out here for hours on my own.”

Peter moved then, his own arm wrapping around Tony’s waist – no hesitation, no shrinking away from the intimate contact. A couple of seconds went by before Peter moved again, his body turning and free hand coming to rest softly against Tony’s cheek. “Anytime, cowboy. You can’t possibly know how good you look on a horse. Or how sexy you get when you’re sweaty from work.”

The last few words were whispered, the space between them dwindling down to nothing as Peter inched closer – his fingers were wrapped tightly in Tony’s pearl snap, the first few buttons completely loosened by the time their lips finally met.

For just a moment, Tony let himself fall into the kiss. His arm tightened around Peter’s shoulder, bringing him into his chest a little tighter. The other hand reached up to rid Peter of his hat, then did the same for himself. Without the brims in the way, Tony leaned even farther forward, their lips and tongue moving in a dance that felt old hat now that they were finally connecting like this. Peter felt like home from the moment they met, and this intimate connection felt even better.

But then he remembered the many years of isolation and all the shame – the bad memories of those times more than enough to pull him away from the amazing sensation, his lungs burning from lack of oxygen and searing fear of what-ifs and ignorant people. Unable to push it all down, Tony put a bit of distance between them, his eyes glued to the floor where his boots were brushing nervously against the dirty planks.

“Fuck, I’m sorry. I-I – “ Tony tried to babble out before deciding to ditch the niceties and make a quick escape out the door.

For two days, Tony avidly avoided the stables. Though it was his favorite place on the entire property, he wasn’t ready to face Peter head-on and knew the younger man would wait to find him there as long as it took. There was an unspoken connection that neither was willing to let go of, no matter how hard Tony fought against it. Between shared looks and hard-won tidbits about each other’s lives, something was created, the bond living and breathing, just like the two of them.

Deep down, Tony knew running away wouldn’t get him anywhere. His self-imposed isolation lasted for almost twenty-five years. In that time period, Tony didn’t take on a lover or even think about letting another person into his life. He got by on his excellent relationship with Steve and the few hands that had been there from the beginning. It was almost too easy to stay solitary and never let the world around him come close to hurting him ever again. The fact that Peter managed to get under the high walls of his fortress meant there was already no escaping it.

And now that their lips had met and Tony knew what it felt like to have Peter pressed against him – well, he almost didn’t want to fight it, anymore. Times changed and so did the way the world saw people with differences.

Unable to come to terms with what happened to him, Tony turned his head away from all of the advancements that occurred – allowing himself to hope for something better felt like a death wish.

Yet, the more time let himself get to know Peter, the more he felt himself wanting to give in to the hope – wanting to give in to Peter and the thing that could easily burn so intensely between them. At what point did the fear that ran his life get the better of him? When, after so much time of being by himself for both protection and self-preservation, was enough actually enough?

The answer to that question came in the form of a knock on the main house door halfway through day three of ignoring the entire situation. He was sock-clad in his kitchen with chicken salad halfway prepared when the sound echoed around the house – his heart kicking up in pace and volume with every resounding pound. Putting everything on the counter, Tony took a couple of seconds to pull in a few deep breaths before he could even think about turning around and answering the door. He wasn’t sure how he knew it was Peter there waiting for him, but something in his gut spoke loudly – the all-too-familiar feeling of rightness dragged him to the door without thought.

With so much adrenaline coursing through him, the door was within his grasp way quicker than he expected. The doorknob was already in his hand before he could think about what came next, and when Peter stood there on the other side, hat in his hands, a somber look in his eyes – Tony lost it. His momentum carried him over the threshold, long arms scooping Peter into him until they were pressed flush together, chest against chest. They shared the same breaths for a moment before lips were upon each other again, this kiss sure where the last one shared between them carried so much apprehension.

Their lips stayed sealed together until Peter pushed against him, the movement just enough to bring his brain back to earth. His eyes searched Peter, Tony eager to understand what brought the distance between them this time.

Understanding the inner turmoil, Peter placed another soft kiss on Tony’s lips, his eyes flashing with mischief and want. “You’re gonna crush my hat,” Peter mumbled, a soft smile overtaking his lips. “Invite me in, cowboy.”

“Oh. Yeah. Fuck – please come in, Pete.”

Tony didn’t hesitate to step back, his heart was racing, and limbs were shaking, but the chance he wanted was right in front of him – and he sure as hell was going to take it; fear and past-precedence be damned. With Peter in front of him the way he was, so open and willing, trusting Tony to make the right decision – he felt like he could take on the world.

Peter walked into the house just enough for Tony to get the door shut before he was manhandling long limbs. Tony’s back pressed against the heavy wood with a gentle push and answering thud. Now that the hat was no longer in sight, Tony took the opportunity to press their bodies back together, the feeling of Peter against him head to toe so intoxicating – literally everything he ever dreamed he could want.

Their lips pressed and pushed together, the never-ending battle of who controlled what continuing throughout the dance to Tony’s bedroom. Landing in a heap like they did, Peter ended up between Tony’s bare thighs, his hands passing across the goose fleshed skin there. Tony threw his head back with every caress, the weight of another man on top of him so foreign and exciting after so many years with only his own hand for company.

A soft nose pressed against the length of Tony’s neck, the exhaled air and light caress dragging a light moan from deep within. Lips traced veins and bare skin until Peter had the lobe of Tony’s ear in his mouth, soft kisses placed around the shell almost enough to end things before they really got started. Tony tensed up, his body desperately fighting itself with every touch and kiss.

“It’s alright, Tony. It’s alright,” Peter whispered, his fingers finding Tony’s to tangle them together tightly. There was a quick shift until their eyes were locked and Peter was gazing down at him with so much lust and affection. He wanted so desperately to give in that his stomach was churning – the need and anxiety battled with each other every step of the way.

Instead of continuing the heavy petting from before, Peter kept their gazes locked – his hands running lightly down and around, then up and back until all of Tony relaxed. He used eyes and lips and arms to smash the surface of what Tony thought reality was, only to bring the truth to the forefront. His desire, the melting hot feeling of being consumed – there was merit to it, and it was returned so deliciously.

Sensing that Tony was finally settled, Peter got back to work – his lips trailed down Tony’s neck, across his collarbones and pecs with nips and licks following that very same path. He paused at each nipple, giving each nub a rundown until both were peaked and hard – the flesh sensitive to every touch now that the pleasure neurons were firing. The softest stubble of Peter’s five o’clock shadow drew soft sounds of joy from Tony’s lips – the idea of having beard burn on his body was insanely attractive; almost too much for his wrung-out soul.

Peter eventually stopped between his legs, that warm tongue of his worming out to trace along Tony’s length, down drawn up balls, across his perineum, and settling against his still tense pucker. He lathered the outside of the muscle with sweeps of a soft tongue and warm kisses – Peter’s ministrations dragging Tony even further under than before; his entire being was ablaze with the best kind of fire and heat.

Nimble fingers spread Tony’s cheeks for more room as Peter upped the stakes and started to go at Tony’s hole with vigor. Little by little, Tony felt the tip of Peter’s tongue press against his rim, each inch of it pressing in easier as the moments past. Every brush got Tony to open up a little further, his legs widening with each lick and press across his most private place.

Soon, a thumb joined in on the action, Peter pressing the digit in without any sort of preamble. Feeling a bit fuller, Tony forced his head up to take in the blissed-out look on Peter’s face. Though he was the one delivering all the pleasure at the moment, Peter looked like he belonged right where he was, settled between Tony’s legs bringing them one step closer to finally falling over the edge – together; the way it should be.

A quick fumble with the bedside table had lube in Peter’s hand, his fingers slick with it before either man could even blink. The added addition of long fingers to the already tantalizing push and pull of tongue and hole had Tony on edge, his cock almost completely untouched until that point. He let one, and then two fingers press into him without complaint – it’d been a long time since he even used fingers on himself, let alone allowing another person to do so. By the time Peter tried to push in with a third finger, Tony was panting with want – the tight bow of his body racked up and ready to release upon the slightest instance of a command.

The clench of muscle and heat around Peter’s fingers must’ve finally been enough for him – he gently removed his fingers from Tony’s ass and quickly fumbled with the lube bottle, the cap and his fingers a sticky-slick combination. While he worked that out, Tony tried not to mourn the fullness, his brain doing its best to remind the rest of him that Peter’s cock was inches away – and probably just as eager to drive home as Tony was.

About to turn over onto his belly, Tony was stopped by Peter’s hand on his shoulder. He gave him a curious look, his head tilting to the side in question.

“I want to be able to see your face,” Peter replied simply, the hand on Tony’s shoulder moving easily to press against his cheek. His thumb traced under Tony’s cheek bone – the caress filled with affection and meant to be calming.

Settling back against the mattress, Tony let out a small sigh. Peter immediately laid down over him, his weight pressing Tony even further into the bed. They shared a look as Peter shifted and moved, the head of his dick pressing against Tony’s entrance almost unexpectedly. With the slightest pressure, Peter popped inside of him, the stretch and burn there, but barely noticed.

Instead, Tony kept his eyes on Peter, their eyes dancing together with lust and want and need and safety – the intrinsic feeling of the rightness between them easing the way with every slow roll of Peter’s hips. Fully seated, Peter broke the gaze, resting his forehead against the side of Tony’s neck, instead. His lips were like liquid fire against Tony’s skin – every piece of him entering into that stage of delicious sensitivity.

“Oh god, Pete. You feel – “ Tony cut himself off when Peter started to thrust, the pleasure of it all robbing him of any tangible communication skills. Moans and pants filled the space instead, the pitch of his noises climbing in volume and intensity with every thrust.

Like most things between them so far, their coupling stayed pretty silent. Peter used touch to talk, instead – his hands gripped Tony’s hips, then shifted to press tightly into the thighs he was now holding up for better leverage for his own hips to thrust and move and roll in all of the right spots. He pressed kisses against Tony’s sweaty skin, and when things got really good, he let his teeth dig into the spot where neck and shoulder meet.

Tony felt his orgasm come on in little increments. His stomach filled with an untouchable heat. The warmth spread from there, down his limbs until each of his digits was completely overcome. When all was said and done, Tony felt the flare of that heat settle into the corner of his heart, the immensity of it dragging him down and under – his body and soul finally free.

Lips pressed against his ear again, Peter’s repeated “come on, come on – give in to me,” the soundtrack of first his orgasm, and then Peter’s right after. His voice shifted, Peter’s mumbled “Tony!” deep and gravely – low in the way that only something satisfying could bring out of someone.

Collapsing in a heap of limbs and sweat and the glorious scent of sex, Tony kept Peter wrapped up tightly against his chest – the thought of either of them going anywhere anytime soon more than Tony could possibly take. Peter was here now – the place in Tony’s arms belonged to him and this experience did nothing but drive that truth home.

He let a grin slip over his exhausted lips – the sedated look following him all the way into the deepest hour of sleep Tony Stark ever got.

Later, when cum and sweat and apprehension were washed away, Peter pulled Tony into the circle of his arms, the still wet strands of floppy hair resting against Peter’s chin. They laid in silence for a while, Tony’s only movement the soft brush of fingers up and back down a lean back.

“Thank you,” Tony mumbled, his arms tightening their hold.

Peter pressed kiss after kiss against whatever skin of Tony’s he could reach in their reclined position, his own grip tightening. “I’ll chase that hurt of yours, Tony. Just stay right here and we’ll get through it together.”

Glancing up, Tony let the words wash over him, let Peter see the way his promise affected him. They locked eyes for the hundredth time that day and with the utmost feeling of rightness, Tony nodded his head. He wanted to give in, wanted to take Peter up on the love and protection and companionship he was offering.

He nodded again, once more for emphasis, then tucked into the perfect Tony-sized spot against Peter’s side. Laying a soft kiss on the skin there, Tony felt himself sigh and relax – finally feeling himself giving in and letting go.

#starker #bobbie writes #give in to me #sorry for the repost #it didn't show up in the tag the first time #fingers crossed it does this time around #peter parker/tony stark

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avauntus · 3 years

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2020 favs: (short) fic recs

I am stealing this idea from @macgyver-sheriff, who has no clue who I am, but whose post I saw go across my dash. Thank you! 👋

Would you like some recs for the holiday season? - I too would like to share love for my favorite things I read that were written this year! <3

I’m going to do this in two parts - the short fics (10k or less, generally one-shot), and another post for the long or series fics I loved this year (it’s 2020, I figure we can use too much of a good thing?)

( @staidwaters - I’m ‘disqualifying’ your works because I’m biased, sorry! Look away! Unless you want recs!)

"Congratulations, Get Rich" (9,238 words) by Attila (The Untamed - modern AU)

Tomorrow is Chinese New Year, which means Wei Wuxian has to get all of his bad decisions out of the way tonight.

Lan Wangji, Lan Xichen, Jiang Cheng, Mianmian are all so screamingly perfect as modern versions of themselves in this, and it is KNOCK DOWN HILLARIOUS. Wei Wuxian is just a screaming queer disaster (affectionate) - as he should be.

Excerpt:

After a long beat, Lan Xichen sinks gracelessly into the chair Lan Wangji had been sitting in earlier. “I just want to be absolutely clear,” he says delicately, “that you are currently under the impression that my brother has no romantic feelings for you. That is what you’re saying to me right now, yes?”

“Yes?” Wei Wuxian says, feeling desperately confused. “Obviously? Why?”

“Because at least one of you is very stupid, and I’m trying to figure out who,” Lan Xichen tells him, sounding distracted. It’s the rudest thing Wei Wuxian has ever heard him say, and his mouth drops open slightly.

“caved to the careless” (6,708 words) by ilgaksu (The Untamed/MDZS - Song Lan/Xiao Xingchen)

Love is a choice you make - like this, and this, and this.

Have you ever read a writer whose work is so distinctly itself that you can feel yourself slipping in time even as you keep going? That’s not very articulate, but it’s the best way I can describe everything of ilgaksu’s I’ve read. Their fics are the same emotional register as having the breath knocked out of you after a fall. This was the first one I read, and I think it ends well-- with what Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen find along the path-- but it’s still heavy. Discussions of canon-compliant character death and grief/mourning here.

Excerpt:

He pauses. Until this very moment, he was unsure who to ask for. He has heard the rumours of the Yiling Patriarch’s ongoing residence here, about Zewu-jun’s seclusion: he’s dead, but even the dead are not free from gossip. But he remembers a courtyard, nearly two decades ago, and the weight of eyes some might have called angry in their intensity. He remembers those same eyes, and how for the wear of the intervening years, they had kept the same essence: longing, yearning, a kind of small unspoken grief.

Song Lan had a dream once. A dream of a sect, bound not by blood, but by a shared belief in the right path. So many things are only an inheritance: shame is one of them.

Love is a choice. Love is a choice, and you choose until you can’t.

“I am here,” he decides, carving the words into the dirt, every stroke of every character resolute, “To meet with Hanguang-jun. Please show this one the way to go.”

“Green River Running” (8,169 words) by @rain-hat (Love in the Moonlight - post-canon AU)

5+1: Kim Byeong-yeon returns to the land of the living.

I skimmed through Love in the Moonlight during my quarantine summer (distinguishable from my “quarantine spring” or “quarantine fall” only by fireworks), and immediately upon finishing, thought: “Psht, they killed off their best character.” And then, something happened that never happens -- I went on ao3 and found the exact thing I was looking for, written far better than I could have imagined. Kim Byeong-yeon is such a quiet yet powerfully subversive presence and the progression here is so masterfully done. This is true of all of rainhat’s work’s I’ve read, but this is a fine example-- I really treasure the warm humanism of them.

Excerpt:

People needed helping hands even more than they needed sympathetic ears, though. Over the last year, Hong Gyeong-rae and Byeong-yeon had built houses and planted crops side by side; negotiating with moneylenders here, helping small-folk secure their stores against bandits there. There was nothing courtly about Byeong-yeon’s capacity for labour, or his expectation of reward. Wherever he went, he worked from dawn to dusk, ate the food he was given, and slept under a roof if he was offered one.

It suited him, Hong Gyeong-rae thought, even though there was something outlandish about his gentle speech and palace manners in the midst of it all. But to behave in any other way would be untrue to his upbringing; nor was he the sort of man to whom it would occur to try. And after all, most people liked to be treated with courtesy; it did not come across as mockery from this solemn, severely dressed young man, who seemed to find no task too big or too small. Hong Gyeong-rae had seen him argue tax law with local councillors and stand up to highwaymen armed with nothing but a knife and staff. But he watched cooking pots for women who had to run to the fields to tide over the day’s labour, too; he wrote letters for them, and tolerated their fractious children and spoon-fed their bedridden elders, if that was what was called for.

“The Veritable Records of King Taejo: Year 2, Entry 208“ (9,857 words) by @sadviper (My Country: the New Age - Nam Seon-ho & Hwang Sung-rok slice-of-life)

Hwang Sung-rok eats his way to the bottom of a real estate scam, and Seon-ho and Yeon help (a little).

No one is out here doing it like SadViper. This is technically part of a series, but they can all be read separately. I did not realize I needed to see more of Nam Seon-ho in all his “type-A government official glory” until Viper started sketching him out for us, and as a bonus, we get to see Yeon, and Sung-rok as the world’s surliest caretaker (but don’t call him that). I have an authorial fallacy where I always think stories have to have some grand “plot” -- a “Maltese Falcon” to pull the reader along-- the genius of Viper’s work is she shows us exactly how interesting and important the day-by-day tiny choices and connections we make are, with an impeccable background of historical research to ground you in the setting.

Excerpt:

Nam Seon-ho was his master now. He was a strange one. He was a traitor, for helping the escaped Liaodong soldiers, but not, because he managed to wiggle his way back into Yi Seong-gye’s favor and was now a sixth-ranked inspector with the privilege of having personal audiences with the King. He was temperamental and belligerent from being the son of a slave mother and a lifetime subject of Lord Nam’s fantastic parenting philosophy. He was afflicted with perpetual guilt. And he was also one of the hardest working and most desperate people Sung-rok had ever known.

It was a terrible combination. He was not merely a disaster waiting to happen, but a disaster perambulating on two legs at the edge of a chasm. If Sung-rok intended to stay in service for long, he needed to find a way to cool down some of Seon-ho’s intensity, even though admittedly, it was what drew him to Seon-ho in the first place.

Thoughts like these plagued Sung-rok for a while. It was one thing to know a person; it was quite another thing to try to change them.

“Orison” (4,975 words) by @gravelghosts (aeli_kindara) (Supernatural 15x18 coda)

Cas says, I love you.

So! This rips my heart out, every time. All the times Dean imagines himself together with Cas...and then he imagines himself, if not happy, then thriving.

Jack: “What is the point...if everyone I care about is going to leave?”

Castiel: “The point is that they were here at all and you got to know them, you... When they're gone, it will hurt, but that hurt will remind you of how much you loved them.”

Excerpt:

The thing Dean tries to do is: listen.

Happiness isn’t in the having. It’s in just — being. It’s in just saying it, Cas tells him, and Dean’s whole heart is screaming, No, but he shuts his mouth. He listens. He listens like his life fucking depends on it, which it does, in more ways than one.

“Sky Full of Song” (6,632 words) by @drivingsideways (Supernatural, finale 15x20 fix-it, Dean/Cas)

Or: The One in which Cas ghosted Dean.

Look. Look. If Cas(tiel) can yank Dean Winchester out of Hell, celestial-scream at him not once but twice, burn out a woman’s eyes like an utter clown before thinking “Huh, an Earthly vessel, guess that’s not just bullshit, then,” and when they finally work it out, Dean greets them with a knife to the chest and THEN they’ll spend twelve years misunderstanding each other and bickering, you had better believe these two are going to be disasters even in Heaven. Drivingsideways gives us all of that dynamic, with the found family of Jack and Mary as facilitators, and the happy resolution, which of course includes a true form “roughly the size of your Chrysler Building.” <3

Excerpt:

The thing is, Castiel doesn’t want Dean to feel obligated.

Dean has a streak of self-sacrifice that's as wide as the Caspian Sea, and Castiel doesn't want to be any more of a chore or obligation than they have been to Dean for all the long years of their—brotherhood.

Castiel had shocked Dean, to the core of him, with their confession, and Castiel had seen the swirling confusion, the fear, the panic, the shit what do I say, what do I do—how do I stop him—

So, no, Castiel would not be paying a visit anytime soon.

Of course, if Dean evinced an interest in meeting them, then Castiel would not stay away.

Castiel isn't that cruel.

(They have, on occasion, been exactly that cruel, but they are trying to outgrow it.)

Dean is still their friend.

Dean knows how to reach them, if he wants to.

(see? disasters. haha)

“The Rough” (3,267 words) by anactoria (Supernatural, finale -15x20- ‘fix-it’)

Heaven can absolutely fucking wait.

Rec’ed for the concept more than the style (this is dialogue-heavy, as a lot of 15x20 fix-its tend towards), but I *love* this course-correction: After kicking around Heaven, Dean and Cas return to Earth to take their place as urban legends among the hunter community. Just for a while.

Excerpt:

But it isn’t life. That’s the thing. It’s awesome, but it isn’t life; life’s a hard, painful, infuriating mess, and Dean only got halfway through his own, and he feels cheated. For all he held it together for Sammy at the end, for all he tried to take Cas’s big moment-of-happiness speech on board, he feels cheated.

There’s supposed to be peace at the end. When you’re done.

Dean wasn’t done.

#other's fic #fic recs #2020: a year!#spn #my country: new age #the untamed #love in the moonlight

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sterling-silvers · 3 years

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Star Wars: The High Republic #2 Review

Ultimately a 7.5 out of 10, this installment was slightly better because of how Cavan Scott decided to advance the plot. While there some are nice nuggets of good-story telling and character interactions, even worse than last time, it’s bogged down with cardinal errors that truly make me question Scott’s competency as a writer for this story.

The issue comes right off the back end of Keeve being promoted to a Master Jedi and chronicles her first mission in the position. She is still dealing with the growing pains of what it means to be a Jedi which is depicted with her ongoing internalized self-doubt as well as her difficulty expressing certain Jedi mantras, such as “May the Force be with you.” Arguably exacerbating this bottled up uncertainty are the Keeve-proclaimed legends of Jedi Masters Sskeer, and identical Kobati twins Terec and Ceret. These twins are Bond-twins and as so are able to share the same mind and experiences of each other.

As they exit “hyperspace” (more on that later), the four masters come across the leftover demise of a ship that has been attacked. The Jedi were tasked with responding to the scrambled distress call that the ship had sent out sometime ago but, it seems as if they arrived too late. Both Keeve and one of the twins, using the Force, are able to sense survivors within the ransacked ship. As so, they board and enter. Almost as soon as they are inside, they are met with poisonous Nihilian ovax gas and utilize a device called “rebreathers” to mitigate the effects. Fully aware that the Nihil have raided this ship, they continue their investigation and split up to cover more ground. Traversing in groups of two, Terec – who is accompanying Sskeer – can sense the Trandoshan experiencing extreme trauma which means that Ceret can feel it as well via their bond; specifically, Sskeer is having flashbacks to the exact moment he lost his arm in the Battle of Kur.

On Keeve’s side of things, she and Ceret come across the corpses of a Hutt and Gamorrean guards. Upon further examination, it seems the Hutt was killed via an amalgam of stab wounds, blaster bolts, and nagnol poisoning – the latter being a toxic natural gas, capable of disrupting starship sensors, poisoning beings based on dosage, and a key element in the Nihil smokescreen.

On Sskeer’s end, he comes across a barley crop and together the Jedi deduce that the Hutt was capitalizing on the grain shortage that has occurred thanks to the Great Disaster. As the twins work on trying to ascertain where exactly the crop came from, Ceret is attacked by a Nihil that has been left behind; this causes both twins to feel the pain but, the wounds are not fatal. Sskeer charges ahead and chases after the Nihil raider, who is already suffering from serious injuries previously sustained in the raid. While Sskeer is perturbed that he cannot sense the attacker he is able to fatally strike down the assailant; coming to gripes that he has just killed, Sskeer goes on a rampage and continually slashes the bifurcated carcass only be brought back to his senses when Keeve addresses him.

Afterward, the Masters relay their findings to Marshall Avar Kriss and with the analysis from Master Maru, come to the conclusion that the barley – specifically Vratixia Renanicus – is a key ingredient in bacta; moreover, the shipment likely came from the Sedri System – principally, Sedri Minor. With this in mind, Kriss assigns Sskeer and Ceret to got to Sedri while she and Jedi Master Rwoh convene with Keeve and Terec to collect the Hutt ship that is breaking trading sanctions. Keeve moves to go with Sskeer but, Sskeer stonewalls her to stay with Terec.

Arriving on the planet, Sskeer is met with unwecolmedness by a citizen, Kalo Sulman who makes it clear that the Jedi’s presence will interfere with the colony’s independence. As the two are discussing, Ceret sees a Rodian in the crops motioning him to come over – as Ceret goes deep into the brush he is attacked by Drengir.

Back on the ship, Kriss and Keeve are discussing the remains of the corpse that Sskeer has left; Kriss reprimands Keeve for not telling her sooner but, also admonishes herself for not looking deeper into the signs the Force were giving her – such as not being able to hear Sskeer’s “song”.

As this happens, Terec – who is being medically assessed by Rwoh – screams out in pain feeling his brother’s anguish and relays this to Kriss. Kriss immediately contacts Sskeer and asks if Ceret is with him; when Sskeer realizes that the twin is gone rushes into the fields only to find his lightsaber.

What I liked:

A growing plot pivoting off of the bacta manufacturing that was touched on by Jedi Grandmaster Veter; this is much welcomed world building within the parameters that is the High Republic.

A very competent and aptly written investigation, analysis, and deductive reasoning done by the Jedi as a whole. The way the Jedi got on the ship, looked for clues, relayed their information to the data analyst/forensic expert, and hash out a plan to go to the planet where the clue originated from was great and definitely resonated with the idea that these Jedi are analogous to Texas Rangers. They certainly seemed like proto-Jedi investigators, not unlike future Jedi Master Tera Sinube.

The continued delving into Jedi Master Sskeer. I like the balancing act that is being conducted with his character. He’s a virtuous being that is dealing with trauma but, that doesn’t, ultimately, stop him from being a Jedi – it just tests it. He is still a “knight” and applies that chivalry when it needs to shine. Witnessing his accident and how it is affecting his psyche, ability to use the Force, and his morality is the highlight of this issue. This is what should be focused on to establish WHY Keeve looks up to him – give her these thoughts in accordance with herself doubt.

The dynamics of Ceret and Terec as interconnected Force Twins (could be seen as “Dyad Force-bond” inspired). Their link is a double-edged sword that reminds me of the Tomax and Xamot Paoli from Cobra Command. The original Star Wars was centered around Force sensitive twins and it’s nice to see that element played with more here – haven’t really seen that since the Mikkian twin sisters – Tiplee and Tiplar – in Clone Wars.

The holster to the lightsabers – it’s a nice, subtle way to convey how the Jedi of this era are more in a time of peace and reservation. To have a weapon holstered means that they have to take the extra moment to consider brandishing it. This underlying detail syncs really well with the time period considering that most of their enemies would be lifeforms and could be reasoned with – “life is precious.”

This can be seen as succinct yet distinct dichotomy between this era Jedi and the Skywalker Saga Jedi, as their sabers were without a holster and normally fashioned around the hips allowing for both instant access and draw in an age encompassed by war with droids – “droids are replaceable.”

What I disliked:

The application of Keeve’s personality traits continues to feel like a mismatch for the particular time period and volk she supposedly has been training and studying with; Ezra Bridger – who by the High Republic’s standards would not even be a Jedi – acts more like a Jedi than Keeve does. If anything, the uncertainty, quirks, and misapplication of Jedi traditions would have fit Ezra WAY more than it does (or really doesn’t) with Keeve. The concept itself is fine but, the iteration is what is flawed. Keeve is fast feeling more like a Jedi from post revenge Revenge of the Sith – like Kanan Jarrus – that a High Republic Jedi.

The sloppy fan service – there is a scene not only of a Hutt but, the Hutt is dead with its tongue out, surrounded by dead Gamorrean guards. It would be one thing if we just had a dead Hutt, I can even look past the Gamorrean guards (even though it would be nice if we saw this race in more roles than guards – there are some but, it does seem like guards is niche as far as the universe is concerned) but, to also have the Hutt dead with its tongue out to me just screams “DO YOU REMEMBER THAT ONE SCENE IN RETURN OF THE JEDI WITH JABBA?!!!” Just, how much are you going to dilute a reference? Make the fan service substantive and or just not in your face – the Rodian luring Ceret is a good version of fan service; present, notable, but not impeding in terms of the narrative.

What I Marked Off:

The completely wrong depiction of hyperspace; Star Wars Hyperspace is blue and certainly not immersed in stars when one is traveling through it. This error is on the very first page of the issue. This shook me to my very core and yanked me out of the immersion. IT’S THE FIRST PAGE! HOW DOES ONE MESS UP ON THE FIRST PAGE?!!! To add grave insult to mortal injury, hyperspace is a FOCAL element of the High Republic Era – you CAN NOT mess this up. Ultimately, it’s a team mess up but, Scott gets the brunt of this reprimand because this is his story and arguably his script is the one that should be guiding the artist.

The fact that Scott continues to fail to make the necessary references about crucial dynamics, events, and positions within this era. I had to learn from a YouTube video (link below) that Sskeer is actually the “Steward” to Kriss’ Marshall role. As of issue #3, this position is still not established to be held by Sskeer which is a real shame as it adds more substance and weight to his plight as a perturbed Jedi. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPeRcyJE5dk&feature=emb_title

In summary, this issue was a 7.5 out of 10; slightly better than issue one because of how the writer decided to advance the plot and who he decided to advance the plot with. The genuinely good moments of story-telling are bogged down by ineptitude that can literally throw one out of the immersion. Nonetheless, if you can tolerate the faults there are elements to enjoy, especially when it comes to the characters. I hope those elements promptly become prominent.

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clexa--warrior · 3 years

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There’s a new group of villains on Fear The Walking Dead.

Well not entirely new. These are the same people who’ve been scrawling “The end is the beginning” everywhere. The same people with the submarine who are looking for Morgan who took the Magical Key from the bounty hunter way back at the beginning of Season 6.

I admit, I’m just kind of tired at this point. Tired of all the bullshit and bad writing and the tedious characters and the predictable stories. Tired of the parade of mediocre villains. Bone weary. And yet here I am, still reviewing this damn show.

Let’s take a little walk down memory lane, shall we?

TV’s Greatest Villains

At the beginning of Season 5, after the Most Horrible Villain Of Any Walking Dead Show was taken care of at long last, we got a new group of bad guys who . . . just wanted their warehouse back? And directions to an oil refinery?

Truly, these were now The Most Horrible Villains Of Any Walking Dead Show Ever.

Logan (played by a woefully underutilized Matt Frewer) was the head honcho of these bad apples and he fooled Morgan’s group into flying a plane they didn’t know how to fly far, far away to help some strangers in another part of the vast continent of Texas. Then he . . . moved back into his warehouse! The bastard.

After half a season of trying to fix the plane so they could fly back across the Pacific Ocean (which we all know separates the two halves of Texas) Logan tries to pretend like he’s a decent guy and fools the Morganites into showing him where the oil refinery is. Dastardly Logan! Then, just when Morgan and Logan decide that their names are similar enough that they might as well be friends, the Rangers show up!

They show up on horses with rifles and expertly kill Logan and every single member of his crew but for reasons (reasons!) they spare Morgan and the Morganites. It turns out that Logan was working for the evil witch queen of Lawton, Virginia—Truly The Most Horrible Villain Of Any Walking Dead Show Ever (Seriously). She is so evil that she kills the people working for her, who helped lead her to the oil refinery, and spared some people she didn’t know who weren’t loyal to her at all for reasons.

Yes, you heard me. Reasons! You don’t get to know the reasons. That’s not how scripts work. Scripts are supposed to be confusing, opaque and riddled with plot holes and inexplicable character choices.

Anyways, Virginia and the Rangers with their horses and their cowboy hats and their idyllic Texas aesthetic become the new Big Bads sometime in the second half of Season 5. Morgan and Friends make a PSA documentary to make sure anyone wandering from gas station to gas station is able to know who to call (GHOSTBUSTERS!) if they’re in trouble (which, like, yeah it’s a zombie apocalypse) because Morgan really wants to make up for all the bad things he’s done and so do all his friends.

Virginia is very mean, though, and so she makes a PSA, too, and that pisses Morgan off so bad that he takes his people far, far away to an abandoned Western-themed park-town filled with zombies and they make another PSA on the way that’s even more amazing and magical but a dude dies making it, marking the Best Walking Dead Death of All Time in the process. Seriously a dude decides it’s so important to film a selfie shot for the PSA that he dies when a bridge that’s collapsing surprisingly collapses! And then everyone is very sad!

Then, uh, after a spell at the new town that has no resources or water because it’s a theme park town instead of a real town, Wes and Alicia paint some stuff and June and John Dorie get married and Daniel plays some guitar and sings and Frank Dillane is like “Holy shit I’m so glad I bailed on this show” and then Virginia comes because Morgan calls her because instead of walking somewhere else they decide they should call the Evil Witch Queen Of Lawton so she can rescue them by splitting them all up (even Skidmark the cat!) and then the season ends with Morgan getting swarmed by zombies but don’t worry he’s still alive and they’ll tell us as much in a trailer that comes out before Season 6 because AMC is criminally addicted to spoiling their own shows for no reason on social media and . . . and . . .

Somewhere between Season 5’s finale and Season 6’s premiere AMC and showrunners Ian Goldberg and Andrew Chambliss must have put their heads together with Scott Gimple and decided that the Rangers and Virginia were actually super dull villains, just like the last few villains (I skipped the whole Vultures plot because they were actually so stupid they put the stadium under siege but still let Madison and co. go out scavenging because somehow they never read the Siege 101 manual or something).

Anyways, for reasons that must be obvious by now, somebody must have pointed out that Virginia is not a very good villain after all, partly because she’s just not that convincing but mostly because she made a goddamn copycat PSA and someone thought that was actually a cool story because there is no God and life’s not fair and this is also why we can’t have nice things, son.

And they must have realized that the Rangers are a like a cartoon version of what might happen in Texas after a zombie outbreak (just compare this clown show to the far more realistic Vatos gang from Season 1 of The Walking Dead). All these realizations must have felt strangely repetitive after what I can only imagine were similar revelations about Martha, the Vultures and Logan. So many revelations, so little useful insight or meaningful changes!

The Believers

In any case, they had June kill Virginia after a weird series of events that also saw one of the only good characters left on this godforsaken show get killed by yet another brat, and came up with The Believers, a group almost entirely inspired by The Monkees. These totally realistic folk live underground where they grow crops and embalm zombies and talk about how you need to be able to “see” when you look at this one creepy zombie they have entwined in vines in their basement. They’re led by a guy named Teddy played by John Glover who must really be down on his luck to take a role on this ridiculous show, though he’s actually creepy as a villain so that’s something. But no, I’m not going to feel any hope or optimism because fool me once shame on me, fool me again and George W. Bush, man. He has something to say about this.

Wes and Alicia and Al and Luciana all find their way to these people. I honestly can’t remember how they found them, but they show up to scout things out. They get interviewed like we’re back in Alexandria. Things go bad when Wes runs into his long-lost brother and ends up killing him after a scuffle over a gun. Wes’s brother has had a little too much of that Kool-Aid if you know what I mean. Wes isn’t too shook up about it. Remember when the entire brothers Dixon conflict between Merle and Daryl played out over the course of one single episode of The Walking Dead? Yeah, me neither.

Luciana says stuff because she’s still on this show for some reason. She says stuff a few times and people say stuff back to her. Al checks an embalmed zombie with a helmet on thinking it might be her lover girl from Season 5, because you totally embalm zombies with their helmets still on, but it’s not. Boy I was really worried there for a second!

Alicia sets the embalmed zombies on fire so they can get away and the others escape but Alicia doesn’t and then she has to have a whole entire conversation with Teddy and it’s pretty damn awkward when she tells him “You wanna kill me? That’s not gonna happen.”

Teddy’s like “whoa damn I was going to kill you but now that’s not going to happen crap” and Alicia’s like “So there, Teddy. You jerk face with your crazy-man beard.”

He knows something about Madison somehow. And he wants to “save you, Alicia” but “I don’t need saving” she tells him and then he talks in more cryptic circles. Teddy’s been looking for someone like Alicia for a long, long time and she’s like “listen old man at least I got some lines this episode!” which, to be fair, is true.

THE END. CREDITS ROLL.

Verdict

Yes, I am clearly mocking just about everything about this show. But I didn’t come up with this crap. I didn’t come up with Martha and the ethanol, or the plane and the beer-balloon, or Totally Pointless Logan, or Ginny and her boring ass cowboys. Maybe Teddy will be a better villain than all these. To be fair, he is a better villain already in a lot of ways. Then again, the bar set by the Vultures, Martha, Logan and Virginia is not very high. It’s so low, it’s less a bar and more of a speed bump.

So while Teddy is far more intriguing than the rest, and it’s even possible that Glover’s brief appearance here in this episode was better than the sum of all the other villains in this show since Season 4, I imagine they’ll find a way to screw him up also and then, as soon as he’s worn out his welcome, replace him with some other group of bad guys. The Shouters, a group of post-apocalyptic crazy people who wear zombie faces and shout at each other really loud, led by a bald woman named Alphapha.

Here’s the thing.

We need more than just Good Guys vs Bad Guys. There are other struggles to work with in fiction. Friction between the group that causes realistic, compelling internal strife. Survival against the elements and just the struggle of surviving in a world laid low by a pandemic, maybe without creature comforts like walkie-goddamn-talkies. Or perhaps a compelling story about a survivalist group at odds with a Native American tribe over water rights, whose intertwined family histories are marred by murder and revenge, where our heroes find themselves torn between both sides of a bloody fight they know very little about.

Yeah, what a notion.

Like I said at the very top of this review, I’m tired. I’m tired of Fear The Walking Dead. I’m tired of the same crap happening over and over again, another absurd bad guys who ultimately make the same fatal choice: They mess with Morgan Jones. NOBODY messes with Morgan Jones.

Maybe Morgan can make a PSA about how mean and delusional Teddy is and then Teddy can make a PSA about how The End Is The Beginning, Actually, Morgan You Twit. It’s just all nonsense at this point and it has been since the end of Season 3. We aren’t dealing with actual stories about real people. We’re watching a cartoon with two-dimensional cartoon villains and a bunch of uninteresting flat characters. Except a cartoon would be more fun.

What is the point of this show now? It’s like a goofier version of The Walking Dead, which also suffers from too many villain groups at this point and too many characters but not this level of crappy writing (usually).

Let me predict the plot for the remainder of Season 6 and likely part of Season 7 if AMC is actually going to let the current showrunners continue driving this show into the ground:

Teddy wants the key from Morgan so he can use it to activate the nuclear bombs on the nuclear sub that’s in the middle of Texas (because Texas, you recall, is separated by the Pacific Ocean which has dried up because ZOMBIES and the sub is there now). He wants to nuke the planet because he wants to save everyone because they’re weak probably. From this nuclear wasteland, new life will spring eternal and his cult—well protected in their underground parking garage with their cute little gardens—will be the new rulers of the world. Or at least of Texas which—we know because of geography class—accounts for approximately 57% of Earth’s land mass.

Look, I’m sorry. I’m really truly sorry but if this show continues to be a joke I don’t know why we should take it seriously. A mocking review if only fitting for a show that continues to make a mockery of itself. AMC has the resources and the wherewithal to produce a better zombie show and quite frankly audiences deserve one. There was nothing fundamentally awful about “The Holding” so I’m honestly not fully sure why I’m in such a snarky mind frame, but there was nothing very good about, either, and it’s just plain as day to me that they’re already falling into the same traps they keep falling into over and over and over again. Meet the new bad guy, same as the old bad guy. It’s all so predictable.

Because they don’t really learn from their mistakes, or because even if they do they just don’t know how to course correct. That’s the problem when you just don’t have much talent but nobody steps in and says “enough is enough!”

Because seriously, my droogies, enough is enough already.

#ftwd #erik kain #i just read the reviews #i may watch this one because reasons and adc

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blodreina-noumou · 4 years

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hello! so this is going to be a string of asks about some thoughts™️ I’ve had about the 100 and it’s continued technology versus life struggle that seems (at least to me) as something being subtly implied in s7. This might be really long and I’m really really sorry if it’s annoying but i just wanted to share with you (and see what you think) bc the way you analyze parts of the 100 is so well done! Also this was literally supposed to be a short intro but apparently I talk too much 😅 Sorry! 1/?

So this starts with a Random Thought I had in the shower about planet/moon survivability and technology and how the two almost seem juxtaposed between sanctum, bardo, and skyring. Starting with sanctum, it obviously wasn’t meant to be inhabited by humans. Gabriel even mentions it (in the latter half of s6 I believe) where he says something along the lines of “life here didn’t evolve beyond reptiles but humans found a way.”

I mean hell, if you need a whole ass Radiation Shield to live then the place probably isn’t meant to be inhabited. Yet sanctum obviously has quite sophisticated and advanced technology in the form of mind drives plus the aforementioned radiation shield. However (and this is where some things don’t add up/continuity becomes a big fucko-wucko, which is not surprising at all since every tv show with 5+ seasons just ends up saying fuck continuity, no im not bitter) their living spaces all the way from Clarkekru house to the tavern and the Palace just seem, for lack of a better word, normal. They’re nothing like Becca’s Lab from s4 (which would be on par with the level of tech mind drives are on) but their living quarters are also nothing like the shacks grounders/arkers lived in or the cottage on skyring. I also know that the mind drives were given to the Primes from a society of high tech but that doesn’t explain why the original sanctumkru used their knowledge to make something like a radiation shield but then just didn’t bother incorporating that level of technology into their lifestyle. (Also wouldn’t they all be used to living amongst high tech?? Like that should be their normal which would make a regular ole 21-century lifestyle very foreign and old-fashioned so why return to it???) Next up we have Bardo which, from what we’ve heard and glimpsed so far is a place that actually does line up with a high tech society but we know nothing about the planet’s survivability. The only thing we know about the place is what we got from Octavia trying to escape and it looks like the native bardoans built a huge man-made structure complete with a forest that looks to span at least an acre and multiple floors which means they’re either above ground in an incredibly spread out high-rise building OR, for all we know, they could even be underground in a highly upgraded bunker-esque situation.

Whatever the case is, it seems like all human life functions indoors which leads us to assume that the outside (i.e. the planet itself) is, much like sanctum, dangerous and unsuited for inhabitation. Lastly we have Skyring. No technology of any kind, anywhere to be seen. The only shelter available is a run down cottage and yet this is the one planet that is unquestionably survivable and inhabitable and is also the closest thing we’ve seen to earth complete with forests, lush grass, and farmable earth. (It does bother me though that we’ve yet to see or hear about animal life because no matter how pretty a place is, the first indication that something is wrong is silence. If green woods are silent and you can’t see anything that is moving and alive then something’s very wrong. I have, however, chalked this up to this being just a detail overlooked or something post didn’t want to bother with/budget restrictions. Also we do get a mention of jellyfish in the water but having no mammals or even insects on land just bothers me haha) Anyway, it just seemed interesting to me how the presence (and abundance/sophistication) of technology seems to constantly juxtaposed with life. The 100 even starts on the basis that technology (ALLIE) destroyed the world and life as we know it. I know this was super long and sorry if it’s annoying lol but I just wanted to share (and am still indecisive about whether or not I want to post stuff plus I like your meta posts lmao)

These are all good thoughts, and a great breakdown of what life looks like on each planet! Thank you for sharing.

I tend to agree with what you’ve come up with, plot holes and all. It IS strange to me that the most apparently liveable planet is used solely as a prison. I think, on some level, BardoKru is trying to deprive the people they send there of any sort of technological advantage or luxury. It’s like those “troubled kids” camps some very misguided parents send their children to. They want them to struggle and work with their hands and build character, or whatever. Even the name “Penance” shows that they intend the no-tech lifestyle on that planet to be a punishment. I imagine they send prisoners there because, as you said, it’s the ONLY planet they know of where people can survive without technology. (The lack of animals/insects, except for, apparently, jellyfish, of all things, definitely bothers me too.) Bardo appears to be either a bunker or a biodome (I like the high-tech bunker theory, personally,) and, as you mentioned, Sanctum is not livable in the long-term. Part of what also makes Sanctum unlivable is the fact that it appears to rely very heavily on that caste system - without the Nulls and other redbloods to work, maintaining the crops, the Primes could not enjoy the level of comfort that they had. And they only had access to so much technology - things like the mind drives were precious, as they couldn’t make any more of them. I think that can go a long ways in explaining how Sanctum is so low-tech. Put all of that together with the way the Primes were running their own little murdercult, and you can almost see how they wanted to play royalty to their serfs in their little world. I also think something Levitt said it interesting. “Let me guess, Sanctum? Well, unlike Dev, I do know everything.” This implies that BardoKru knows about Sanctum, and, for whatever reason, chose not to go there until NapKru shows up. We’ve also heard the phrase, “They weren’t Eligius,” from Gabriel, meaning BardoKru was not originally from Becca’s company. They went space-traveling for different reasons, and likely used different technology to do it. (A lot of theories are floating around saying that BardoKru are the remnants of Cadogan’s people.) It is interesting how, as of now, Bardo = high tech, Sanctum = low tech, Skyring/Penance = no tech. I’m enjoying the different versions of the planets, and their people, even if the worldbuilding doesn’t hold up to a ton of scrutiny. Anyway - sorry I couldn’t come up with anything super cohesive, but thank you for sharing your thoughts! The Bardo/Sanctum/Skyring differences are going to continue to come into play, and it’s good to keep in mind how it all works in each place!

#asks #reachforinfinity #the 100 meta #the 100 spoilers #the 100 s7

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bookcoverbasics · 3 years

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Book Covers Gone Wrong: 1

Until now, every example of a book cover has been a positive one: I have been selecting the best from the newest releases of large and small traditional publishers. But there is much to be learned as well from seeing where a book cover has gone wrong.

The biggest misstep is usually found in the application of the typography. All too often perfectly good artwork is torpedoed by inept type design and this is where the focus of the following critiques will lie. (There will be future posts about missteps in image creation as well.)

This sort of problem lies, sadly enough, most often with the amateur designer or the author attempting to create their own cover. The art will usually be fine since it would probably have been obtained from a stock image source (though there will be a few words about this shortly). Where the process unravels is when the “designer” attempts to add the title and other wordage.

(There are, of course, countless examples of where an author will attempt to create their own art as well. These are, almost invariably, catastrophes that are outside the scope of this blog. Hundreds of these can be found at Lousy Book Covers. )

Bad covers are not limited to the amateur designer. Even the most established and experienced of traditional publishers can stumble. The majority of examples are probably going to fall in the middle ground: from among the great many independent publishers who have sprung up in recent years, most of whom specialize in ebooks rather than print.

On the whole, I am going to try to focus on professional and semiprofessional publishing, both established and independent. I will include amateur efforts only when they serve a specific point.

I had promised a word about stock images... I have already expressed my thoughts and suggestions about these in numerous earlier posts: how these images can be used and how they can be misused. I won’t go much into all of that again. I do want to point out one thing that is probably more the fault of the artist than the would-be designer: and that is creating an illustration meant to be sold as a potential cover image in which no provision is made for the addition of typography. One can hardly place full blame on a designer forced to work around an image that leaves no room for a title or author’s name. As I pointed out in an earlier post, at least a third of the cover art should be set aside for typography. By the same token, someone designing a book should not purchase an image that does not do this.

Following are a few examples that illustrate some fundamental missteps. I will be focusing my comments largely on the use of typography...

The three covers above are all from the same small independent publisher. They share many of the same issues as well as having unique problems of their own. The typography on the left-hand cover is unnecessarily complex. There are far too many typefaces and two of these are highly ornate. Their decorativeness already makes them difficult to read: placing the series title and tagline vertically and adding embossing to the author’s name only exacerbates the difficulty. Finally, little thought was given to the cropping of the image.

The title on the middle cover suffers from spacing. There is far too much distance between “Journey” and “Darkness” and the word “of” is floating off by itself. And with the spacing tightened up, the title could be made larger. The placement of the title is unfortunate as well: It is placed directly across the head of the dragon. The center of the cover---where the eye would naturally go---is left essentially empty of anything informative or visually interesting.

The right-hand cover suffers from the same sort of over-complexity as the left-hand one. An already ornate typeface is made even more so by adding beveling and an outer glow. No attention was paid to letter spacing, so that the script does not flow continuously (an issue addressed in an earlier Typography post).

These are further examples from the same publisher and they share most of the same problems as the previous trio. The letters in the title of the left-hand book are left unconnected, there is too much space between the lines and, again, “of” is left adrift. The use of the art is much better in this example, however. The middle and right-hand covers have over-complicated typefaces as well as at least one too many. And, again, these are made even more difficult to read by adding special effects. “Where” and “turns to” are inexplicably different point sizes (as are “Where” and “sounds like” in the middle cover). Additionally, in the right-hand cover, there is too little contrast between portions of the type and the background. Finally, the last cover would seem to be suffering from the “kitchen sink syndrome,” where the designer has given in to the urge to include everything they think might be important---including the intrusive yin-yang symbol. Likewise, there are a few problems with the art in the center cover, but I will come back to this one in a later post.

It is rarely a very good idea to make letters into rebus-like pictographs: visual puns such as the crescent-shaped C in the word “Crescent” in the left-hand cover. This is usually redundant and unnecessary...and at worst simply looks like cleverness for the sake of cleverness. There is also a real danger of rendering the word more difficult to read...and anything that interferes with the easy and immediate readability of the title is not a good idea. The title---and the cover---are also burdened with the addition of gratuitous decorative devices that add nothing. The middle cover stumbles on letter spacing, with far too much space between the final E in THERE, the apostrophe and the S. The same holds true for the space between the F and A in FAITH...and the word is partially obscured by the addition of shading that causes it to partially blend into the background. Additionally, the cover has far too many visual elements, giving it a cluttered, photo album effect, resulting in a lack of focus. The right hand cover is a particular egregious example of ignoring letter spacing when using a script face.

It is worth taking a closer look to see all the ways this went wrong.

Even long-established traditional publishers can stumble. In the examples above there is far too little contrast between most of the type and the background. This makes the text difficult to read, especially in thumbnail form. This is especially the case with the author’s name in the third cover. In the left-hand example, the addition of embossing only makes the problem of readability worse, something the shading and texturing on the fourth cover also does.

In this example from the same publisher an otherwise first-rate design misses the mark by a hair’s breadth. It is never a very good idea to place red against black and probably a worse idea to use a dark red with little saturation. While the title is still fairly easy to read, it really could stand more contrast, as can be seen in the thumbnail version. The tagline, however, is impossible to read at any size.

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notdirk · 5 years

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A mini guide on Dirk’s mannerisms

A mini guide Part 2: Electric Boogaloo Wanted to do a second one, if you haven’t already you should totally check out my Jake guide. It’s pretty cool.

So here we are, where making this HAPEN. I obviously am not a Dirk Strider expert but I hope the shit I have to say clears things up, or helps you with roleplay/writing a little.

Dirk is a tough cookie to break down, he’s wordy in 2 main ways. Roseways: He’s wordy like Rose in the sense that he has a very extensive vocabulary. Daveways: He’s wordy like Dave via fruitful metaphors. Both of these combine to form being wordy in ways that I can only describe as Dirkways, he’s like the Verbal Antichrist.

I’d describe it with a Dirk translator, being: INPUT: "What you're doing is stupid."

OUTPUT: "All I can tell you is that the artifice you're performing here, is absolutely farcical."

So Dirk swears. He swears a lot, holding the title for the alpha kid who cusses the most. Thing is with his cussing, he doesn’t have a tendency to cuss people out (excluding Hal/AR but he only calls him a dumbass and a jackass), it’s more to just add expression to sentences, a little fuckin’ emphasis never hurt anyone. Dirk isn’t as polite to people as Jake is though, if he doesn’t wanna talk to someone, he’ll make it clear. The dude has a fairly low tolerance for bullshit.

When it comes to writing for Dirk, you need to take into account the circuitous vocabulary, one big batch of fucks and shits, the little passive aggressive and catty jabs, an arguably cold tone, the colorful analogies and the snarky cynicism.

I’ve read a lot of fanfiction involving Dirk and seen a lot of Dirk roleplayers in action, I’ve also noticed a few miscalculations and misjudgments of his character. (Yet again, I’m not spared from this, as someone whose actually written for Dirk before, I’ve made a lot of mistakes. Call this a self-callout if you will but yet again, these are from personal and secondhand experience).

I’d like to add before I delve into the list, in most of the Dirk-related fanfics I have read he's usually like.. The Background Dude who does and says nothing important, just kinda stands and nods his head as the main characters prance around. Either that, or he's The Boyfriend™ who does nothing but exist to be Jake's boyfriend and contributes absolutely nil to the plot. He just also kinda stands there, does some romance shit, then fucks off back to his apartment or whatever.

The mistakes I usually see people make are:

Making Dirk extremely boring, monotone completely and never expressing literally anything, not even frustration. Dirk isn’t built like a robot, he does emote through his text (usually in ways that come off as a little passive aggressive, I really doubt it’s Always intentional). He has a personality and he isn’t a plank of wood, he has his interests and he’ll humor your thoughts. If he truly does not give a shit about whatever you’re talking about to him, he’ll make it clear, he doesn’t just sit there and go “Uhuh. Yeah. Yep.”

Unlike the problem in the Jake tips, Dirk is usually pelted with a shitload of bros, mans and dudes, he does use that language quite a bit but it’s sprinkled generously throughout his pesterlogs, it isn’t jammed into the apple crumble. That’d be greedy and also pretty monotonous to read. Seriously, be careful with how many times he says bro and dude in the span of 5 sentences.

This one is biased and is more due to my qualms with Old fanon Dirk, the 2012 teenage boy who was a weaboo and a brony. You can say it’s in the past, and I wish it was true, but I’ve seen it crop up a little. Seriously, you’re allowed to run around being all like, “Well my Dirk likes My Little Pony and anime, so fuck you!” I’m not here to gatekeep, I’m just saying. People tend to focus on these things a lot, like.. maybe too much. Also the gay thing, I’m gonna get to that.

One thing I see way too much is people making Dirk extremely rude to the other alpha kids. It’s fine if it’s fitting with the scenario, maybe something awful happened and he’s holding resentment, but just your regular Dirk isn’t gonna belittle his friends like that, he does genuinely like and care about his friends. The first pesterlog we have with Actual Dirk starts off with him asking Jane if she’s alright, he gives a shit. He’s expressed frustration towards his friends before (trickster Roxy) but he’s never been inherently rude or mean towards them, he has their best interests in mind but he just goes about it in the wrong ways. Something that kinda ties in with 1 is that he displays sentiment/affection in a strange way, he doesn’t actively go about hiding the fact that he gives a shit about his friends or specific things, he just cakes it in a layer of irony, except the irony is to Display that he gives a shit, instead of Repress it.

Oh boy. The gay thing. Ok, the problem with a very vocal minority of the fandom’s views on Dirk’s homosexuality are that they either erase it or they hyper-focus on it. Hyper-focusing on it being like “Oh look at this smol gay bean, he’s just megahomo.” and in their writing, they’ll emphasize on the “gay” things that he does, as if that’s his only personality trait. That and the whole DirkJake thing, now listen. I do like DirkJake, it’s my OTP but honestly man, people make him way too sexual towards Jake. There's more to his personality than loving Jake, I mean. He didn't even want to talk to a version of himself about it. You think he'd broadcast those feelings to everyone else?

Strider analogies? What Strider analogies? Dirk’s metaphor usage is often overlooked too, sometimes it’s completely forgotten, which kinda baffles me seeing as it’s a more than once occurrence. He uses analogies in a similar way to Dave, they’re usually fairly obscure but still somewhat relevant to the topic at hand. When Dirk strayed away from the topic at hand with Jane, he caught himself immediately, he knows when to shut up but not always.

Dirk isn’t an “uncultured swine”, he’s fairly up to date with pop culture, even being described in his introduction page as a “PRETERNATURAL POPCULTURE ACADEME.” You can look to the Detective Pony rewrites for better examples of his up to date Internet knowledge, arguably dated but that’s just because of the early 2010s, I’m sure if the alphas were introduced this year, he’d.. well. He’d know his shit. He’s considerably book smart but not as socially perceptive, this isn’t to say that Dirk is completely unaware of the consequences of all of his actions, but he makes a lot of mistakes. He’s only human.

Grammar, seriously. It’s strange making this the last (for now) point but I’ve seen a lot of Dirk roleplayers just completely forget about his perfect syntax and grammar, he does remove the g from words occasionally and he does break his text into lines, occasionally using ellipses. But that’s really it. It’s harder to convey emotion through typing in this way but it’s a part of his character.

Yet again, a long post, probably even longer than the Jake one but I hope this helps with writing or roleplaying as Dirk, or just if you’re curious really. Again, if there’s anything you think I got wrong or should add, feel free to let me know, I’ll update it stat.

If you’d like any personal critiques on your writing then I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to pinpoint everything wrong but I’d be happy to assist/see what you’ve got.

#homestuck #dirk strider #not art #roleplay tips

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