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heaven4lostgirls · 5 months

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moving on (S.R)

pairing: steve rogers x reader, billy russo x reader

warning: angst

summary: you start to believe that maybe moving on from Steve might not be as hard as you think when you meet the likes of Billy Russo, untiil Steve does something that makes you change your entire opinion of him

word count: 1.3k

tags: @blackhawkfanatic , @buckys-wintersoldier , @witchychanel , @nicoline1998enilocin

a/n: im back!!!!!!!!

part 1, part 2, part 3

Although the past month was hard for you, you pushed yourself up each day to continue living your life. You refused to let yourself go because of a man, being with Steve was as simple as breathing air however the last few months, it honestly felt like drowning in water. How he hadn’t notice you slipping away before the breakup was beyond you.

Your meeting with Billy Russo and his current assistant was in the next hour and you had to take your car to his office, so as you slipped into an office appropriate dress and heels, you mad your way to your car to drive to the offices, it was only around 20 minutes away, so you didn’t struggle that badly.

Walking to the elevator, you press the highest floor to reach Billy’s office and as you step out, you’re greeted by his smiling assistant with a clipboard in her hand. She ushers you to the meeting room as you both make small talk about the job and your role that you had forgot to ask about in your confirmation email.

Billy sits at the head of the table with his phone in his hands as his eyebrows furrow at whatever message is on the screen, he lifts his head up to look at the both of you as you enter the room and soon his frustrated gaze disappears and in his place is a welcoming smile as he stands up and makes his way towards the both of you.

“Y/N Y/L/N. Lovely to meet you” he says with a smile and firm handshake as you smile back at him with a cheerful nod, “Mr. Russo, I can’t thank you enough for considering me for this position” you say as he squeezes your hand softly before he lets go.

“No need for thank you’s, I wouldn’t want anyone else to take over Delilah’s job. Also, don’t call me Mr. Russo, Billy is just fine love.” he says as he walks back to the head of the table, your legs become unstable at the stern tone in his voice as you watch him walk back. You and Delilah end up sitting on either side of him as she passes around copies of your contract to the both of you.

He’s close enough that if you stretch your heel clad foot out, you’d be able to make contact with his shin. You find yourself staring at the way he twirls his pen around in his fingers, his long fingers spin it around in an effortless manner.

You’re shaken out of your trance as he calls your name, “if you’re done reading the contract, would you like to start on Monday?” he asks with a quirk of his eyebrow and you flush. That’s 2 days from now you think, however the only emotion that floods through you is pure excitement.

“I’d love to!” you say enthusiastically, and he nods happily, as you finish up the meeting and sort out the finer details of your contract alongside other aspects of the job that you are unaccustomed to, you start to pack away your things and walk to the door before you’re halted by ring covered hand on the crook of your arm.

You turn towards Billy and his genuine gaze catches you unaware and you look down to your feet in a shy manner which is completely out of character for you, “I was wondering if you’d let me walk you to your car?” Billy asks in a soft tone, and you’re once again shocked by the lack of cockiness in his tone, he is completely different in comparison to the way the media portrays him.

“Sure” you state with a nod as he smiles and motions for you to lead the way. You both walk in silence until he breaks it with a sudden question, “you and that Captain America guy still together?” he asks, and you resist the urge to scoff at the mention of Steve.

“No” you reply curtly but honestly. He looks surprised however he just hums and nods as he looks down at his phone again to type a quick message, only glancing up again at your own question. “What about you Mr playboy? What happened to that girl you were dating before?” you ask teasingly, and he looks up at you with shock however you’re pretty sure you see a quick smile dart across his face. “Dinah is old news” he replies curtly. You nod and don’t question him further as you reach your car.

As you unlock the door and move to open the door, you’re stopped by a hand on your arm as Billy manages to move himself in between you and your car to open the door for you. You smile at him in thanks as you grasp his hand to sit in the driver’s seat.

“Thank you for seeing me today” you muse as he softly shuts the door to your car and his brows furrow as he shakes his head, “What did I say about thank you’s? you are more than qualified for this job Y/N” he states roughly but there’s a softness in his gaze that makes you pause and question if you really did see it.

“Sorry Mr Ru- Billy” you correct yourself sheepishly and he smiles back at you in a way that makes you think that maybe Steve wasn’t the be all and end all. “I should probably get going” you say as you gaze into his chocolate brown eyes, and he nods before he lifts the hand he’s been holding since you got in your car to his lips in a chaste kiss.

Your cheeks heat at the kiss and as you clear your throat you mutter a sheepish and embarrassed goodbye as you make your way out the parking with your cheeks aflame and a smile adorning on your face.

The smile never leaves your face, even as you arrive at the Avengers compound. As your ride the elevator up to the top floor. As you walk out, you’re greeted by balloons and the smiling faces of your teammates, well, ex-teammates.

“Pepper kind of spilled that you got the job!” Tony says excitedly as Pepper nudges him in his side before she concedes, “all the personal assistants have a group chat” she says sheepishly and as you shake your head to let her know its okay.

As your gaze washes over the group, you see Peter, Bucky, Nat, Clint, Sam, and Steve with his arm wrapped around…Sharon? What. The. Fuck. The smile on your face strains and your heart clenches at the sight. Sharon smiles at you sarcastically and Steve has a small smirk on his face.

As you feel yourself about to tear up you meet Bucky’s pained gaze and as he mouths the words, ‘are you okay?’ you shake your head subtly before he nudges Peter next to him to whisper something in his ear before he goes to distract Steve and Sharon.

Peter moves towards you and softly grabs your hand before he walks past Steve, Bucky and Sharon who seem to be arguing, you hear Bucky scolding them through clenched teeth, “I told you it wasn’t a good idea to bring her Steve.”

“Well, I didn’t know what else to do Bucky!” he replies desperately. Bucky sighs and looks at his friend in annoyance before he mutters, “Maybe it’s better if you just leave for now, okay? I don’t think she deserves this drama after just getting a new job”.

“But-”

“Just go Steve.” Tony’s voice joins the two and you watch as Steve curls in on himself before you watch him storm to the exit as he throws Sharons arm off of his, before he turns back to look at you with a pained gaze as you turn away.

#juliwrites #steve rogers angst #steve rogers hurt #steve rogers imagine #steve rogers x reader #steve rodgers imagine #steve rogers smut #steve rogers #steve rodgers x reader #steven grant #steven grant rogers

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namusthetic · 1 year

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The Four Seasons

Color guide for the characters' comments:

Winter; Spring; Summer; Autumn;

_______

Winter

Jittery because had way too much sugar

Started buying presents and wrapping them in September

Has a special mug for every occasion

Likes to relax by the fire while reading or scrolling through their phone

Gives Christmas-themed socks to everyone

Sits in weird positions

Loud and affectionate with people they feel close with (even too affectionate... )

Cold and unforgiving when pissed

Has a reading list and is gonna finish it before the year ends (hopefully)

Struggles with anger management

Smiles at strangers on the street

Starts stuttering and their lisp comes out when too nervous or excited (I heard Autumn saying it was cute - oh really? - S-spring!!!!!!)

Loves surprises

Prideful, gets offended easily, but also forgives and forgets easily (it took us a whole afternoon to get them to open the door just because the three of us hung out without them - still don't know why we bothered. - HEY!!! )

Calls instead of texting

Ready to throw hands if any of their friends gets bullied or insulted

Aesthetics:

Hot chocolate and a crackling fireplace, Christmas songs and mulled wine, snow and cold wind, warm scarves and knitted gloves, snow angles and snowball fights, smirks and fistbumps, warm sweaters and tight hugs, doodles on frosty window panes, dad jokes and uncoordinated dance moves

Playlist:

Mr. Blue Sky by Electric Light Orchestra

Everybody Talks by Neon Trees

Don't Stop Me Now by Queen

Tongue Tied by Grouplove

(I Can Get No) Satisfaction by The Rolling Stones

This Side of Paradise by Coyote Theory

Line Without a Hook by Ricky Montgomery

Eleanor Rigby by Cody Fry

Somebody To Love by Queen

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas by Michael Bublé

Snowman by Sia

Winter Wonderland by Michael Bublé

Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy by Queen

_______

Spring

Has various nervous tics because of anxiety

Always sitting on the floor

Often with their head in the clouds (AM NOT! - darling, I've literally seen you walk into door frames more times than I can count - ... )

Almost never raises their voice

Starts reading a book, then forgets about it and starts another one

Gets lost in daydreaming and dissociates from reality

Defends strongly what they believe in

"If I were a frog you'd be welcome on my lily pad"

Starts projects but never finishes them

Sensitive, cries easily when animals and environment is involved

In touch with their emotions and nature (and also with summer apparently - if you don't shut up, I swear. - Autumn, help me!! - oh, hell nah)

Spends long afternoons having pic-nics in the park, reading, sleeping and sunbathing

Walks in the woods looking for fae traps and playing hide and seek with foxes

Aesthetics:

Flower crowns, pic-nics and apricot jam, sunshine filtering through the leaves, birds chirping and bubbly laughter, bumblebees and bees flying from flower to flower, soft singing, flower crowns and daisy chains, curious eyes and pastel colors, small frogs and lilly pads, strawberry toasts and herbal teas, sweet smiles and paint-stained hands

Playlist:

Ocean Eyes by Billie Eilish

Cool Kids by Echosmith

Ophelia by The Lumineers

Hey There Delilah by Plain White T's

Swing Lynn by Harmless

My Kind of Woman by Mac DeMarco

girls by girl in red

Coffee by beabadoobee

Juliet by Cavetown

rises the moon by Liana Flores

Where'd All the Time Go? By Dr. Dog

cardigan by Taylor Swift

No Plan by Hozier

_______

Summer

Sleeps with the windows open

Goes to the beach at sunrise to walk along the shore

Parties until late at night and comes home in the early morning

Afraid of never being good enough

Plans their day to the second, has a set goal in life

Chatty, makes friends easily but sometimes tries too hard

Just plain gorgeous (agreed!! - *blushes*)

Constantly doing something so they doesn't have any time to wallow in their thoughts

Sees the best in people (even Autumn? - Would you knock it off!?!!)

Doesn't need anyone's approval but cares about their found family's opinion

Has always something urgent to do

Done with everyone's whining (e- even me? - no, not you - pffft, simp. - *proceeds to throw a shoe at Winter* - You asked for it.)

Always tries to be strong by repressing their emotions (yeah, you shouldn't do that - sigh, I'll try not to)

Aesthetics:

Sunshine and linen sheets, freckles and dimples, gold and sand, warm laughter and cold cocktails, strawberry lemonade, pizza and a can of soda, tan lines and stretch marks, afternoon naps on the porch and late night rides, roller skating with their headphones on the promenade, thrift-shopping, a light breeze in the summer heat

Playlist:

Juicy by Doja Cat

Chicken Noodle Soup by J-Hope (ft. Becky G)

Cool for the Summer by Demi Lovato

WANNABE by ITZY

Need to Know by Doja Cat

I'm Legit by Nicki Minaj ft. Ciara

About Damn Time by Lizzo

Levitating (ft. DaBaby) by Dua Lipa

Egoistic by Mamamoo

Next Level by aespa

Truth Hurts by Lizzo

Gashina by SUNMI

Dirty Harry by Gorillaz

_______

Autumn

Lovely and deep, like the woods they like to wander

Started planning their Halloween costume since summer

Chooses their afternoon tea depending on their mood

Likes to sit by the window and read when starts raining

Often misunderstood

Looks dark and broody but is just a cinnamon roll (a cute, little, squishy cinnamon roll!!! - sometimes I struggle to repress the urge to push you off a cliff - nah, you know you love me - who's gonna tell them? - Not me.)

Starts reading several books at the same time and switches between them

Spends long afternoons reading in coffee shops

Struggles with depression and anxiety

Cannot function without coffee in the morning

Gets startled easily if they are focused on something else

Judges everyone silently, that's just what they do (Except Spring, she can do whatever she wants. - is it the cuteness? - It is.)

Waits for the call to end and then texts "What do you want?!?"

Aesthetics:

Eye-rolls, tired eyes, old books and fallen leaves as bookmarks, sentences underlined with shaky lines, large cardigans and knitted sweaters, dark coffee with splashes of milk, Earl Grey tea and butter biscuits, soft sighs and sweater paws, leather messenger bags and worn-out notebooks, the pitter-patter of rain on the sidewalk, fog and drizzle, the distant rumble of an incoming storm

Playlist:

The Less I Know the Better by Tame Impala

Tired by beabadoobee

Devil Town by Cavetown

Coffee by Jack Stauber's Micropop

Blondie by Current Joys

Alien Blues by Vundabar

Little Dark Age by MGMT

Hey Kids by Molina ft. Late Verlane

Take a Slice by Glass Animals

Vide Noir by Lord Huron

Mary On a Cross by Ghost

The Chain by Fleetwood Mac

Zombie by The Cranberries

----------------------🍏

Helloo!!! ✨

Sorry it's been a while since I've posted anything (again, sob) but I'm back!

I chose seasons this time, and I've also added comments from each one, I thought it would be a cute thing to add, I had fun doing it.

For the character's comments I used different colors to recognize them, I hope it's not too chaotic.

Hope you enjoy, and please take care of yourselves,

lots of love 💜

#moodboard #aestethic #character aesthetics #tag your aesthetic #character concept #tag yourself #playlist #song suggestions #types of people #seasons #autumn #summer #winter #spring

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the-cult-of-russo · 3 years

Text

Biggest regret (part 3)

Pairing: Billy Russo x Reader

A/N: So many of you guys love this story and I love it. Thank you guys 😊

So this one really went off on a tangent and it's longer than I thought. But I didn't wanna rush this and I'm enjoying this story. So he doesn't meet his kid yet, that's in the next part that I'm writing right now. Then there will be another part that I've got in mind too.

Warnings: cursing, angst, sadness, fluff kinda, emotional Billy.

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Delilah cooed happily where she was perched in a little rocker seat. It was vibrant pinks and yellows with a bar along the top and little stuffed animal shapes dangling off it that she swatted with her chubby hands.

You were cleaning. Stress cleaning to be precise. Ever since you got that letter from Billy you'd felt out of sorts. You really hadn't expected it. You'd spent the better half of the start of your pregnancy thinking he'd come to his senses. That he'd turn up and say sorry or even call or text. But by the end of the pregnancy you realised you'd asked too much of him. That maybe you didn't know him as well as you thought.

It had been a bitter pill to swallow having him just walk out of your lives like that. Your pregnancy hadn't been easy by any means and that only made it harder. You had no family, no real friends. You'd been completely alone. Every time you ended up at hospital the nurses took pity on you. Seeing you so sick with no visitors or help. It had been hard.

Since Delilah could return home, one of your neighbours in your complex had taken to helping you. Louise was a woman in her 60s and before now you'd only ever seen her in passing with a murmured hello. But seeing you struggle as a single mother, she'd taken you under her wing and helped you immensely.

You had to work from home since you had the baby. The time off with unpaid maternity leave when she was born and was sick had set you back quite a bit and now you were struggling. You'd had to leave your job since there was no way you could do it from home and you didn't have child care or the money to do it. And honestly, after having Delilah, the overwhelming urge to keep her safe was shocking. You didn't really want to leave her with someone you didn't know. It had been hard for you to agree to it with Louise who would occasionally have her for an hour or two so you could catch a break. And she was literally only next door which eased your mind a little.

Now you were doing proofreading and transcription work from home and it didn't exactly pay great. You got by though and you made do with what you had. You just didn't expect things to go this way. You still remember when you found out you were pregnant and told Billy. It had been a huge shock to you and despite the nagging feeling that this was how it would end, you stupidly hoped it would be different.

You sat on the bed, the test in your hands as the two pink lines glared at you. You were pregnant. You had a baby in your belly. You felt like you couldn't breathe. You and Billy weren't even super serious. There were feelings involved but neither of you mentioned it. Opting instead to pretend they weren't there. You were scared if you told him you loved him that he'd run for the hills and he was scared of feeling anything at all.

You'd been 'together' for nearly two years. You weren't officially boyfriend and girlfriend, there were no labels slapped on you both. But everyone knew you were his and he was yours and it worked just fine. But now there was a baby. Now things got serious way quicker than you expected and you were terrified.

You weren't ready to be a mom. You'd never put much thought into having kids and you didn't know how to be a mother. You'd have a tiny human that depended on you to keep them safe and loved. How the fuck would you manage that? And then there was Billy. You'd have to tell him and you felt sick with worry about how he would react.

You knew about his childhood, you knew pretty much everything about each other. He'd never known love as a child and you hoped that would mean it would force him to want to be there and be a good dad. But you knew him well enough to have the worry that it would have the opposite effect and he'd freak out.

He'd been at work and you'd been at his place. You didn't live with him, you still had your own place. But you stayed there most nights or he would be at yours. You never spent a night away from each other.

You heard the front door open and close and you felt a wave of dread settle over you. Like an ice cold blanket snaking around your entire body as it squeezed. You had to tell him. You had to hope he would be okay with this. You knew you'd keep the baby regardless. Despite only knowing for literal minutes, you cared about this baby. This baby was a piece of you and a piece of Billy. There was no way you couldn't keep them.

"Hey, sweetheart! I'm home!" You heard him call from the living room. You swallowed thickly as you stood on shaky legs, stuffing the test in the pocket of your hoodie. You made your way to the living room as he shucked off his jacket. He looked handsome as always and he flashed you a warm smile when he saw you. But it fell when he took in your anxiety induced state.

"What's wrong?" He asked carefully, black eyes scanning over you like he was checking if you were hurt. Your throat tightened as you felt your eyes prickle and you willed the tears away.

"Uh… you should sit down. We need to talk," you murmured softly. He frowned, tilting his head as he regarded you.

"Sounds ominous," he replied dryly. He complied though and moved to sit on the sofa. You opted to stay standing near the coffee table.

Your whole body felt like it was shaking and you felt in your bones that this was the moment where everything would change. Either for better or worse, but change was coming and it hurt your heart. You needed to just tell him, get it over with. You inhaled a shaky breath as you looked at him. His face was etched in concern and he was patient with you, watching all the emotions pass over your face.

"I'm pregnant," you blurted, grabbing the test from your pocket and handing it to him. His eyes almost popped out of his head and he grabbed the test, staring at it. You couldn't get a good read on his face other than the surprise and you didn't like that. He was staring at it hard and you knew he was deep in thought. That cold dread came back and sunk its claws into you.

Suddenly, he tossed the test on the coffee table, springing out of his seat and moving around to the back of the couch like he wanted to get far away from you.

"No," he frowned. You blinked dumbly at him for a moment as your eyes burned.

"No?" You asked softly. His dark eyes pinned you in place then. For a brief moment you saw utter pain and complete panic, eyes glassy with unshed tears. But then all emotion left his face, left his eyes, and it felt like a punch to the gut. You'd seen that look on his face before but never directed at you.

"I'm not… I can't do this. I don't want a kid," he said coldly. The lump in your throat got bigger as you nodded. What else could you say? You could cry and scream and fight but what was the use? Part of you expected this although you hoped for something else. You couldn't force him to stick around. If he wanted out then you had no choice but to let him.

You felt tears slip down your face as you glared at the floor, lower lip quivering. You couldn't look at him. The pain you felt was unbearable. Pain for yourself for losing him, pain at how cold he was being, and pain for your baby for having a dad that didn't want them. Did Billy even realise he was continuing the cycle of his own upbringing?

You felt his eyes burning into you but you couldn't look. You had so many things you wanted to say but they all caught on the lump in your throat. Without a word, he grabbed his jacket and left, slamming his door behind him so loud you jumped. You sobbed then, moving to curl up on the sofa as you let it all out. He was gone. You'd have to do this all alone and you missed him already despite him leaving you like this.

You were unsure of how long you lay on his sofa sobbing your heart out until your phone chimed with a message. Stupidly you thought it was Billy saying sorry. It was Billy, but he definitely wasn't apologising.

'I'll be back in two hours. Pack all your shit and be gone before I get home. Don't contact me again.'

You felt a surge of anger and bitterness seep into you then. You thought he'd cared. Never had he told you how he felt about you but he acted like he cared. Introduced you to the Castle's, his family. But clearly you were wrong. His message was loud and clear. You didn't respond, there was no need. He wanted to never hear from you again and that was fine. You packed anything of yours and left within an hour, your heart heavy with pain, hurt and anger.

When you got his letter, at first you were angry. You wanted to be petty. Wanted to ignore it or send him one back telling him to go fuck himself. But you'd looked at your daughter then with her sweet smile and her dad's eyes and you couldn't. Because despite what he'd done, she deserved her dad.

You hadn't responded to the letter right away. Two weeks you kept reading it and coming to terms with all the emotions it brought you. You knew you still cared about him even after what he'd done. You couldn't help it. But his letter sounded so sincere and the self loathing in his words tugged at your heart. He'd fucked up big time, but he was trying to fix it. Billy was a proud man and you knew it took him a lot to reach out to you. You wanted Delilah to get to know her dad and wanted her to have a relationship with him.

You had a lot to work through and you and Billy would need some serious talks to be able to co-parent properly, but you'd do it for Delilah. There wasn't a thing in the world you wouldn't do for that girl.

So you'd replied and now you've been waiting for his call. You were full of nerves and you could taste the emotions lingering from the day he left in the back of your throat. You felt like you were in some kind of limbo.

After stress cleaning for a bit and looking after Delilah, you sat on the sofa with the TV on low as she snoozed in her little seat. You felt lucky she was such a chill baby. The pregnancy and birth had been harder to deal with and you thought having her would be difficult but it hadn't been that hard for you. Louise kept telling you that you had natural maternal instincts and that you'd picked it up easily.

You tried to pay attention to the screen when your phone buzzed from your pocket. Your heart skipped a beat as you got it out. It was a number you didn't recognise and your breath started coming in shorter because you knew just who it would be.

"Hello?" Your voice shook a little as you answered and you heard a soft sigh on the other end.

"Hey, Y/N, it's Billy," his voice was smooth like always but it sounded off. A little raw.

"You got my letter then," you murmured. You rolled your eyes at yourself for stating the obvious but you didn't know what else to say. Never had it been so stilted and awkward to talk to Billy.

"Yeah… and I know you asked me to really think about it, so I did. And I wanna be there. I'd like to… I'd like to meet her if I can," he sounded apprehensive and you wondered if he thought that you'd reject him even after telling him in the letter you wanted them to meet.

"Okay… I'd like to meet up with you first. We have a lot to talk about that needs dealing with before you meet her," you said firmly. This you wouldn't budge on. There was a lot of unresolved tension and feelings around you both and one quick meeting with him wouldn't fix that, but you wanted to clear some air before he came to meet Delilah so it wasn't completely tense. You also wanted to make sure he really was 100% with this or you wouldn't allow it to happen. You wouldn't let her get hurt.

"Yeah, I'll do… anything you need. Whatever you want," he answered quickly. You nodded even though he couldn't see it, happy that he wasn't fighting you on it. He seemed like he genuinely wanted to take this seriously which was good.

"Right… uh… I can… I can meet you today. The diner down the street from my place? About 6pm?" You asked softly. You heard him sniffle a bit down the phone and you started to wonder if he'd come up with an excuse about work. You knew he worked late a lot.

"Yeah, that's fine. I'll be there," he said resolutely. This was a good start already.

"I'll see you then, bye Billy," you murmured.

"Bye, Y/N," he replied softly. You hung up and blew out a breath, your shaking hands gripping your phone. You hadn't heard his voice in over a year and it had your heart hammering away against your ribcage. You still loved him but the love was tainted with pain and betrayal. You'd have to stuff it down for the sake of your daughter.

You didn't bother to change out of your jeans, boots, tee and hoodie and after asking Louise if she could look after Delilah for a bit, you set off out. You'd told Louise everything. She already knew what happened with Billy and you'd even let her read his letter. While she wasn't happy he'd walked away in the first place, she was happy he was trying to step up now. You were glad she was supporting you with this.

You got to the diner five minutes early and fully expected to have to wait. But when you got inside, Billy was already sitting in a booth. He looked shit scared and his fingers drummed on the table restlessly. As you approached, his head snapped up. So many emotions crossed his face as he looked at you that you couldn't keep up with them. But when it settled on heartbreak you felt your own squeeze painfully in your chest.

He stood up as you got to the table and there was an awkward moment where you both looked at each other. He looked tired. He had dark rings around his eyes and his usually perfect hair was a little dishevelled. He had on casual clothes and his leather jacket. He took a step closer like he was going to hug you and you stepped back without thinking. His face fell a little and he nodded, the movement stiff but he seemed to understand you weren't ready for it.

He moved to sit down and you sat opposite him. It was so tense you could cut the air with a knife and you didn't even know where to start. The waitress came over then and gave you both a bright smile and you both ordered coffee. Once she was gone the tense atmosphere was back.

"I'm sorry," Billy muttered brokenly. Your eyes looked up at him then and he was staring at you with shiny eyes. Your throat constricted and you cleared it.

"Billy-" you started with a frown. He cut you off though.

"I know… I know I'm the biggest asshole out there. I don't deserve you sittin' here or givin' me a chance. But I want you to know that… I thought about you and the baby… Delilah… every damn day. And I-I hated myself for walkin' away. And I can't take back what did, but I can be better. I want to be better. And I'm sorry I hurt you and I'm sorry I left. But I'm serious when I say I wanna be here. You said I'm in or out and I want in. And I swear, I fuckin' swear that I'll prove to you I'm a better man," he said imploringly, leaning his forearms on the table as he watched you.

You blinked at him, collecting your emotions as the waitress came over with the coffees. She didn't linger, sensing the heaviness of whatever was happening in your booth.

"I'm glad you're here, Billy. And it's gonna take work for us to… to be okay around each other. But Delilah is the focus here and you deserve to have a relationship with her. You're her dad," you said softly. He sneered, not at you but himself, as he shook his head.

"No… no I'm not. I haven't been there. Sure she's mine, my DNA, my blood, but… I walked out. I left you, I left her and you both needed me. I'm not a dad, not yet. But I'll do whatever it takes to show you I'm worthy of bein' her dad," his voice shook yet was also firm and you knew in your heart he meant his words. It settled you a bit to know he really was serious about this.

"I'll be honest… part of me expected to come here and you wouldn't be ready. That you were talking shit for whatever reason. But I believe you. I wish it hadn't taken this long but I'm glad you're here now, Billy. It's been… so fucking hard doing this alone," your hands were around your cup and you stared at them as you spoke, your voice quiet among the light buzz in the diner.

You heard his breathing hitch and looked at him again. His fists were clenched and his head was lowered which made it hard to read his face. His whole body was tense and you were about to open your mouth to ask if he was okay when you noticed his shoulders shaking slightly. Oh.

He sucked in a breath as a broken sob left his lips and it ripped a hole right through your chest. Now matter what he'd done, seeing him this way was jarring. You'd seen many sides to Mr Billy Russo and you'd even seen him cry before. But he looked so worn down and broken and it hurt you even if it was his own fault.

His elbows resting on the table, he brought his hands up and rested his head on them as he openly sobbed. You never thought you'd see the day that Lieutenant Russo cried in a public space but he seemed beyond caring.

You swallowed the lump in your throat as you stood and moved to his side. You slid into the booth next to him as your own eyes welled up and you reached out a shaky hand to stroke the back of his neck. He tensed at first like he hadn't even noticed you'd moved which was startling given how perceptive he was about everything around him. But then he relaxed and moved his face from his hands and turned to look at you. Tears were streaming down his face and he looked younger and vulnerable.

You wrapped your arms around his neck and he didn't hesitate to bury his face in your neck as his own arms held you tightly. You stroked his hair softly, trying to soothe him a little. You couldn't help it. Maybe it was that maternal instinct that always hated when someone was upset around you or maybe it was just the fact that no matter what happened, you did still care.

"It's okay, Billy," you whispered through your own tears. He shook his head where it was still pressed against your now damp neck.

"No it's not. I fucked up. I shoulda been there," his voice was muffled and broken with his soft sobs that were slowly easing and you held him a little tighter.

"You did fuck up but you're here now and that's what matters," you murmured. You pulled away and he let you go reluctantly as he sniffled and looked down. You reached up and wiped his cheeks with your hoodie sleeves and then he looked at you.

"We can't change the past, Billy. Yeah, you messed up, and yeah it hurt me. But you already missed out on so much and that's a punishment in itself. Things aren't gonna be easy and it'll take time for us to heal, but you're here now and Delilah needs you. That's what matters," you uttered, hands falling from his face.

He sniffled again as he nodded, his obsidian gaze searching your face like he was looking for something.

"I don't… I don't have the words because thank you doesn't even come close. I don't deserve this. I don't deserve you helpin' me out and I don't deserve Delilah. I didn't really think I'd hear from you and now here you are, fuckin' comforting me in a diner when it should be the other way around," he lamented with a frown.

"I don't like seeing you cry," you shrugged with a weak smile as your hands toyed with the sleeves of your hoodie. He gave you a small smile back as he nodded. A silence settled over you both then and it was slightly awkward. You knew he was probably embarrassed and also still beating himself up. Once upon a time you'd be glad to know how hard he was being on himself over this. But seeing him like this was painful.

There were still a lot of things to sort through with the pair of you but they weren't the priority. The first and most important thing was him establishing a relationship with his daughter. You figured in time things would get easier with him and he seemed dead set on being here now. And you could see the genuine remorse for walking away so you knew he was serious.

"I should go. But uh…" you murmured as you stood from the booth, Billy following suit.

"You can… you can meet her tomorrow if you'd like? I could… I don't know, make dinner for us all? You could come by my place and meet her before dinner?" You suggested, voice laced with uncertainty. His face lit up then even with his slightly damp cheeks and shiny eyes. His smile was bright even if it was hesitant.

"I'd really like that," he nodded as he gazed down at you.

"Okay… good. Uh… come by around 5?" It still felt awkward between you and you hated it. It used to be so easy between the two of you.

"I will… thank you, Y/N," he murmured sincerely. You nodded and gave him a little smile. He stepped forward and this time you didn't step back. The hug didn't last long but it took you back to a time when things were good with the pair of you. Where you felt safe in his strong arms surrounded by his calming scent. It sent a pang through your chest. You hugged him back before he moved away and you gave him another nod before you left.

By the time you were walking in your complex you had tears down your cheeks. It had been hard to see him after everything. Hard to see him such a mess too. You had that feeling, the same one you did the day you found out you were pregnant. That things were changing, this was a turning point. Only this time it was a good one.

It was hard to wrap your head around after all this time that he'd be there. Of course there would be a period of adjustment where he got to know his daughter, but eventually he'd be parenting just like you. It was a strange feeling to comprehend that you wouldn't be alone in this anymore.

Seeing him and speaking to him, it had eased some of the bitterness that you'd held for him. Not completely but quite a bit. You couldn't hold onto the anger and pain of the past, not when Delilah needed this. You'd never be able to go back and redo how things happened but you could close that chapter and start a new one. One where Billy was actually around and your daughter had a dad. Despite the nerves for the dinner the next day, you were also a little excited and hopeful.

#billy russo #billy russo x reader #the punisher #billy russo imagine

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incorrect-dishonored-quotes · 3 years

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Do you have a favorite level within each game or even one out of all games / is there a specific level that stuck in your mind since you first played it?

Mine would be the second to last I think in DH1. The one, where you walk over a bridge and it's all orange light on one side and deep shadows on the other. In daud's dlcs it would be the boyle mansion, because I love the flooded building. I've loved the edge of the world in DH2 because Karnaca's atmosphere is such a breath of fresh air and the trail of whale blood through the bright and sunny district reveals very much about the game's world. For DOTO it would either be the bank job or the royal conservatory. It may sound pretty weird but the atmosphere within the bank job gives me vacation vibes lol. Also the moment you take the twin bladed knife feels amazing every time. I also really like the hidden features in the royal conservatory.

Thank you for running this blog, it really means a lot to me. Happy Pride! 🏳️‍🌈

Honestly all the levels in the DH series has a lot of personality in them, and so much visual storytelling. Each one has a different feeling to it while all matching up to eachother perfectly. Never do I feel like one doesn't belong with the others, they all feel part of the same world, and they feel so lived in too.

Everyone has their favorites, and you picked some good ones. I think youre refering to Kaldwin's Bridge which is a very well done level and is certainly pretty to look at, but its rather big with a lot of loading points, and it's a bit choppy and tedious for me. I do like the area around Sokolov's house though. The test subjects imprisoned in the streets and the crumbling buildings around his perfect apartment is great environmental storytelling. Personally my favorite in Dh1 is The Flooded District. The reflection it paints for Corvo, that after everything, things can still get worse and there's still a light at the end and he can't give up. That even after hating Hiram Burrows and wishing death on him, Daud hides there, in the mass grave Burrows made, protected by the rats, flood waters, rivercrusts, and weepers. It's just *chef's kiss*.

I think the one in Daud's dlc's is actually Brigmore Manor, which is one hell of a level. We learn that Daud and Delilah have a lot in common just by the way they work. They both have large followings they share their power with, hidden under everyone's nose. Dispite this, the difference in atmosphere tells the player that Daud is trespassing here. He's met someone who can match him, maybe even best him, and he has to be careful not to lose what little he has left. Brigmore is probably my fave too, but The Surge comes very close. Being in Daud's base, cutting up Overseers, and freeing his Whaler kids is very satisfying.

Edge of the World is a great intro to Karnaca. You get a feel for the atmosphere, learn about smaller power struggles (Howlers vs Overseers), and get a feel for just how bad things are there. I love taking my time in this level, finding the runes and talking to Mindy Blanchard just because it is a very pretty level that's fun to explore. I also like how it ironically leads you to Addemire, which is dark and claustrophobic. My fave in DH2 though is Crack in the Slab. Going between timelines wasn't something I'd done in a videogame before, and it made learning about Aramis Stilton and the rest of Delilah's allies extremely interesting. I love the little details you can mess with in the past to convenience you in the present too. There's a lot to go though twice over in that level, and I always find something new each playthrough. Also, in the ambience music in the present, you can hear a rhythmic banging, and I theorize you can hear the miners being overworked from Aramis' home.

And then there's DOTO... DOTO, my beloved. This game really brought Billie Lurk's character to life and I enjoy every second of it. My fave here would be Follow the Ink, for reasons similar as to why I like Edge of the World. It's nice to explore and there's so much to do story-wise, and even more to just find or interact with. I do wish the story flowed from one point on the map to the other, like how Edge of the World slowly lead you to the black market, wall of light, overseer outpost, then to Addemire Station. I find I'm going back and forth a lot in Follow the Ink, but that's nit-picking. If anything, it gives me time to stumble across things more. I will say though, The Bank Job is probably the strongest level in the game, and the writing is the best there. Billie getting a hold of the knife, pointing a finger in The Outsider's face and telling him she's coiming, no matter what it takes, only for The Outsider to look her in the eyes and tell her that Daud, the closest Billie had ever come to family, is dead?... Heartbreaking. I'm racing back to the ship. I know he's lying, and he has to be, right? But nope, he wasn't. Billie burning her ship called Dreadful Wale, an anagram for Farewell Daud, as his pyre hurts so much. I love the very ending too and how Daud is low chaos option, and to be honest, I shouldn't have been surprised by that. Ironically, mercy and forgiveness were themes in the background of Daud's dlcs.

Some honorable mentions would be:

-Bottle Street/Holger Square: Learning about Overssers, Slackjaw, Granny Rags and you get to see my man Geoff Curnow! Please switch the poison btw.

-Lady Boyle's Last Party: You fuck around with guards and rich ppl bc they think you're one of them and that's quite the critique on the upperclass huh. Don't forget to sign the guestbook as The Empress' alleged assassin!

Return to The Tower: Hiram Burrows is finally his own undoing, and his worst nightmares have come true! What a satisfying downfall. How poetic. Bitch deserved everything he got.

-Light at the End: In high chaos, Martin shoots Pendleton after calling him inbred and that's hilarious to me. Also in low chaos. Emily will scold Havelock and tell him to "sit in the corner and think about what [he's] done!" In honesty, it's a good climax.

-Eminent Domain: Timpsh's downfall in low chaos is one of the most poetic and well written eliminations in the games. Seeing him faint in front of a General of the City Watch always makes me laugh.

-Coldridge Prison: Revisiting the place as Daud and seeing how it's changed since Corvo's escape was very interesting. There's a lot of details to interact with like other prisoners, executions, and doomed escape attempts.

-Addemire Institute: The Crown Killer was an interesting antagonist, and there's a lot of notes and clues to what Addemire was like before The Duke ruined it. The entire situation is very tragic, but not all is lost!

-The Dust District: It's just really fun to explore Karnaca ok? Also Corvo's old house is there.

-Hole in the World: I love how it hints that there's a low chaos option, but you don't realize it until you talk with Daud’s spirit and all the hints come together. I like wandering around the place too since we don't get to see The Void this much anywhere else.

Sorry this was so long, but I really love how well thought out these game are, and I really rambled! Happy pride to you too!

#mod tad #doto spoilers

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asirensrage · 2 years

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Congrats again! 🎵 I'd love to see you talk through one of your Michelle/Kelly playlists 🥰

Thank you so much!

Sure thing! Let's go with "Of Ghosts and Possessions" which is the playlist for the their friendship. There's like 60 songs on here so it's under a cut lol.

Pompeii by Bastiile - I chose this song for the lyrics "But if you close your eyes/ Does it almost feel like nothing changed at all? / And if you close your eyes / Does it almost feel like you've been here before?" It worked in my mind for how Michelle and Kelly both feel that it's very familiar (being back together and alive and in a world they recognize) when it's also feels like everything is falling down around them.

Migraine - Twenty One Pilots - This was chosen because both Kelly and Michelle have a ton of issues that they work through. Michelle feels like she's the only one struggling and Kelly is holding herself from revealing how she feels because she's trying to keep it all together for everyone.

Hunt You Down - Kesha - This was chosen just because 100% both Kelly and Michelle would not put up with anyone treating them wrong (and god forbid the other one finds out you hurt one).

Teenage Dirtbag - Wheatus - This was originally chosen because I had this idea for a scene where Michelle starts singing this in the back of the Impala and it takes the guys a moment to realize it's a song, lol.

Sonny - New Found Glory - This song is about losing a friend and trying to survive it. It's for Michelle when Kelly died.

Head on Collision - New Found Glory - I have to be honest, I chose this because my best friend and I bonded over NFG and it's a staple to me when it comes to friendships ahahha.

My Friends Over You - New Found Glory - This is chosen for the above but also because it's Kelly and Michelle against the world. They have each other's backs no matter what.

My Best Friend - Weezer - Do I really need to explain this? They're best friends! lol

all good girls go to hell - Billie Eilish - This was chosen for the vibe. lol Also because Michelle is the gatekeeper to Lucifer.

Woman (feat. The Dap Kings Horns) - Kesha - Because they're motherf*cking women! lol

Let 'Em Talk (feat. Eagles of Death Metal) - Kesha - Kesha's music just makes you ready to kick ass. By the end of the fic, Michelle and Kelly don't care what others think. They're trying to survive and have a good time.

Anthem Part 2 - blink-182 - "We'll never give up, it's no use/If we're fucked up, you're to blame" 100% is about trying to survive while the world is going insane.

Basket Case - Green Day - this is because Michelle feels like she's going insane half the time.

Daddy Lessons (feat The Chicks) - Beyonce - Daddy Lessons was picked because a) the feel of it and b) that neither of them will accept men treating them bad

bury a friend - Billie Eilish - this is not only because Michelle had to bury Kelly, but also because the fear of not knowing what someone wants from you.

Bury My Troubles - Imelda May - this was chosen because Michelle does not share her feelings at all.

Can't Win - PUP - This was chosen because there are times when both of them feel like they can't win.

Cough Syrup - Young the Giant - "Life's too short to even care at all/ I'm losing my mind losing my mind losing control." - this covers both of them. Kelly thinks life is too short, Michelle feels like she's losing her mind.

Delilah - Florence and the Machine - I love this song and the idea of "it's a different kind of danger" and it makes me think of finding yourself and fighting for it tbh lol

Dog Days Are Over - Florence and the Machine - I chose this for the lyric "Happiness hit her like a bullet in the back/ Struck from a great height by someone who should know better than that" because I think happiness hits them both unexpectedly.

Don't Cry - Guns N' Roses - I love this song lol. I chose this because it's about hope.

Dust in the Wind - Kansas - You need some classic rock in an SPN fic. Dust in the Wind is for Kelly: "all we are is dust in the wind" ;)

Fortunate Son - Creedence Clearwater Revival - because neither of them are fortunate lol.

Friends - Flight of the Conchords - Again, because they're friends. Also this song is so much fun.

Gimme Some Lovin' - Spencer Davis Group - This is another song that reminds me of friends and "I'm so glad you made it" (because you knwo they're both glad they're not alone)

Girls Just Want to Have Fun - Cyndi Lauper - Does this need an explanation?

Glitter & Gold - Barns Courtney - I love the sound of this song. It also about rising up even though you're human.

Gold Guns Girls - Metric - the lyric of "is this ever gonna be enough?" really stood out to me. I think the two of them wonder that a lot during Crossfire. When does it stop and can they just live?

Good Things - Rival Sons - This song is all about how "good thing happen, bad things happen too" and I think it really highlights the fic because a lot of bad things happen to Michelle but she's reminded of good thigns as well, like having Kelly back.

Have You Ever Seen The Rain - Creedence Clearwater Revival - Again about hope. The sun after the rain.

Helicopter - Bloc Party - It's a bit chaotic of a song but it repeats "are you hoping for a miracle?" which fits them.

I Feel So - Box Car Racer - this one works for Michelle "I feel so mad. I feel so angry."

If I Die Young - The Band Perry - and this one is for Kelly, who did die young

Invisible Chains - Lauren Jauregui - The two of them break their chains through the fic.

Just a Girl - No Doubt - Exactly as it says.

Monday Morning - Prozzak - this is another song about losing a friend.

Paint It Black - The Rolling Stones - “I see a red door and I want to paint it black” a) i love the rolling stones and b) it’s wanting to make things feel the way you do.

The Prayer (Kid Cudi Cover) - Lily Kerbey - I love this song. Just listen to it. “Maybe how I dream of being free since my birth / Cursed, but the demons I confronted would disperse”

Ramble On - Led Zeppelin - This song just makes me think of moving on, and the fear of setting roots

Running Up That Hill - Placebo - This song has multiple layers for this fic from “And if I only could / I'd make a deal with God / And I'd get him to swap our places” with Kelly wanting to help Michelle and You don't want to hurt me (Iyeh-yeh-yo) / But see how deep the bullet lies (Iyeh-yeh-yo)/ Unaware I'm tearing you asunder (Iyeh-yeh-yo)” which really makes me think of both of them (and the men they’re with).

She's So Hard - The Jezebels - This is about Michelle tbh.

Mace Spray - The Jezebels - This is for the two of them. “But she loves me / More than anyone who wouldn't lay a hand. / She keeps mace spray,/For you can't rely on the common man.”

Stressed Out - Twenty One Pilots - 100% because they’re both stressed out.

This Year - The Mountain Goats - “I am going to make it through this year if it kills me” this is pretty much their motto.

Unwell - Matchbox Twenty - both of them are unwell. Kelly just hides it better.

What's Up - 4 Non Blondes - because you know they both just want to scream at the top of their lungs lol

WHY - NF - this fits both of them. “I push away the people that I love the most, why? (woo) / I don't want no one to know I'm vulnerable, why? (woo) / That makes me feel weak and so uncomfortable,”

Yesterday - The Beatles - because their troubles seemed to be easier before

Take A Hint - Victorious Cast - this song is just fun. I think it suits them both when they’re out and about

Going Down Fighting - Phlotilla, Andrea Wasse, Topher Mohr - because they will go down fighting.

Crazy - Daniela Andrade - This is also a little more for michelle who feels like she’s going crazy

Violet - Hole - the two of them are definitely violent.

The Man - Taylor Swift - Because at times it feels like everything would be easier if they were men.

I Won't Back Down - Tom Petty - This is also because they won’t back down

It's The End Of The World As We Know It - R.E.M. - Because it’s the end of the world hahaha

Kill Your Heroes - AWOLNATION - Another song chosen for the vibe of enjoying life

The Greatest (Feat Kendrick Lamar) - Sia - Because they don’t stop and keep trying

long story short - Taylor Swift - this song fits them both. Falling into the rabbit hole but climbing their way back out.

Jumpin', Jumpin' - Destiny's Child - 100% just for partying

How Far We've Come - Matchbox Twenty - this was chosen simply because they come so far.

Older Than I Am - Lennon Stella - And finally this is because sometimes you feel older than you are because of the things you’ve lived.

note: this took way too long. I have too many songs. Thank god I didn't pick Michelle and Sam's playlist lol

#fic: caught in the crossfire #kelly and michelle #fic playlist #jemmalynette

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ellewritesathing · 4 years

Text

Infernal - III

Summary: In your sleepy little town of Greendale, nothing ever slept for long. And ever since October, everything felt like it was waking up. Everything except for you, that is. One teensy trip to Hell (and an infuriatingly cute guy) later and suddenly you felt wide awake.

Word-count: 3.1k+

Masterlist Prev. | Part 3

A/N: things are starting to heat up guys! thank you for sticking around with me 💕 before we start i just want to say that there’ll be way more caliban in the next part (promise)!!

For once, your dad left the house on his own and left you with the perfect opportunity to go through his desk. You never used to snoop, but he never used to give you a reason to. He was getting worse and you needed to find out what ‘worse’ was.

The desk was scattered with notes and notes about the lunar cycle and ley lines, some too messy for you to make out. He’d charted a map that looked eerily familiar with ley lines in black ink on top. Messy colors illustrated how the power ebbed and flowed with the moon throughout the town.

You were about to shove this stack back into one of the drawers when something caught your eye. An old, crumpled up map of Greendale sandwiched between other drawings in the stack. You laid the Greendale map above your dad’s map for Delilah’s home town. They looked exactly the same.

A note was scrawled on top of the Greendale map and you squinted to make it out. Met Kali in June. Some scribbles underneath that you assumed were the timeline of their relationship, the last date entered was your birthday. Kali never returns.

Your phone rang out in your pocket and you jumped. Swearing and fumbling to silence it with one hand while trying to put the papers back into their stack with the other, you eventually got everything back to normal. Heart rate not included.

“Hey, where are you?” Roz asked. “I thought we were going to see what’s up with the carnival after school.”

“Crap, that was today?” you asked. You rubbed your forehead and sighed.

“Uh, yeah. That’s what we said at lunch,” she said slowly. You could hear her shifting on the other end of the phone. “Were you even paying attention? You seemed pretty spaced out.”

“I’ve just had a lot going on at the moment,” you said. It wasn’t technically a lie, but you knew Roz could pick up on your uncertainty. “You guys go ahead and I’ll meet up with you some other time.”

“Okay, well, are you coming to band practice later?” she asked after a few seconds.

“Of course,” you said. “I’ll leave now so I don’t forget again.”

“Right,” Roz said, clearly unimpressed by your attempt at a joke.

Hanging up and closing the door on the mystery that was your father, you started getting some things together so you could head over to Harvey’s. There was a book lying on your bed with a sticky note on the cover. You peeled back the sticky note (Thought you might enjoy this one!) to see Shakespeare's The Tempest in swirling letters. You put it, some homework, and the book you’d borrowed from the Spellman’s into your backpack.

After what you considered a valiant effort at your homework in Harvey’s garage, you started leafing through the witchcraft book. It went into great detail about all manners of topics that were largely useless to you at that time. Sighing and putting it back into your backpack, you took out The Tempest. You only managed to get through the first few pages before Harvey and Theo hurried in, carrying Roz between them.

“Woah, what happened to her?” you asked, getting up and leaving the book on your chair.

“We don’t know,” Theo rushed out. “She went into one of the tents at the carnival and something happened.”

“Lie her down,” you said. You grabbed a blanket and covered Roz in it; she was shaking so badly that you weren’t sure she’d ever get warm again. The thought sent goosebumps up your skin.

“We should take her to the hospital,” Theo said, still visibly freaked out as he watched you with Roz.

“Come on, Theo, you know whatever happened to her is … it’s magic-related,” Harvey said. He turned his attention back to Roz. “Roz, can you tell us what happened to you?”

Roz struggled through the cold to form words, but they didn’t seem to be making any noise. “Get Sa … Sabrina,” she forced out.

“She’s right,” Theo said. “Sabrina would know what to do.”

“Okay, you guys stay here. I’ll go get her,” Harvey said, already getting up and running out the door.

You and Theo shared an anxious look before he tucked the blankets a bit tighter around Roz. You went to find a heating pack and anything else to raise her temperature while he stayed with her. The two of you tried everything you could think of but nothing seemed to warm her up, not even the magick blanket that Harvey brought with him when he came back.

“Roz, maybe if you moved around, it would help warm you up,” Theo suggested as gently as he could.

He stopped pacing long enough to say, “She can’t! She can’t move,” and to receive one of the harshest glares you’d ever given him.

“He’s trying to help,” you said, each word sounding like its own sentence as you continued to glare at him. This wasn’t Theo’s fault, and Harvey didn’t get the monopoly on being concerned for Roz.

“I know! I just-” Harvey sighed and rubbed his face. “I’m not sitting around and waiting for Sabrina. We have to do something before it’s too late.”

“What are we gonna do, Harvey?” you asked. “Because the last time I checked, none of us have magical powers, which means we can’t cure a magical illness.”

He picked up a shotgun from the wall and turned back to look at you. “Maybe we can’t, but the people from the carnival can.”

“Are you insane or just-”

Your yelling was cut off by Harvey running out the door, shotgun in hand. Theo got up, either to go with him or stop him but you held out a hand to stop him.

“Oh no, you’re not going anywhere,” you said, words sounding more forceful than you meant them to. “You’re going to sit there and help me take care of her.”

You thought he’d argue but instead, Theo just blinked at you twice and sank back into his seat. You took a breath and then started pacing to help you think. Harvey came back sometime later, and Roz turned to stone sometime after that. Eventually, you managed to get ahold of Sabrina.

She basically said that there was nothing you guys could do until she managed to get her powers back. You considered using Caliban’s magick necklace to ask him to help, but Sabrina promised that Ambrose was already researching how to reverse the transformation before you could even mention the necklace.

All the three of you could do was watch over Roz, stay together and, please, keep away from the carnival. The pagans, she said, were dangerous.

Sabrina’s warning did little (or nothing) to deter Harvey from going to the carnival with the reinforcements of the baseball team while you went to get the group some food and Theo checked on Robin. You’d gotten a frantic call from Theo about the boys being turned to pigs and to come help corral them.

After a long night, you now sat with Theo, Robin, and Harvey, slumped against his couch and covered in mud after corralling the newly-transformed baseball pigs into Theo’s barn. Getting all the pigs and cursing Harvey to heaven and back had really taken it out of you.

“I’m never eating bacon again,” Theo said eventually. You would have laughed if you weren’t so tired. A moment of silence passed as he looked between you and Harvey. Can I tell him? The two of you gave him a nod and he continued, “Robin, there’s a few things you need to know about Greendale.”

Robin sat up and told him to wait. He was always nervous but now he seemed even worse. “Let me go first,” he said. “There’s some things I need to tell you … all of you.”

You and Harvey looked at each other before Robin explained. He was a hobgoblin, taken in by the pagans. He rushed out that he didn’t believe in the same things as them and that he wanted to leave them but … he didn’t know how. After some yelling, the four of you took a breath and made a decision.

Robin was one of you now.

“Where have you guys been?” Sabrina asked when she finally showed up again. All of you scrambled to your feet at the sound of her voice. “You look like-”

“We were in the mud,” Harvey cut her off. “Where have you been?”

“All over. Things have been a little crazy,” Sabrina said.

“The baseball players got turned into pigs,” Theo said.

“What?” she asked.

“Harvey got in his head to send a message,” you said, sending him a pointed look. “He took Billy and Carl to the carnival.”

Deciding it was his turn to talk again, Harvey jumped in. “And this woman, some kind of witch-”

“Circe,” Robin said.

“-turned Billy and Carl and Martin and Eric into pigs,” Harvey said. “They’re in Theo’s barn.”

“And Robin’s one of ‘em,” Theo finished.

Sabrina was more appalled than you expected by the revelation. Robin had to go through his whole explanation again, this time sounding even more frayed, and it broke your heart. He didn’t want to be a part of the Green Man’s resurrection. He just wanted to be a teenager.

“And when exactly is this resurrection supposed to happen?” Sabrina asked.

“Uh, when the Green Man’s head scrapes the sky and the ripe fruit falls from his arms,” Robin answered.

“So I’m guessing that means we’ve got time to save Roz and figure this whole mess out,” you said, taking a breath and moving your hair out of your face.

“Yeah, but how are we supposed to do that?” Harvey asked. “Sabrina doesn’t have any powers.”

In an all too familiar way, a voice from the side caught your attention. “Perhaps I can help,” Caliban offered from the doorway. He caught your eye and seemed ready to make some quip about the mud, but Harvey was too quick.

“What the hell is he doing here?” he asked.

You shoved aside the defensiveness you felt for Caliban at that moment and acted like you couldn’t care less about his presence … after making sure that the necklace hadn’t fallen into view and was still safely hidden away behind your muddy clothes.

“Caliban, if this is about the third challenge-” Sabrina started.

“I came to make a proposal, away from the Courts of Hell,” Caliban cut her off, taking his eyes off you long enough to look at her. “If my queen were to entertain it, I would, in turn, help your friend.”

“What kind of proposal?” you asked, at the same time Sabrina asked, “What do you know about turning someone from stone to flesh?”

“I’m made of clay,” Caliban said to her. Explained the cheekbones, not that you’d ever tell him that. Then he looked at you and added, “I’m afraid I can’t discuss official business, love.”

“Start talking about how you’re gonna fix Roz,” you said, taking slow deliberate steps towards him. You poked his chest when you were close enough “Or get the hell out.”

Caliban’s eyebrows knitted together slightly as ran his right thumb across his lip, seemingly deciding what he thought of your more direct approach, before speaking. “There’s a spell, a Pygmalion spell, that will turn her back into flesh.”

“Do you know it?” Sabrina asked from behind you.

“Not by heart, no. I’d have to find it,” Caliban said, leaning slightly to look at her. “If you came with me, I could outline my proposal.”

“Sabrina, if he can fix Roz-”

“Fine, I’ll do it,” Sabrina said. She walked around you and out the door, turning back to tell Caliban to follow her.

The two of them disappeared in unholy hellfire, not completely unlike what you were feeling on the inside. You knew he only wanted the crown - that he only wanted Sabrina - so why were you so upset that he was keeping this proposal such a secret?

“I should go,” you said, trying to cover up the acid in your voice as you turned to face your friends. “I’ve got a paper due tomorrow.”

“We should go, too,” Theo said, taking Robin’s hand in his.

“Wait, you guys can’t all just leave,” Harvey argued.

“Harvey, we’ll be back first thing in the morning, okay?” you promised, trying to sound more benevolent than you felt. “Or sooner if Sabrina and Caliban get back before then.”

---

In all fairness, you did try to get down that paper after you showered. The problem was that that blonde asshole was there every time you closed your eyes, pulling you in with his pretty smile before pushing you away when he got bored. Slamming all the books shut, you went downstairs to get something to eat.

You found your dad in the living room when you went down, passed out in front of the TV. You covered him in a blanket and went to mope in the kitchen, but someone knocked on the door before you could make it there. After an overly dramatic sigh, you went to check who it was.

“Mrs. Wardwell? It’s like 11pm. What are you-” you stopped when she got this sinister look in her smile. “Lilith. What do you want?”

“Sabrina let The Dark Lord out of his cage,” she said, sounding like she was trying very hard to remain cold and detached as she always did. The flippancy gave her away. “I need asylum.”

“Asylum,” you repeated slowly, closing the door slightly in an attempt to block her view of the rest of the house. “Wouldn’t the coven be better suited for that me?”

“Going to witches without power is like putting on sunscreen after you’ve already been burned. Useless,” Lilith said, emphasis on the burned. “Besides, this is a matter best handled by family.”

“Listen, I think you’ve got the wrong-”

“Kali?” your dad’s tired voice asked behind you. You hadn’t heard him get up. “Kali, I thought that was you.”

Lilith said your dad’s name with an emotion you didn’t think she was capable of as she crossed the threshold. Maybe she was a better actress than you gave her credit for. “I think it’s time we had our first family meeting, don’t you?” she asked, setting her bags down. “We have much to discuss.”

You didn’t have the opportunity to argue before your dad went to make tea and Lilith settled into the corner. You knew the last place she wanted to be was sitting at your cramped Ikea table, but she seemed perfectly content to be there. Trying to figure out her angle, you sized her up and skulked closer.

“Okay, are either of you going to explain what the hell is going on?” you asked after five minutes of silence.

“Y/N,” your dad scolded as he turned around. “Language.”

“I don’t really think you have the moral high-ground here,” you said, crossing your arms over your chest.

“The moral high-ground,” Lilith said slowly before shaking her head, as if trying the words on and then deciding they weren’t for her. “Nevermind that, let’s cut to the chase. You’re familiar with your friend Rosalind’s cunning?” You nodded. “Your father has something similar. When I visited Earth to negotiate with Edward Spellman, he found me.”

“I didn’t mean to,” your dad said, sounding dreamy again. You wondered if he’d remember this in the morning, or if he’d snap back to consciousness when he dropped the teacup in his hands. “I was just drawn to this place, you know? And then when I met Kali, I knew the reason why.”

Lilith didn’t seem nearly as enamored with your dad as he did with her. You tried to keep your voice even as you drew your eyes off of her and to your dad. “And what was the reason?”

“Kali is the mother of all demons,” he said, sounding like this was something he’d already explained to you before. “She needed an heir. Someone to claim the throne.”

It felt like someone had punched you. Years spent searching for something more and this was what you got. Your father’s sickening warning during one of his fits ran through your thoughts: Careful what you wish for, little lily. Something more, something less. Always something, something, something. How long until something eats you whole?

“Someone like Sabrina?” you asked, trying to recover.

“With a little help from your mother …” Lilith said in a tempting voice, “You could be every bit as powerful as Sabrina. Perhaps even more so, since you don’t seem to share her affinity for bad decision making.”

“What makes you think I’d want anything from you?” you asked, ignoring the quip about decision making. Screw her for thinking she knew you.

“Y/N,” your dad scolded again.

“You might not want anything from me, but you do want the power,” Lilith said, leaning back in her chair to get a better look at you. She’d never seen you angry before, did she like it? Did you care? “Something more than this simple life. I can give that to you.”

You bit the inside of your cheek before trying to answer. You didn’t know how to respond, so you asked another question instead. “If I’m supposed to be some heir then why are you only here now?”

“Truthfully, I was hoping I would never have to come here at all,” Lilith said, taking a dramatic inhale. “I would only need you if something went wrong, and believe it or not I didn’t want to involve you if I didn’t have to.”

“I believe it just fine,” you said, tone snipping at the end. “Abandoning your backup so you could plan a coop doesn’t make you a martyr.” Before she could respond, your phone rang. Your dad looked ready to tell you to put it away when Lilith held up a hand to stop him. Hesitantly, you picked it up. “What’s wrong, Harvey?”

“Can you meet us at the school?” he asked, sounding rushed. “Sabrina’s got the spell and-”

“Listen, things are a little crazy right now,” you said, drawing out the words so you could come up with an excuse and repress the anger you felt. “Can I call you-”

“Go,” your dad said, louder than Harvey’s insistent whining in your ear. Lilith shrugged. “Go help your friends.”

“I-” you took a breath and pinched the bridge of your nose. “I’ll be right there. Wait for me.”

Part 4

Tag List: @peachesandknives @caliban-is-my-girl @t-a-i-l-o-r-m-a-d-e @music-movies @miss--moose @marrypuffsstuff @harryscarolina @igorsbby @foji2000 @mschfavngz @artaxerxesthegreat @thxmagic @luquincy @peachesandknifes @xealia @hotmessindisguise

#caliban #caliban imagine #caliban x reader #infernal #chilling adventures of sabrina #caos #caos rewrite

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parzivval · 4 years

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hi gang I’m subjecting you all to this, enjoy

tagged by @cerulienne!

tag game: put your entire music library on shuffle and post the first 10 songs that play, then tag 10 people

1. Dark Days - PUP: slaps in every respect of the word. only song that keeps me alive through winter.

2. Take Your Time - fun: when I was a freshman my prefect lent me this record and I still remember this song!! reminds me of being 14 during spring term

3. I Still Don’t Know - James Righton: has anyone seen Benjamin aka the Colin Morgan movie where he plays a struggling gay director. absolutely delightful. this is from the soundtrack

4. Mama Tried - Merle Haggard: I LOVE this song, my dad played it all the time when I was little. strong cowboy energy.

5. Wake Me Up When September Ends - Green Day: sad but still a banger. big mood.

6. Secrets - One Republic: not to be insanely white on main but I fucking adore this song it makes me so HAPPY. It was in one of my fave movies growing up, that’s right boys, the Sorcerer’s Apprentice ft Nic Cage.

7. Delilah - Florence + the Machine: slaps. listened to this album a lot on the bus home from 8th grade. how big how blue how beautiful is criminally underrated.

8. Enter Sandman - Metallica: great for driving. also great for annoying my mom. insanely catchy.

9. Gypsy - Fleetwood Mac: makes me feel like I should be in a meadow somewhere with a tambourine. I have an unabiding love for Stevie Nicks.

10. Blue Moon - Billie Holiday: so soft, so nice, feels peaceful. her voice is SO beautiful she just exudes grace & love. I also like that the recording is kinda scratchy.

I tag @retrocouch, @kentalgender-official, @toeprison-dancer, @your-friendly-local-lesbian, & no one else because I’m a hermit and I don’t know anyone

ok love u guys have a good friday

#if anyone knows PUP #PLS message me #theyre one of my fave bands but they're still pretty small

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wykart · 5 years

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A Great Age, Ending

Dishonored post DOTO fic that fleshes out some of the lore (which is obviously speculation on my part) surrounding the Outsider's fall from grace (his transformation in Dh2) and the fate of Billie Lurk with all that 'eye of the dead god' business.

Canon: This assumes sort of 'medium' chaos for both Corvo in Dh1 and Emily in Dh2, both have killed but they're not psychopaths that like putting springrazors on severed heads and throwing them into a crowd of civilians (because who would DO such a thing??)

Summary: Billie Lurk set out to kill the Outsider, but instead gave him something else; life. However, she left something else behind in the eye of the dead god, something which it had been promised ever since the Outsider marked her, not as his follower, but as his successor. As the young man struggles to adjust to his newly mortal existence, Billie feels a pull towards the darkness, back into the void, and Emily Kaldwin struggles with the loss of the power that accompanied her across the isles and through her idle days in court.

Read here on ao3

or read chapter one under the cut

I heard a whisper in my ear, a word that felt impossibly ancient and foreign, yet flooded my mind with grim familiarity and a stinging pain in my neck where a slash had once turned to stone. My name.

When she ripped me from that hollow place, I felt my conscious plucked from the expanse, and stuffed violently back into a cruel shell, cut away from everything I had been in a heartbeat. A heartbeat; something I hadn't experienced in eons, life where I had expected, perhaps even wanted, death. The thick blackness parted before my eyes like clouds, as light touched my eyes for the first time in millennia. I saw her face, sharp and dark and scared; and collapsed into her strong arms feeling weight and touch and pain. Why hadn't she killed me? She held the twin blade, intertwined with the dark stone and black magic that had crafted her arm. Why had she not thrust it through my halted heart? I knew that had been her intention, and the intention of her mentor, whom she loved like a father. Billie lurk was not merciful, in fact I knew her to delight in the fading of light from the eyes, the falling blood from the blade. And I was her sworn target, the most deserving of death. So why did I live?

…

She awoke to a dull throbbing pain on the back of her hand. It wasn’t the same as any pain she’d felt there before, not the tickling burn that set her nerves alight when the mark had been given to her. Not the dark, elating rush of power through her veins like flowing water as she leapt between rooftops on a coil of shadow, and not the nauseating pull from deep within her, like air being yanked from her lungs as she entered the blackness of the void. No, something had happened, something was wrong. The pain grew, cold and sharp, like a knife cutting into numb frozen skin, gouging not just the mark from her hand, but the power, and the connections tethering her to the world beyond. She sat up, groggy and sluggish, wincing at the strange sensation. She had little time for contemplation at the meaning of all this, because at that moment her pain crescendoed into excruciation, and she let out a piercing scream.

The sound had escaped her before she could stop it, and she wondered if this was some terrible price she must pay for the powers bestowed upon her. She knew that such a price was coming by the way her father regarded his own mark with apprehension and a certain grateful disgust. Every tendon in her body was clenched and shaking against the pain, eyes so tightly closed that the shadows of lights behind her eyes spun and danced. But then, as soon as it had come, the feeling was gone – leaving only raw, throbbing flesh in its place. Something was different, and when she reached out to the void, she found nothing but herself, echoing back. She felt... incomplete somehow, yet there was an old familiarity to it, and loneliness. Emily Kaldwin knew then that the mark of the Outsider was gone. The door burst open and the heavy footed boots of the imperial guard thundered in, uniforms of red and navy, tassled and prim.

“Your majesty!” One of them cried, breathlessly, “What is it? What’s wrong?” The urgency in their tones, their adrenaline, it made the empress feel ashamed.

She plastered on a smile “It was nothing, kind sirs, a nightmare is all.” She tried to appear unshaken. “I apologise for rousing you here for no reason other than my own imagination.” She scoffed a little, and smiled weakly at the outlines of their shocked faces.

“No problem your highness, think nothing of it. We are, after all, here to serve-“

“No need sir,” she knew their words by heart, and thought she might soon collapse from the suffocating aura the mark had left behind. “simply leave me to my rest and feel free to get some of your own.” The guards were unnecessary, but her father insisted.

“Of course ‘majesty, begging your pardon.” The guards walked out, looking a little disappointed that there was no threat to valiantly dispel, no brave and daring rescue to brighten their boring nights as standing sentinels, no tall tales to tell by the firelight to their comrades while they drunk the envy and admiration from their eyes. Just as the guards left, another set of footsteps slunk in, softer and well disguised, so quiet, in fact, that no other ears would have noticed. Corvo Attano stood at the door, his face shrewd with concern. His left fist was clenched, popping veins, red raw skin, and a white swirling scar. He must have felt it too. Even though his own mark had been removed by Delilah months earlier, his connection to the void and the Outsider would never fade… until now.

“Emily,” he spoke, a soft and caring voice, worn at the edges. “Are you alright?” A lantern swung in his hand, illuminating the dark chambers in tall, dramatic shadow.

“I think so. It’s the mark, it’s gone.” It was only then that she realised just how saddened she was by this, after the pain and shock had almost faded away.

“Yes…” He trailed off a little, placing the lantern down on a nearby set of drawers, “yes I thought as much,” he walked further into the room and sat on the edge of her bed.

“But it feels like more than that,” she started, reaching into her memories of the past few moments to recall what had come over her.

“I don’t think it was simply a gift revoked. It was torn, cut away, it doesn’t feel like anything I’ve experienced before, certainly not like what Delilah did to me.”

“So you felt it too, even though your mark was gone?”

“I did, though I expect it was a mere echo of what you felt, my connection to the void has been fading these past months.” He held Emily’s hand in his, gently brushing the mutilated flesh with his thumb. She looked into his eyes imploringly, asking for more. “When Delilah took my mark, all she stole was my power, things that I could control and manifest physically. This time, everything holding me to the void has been severed, I can’t feel anything anymore, nothing beyond my own head. It’s strange… but welcome too, like I’ve awoken from a dream… but what about you, does it hurt? Can you still feel something?”

“Nothing... Nothing at all” She sounded miserable. She was miserable. “Do you know what it means?” She could see it in his eyes, that look of patronising understanding, there was sympathy and severity there.

“Emily, I know how you must feel. The power was – as much as I hate to say it – a part of you. But you need to understand that this is for the best. The path of The Outsider – my path – leads only to blood and regret.” It was the tone he took when he, albeit rarely, gave these fatherly insights of wisdom.

“Sounds like you should go join The Abbey, Overseer Attano.” She forced a chuckle, and looked at him with indifference. She faltered, her father was serious. She recalled a night, as still, black, and uncaring as this one, though it had been sharper, richer, it had tasted of blood and ash, of rot and twisting roots, of revenge. She had brushed her hand across cold, jagged stone, and it had melted away into the flesh of her father. His eyes were wild as the life returned to them, his arm still outstretched to where Delilah’s throat had been (to her – months prior, to him – less than a moment ago). He stumbled, synapses receiving senses new and frightening, too much crammed into too little time. Only then had Emily let out a deep sign, gravelled and weighted with the pain of those past months. She had collapsed into her father’s arms, and he into hers, and they enveloped each other as they cowered in the defiled palace. They had been, if only for a moment, at peace. Until Corvo spied the mark etched into his daughter’s skin. He had grabbed her hand, so hard, so fast that it shocked Emily, that it almost hurt. He had cried, really cried, sobbing, wrapping her lithe hands among his, large and strong. It scared her. He had apologised, for what she didn’t know, he had looked into her eyes, searching her. He asked “How many,” she looked confused, and he implored her “How many dead?” She had looked away, strange that she felt guilt and shame toward a man who taught her how to swing a blade, who had carried her over piles of corpses to her throne when she was a child. She knew how it saddened him to see her cover her mark with gloves in court each day, lest her be marked as a heretic. He hated to see her live in fear of discovery, suppressing her emotions so as not to release them in a flurry of magic and blood. She knew he must be beyond relief at prospect of that burden being lifted, from both of them, giving them both a chance to move on from the time when those powerful gifts were the scales balancing life and death.

“I’m sorry father,” she whispered, earnestly – and she was.

“The mark, it’s power…” he was struggling to find the right words, as he so often did. But silence was not an option, not now, not with Emily. “It was a tool, nothing more. Something like that, you can’t let it become a part of you, have power over you. It served it’s purpose, you’re back on the throne and our enemies are dealt with.” He sighed, once again turning his attention to the red welts and heat radiating from where the Outsider’s mark had been on her hand. She tried not to wince as he examined it. “We have no need of power like that any more.” He closed his palm around the scar and looked up into her eyes.

But I do, she wanted to say, because she lived and breathed that darkness. She wove her way through the fabric of reality, the spaces between worlds, dancing from rooftop to rooftop and watching the city sleep. She lurked in the deepest of back-alleys scouring old shrines for enchanted ink and scraps of whalebone, for purple fabrics and sharpened stakes erected to the worship of the void – anything for the rush moving just that little bit fasted, to feel the sting of a blade or pound of the earth without damage, to peel away the veil of the world just that little bit farther… She knew it was dangerous, that she might lose herself to a life like that. In the moment, she didn’t care, it was the only thing that could relieve her from the day to day mundanities of cordial diplomacy and carrying an empire by her image alone. She did need it, that power, and she didn’t know what she would do without the music of the void to fill the spaces between her thoughts as she lived. She supposed she would have to find out.

...

When sleep found her again – her father still sitting there beside her, stroking her hand – she found herself in the void. It was different than she’d ever seen it. Different to the black hollow place that the Outsider called from, and different again to the sharper, golden spaces where Delilah stalked her dreams. This was another power entirely, calling out to her. The same black stone stretched out in slabs and jagged platforms in a swirling crimson sky. It was deep and bright, rich and fiery. A shrouded figure was standing on the landing below. She reached out through the mark that had once adorned her skin, trying to grab hold of those buried instincts and swing herself over the gap on a tendril of dark smoke. Nothing. She looked down at the back of her hand. Blank, even in the void. Instead, she clambered down over the edge, bracing her knees for a shock of impact as she landed behind the stranger. They wore a sharp crimson coat, a shock of black her twisting in the windless air. They turned. Meagan Foster – or rather, Billie Lurk – stared back. Her eyes were black and bottomless like those of the Outsider himself, and they swirled with the same red firelight that danced across these unfamiliar skies. She opened her mouth to speak, and Emily saw her lips form around her name before she woke up, cold and sweating in her palace bed.

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bellbottomedzoso · 5 years

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i'm going to be a hoe and make you answer all the queen asks

wow thanks.

Lap of the Gods: are you religious or spiritual at all?

yeh. I’m Muslim!

Killer Queen: what’s your favorite guilty pleasure?

coca cola. i can feel my teeth rotting in my mouth. Also soap cutting ASMR

Staying Power: what is something you’re most confident about?

i’m!!! not a terrible singer!!!

Dancer: do you prefer to dance or to sing?

siiiinnnnnngggggggggg (apparently i pissed off my dad real bad today because i was singing too loud in the shower while he tried to take a nap)

Doing Alright: are you stable or do you struggle with any mental health issues?

I’m stable. i mean i daydream a lot and i get stressed but that’s just a personality and school thing, respectively.

You’re My Best Friend: what is the name of your best friend and how did you meet them?

i have no idea. there’s these two weird girls i think their names are like,,, cassidy and tulip????

no i’m kidding- cas and rose are my best friends and i love them to the ends of the earth- i met cas in elementary when she and another girl asked me to play detectives with them and i knew of rose in elementary but didn’t really meet her until middle school. The three of us all became really close friends in middle school and now having us in the same vicinity is probably too much friendly chaos for nearby people’s well-being.

Nevermore: What was the last thing to make you cry?

pictures of cats. specifically pictures of my cat.

I’m in Love with My Car: what’s your favorite make and model of car? If you don’t like cars, what is your preferred mode of transportation?

i don’t know much about cars. my preferred mode of transportation is probably by train. trains are nice. you can sleep on them and focus on the sound of the chuga chuga

Spread Your Wings: do you like your job, or do you have greater aspirations that make it unbearable?

i don’t have a job and i don’t like thinking about jobs even though i should but they stress me out sorry

Don’t Stop Me Now: how do you get yourself motivated?

i uhh,,, talk to myself lol

Delilah: do you have any pets? If so, what are their most annoying habits?

i technically have a pet!! i have a cat named milo but he doesn’t live with me anymore and i miss him immensely. when he did live with me though his most annoying habit (that most cats tend to have) is sCREAMING HIS DAMN HEAD OFF AT F I V E A M UNTIL I FEED THE LITTLE MONSTER

Back Chat: is there anyone in your life that intimidates you? What about them makes them intimidating?

my chorus teacher is kind of intimidating but after a while it’s easy to see right through him so i can deal with his stern demeanor.

Life is Real: which member of the Beatles is your favorite?

bol

Princes of the Universe: which member of Queen is your favorite?

roger or deaky

Cool Cat: are you a cat or a dog person? Even if you like both, do you have a preference?

CATSCATSCATSCATSCATS

Keep Yourself Alive: what is your most healthy coping mechanism?

umm i have this one for when i feel insecure about my appearance. Looking for features that i don’t like about myself in other people who many people and i find beautiful. it’s a “if they can rock it, so can i” philosophy

Who Wants to Live Forever: how do you handle mourning the loss of a loved one?

i haven’t really lost anyone. i’ve lost more pets than people. in the case of both, i just cry. a lot. because although it is inevitable, it is scary. the thought behind it is scary, too- and i tend to overthink things.

Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy: what is your sexuality?

just,, love me please

Let Me Entertain You: who is your favorite modern artist? Why?

so right now it’s probably FINNEAS. i’ve been listening to him a lot and oH MY GOD i love it rhgyerghkbewg he doesn’t get all the attention he deserves because of billie though :(((

#ask

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stompsite · 6 years

Text

Can Violence Be Okay?

As some of you know, I’m basically gonna die real soon unless I can get heart surgery, but that’s expensive. I make money by writing essays about games. If you like my work, please share it around, because personally, I’d like to keep on living. If you wanna support me, I’ve got patreon, ko-fi, and a critically acclaimed game out. I’m also looking for work as a designer or writer, so if you know of anything, let me know, please? I’ve worked on well over a dozen AAA and indie games doing everything from emergency script rewrites to helping devs improve their investment loops. I’ve put a lot of time into the 29 years of my life so far, and I’d like it to pay off, lol. But seriously, my mortality is distressing, so if you know how I can get my heart fixed and put a roof over my head, I want to hear from you!

Dishonored 2 is one of my favorite games. I’ve written about it at length before. I’ve talked about some of my problems with the game (doing the right thing in D2 feels like an easy choice compared to D1), but I mean, man, I still love it. When it first dropped, though? Man. I had A Problem with it.

Dishonored 2 was so good until I got to the end and got an ending that didn’t match up with my feeling of where I was at when playing the game. There I was, being the best Corvo I could be, running around trying to save my daughter Emily, realizing how bad things had got in Karnaca while I’d been away, and wanting to do my best to keep everyone safe and improve the empire.

At the end, the game told me that Corvo ruled the islands with an iron fist. What had happened? Why was it doing this to me? I didn’t ghost every level, but I certainly approached things non-lethally where I could.

Turns out that the game doesn’t like it when you kill monsters.

I mean, sure, if you kill, like, a rat, the game doesn’t seem to care, but if you kill a witch, the game gets mad. Apparently, the game considers witches to be people. I did not--I felt the game had led me to believe that witches weren’t actually people. So when I made the choice to kill them, the game saw it as Corvo choosing the path of violence… but that’s not the decision I made.

Let’s rewind a bit.

One of my favorite story archetypes is about people without power who, through cleverness, ingenuity, and grit, overcome those with power. It’s not just about being an underdog, it’s about being underestimated, devalued, even downright abused. It’s about the defiance that comes with that, and overcoming the expectations someone has.

I don’t know exactly why, but I’ve always liked these kinds of stories. It frustrated me to watch my wealthier peers pick on the poorer ones. It insulted me when I was essentially told “wow, it’s remarkable that you’re so intelligent for someone so poor” after I won a scholarship. I had to protect two disabled students from one of the richer students in school because he wanted something they had and they didn’t want to give it to him. I have watched people with power hurt and abuse those without. Heck, I’ve been at the mercy of people more powerful than me before. I don’t like that. When I can tell someone’s struggling with the power dynamics of a group, I do my best to help them feel more comfortable in that space.

One thing I liked about the first Dishonored game is that the Empress, Jessamine, is portrayed as a good person who wanted to do right by her people, but she was actively sabotaged, and eventually murdered, by the nobles whose power she threatened. That kind of story is alluring to me; getting justice for Jessamine and delivering Dunwall from the powerful, punching up like that… that’s awesome as heck.

It was kinda weird when Dishonored 2 shows up and indicates that maybe Dunwall didn’t actually improve that much after the nobility was killed off/not killed off (I was mostly nonlethal the first time). D2 never really confronts this head on, at least that I can recall. Instead, it feels like two different stories. There’s the personal story of “someone hurt your family and took your home and you should take it back,” and then there’s the idea of “you’re fighting for justice for people who are downtrodden by the people who took your home.”

These are both great, but after the fact, it did seem kinda strange that Corvo, literally the dad of the Emperor, as upper-class as you can get, is playing the part of the underdog (or Emily herself, who I haven’t played because I wanted to hear Stephen Russell’s voice again). Like, there’s this implication that he and Emily haven’t really fixed anything at all and maybe kinda betrayed Jessamine’s legacy with that? I dunno. It’s really the only criticism I have of Dishonored 2 anymore, and I mean, the game’s still a 10/10 for me. It’s one of the only games that can grab hold of my attention and actually distract me from the pain I’m in.

Arkane has done such an amazing job with their games; I get to be someone else for a while. I can block out the health problems for a while and just fall into another space and experience relief from my awful life. I will never be able to thank everyone there for making such pure and wonderful games.

So Dishonored 2 has this kinda odd relationship with privilege and power and how it contextualizes its protagonists, but then along came Death of the Outsider, which solved this problem by letting you play as Billie Lurk, who, for my money, is the best protagonist in Dishonored history. I love playing as Billie. I love that she’s not an upper class person, just a normal person with cool tools and powers.

Anywho, back to the violence.

So, one thing I love about Arkane games is that they have amazing gamefeel. It’s like saying a drink is smooth, right? Like, it just feels right. I’ve never played an Arkane game that felt bad (maybe Arx Fatalis does, but I’ve never played it!), and I feel like, with every successive release, they only get better at making great gamefeel. Buuuuuuttt… it feels like since Dishonored, every Arkane game is a test. You can’t just do what feels good; you’re taking a test.

When the witches came along, I’m not gonna lie, it felt good to let loose. They’re just as powerful as I am, so it’s not like it’s an uneven playing field.

But… that wasn’t my first reaction. I’d encountered the witches before in The Knife of Dunwall and The Witches of Brigmore, and they’re portrayed in those games as unequivocally bad. Still, for Dishonored 2, I was trying to play stealthy and nonlethally, so I decided to knock them out at first. When I found out I could take their powers in one mission, I decided to try that, and then figured that when Corvo stopped Delilah, he’d probably arrest them or something.

Then, an unfortunate bug occurred (kudos to Arkane for fixing it really quickly! I think they had it solved in a couple days or something amazing like that) where some of the witches were dying when I was trying to render them unconscious. I couldn’t get the nonlethal option to work.

But I wasn’t that concerned, because I felt the witches needed to be killed.

Why?

Because they’re horrible, and I think they seem closer to Vampires--supernatural monsters--than people.

I mean, listen to their dialogue. Look at what they do to the people they kill. They even backstab each other--one of their idle dialogues is about stealing from another. Another is about brushing her sister’s hair so she can gain trust and then stab her sister in the throat. The witches are hostile too--it’s not possible to approach them peacefully. They react to you like you’ve just invaded their vampiric crypt.

The mechanics don’t really leave room for interacting with them sympathetically; there’s no chance to talk to them, work with them, or anything. You can knock them unconscious, but it feels weird, even unconscionable to do that to people who are talking about stabbing each other in the throat.

I’m okay with knocking someone out when the heart says something like “He wasn't always like this. One of his works still hangs in a museum,” or “If he looks sad, it is because he mourns the child he lost,” but I had to look up a list of the heart’s lines about the witches because I couldn’t think of a time when the heart ever said anything good about a single one of the witches.

So, they have magical powers, want to do nothing but kill us, and they’re even happy to kill each other too. Read some of the notes--it’s indicated that they’re sadists. They take delight in killing anyone and everyone. The environmental storytelling seems to indicate the same thing; nothing good comes of a witch’s presence.

When I first did my quick gut-reaction post about Dishonored 2, I fumbled to articulate why Delilah bugged me. I felt like the game tried to excuse her at every turn. She had a bad life. She was a bastard child and treated poorly. Given my propensity for liking underdogs who were underestimated and mistreated, you might think I’d like her too. But I saw what she did. I saw what she’d chosen to become.

Many of the witches are contextualized in this way. I think the actual target of the museum mission--sorry, I’ve forgotten her name, it was 18 months ago--has this whole long backstory about being a rich lady who was going to get married off to a man she didn’t love who was kind of a shitty person anyways.

In reading all of the lines in the game that the heart has for witches, most of them are about enjoying drinking blood, murdering families, and abusing children. One woman struggles to remember the person she was before, but that reminds me more of a vampire’s thrall than anything else, and the game never does anything with that. No “please, I don’t want to do this,” or anything.

They became witches, and are now visiting a far greater violence upon the Empire. As one of my friends pointed out--and I’m inclined to agree--the Empire kind of deserves it, at least in Dishonored 2. It’s not a good society. I mean, it’s weirdly forward thinking in some ways, right? Like literally all of the romantic fiction I’ve encountered in the universe is LGBT stuff. But then in other ways it’s a mirror of the 19th Century British Empire, abusing people and nature in equal measure. Like I said, Jessamine seemed to be trying to fix those things, but she died, and Dishonored 2 indicates that Emily shirked her responsibilities to be a better Empress.

But.

I mean.

Literally all of the heart dialogue we have for them paints them as bad people. The nicest person we have is one who despairs because it’s easier to hurt people with each passing month.

One of my friends has argued that these were all women who were mistreated or whatever, but the heart doesn’t tell us about that. It isn’t saying “her husband used to beat her, so she relishes the power she has” or anything. None of these lines speak to a culture of misogynistic violence. Instead, we have a woman who “spent a month killing those who had slighted her.”

Slighted.

Not abused, beat, hurt. Slighted.

There is, as far as I’ve seen, precisely one person who was a victim: “Beaten and abused, she was barely sane when she heard the coven's call. Now she does the same to others, wielding her power like a barbed whip.”

I’ve been abused. It’s not something I like to talk about at length, but I was molested by an adult male (thankfully not my parents!) at the age of 11. I was abused by an ex who wanted to destroy me the way her mother had destroyed her, and those actions included gaslighting, emotional blackmail, and a ton of other things I don’t really want to talk about. I’ve been physically and emotionally abused for my genetic shortcomings.

I learned, a very long time ago, that almost all abuse comes from people who were abused. I’ve met people who are very angry, and I’ve heard people say “ah, well, it’s okay for them to lash out, because they were abused, so it’s only natural.” Heck, I’ve been one of the people who lashed out. It was only an emotional outburst, but it remains one of the worst things I’ve ever done. I will never stop regretting it.

I understand wanting justice. I understand wanting someone to hurt for what they did to you. I still have nightmares I don’t talk about. I’ve sat with friends who’ve had it so much worse than me and done everything in my power to give them what comfort I can.

But the witches are different. They chose power. And they chose vengeance. Should we justify that? Would I be justified if I started murdering everyone who looked or seemed like the people who had wronged me? Does anything excuse the murder of a bunch of academics in a Karnacan museum? The witches speak with sadistic dialogue. One of the notes left behind by someone trying to hide in the game’s final level makes it abundantly clear that their behaviors are monstrous.

So. Uh.

Look at Gary Oldman’s Dracula.

Dracula’s whole thing is actually super sad, right? Like, the love of his life died while he was out fighting bad dudes. She was tricked into committing suicide, so he renounces God and gets cursed into becoming a monster. His origins are tragic. It’s unfair what happened to him. But I mean, he still murders people and stuff. Dude’s gotta get stabbed in the heart. Sure, it’s cool that his wife got reincarnated as Mina Harker and all, but his whole kidnapping her and trying to turn her into one of his thralls is still bad.

The reason that killing Dracula is good is because Dracula has power and he is a monster. These witches have power and they are monsters. They hurt people--not just the ones who deserve it, but the ones who don’t. In the Brigmore witches, it sure as heck appears to be that they’re preying on the poor. It’s not like they’re out there fighting a revolutionary war against the nobility, and that their magical powers tip the scale. No, they’re killing everyone, even like… public works dudes. It’s an indiscriminate process. They’re killing people they don’t even know.

What makes them not monsters? They have power, and they use that power with cruelty. Dishonored’s world is not a good one to live in, but there is nothing the heart has for us that says that these women were victims. In many cases, they were perpetrators before they got their powers.

Corvo may be kind of a shitty ruler, by seeing a ton of problems during the time of Dishonored 1 and not addressing them leading up to Dishonored 2, but he’s one of the only people who can actually fight a witch; I think the only people actually capable of fighting them are the creepy religious zealots who enjoy torturing people for fun (why didn’t Corvo shut that down?).

So I was thinking about all of this when I killed the witches. They weren’t human anymore. They were indiscriminately murdering anyone who stopped them. Their leader, Delilah, had been portrayed in two stories already as a monster, and while her backstory was tragic, she took that tragedy and used it to excuse being a murderous monster, who ruined the lives of everyone she met, regardless of who they were.

I would have had a much harder time squaring off against a witch who was using her powers to put a stop to her abuser. Like, I, personally, would probably not hunt down the man who hurt me as a kid and put a sledgehammer through his brains, but I mean, in a game, if a witch went to murder a man who molested her, I definitely would be treating her like a person.

These witches, I felt, after listening to them talk, listening to the heart, and watching them act so casually around the bodies of the people they murdered, weren’t out for justice. They weren’t trying to fight back against an oppressive and cruel society. They were monsters. When a witch is wandering around talking about going for a swim later or wondering how the new girl’s doing, it might seem fine, but to be so casual as she walks past a pile of bodies… that’s monstrous. Murder is not a casual act.

Corvo (or Emily, if you played as her) is the only person who can stop the witches, even if you reject the Outsider’s gifts and play without any powers at all. They outclass everyone else, and they kill for the thrill. Someone has to stop them. It’s urgent.

A friend of mine got really upset with me for killing the witches. He said that these were women who’d been mistreated and society deserved to burn. But I mean… if you’re a random guy in a library, are you gonna be able to stop a squad of guards who throw innocent people in prison, kill people’s dogs for meat to sell, or murder innocent people? What about a groundskeeper? What can he do?

The game does not, as far as I can tell, back up the assertion that the witches were victims given power. There is no justice--they’re psychopaths who tortured children and animals, who murdered families, who relish in the carnage. The few women seen as good are losing those memories. Their existence as witches is a tragic one at best, and they’re so reminiscent of horror characters who lose themselves through possession or vampirism that I don’t know how to justify refusing to stop them.

A cop once told me about how he fought a man on PCP. The man had beaten his partner unconscious and was trying to choke him to death. Apparently this huge guy didn’t even feel their tazers and they weren’t supposed to shoot him. This cop ended up in a knock-down, drag out brawl with a man who wasn’t feeling any pain. He ended up bashing a pyrex bowl over the guy’s head so hard it shattered before backup arrived. He told me “if I could have shot him, I think I would have.”

To me, this brings up the question: is it possible to be violent in a game for a constructive purpose? There’s that old quote, misattributed to Orwell, that says something like “we sleep soundly in our beds at night because there are men who visit violence upon those who would do us harm.”

I must admit, I’d love future Dishonored games that involved dismantling the monarchy and trying to find a better, fairer government. I’d love to visit Pandyssia and dismantle traditional colonialist tropes. I’d like to grapple with questions about the ethics of violence, because that’s a subject that interests me on a personal level.

But I must admit, I was surprised when Dishonored 2 did everything to portray its witches as these inhuman, incredibly powerful beings, and then punished me for trying to protect the weak from their unbridled power. To me, my actions were heroic, because I was fighting a corrupted and almost unstoppable power in order protect the innocent. This is a game that let me save Aramis Stilton, a man who had fought for workers rights and was destroyed by the Duke for it.

(as an aside, I love Stilton; he grew up poor and earned his wealth honestly. He earned everything he had, so of course the nobility didn’t think he deserved it, because rich people think the only honest way to have money is to receive it from one’s parents. He never forgot where he came from and tried to do right by his workers, so the nobility destroyed him for it. Restoring his mind through time shenanigans is one of the most… most right things I have ever done in a game. I felt fortunate to be given that option)

I think, if the witches were human, if they were victims who deserved better, then the game should have supported that through its mechanics and narrative. But the heart--which, last I knew, told the truth--told me that they were monsters, and those that weren’t had lost their humanity and were on their way to becoming monsters.

I would love other ways to solve problems. When the heart tells me that this man beats his son so hard his bruises last a month, I want to put a stop to it. But what can I do? My only verbs are “knock out” or “murder.” Should I knock out a monster that rejoices in slaughter? Or should I put it down so that it won’t kill again?

Dishonored 2 is one of my favorite games of all time, but I felt that the ending only considered whether I had performed violence, not whether that violence needed to be performed. In my own life, I went through hell and chose not to come out of it a monster. I don’t know how to justify these women performing child abuse, animal abuse, and murder. Like vampires, they are monsters. No matter how tragic their origins, they prey on the weak and defenseless. I don’t like violence, but I think maybe there are times when it’s an unfortunate requirement. They might have been powerless at one point, but in the game, their actions showed they did nothing but punch down. Personally, I think we should punch up or not at all.

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darknessfactor · 7 years

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Prompt thing: People's reactions to meeting human!Outsider. (Bonus points for different ships)

A/N: I’m probably not going to get bonus points because I don’t really know what you mean by ‘different ships’. But other than that, I hope you like it!

(Though to be honest, my guess is that if people recognized him, he would make like that alien in that one vine with the X-files song: try to run away and crash into something.)

Billie

“Do you think that the Eyeless have any Serkonan plantains lying around?”

Billie snorted. “Food wasn’t exactly the first thing on my mind when I was trying not to get speared by Envisioned. But considering that most of the cultists don’t seem to leave the mountain ever, I’d say your chances are pretty high.”

Seeing him perk up, she added, “But we’re not detouring from getting out of here. There could still be Envisioned around.”

The Outsider glanced at a pile of snoring cultists that they passed. “Only Envisioned, I’m guessing?”

“You weren’t watching?”

“I was somewhat preoccupied over what I assumed was my impending death.”

Billie held back another snort, and instead said, completely deadpan, “Don’t assume, it just makes an ass out of you and me.”

The Outsider laughed. Threw back his head and let out an honest-to-Void laugh, clearly uncaring that it echoed throughout the Eyeless’ hideout. Billie didn’t have the heart to shush him, turning away to hide a smile.

It had taken him a little while to re-learn to walk - to put one foot in front of the other and keep his balance - but by the time they stumbled out of the ritual hold, he didn’t need to hang on to Billie’s arm any longer. He was, unsurprisingly, ravenous, and stopped to grab whatever food was lying around on their way. He’d already eaten half a loaf of bread and two apples.

The Outsider was, as Billie suspected he might be, fascinated by all the things he didn’t get to experience when he was... well, when he was the Outsider. He also, however, held onto the wry cynicism with which he’d spoken to Billie, and seemed especially prone to sarcasm.

Which suited her just fine. It was nice to be around someone who could keep up with her.

The Outsider spoke up again. “It does sort of have an aesthetic beauty to it, doesn’t it? If you ignore the cold, unwelcome feeling it has.”

“I’ll set up a resort here. ‘Come experience all the horrors the Void has to offer. Visit once and you’ll never sleep properly again.’”

The Outsider smirked at her. “’People who want to be turned to stone especially welcome.’”

This time, they both laughed.

Emily

“Your majesty, perhaps you’d like to pick your jaw up off the floor.”

Emily snapped her mouth closed, shaking herself and wondering if this was a dream - but when she pinched herself, the Outsider was still in front of her. He had his hands folded behind his back, a position she was used to see, but the eyes were... different.

“How?” was all she could ask.

“Well...” And for the first time, he looked hesitant. “That would be the reason why I wanted a private audience.”

Emily was about to ask what he meant by that when there was a violet flash, and Meagan Foster - Billie Lurk - appeared next to him, arms folded, like she’d been standing there the entire time.

“Mea -” Emily cut herself off, once again finding herself struggling to close her mouth. “Billie. What - ?”

“It’s a long story,” Billie said, with the air of someone who would rather be anywhere else.

Emily couldn’t stop herself from smiling, standing and moving towards them. Billie eyed her nervously, though the Outsider seemed less so. Emily placed one hand on each of their shoulders, letting her ‘Imperial Majesty Emily Kaldwin’ mask fall away completely.

“I don’t know about you two,” she said. “But I could use a drink.”

Corvo

It was hard to believe that he was actually here, and not visiting in what Corvo sometimes could swear were fever dreams, but the profile (though he was facing away from him) was unmistakable.

The last time Corvo had been visited by the Outsider, it had been a few weeks after Emily had overthrown Delilah and rescued Corvo. He had offered to return Corvo’s Mark to him, which Corvo had refused, saying that he had gotten by without using it for fifteen years, and that he could continue to do so.

At that moment, the Outsider was staring down at Jessamine’s grave, while the sun started its ascent. Corvo moved silently to stand next to him, also turning his gaze to the gravestone.

“Hello, Corvo,” the Outsider said. “Emily was kind enough to offer me - and my... friend - a place to stay.”

Corvo huffed. “I know it’s Billie Lurk. You don’t have to dance around it.”

“Oh,” the Outsider said, sounding awkward, for once. “Right. At any rate, I’m sorry I didn’t come to speak to you sooner. I’ve been... thinking.”

“About?”

The Outsider shrugged. “What I’ll do now. Before - when Billie first released me - there was... so much to think about. Being able to hear so much, and see color, and eat and smell - not to mention Billie figuring out a way to set me up with a fake identity. And then the decision to come here... I didn’t really consider what I would do with the rest of my life. I didn’t really realize that I have a life to live.”

He paused, but he seemed like he still had more to say. Corvo found the Outsider’s willingness to be candid - after many conversations filled with nothing but cryptic words - refreshing.

“Emily says I’m welcome to stay,” he said. “I think she’s trying to convince Billie to stay as well. I just... I’m not sure if that’s what I want.”

Corvo hummed thoughtfully. “Maybe the point of all this is that whatever you end up doing, it’ll be your decision, in the end.”

They were both quiet, for a moment, and then the Outsider looked over at Corvo, smiling. “Maybe it is.”

#dishonored #dishonored 2 #dishonored fic #the outsider #billie lurk #emily kaldwin #corvo attano #my fic #amaya writes fanfiction #prompt fill #doto spoilers

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doctorpariahdax · 7 years

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Stick around Corvo fans-How Daud was thrown away and enlightened as a character in Dishonored series.

This is gonna be long so buckle up kiddos. There's a couple things that immediately come to mind for fans of the Dishonored universe and from what I've come across is that you either love Daud or you hate him. And I don't think that's directly a flaw with the character himself but how he was presented. There are a couple things I want to list that I'll further elaborate on that pertain to how Daud was thrown away as a character (ruined) and elaborated on. -dauds inital purpose -mercy or le death -yay classic redemption arc - except lol maybe not what did you do -true character nature -the marked and the outsider's approval -the purpose of doto -the end of daud Now to give you full disclosure I have not yet run through all of Dishonored 2 or doto. I am by no means a completionist, I don't feel pressured to explore every nook and cranny just for some obscure letter written by one of Delilah's witches that tells you something about someone somewhere about hlahblahblhab. Now because I'm a responsible impulse efficient and self controlled person roaming social media I spoiled the end of doto for myself and I am deeply saddened because Daud is my favorite character. I don't know if it's a kink of mine to like dangerous emotionally unavailable and unattainable men (cuz he's ded. Lel nah he's fictional) but Daud was genuinely more interesting to me than Corvo. This is not to say that the first Dishonored is bad, but the story was lacking for me - I'm very much a story seeker- and when the game first came out I played the intro and immediately set down the game thinking, "ehng...". When I decided to give Dishonored another try (*cough this summer cough six years later cough*) I kept going not because of my interest in Corvo or the outsider, or getting Emily back safely (don't get me wrong I like kids but Corvo is either best or worst parent and I can't decide which); I kept going because I wanted to know more about the "villain". He's an assassin, a merc for hire which to me meant his character is either going to be really deep or inexplicably shallow. I was upset at first, he wasn't in the game as much as I thought he would be but Dishonored has a tendency to shove information by into your face /after the fact/. I spared the villain hoping I would see him again. I didn't. ....until I found out there were dlc's. Staying with my rant? Digital cookie for you. Dishonored's story telling was on par and in many cases far better than the knife of dunwall, but the first dlc was very much a setup for the brigmore witches dlc, which in turn was what I think the best story telling in the whole Dishonored series.. Gonna go into my points listed above now because either don't want you to read through this thinking it was total anxiety induced stress writing (...which it definitely isn't....by the way....) There's a general healthy mindset that people inherently dislike villains, evil doers and all round moral miscreants, Daud being an assassin for hire and not much more in Dishonored as his initial purpose was already be placed in a rough position that a portion of players might find amiable but mostly for his badassery and not much in the character development isle. The way I see it is that you first are greeted with Daud's be character development in one of two ways(or a blend): you want Corvo to be moral and spare Daud, or upon hearing that Daud reports to you there's something by inside of him suffering you spare him to let him suffer more. Daud's intial purpose was to be a 'bad guy' and in either scenario he is still seen as being the bad guy or getting a cliche "this is worse than death and you deserve to suffer" sort of ending. When you come to knife of dunwall Daud is...tired. there's no simpler way for me to describe it. He's lived above and away from any higher power than himself (cuz we all know the outsider doesn't seem to give a hair on his left ball about Daud but he'd dress in drag and do the hula for Corvo...#dauddeservesbetterfriends) And we know or at least can vetire the thought that Daud has adjusted to his life as a killer, but he doesn't seem active enjoyment from it. I'm not exonerating Daud's tendency for murder, but think of it this way, he is a serial killer by death count but he's not a Ted Bundy or Hannibal Lecter. Killing doesn't give him satisfacyion, it is just a job and people are hard to become attached to when you have to look at them often as return receipts and cashiers. That's not to say that Daud doesn't feel love. I genuinely think he loved Billie as a sort of best friend and daughter. The death of empress kaldwin has hit daud hard too. He knew it was a bad idea but it was habit, it was just a contract, and jessamine meant nothing of compromise to Daud personally. When Daud is betrayed by Billie and given a death date from the outsider Daud has already submitted in some form to his own fleeting mortality and is pained after decades of his reputation getting ahead of himself to the point where he wouldn't say 'no' to a contract. I feel that Daud felt as though he was becoming more of a Lecter esque serial killer to the public, that who he was, his identity had been lost underneath the bodies he's left in his wake...and he regrets all of it, realizing its futility, pointlessness. People are just contracts to him, but he never actively sought to I'll with the purpose of hurting the very fiber of others' existence... When you spare Daud as Corvo his single line proclaiming how extraordinary your willingness to give him clemency is isn't a line to me that was ultimately thrown to the wind, it was something that genuinely sparked upset and fascination in Daud. Corvo did something Daud hadn't done since he had moved from serkonos, and without the incentive of pay - Corvo decided to spare a life. That ruptures something deeply in Daud, who had already endured his midlife crisis and brings me to the third bullet point "classic redemption arc" although it does matter what you do....that changes Daud's character to me...idk. All in all the only right way I saw to play brigmore witches was to go non-lethal stealth...and trick Delilah into her own spell. Daud is a master assassin. It made no sense for him to merely go jumping around murdering everyone who saw him (this is how I initially played Corvo because dayum I was bad at stealth games also pc controls, but then again Corvo isn't a master assassin when you first meet him...Daud is). After a struggle with Delilah, you hold onto the platform and read her citations and she flies off of you, into the painting, I wanted there to be a classic breathless hero who mutters calmly "gotta quit smoking" ( drum crash) and goes about his business. But! Something I feel a lot of fans of Dishonored overlook is that Daud had no need to further pursue Delilah. He could easily have faded into obscurity around the second mission when he realized that Delilah was after Emily and not him, but he ventures forward, accepting his fate - tired and downtrodden about his choices and the inevitable futility of his fate- in the efforts to save the life and hope that still exists in young Emily, the daughter of the empress he murdered right before her eyes. It's a move of an apology, a silent, self accepting apology with no further requirements for acknowledgement. Which brings me to the true nature of daud in addition to the nature and approval of the outsider to his marked ones. Daud in canon does not kill but traps Delilah. Daud is a mater assassin. He's quick he's quiet he is an efficient man with little room in his life or care for killing as a sport....he is to some extent evil, but he is not incapable of doing good to simply do good. The outsider is decribed furtively as a true neutral character who appeals to the benevolent options but is known to commit 'evil' by not intervening. He seems to be a strong advocate of free will but does extend the occasional helpful hint to his marked ones. Daud is told by the outsider that how he handles Delilah will be viewed with great curiosity which is another added caveat to Daud's evolution as a character and devolution as an identity. The outsider became bored with Daud, stopped willingly checking on him, but when Daud does the 'unusual' sparing Delilah but torturing her for (what was supposed to be eternal) ...he gains the outsider's favor, even if for juat a moment. He fades into obscurity for both Corvo and the outsider, even to his own men, abandoning the identity of 'daud' and presumably not going on a killing spree. The purpose of doto.....I'm not 100% sure of a 'purpose', but doto makes or breaks Daud for most people. For me it did both. But it didn't break Daud's character development for me because he saw the outsider specifically as an excuse for all the murder and the theiving and the murder and did I mention Daud murdered? He had to kill the outsider to prevent another 'daud'. The outsider was the omniscient condoner. 'daud' would not have ever easily existed to such fame or success without the aid and the passive/spontaneous condoning of the outsider and his abilities. Few be if any would have managed to be a 'daud' identity without being able to be so far above the confines of human abolity to cheat mortal instruments of death.... Corvo and his attempt to save Emily would have been a fly's breath shy of impossible without the outsider to tinker with the impossibilities. Daud's action to kill the outsider was selfish, I can see and agree with that, but he only wanted to destroy the exoneration of evil, not to simply forgive his transgressions by eradicating and blaming the one who allowed and corroborated with him to be such. How doto has presented Daud in doto and how many people have received and reacted to Daud's presented purpose in doto did misrepresent and destroy in some regards the development they took with Daud's character, but let me reiterate that his character development itself was not thrown out the window, it was how his character was presented in a plot and the narrative around doto. ...let me again remind you I said I haven't exactly finished doto....because I spoiled it for myself and I don't want Daud to die...again....finally? Maybe not the right words - oh look I've made myself sad, fancy that - but the point. Of this ramble which now I don't know how to end and I don't think I've ever spent so long on Tumblr in one sitting .... Daud is not a poorly constructed character. Doto poorly presented him and he deserved better. Doto also made Daud's character solidfied. He's not a gentle being. He's stern, violent, reserved and determined, but he's also deeply emotional and self loathing. He aspires to destroy the outsider because of what the outsider allowed in to do, he did not pursue or seek to blame the outsider into naively forgiving himself for the crimes he committed. It was a matter of settling his conscience. Probably with the abuse of his powers, a lot of stress, whiskey, cigars, and breaking a handful of bones repeatedly over his career and his guilt Daud was well aware he was on his deathbed long before Billie found him and he had been haunted by his blindness and decades of him /having forgiven and forgotten/ his crimes that it drove him to death. Daud is not a poorly constructed character. I would argue he was a character that the Dishonored series put the most time and effort into.

#Long post #lmao #outsider forgive me #Daud #assassin #Dishonored #Dishonored 2 #death of the outsider #Billie lurk #Corvo #Corvo attano #the outsider #character analysis #also I'm tired and I've never spent this long on Tumblr in one sitting

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bobbystompy · 4 years

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My Top 75 Songs Of 2019

Previously: 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011

First time going below 100 songs since 2015, and I cannot wait. Giving this extra juice already.

As always, criteria and info:

This is a list of what I personally like, not ones I’m saying are the “best” from the year; more subjective than objective

No artist is featured more than once

If it comes down to choosing between two songs, I try to give more weight to a single or featured track

Each song on the list is linked in the title if you wanna check them out for yourself; there is also a Spotify playlist at the bottom that includes the majority of the songs

This is usually the part where I put up a pump up video, but we are going with something a little different this year.

youtube

(It was stuck my head. Blame Blink-155.)

75) YG - “In The Dark”

The video begins with YG chugging a full tequila bottle -- sure. This song is very bad. It’s like he’s in a competition to make the verse lyrics worse than the chorus lyrics (spoiler alert: the verses “win”); not even satanic imagery can save this.

74) Solange - “Stay Flo”

Here’s a weird take: wouldn’t Solange’s career be way more fun if everyone slept on her? Instead, it’s hype on hype -- plus being Beyoncé’s sister -- which makes it nearly impossible to deliver. This has a fun beat/vibe but is kinda boring... and was still easily my favorite off her album.

73) Art Alexakis - “The Hot Water Test”

My doctors told me that I had a disease / I will slowly fall apart until there’s nothing left that looks like me

This song makes the stakes clear immediately. It was released a few months after I saw Art play in June 2019 on my birthday. At the intimate show, he revealed his multiple sclerosis diagnosis as if we were all his closest friends. Something like this is never easy to deal with -- a similar announcement by the Lucky Boys Confusion singer did not help matters -- but music can help such a painful situation, and it’s clearly Alexakis’ exile here.

72) The Cranberries - “In The End”

A very suitable sendoff for the band following the passing of singer Dolores O’Riordan. The recording story (via NPR):

O'Riordan died suddenly in January 2018 at 46 years old and left behind the vocal tracks to what was intended to be the band's latest album. Now, O'Riordan's bandmates have decided to complete that album, In The End — the last album the band will release — in her memory.

[...]

In June 2017, O'Riordan and Hogan started emailing album ideas and demos back and forth to each other. O'Riordan had been very open about her struggles with mental health and addiction, which would affect the band at times, but they wanted to make a new album. Hogan says that when they were emailing those demos, she was in a good place. They started laying down her demos.

"All of that was kind of behind her," Hogan says. "She's kind of found a way to cope with the mental health thing. That's why she wanted to write so much. That's what she kept saying, 'I have so much to say, I just need the music to put it to.' "

Hogan says O'Riordan's apparent stability is what made her death even more tragic and devastating. (Officials ruled O'Riordan's cause of death to be accidental drowning due to alcohol intoxication.) But after a period of mourning, the remaining band members remembered they still had O'Riordan's demos. As Hogan remembers, they finally had the courage to start listening to them again in late February and, with her family's permission, started recording in April. "We spoke to her family and said, 'Look, how do you feel about us finishing the album?' And they were really supportive," Lawler says. "They were delighted, actually. They gave us their blessing."

Hogan says, in a sense, they were used to O'Riordan not being in the studio when they recorded — "Dolores hated hanging around the studio once we worked on our parts" — but, of course, this time was different.

71) Raleigh Ritchie - “Time In A Tree”

Exercise time. Play the first minute or so of this song without looking at any YouTube visuals.

/waits for you

OK, who are you picturing singing this? Got your image?

Well, whatever it was, you’re wrong -- it’s GREY WORM HIMSELF.

This was the best thing about “Game of Thrones” in 2019, sadly.

70) Culture Abuse - “Goo”

Simple, effective, gets out before you can dislike much.

69) Lil Pump f/ Lil Wayne - “Be Like Me”

Sometimes, a song starts, and you can just tell it’s going to be ignorant. Even before the vocals kick in. This was probably our moment here:

Between that and the beat, it’s like the only thing you can think is “Ohhhh, he’s about to say some horrible things about women.”

Other choice lines:

- “Yes, I’m hella ignorant, I don’t give a fuck” (he even says it in the song)

- “I take drugs like it’s Vitamin C / I’m a millionaire, but I don’t know how to read”

This song almost feels like it existed already.

68) The Get Up Kids - “Satellite”

Finally, our first rock song with some punch. This probably takes the crown from both DMB and P.O.D.

67) Bad Religion - “My Sanity”

BR is historically my favorite band, so it is rather deflating to see them so far back on this list. That said, it is Year 40 (!!!) of their existence, so some can be forgiven. Yet... we’ve never needed them more, you know? It’s this weird mixture of resentment but understanding.

66) Billy Liar - “The Righteous & The Rats”

Gonna see him (them?) open for The Bombpops in March; looks quite promising. Has an old school Brit punk feel.

65) Beach Slang - “AAA”

Beach Slang never lets you forget they love -- no, like, LOVE -- The Replacements. When this cover dropped, I googled “replacements AAA”, and, surprisingly, nothing came up.

Ohhh, what I fool I was. After more digging, I discovered a band called Grandpaboy who performed “AAA”.

“Oh, damn -- he finally went outside the box with this pick.”

No. Grandpaboy is fronted by Paul Westerberg. Singer of, you guessed it, The Replacements.

James Alex wears his heart on his sleeve so hard, he might as well give the heart a little jacket so his heart can wear its own heart on its sleeve.

HE DID THAT TOO?!

You can’t even make jokes about this band; they live in the jokes with their damn earnestness.

64) Gesaffelstein & The Weeknd - “Lost In The Fire”

Even lesser known Weeknd-involved tracks sound like they could lead a soundtrack or close out a festival. Are you familiar with this one at all? It has 87 million views on YouTube. Abel is never not not playing.

63) FIDLAR - “By Myself”

Started from the bottom and I’m still at the bottom

Falling apart never felt so carefree and burdenless.

62) Constant Elevation - “Fuck Runnin”

As hardcore punk as this list is gonna get. All glory to Vinnie Caruana. Though none of his solo tracks from 2019 made it, this has an undeniable energy and confidence. Plus probably the best song title of the year.

61) Maren Morris f/ Brandi Carlile - “Common”

A focused duet that drills into relationship dynamics before throwing a personal theology wrench in the middle of the chorus.

60) Anti-Flag - “Christian Nationalist”

AF going in on the white, religious right. This is like throwing a 50 mph pitch to -- /looks up good baseball players -- Pete Alonso.

59) Cokie The Clown - “Punk Rock Saved My Life”

This is less of a song and more of a confessional essay, and it gets harder and harder to look away with every revealing detail. If NOFX’s Fat Mike needed this character as a vehicle to get all of these autobiographical details off his chest, hopefully it’s a helpful therapy.

58) White Reaper - “Might Be Right”

“Judy French” is such an untoppable song, but “Might Be Right” has a similar dynamic.

57) Denzel Curry - “RICKY”

Denzel Curry as a rap moniker is such a slam dunk.

/looks up actual name

!!!

56) Ariana Grande - “break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored”

It takes a special kind of hot girl twisted to issue this unflinching request while totally pulling it off.

55) Goody Grace f/ blink-182 - “Scumbag”

Not sure if Goody is a Soundcloud rapper, punk rocker, or some kinda emo hybrid of both.

A few asides:

- Have we ever -- ever -- heard Travis Barker this subdued on drums?

- On the Blink-155 podcast, Goody said he gave Tom from the Plain White T’s a songwriting credit because he unintentionally lifted some melodies from “Hey There Delilah”, but... I really don’t hear it at all; like, it sounds maybe in the same key but not much else?

54) Jonas Brothers - “Sucker”

Despite their popularity in the past, I do not think I could name a single JoBros song. That changed in 2019 with this poppy, light, clappy, Maroon 5-style single.

53) Goo Goo Dolls - “Money, Fame & Fortune”

Someone -- coulda sworn it was Brendan Kelly -- said this was Goo Goo Dolls sounding like Fake Problems, and that is spot on.

52) AJJ - “A Poem”

A poem is song that no one cares about

This short, folky tune led to one of my favorite Twitter exchanges of the year, when I reached out to a music journalist with a question and AJJ came flying off the top rope.

51) DaBaby - “Suge”

This song is fun, but I really don’t get it. Beat is cool, flow is fine... this is the new face of hip-hop? His name is DaBaby! What are we doing here?!

50) Laura Stevenson - “Jesus, Etc.”

Taking a classic and doing it full justice/adding some harmonies.

49) blink-182 - “Not Another Christmas Song”

Blink’s 2019 album “Nine” was very, very bad because it tried too hard and was not good. This song, released later in the year, takes an opposite approach and actually works. We get lyrics that are discontent, even clumsy at times -- the “I miss fucking in the rain” line is so out of place/cringe-y but actually feels real and not workshopped by 10 producers. The trio can hopefully use this better b-side to figure out the best songwriting should flow out of you without having to go through multiple stations on a conveyor belt first.

48) Dave Hause - “Eye Aye I”

This song has a lot I love (catchy chorus, wistful thoughts, hairline analyses) and a lot I don’t (genuine use of the word “old bores”, Van Halen getting respect), but one thing is clear: Dave Hause is in complete control.

47) Beck - “Up All Night”

I’ve casually followed Beck’s entire career and would not have guessed this was him if given 100 chances. As an exercise, I’m going to pull up the 2020 Coachella lineup and randomly point to an artist.

/pulls up lineup and points

I got Daniel Caesar. If you told me this was Daniel Caesar, that would probably make more sense here.

46) Shawn Mendes - “If I Can’t Have You”

Randomly came into Shawn Mendes tickets in 2019, and good gracious, that was something. Other than parents, we were the oldest people there by a lot. Getting to watch thousands of teens and preteens legitimately having the best moment of their lives was downright inspiring. When you’re that young, it’s not even hyperbole. Phones were flagrantly out; I’m talking 20+ minutes of straight video being filmed. I wanted to judge so badly, but if you gave me an iPhone at my first concert when I was 14, who the hell knows how egregious my behavior would’ve been. As fun as the whole experience was, I never wanted to be in a grimy punk club more. Sometimes, leaving your comfort zone makes you appreciate your home base more.

This is a rock solid pop song, but there are way too many you/you rhymes to not penalize it some.

45) Big Thief - “Cattails”

The whitest song you will ever hear that isn’t written by Vampire Weekend.

44) Bayside - “Prayers”

Bayside went super metal with their 2019 release “Interrobang” (such a sick name). So yes, the guitars are a touch harder than you might be used to, but the chorus soars; a great hook transcends genre.

43) Naughty Boy & Mike Posner - “Live Before I Die”

Few had as interesting of a year as Mike Posner. Following a breakup, the death of his father, and the death of Avicii, he decided to walk across the United States of America. He legit became Forrest Gump, right down to the beard and grown out hair.

In the video, you can see how a snakebite hospitalized him and almost derailed the whole trek. After a rehabilitation period where he almost lost his leg, our man finally makes it to the Pacific Ocean. If nothing else, watch for the ending -- it’s exhilarating.

42) Post Malone - “Wow.”

Post is flexing in this one; we’ve got slow motion jamming with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, international flights, a dancing beard guy, and a Fall Out Boy name check which really makes them sound cooler than they are now.

41) Bryce Vine f/ YG - “La La Land”

Sometimes, these summertime Cali songs write themselves. That is until YG comes in and flips over the board before you can finish the game. By the time the Coachella reference is dropped when Bryce comes back in, you realize 1:47 may have actually been a better endpoint for the song than its 2:47 length.

40) David Rokos - “Backseat Drives”

It’s winter in Chicago, again and until forever. If you haven’t been to the Jewel in the South Loop or Marshall Field’s before they changed it, just listen to this so you don’t actually have to.

39) Simple Creatures - “Drug”

Mark Hoppus and the dude from All Time Low give us this synth-pop bop that feels like the duo shooting their shot at a real mainstream pop hits. It didn’t quite get there, but they should feel OK about where it landed.

38) Chris Cresswell - “To The Wind”

My interest in The Flatliners ramped up considerably in 2019, as their near decade old record “Cavalcade” got plenty of spins (peep “Filthy Habits”; just stunningly incredible punk). Though they did not release anything this year, their singer put out “To The Wind”, a longing song about missing someone.

37) Kesha f/ Big Freedia - “Raising Hell”

Kesha, with the help of New Orleans’ Big Freedia, gives us another one. I’ve personally dug Kesha for a while now, but when is it time for us as a society to put her into the all-time conversation for pop artists? She has at least, like, seven HOF certifiable bangers. Plus she kills a guy in this music video.

In conclusion, I think this could translate to a country song very easily.

36) No Lenox - “Marquee”

Illinois/Japan’s No Lenox are back with Reuben Baird on the mixer and legendary masterer Collin Jordan (of The Boiler Room) on the, well, master, and the fullness in sound leads to the assault that is the “I saw your name on the marquee / Your friends were milling around outside” part. They only play it once, but I really could’ve gone for closer to five.

35) Red City Radio - “Love A Liar”

Rapid fire Red City Radio gets this one done in exactly 120 seconds.

34) Barely March - “Lead Single”

This sounds like Joyce Manor turned up to a 17 out of 10 before unexpectedly turning into a hellogoodbye song.

33) New Lenox - “Old Words”

Not a typo from two songs ago -- legitimately a different band. This one was written by your boy. The first 15 seconds were from a demo recorded 1/2/16 before developing the rest in 2019 (after some encouragement). We have Dave Rokos on guitar/bass, Dave Hernandez on hums, and Brian Bedford on some very temporary sleigh bells. Themes: online dating, resolutions, exes, currents, Black Wednesday, hope, and Carly Rae Jepsen stage banter.

32) MakeWar - “Sails”

Honey, I can’t make it on my own

You might get some Gaslight Anthem vibes as the vocals come in, but by the time the song ends, MakeWar leaves their own imprint on this impassioned ballad.

31) Sheryl Crow & Johnny Cash - “Redemption Day”

Was gonna say Johnny’s voice could move mountains before realizing no, Johnny’s voice is the mountains.

30) American Football f/ Hayley Williams - “Uncomfortably Numb”

Sensitivity deprived I can't feel a thing inside I blamed my father in my youth Now as a father, I blame the booze

An unlikely collaboration that makes you forget about its unlikeliness by the two minute mark. The two voices trade spots, mesh, harmonize, and weave throughout this beautiful song.

Asides:

- Blake from “Workaholics” in the video?!

- Choose to interpret this song’s title as a Pink Floyd diss

- “I’ll make new friends in the ambulance” should be a 2005-level emo lyric that we all mock, yet it’s somehow one of the most stunningly appropriate closers of the entire year

- I wish my friend Luke was with us to hear it

29) Stuck Out Here - “Embarrass You”

Stuck Out Here got onto my radar with 2014′s amazingly named “Getting Used To Feeling Like Shit”. Five years later, they’re back -- and not feeling much better. The Toronto quartet’s Bandcamp describes the song like this:

They’re fucking up, but unlike previous releases, they’re finally holding themselves accountable.

You can even kinda hear their Canadian accents in the “I’m sorry I embarrass you...” part.

28) The Weeknd - “Heartless”

The Weeknd will be on these lists as long as he continues to make music even 1/8th as good as this.

27) The Chainsmokers f/ blink-182 - “P.S. I Hope You’re Happy”

A simple song that’s a touch more clever than you first realize. The Chainsmokers guy is giving me some real Owl City vibes. Also, how airtight of an apology is the line “I blame myself for when I was someone else”. It’s like the modern way of saying “When I was a child, I spoke like a child”.

Also also, the “I will find a way somehow...” harmony in the pre-chorus is as pretty as music got in 2019. The Chainsmokers are so sonically pleasing, whether you end up liking the music or not.

26) Vampire Weekend - “Harmony Hall”

ooooooooh, that crisp guitar in the intro

25) Alex Lahey - “Don’t Be So Hard On Yourself”

If Carly Rae Jepsen can get a sword, why can’t Alex Lahey get a god damn saxophone? HIT ME.

That solo, combined with the “Mighty Ducks” reference in the chorus, make this song untouchable.

24) Lizzo - “Truth Hurts”

Let’s be clear: this did drop in 2017 but was technically re-released in 2019, so it does qualify for our list despite the criteria threatening timeline. Anyway.

The walking piano part, the iconic intro line (with a lawsuit!), the Minnesota Vikings reference (causing a Green Bay radio edit), and all of the damn positivity. Lizzo was among music’s big winners this year, and her success made you wonder how the hell someone this talented was slept on for those two years.

Let’s end with the purse.

23) An Horse - “Ship Of Fools”

Awkward band name, but a song that makes you pay attention. Kinda like Tegan and Sara, had they stayed more rock. So much urgency in the vocals and lyrics.

22) Charli XCX f/ Lizzo - “Blame It On Your Love”

Trippy vid; Charli continues to give us anthems. Wasn’t super high on the Lizzo cameo, but it somehow made more sense in the context of said video.

21) Sincere Engineer - “Dragged Across The Finish Line”

Sincere Engineer is back -- you can tell from the second those guitar leads get goin’. Drums from 1:19 to 1:36 = /heart eyes emoji. My buddy Cox said his next tattoo very well could be the outro lyric “Too dumb to succeed, too honest to cheat”.

(Bonus fact: they did a beer collaboration/show with Pollyanna Brewing Company in 2019.)

20) Lil Nas X - “Old Town Road”

Was unwilling to listen when this first dropped solely because of how horrible Lil Nas X’s name is (”What if a rapper came out named ‘Lil Jay-Z X’?!”)... what a foolish notion. One billion streams and a Billy Cyrus cameo later, I wouldn’t have been able to miss out on the Song of the Summer (and year) if I tried. More notes:

- Picked this because I had to, but “Panini” is legit good (200+ million streams)

- Went with the original (sorry, Billy), which is a beautiful 1:53 long (brevity, brevity, brevity)

- Did you know: Lil Nas X uses a Nine Inch Nails sample on the beat? This Rolling Stone interview with Trent Reznor is super interesting

Reznor calls “Old Town Road” “undeniably hooky,” but once it exploded, he took a back seat to the phenomenon. “The reason I haven’t stepped in to comment anything about it is, I don’t feel it’s my place to play any kind of social critic to that,” he says. “It was a material that was used in a significant way and it turned into something that became something else, and those guys should be the ones the spotlight is on…. They asked if I wanted to do a cameo in the video, and it was flattering, and I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but I don’t feel like it’s my place to shine a light on me for that. I say that with complete respect.”

Still, Reznor is amazed at how the song became a juggernaut. “Having been listed on the credits of the all-time, Number One whatever-the-fuck-it-is wasn’t something…I didn’t see that one coming,” he says. “But the world is full of weird things that happen like that. It’s flattering. But I don’t feel it’s for me to step in there and pat myself on the back for that.”

19) Gryffin & Carly Rae Jepsen - “OMG”

What doesn’t this little bop have? It’s kinda Chainsmoker-y and tingles like cool breath hitting the back of your neck.

18) Craig Finn - “Blankets”

You travel your whole life just to get out to the place you’re gonna die

I love everything about this song: the artwork, the intro, the climax, the command Craig Finn has from start to finish -- with such a payoff. Now several albums in, the greatest compliment we can give is that his solo stuff now feels more essential than Hold Steady releases*. You can even hear it in this line: “When we got to the Twin Cities / I said ‘Man, I know some songs about this place’”. Another life.

17) Carly Rae Jepsen - “Now That I Found You”

Carly always keeps us in the sky; picking one song was difficult because the album is even more fulfilling as you get to put the pieces together.

16) Billie Eilish - “Bad Guy”

Different genres*, but Billie Eilish lived up to her hype in the exact same way Lana Del Rey did in the earlier part of the decade. Lana said she was the gangster Nancy Sinatra and totally fucking was. Billie feels like something potentially even bigger. Nearly everything about her aura lets you project (or even second guess, if you’re a skeptic). Is she dead-eyed because she’s high or disaffected? Or just Aubrey Plaza? Is it her or her brother that’s pulling the strings? How can someone so young be so good already? In the skinny fashion era of All Achilles Everything, how is she rocking such loose fits?

“I never want the world to know everything about me. I mean that’s why I wear big baggy clothes,” she said. “Nobody can have an opinion because they haven’t seen what’s underneath.”

“Nobody can be like ‘Oh, she’s slim-thick, she’s not slim-thick, she’s got a flat ass, she’s got a fat ass,’” she continued. “No one can say any of that because they don’t know.”

It almost seems too easy, but how much sense does that make to you?

Great jokes aside, I have so much anticipation for what’s next, with assured belief in its potential. Pitchfork:

In 10 years, she will still be well under 30. Let’s hope the planet survives that long.

Yes.

(* - though not totally)

15) Ben Gibbard - “Filler”

Before you check Gibbard’s, please listen to the original by Minor Threat. That’s what he had to work with. From there, a total transformation while doing the near impossible -- keeping its beating heart.

14) Martha - “Wrestlemania VIII”

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Third favorite song title of the year/favorite music video of the year. This is energetic, bratty punk at its finest; also surprised to find out it was British, but, based on the upcoming tour dates and YouTube description...

This is a silly & frankly quite rubbish video but when you are a band trapped within surveillance capitalism's endless hunger for content trying to promote a tour sometimes things will be a silly & frankly quite rubbish.

I love them. Seriously didn’t even notice the accents in the singing until I knew to look for them; now, it’s all I can hear. Also, the part in the video where they finally show someone with an instrument, only he stops playing guitar halfway into the solo (/crying emoji).

THEY SAY ABSENCE MAKES THE HEART GROW FONDA

13) Chance The Rapper f/ Ben Gibbard - “Do You Remember”

Chance The Rapper dropped a one hour and 17 minute album in 2019 because he is a monster. I could not name three songs on it, but this one stood out big. It’s Chano doing what he does best: reminiscing and evoking summer in his city. Gibbard on the hook gives it that 2005 nostalgia while also making you say “Damn, it’s been nearly 15 years since 2005?!”

Fav two lines:

1) “Used to have obsession with the ‘27 Club’ / Now I'm turning 27, wanna make it to the 2070 club / Put the 27's down, Lord, give me a clean lung / Took the ring up out the box, I know this ain't no brief love”

2) “That summer left a couple tan lines / I love my city, they let me cut the line on the Dan Ryan”

(If you know, you know.)

Two more asides:

- If you Google “death cab for cutie”, the next autofill from there is “do you remember”. Rough for the legacy.

- “My daughter on the swing like the 2017 Cubs” is a line that confused me, but here’s how Genius explained it:

Chance is talking about a memorable summer and the things that made him happy. This line continues that theme when he raps about his daughter happily on a swing and how that’s similar to the 2017 Cubs. The Chicago Cubs won the World Series in 2016; therefore, the 2017 season was one of celebration and relaxation as the pressure of the 108 year drought was over.

12) Lana Del Rey - “The Greatest”

I miss Long Beach, and I miss you...

Listening to this song feels like watching the cement dry on a classic in real time. Lana Del Rey’s galactic “Norman Fucking Rockwell!” dominated lists at the end of 2019, and she -- to borrow her word -- fucking deserved it.

- The Beach Boys line is so god damn perfect

- The guitar solo (soooo sick)

- The breathy singing; the crooning; the notes that go up and then down until you’re surrounded by melody

- The perfection of this album name (minus the very iffy exclamation point) will have me comparing nearly any other all-time album title for probably the rest of our lives

- Tried playing this album during my Monday night pickup basketball run, and it very much failed... but that’s about the only thing it couldn’t do

- I’m told the dude with her on the album cover is Jack Nicholson’s grandson (named Duke Nicholson, because of course)

11) Off With Their Heads - “No Love”

If you do not like punk rock, this will be unlistenable. If you do, what a treat! I love how dissatisfied and put off he sounds, and, while there are a few more lively songs remaining on the list, none in 2019 got fast-tracked to my workout/pump up playlist at this speed.

Factoring in the band’s van accident (occurred after the release of this song), the “There’s nothing I could say that’s ever gonna make it right” outro becomes hauntingly clairvoyant.

10) Drake f/ Rick Ross - “Money In The Grave”

We need to face facts: it was a down year for stadium hip-hop. Nowhere on this list do you see Jay, Em, Kendrick, or Kanye (rest in peace). This was my favorite rap song of the year, and it couldn’t even crack the Top 5. Similar to his beloved Raptors -- who are being celebrated here -- it’s almost as if Drake needed some injuries outside his own locker room to get the crown. But I’m done being bummed, let’s focus on the good:

- Ohhhh, the intro (”I mean where. the fuck. should I. really even start?”)

- The way he says “grave” in the hook like he can barely contain

- The hook itself -- read it out loud: “When I die, put my money in the grave”

- How cool Ross sounds when he breaks in

- The Zion reference

The bad:

- Rarely take this angle, but really wouldn’t mind if it were longer

- Misogyny

9) PUP - “Bloody Mary, Kate And Ashley”

Second favorite song title of the year, 6/8 time signature, satanic references, drugs, hallucinations (maybe), and, yes, the Olsen twins.

8) Better Oblivion Community Center - “Sleepwalkin’”

“It’s impossible to count...”

The intro, as the tempo gets jarringly slower and slower, ironically helps you acclimate quicker. This Phoebe Bridgers/Conor Oberst collab was my No. 1 played track of 2019 (the album coming out in January definitely helped). The song builds to Phoebe’s solo part:

You like beer and chocolate I like setting off those bottle rockets We can never compromise But fighting 'til the death keeps us alive

It’s sung so well, you can almost feel the heat of the spotlight on her through the stereo. The lyrics could be anything.

The chill guitar solo takes us out.

7) AM Taxi - “Saint Jane”

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Adam Krier is such a rockstar, he had me shouting “I’m no hero, at best a zero!” within my fifth listen -- and I was skeptical as hell when I first heard the line. But that’s about where it stopped. You can tell this song is going to rip even before the vocals come in. When they do (”These fears don’t die, you get older and they multiply”), it’s just fucking time to go.

6) Taylor Swift - “Paper Rings”

My favorite pop song of 2019. Tay is firing on all cylinders; every lyric is exactly where it’s supposed to be; boppy and fun and sincere (while still being light-hearted). Still holding out minor hope it will be a single in 2020.

5) Pkew Pkew Pkew - “The Polynesian”

I’ve always said the best songs make you want to live the lyrics, whether they are positive or negative. This one had me researching “polynesian wisconsin” faster than I’m comfortable disclosing. And yes “bed bugs” and “needles” were both in the Top 7 recommended searches after those first two words.

Pkew Pkew Pkew collaborated with Craig Finn on some of their lyrics on 2019′s “Optimal Lifestyles”, and I’d be blown away if he doesn’t have fingerprints on this one -- the storytelling is pristine. Go into this open-minded, and I’d be shocked if you weren’t shouting the “Goatees, tall cans, camo pants, and Packers fans” mantra by the end.

Bonus story: this St. Patrick’s day in Chicago, I asked my friend Sara (Wisconsin native) if she’d ever stayed there, and she held up her elbow and showed me a scar from the hotel’s water slide. Your boy was over the moon.

4) Spanish Love Songs - “Losers”

It gets harder, doesn’t it?

Dylan Slocum has a way of not just writing depressing songs -- many lyricists are good at that -- but specifically depressing songs. This song contemplates death, homelessness, squandering your limited time on the planet, credit card debt, leeching off your parents because you have no other choice, crippling illness, and completely giving up because there genuinely is no other choice. The last lines are, without any hint of winking, “We’re mediocre. We’re losers. Forever.”

It’s wonderful.

Two straight Top 4 finishes for SLS; their 2020 album should be something special.

3) oso oso - “the view”

If Jade Lilitri is making personal progress in “microscopic strides”, you wouldn’t be able to tell by his songwriting. Every tune has a way of warming up your entire body and being. This grabs you, whether it’s the laid back guitar or the mismatched quick drums or the big ass chorus. While it came down to this one or “basking in the glow” (an actual single), the bridge here puts us over the top:

But not as much as the phone ringing Not as much playing my house Not as much as the way her goddamn voice sounds It's like taking in sun And then taking it back I fall into old habits I'm stepping over your cracks again

Her voice? This song.

2) The Menzingers - “Strangers Forever”

This song makes me want to rip up walls, sprint through streets with no destination, shred my lungs screaming off rooftops, bash hands drumming the steering wheel until my sprained fingers beg me to stop. It is such a perfect encapsulation of my favorite band of the decade and possibly of all-time.

Scranton’s sons gave me everything and more from 2010 through 2019, so it’s fitting they end so high here. This is probably the most clownable sentence of them all, but I am so constantly thankful I am alive to experience Greg Barnett’s songwriting. What he creates, I can only compare to the best books or movies or athletes or even personal relationships.

The way the guitar alternates in the headphones to start, the drums that go big and push the song along, the reverb vox that certainly could have less reverb, the “it is what it is”-style lyric of “My miserable memory’s making me more miserable”, the oceanic imagery, the quiet bridge that explodes into a final chorus. Barnett said the overall theme was inspired by Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina”.

In it, the character Darya Alexandrovna learns of her husbands infidelity and declares: “Even if we remain in the same house, we are strangers — strangers forever!” The idea of becoming a stranger to someone you so intimately know stuck with me, and became the overarching narrative to this song. Dolly’s statement is definitive, but she also realizes the trappings of 19th century patriarchal Russian society. It’s a complex conundrum, and while lyrically I speak in the first person, this song exists in a world outside of my own personal experiences. I wanted to write about the finality of relationships that need to end this way. Strangers Forever.

My only gripe is I wish there were more. But I’m the same person who never wants them to stop.

1) Signals Midwest f/ Sincere Engineer - “Your New Old Apartment”

Only one song could make me fear missing the chance to be with the love of my life the same year I married her. As discussed in “The Polynesian”, the best songs have the consistent ability to put you in someone else’s shoes. You are either reliving something you personally experienced or maybe taking it all in for the first time. And that can be powerful -- especially dealing with anything big picture.

“Your New Old Apartment” launches me into 2009 without ever asking. Age: 23. My life was transient, I had no career, I didn’t even believe in marriage. I left my retail job in the Chicago suburbs for an unpaid newspaper internship in New Jersey. When I saw the people I loved, I always tried to make it count. Still do.

The descriptors and feeling are suffocating, right from the jump:

I only saw you a couple times last year Once at a wedding, once at a funeral I wore the same clothes to both, and I was worried you would notice ‘cause yours were impeccable

That’s me, then. Not knowing how to dress but hoping to get by anyway. I remember talking to my buddy P before buying my “work clothes” and learning you needed to match your shoes with your belt. Boyish adulthood.

The song continues, and the narrator is filled in on 5-year plans. It may be cliche to speak, but every current moment is simultaneously your youngest and oldest. Being in my early 30s now, it is so easy to scoff at anyone’s best laid plans, but I’m also the same cat who thought The Wonder Years’ “Jesus Christ, I’m 26 / All the people I graduated with / All have kids, all have wives, all have people who care if they come home at night” was life-defining, because I was the same age when that dropped, and it always hits the hardest when it’s all around you.

What I love about these lyrics are the careful observation mixed with mature-behind-his-years restraint. For a very long time in my life, I did not think I would get to be with my wife as anything more than a friend. When you are forced to come to terms with those potential realities, you must make concessions and convince yourself they’re OK. So when it’s revealed the narrator’s muse is married, he resigns himself to hopefully seeing the person more and at least being adjacent to the life they are living. It is tragic but still something. It is alternate hope in the hopeless.

I can picture myself listening to this song that wasn’t yet written while leaving a 2009 or 2010 or 2013 wedding and wishing I told her everything. But I wouldn’t have -- not then. I would have poured my heart out into a diary and quoted a line or three from this at the bottom. But that was then, this is now.

In 2019, her new old apartment will be my new old apartment, and that will never be lost on me.

youtube

* * *

Bonus coverage. Since we are at the end of the decade, I rounded up our No. 1 song from each year and have that below:

2010: The Menzingers - “Time Tables” 2011: Jay-Z & Kanye West - “Gotta Have It” 2012: Carly Rae Jepsen - “Call Me Maybe” 2013: Kanye West - “On Sight” 2014: The Menzingers - “Where Your Heartache Exists” 2015: Big Sean f/ Kanye West - “All Your Fault” 2016: The Menzingers - “Lookers” 2017: The Menzingers - “After The Party” 2018: Horror Squad - “I Smoke The Blood” 2019: Signals Midwest f/ Sincere Engineer - “Your New Old Apartment”

* * *

It’s time to stop writing. Thank you so much for reading.

Spotify playlist is here, featuring 70 of the 75.

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syrupwit · 6 years

Text

Letter for Femslash After Dark 2018

Hi writer! Thank you very much for creating a work for me! I hope this letter will inspire or at least mildly entertain you. If you have an idea that diverges from my prompts but doesn’t cross my DNWs, please go for it -- I’m just spitballing, as they say. (As someone presumably says, somewhere.)

I should note that I’m slightly more into this exchange for dark themes than for smut, but I 100% don’t object to non-dark smut either! All in favor of smut.

DNW: Unrelenting grimness, entirely miserable stories with entirely miserable endings, guro/gore meant to titillate, children in sexual situations, kinks commonly considered “opt-in” (scat, bestiality, etc.), 24/7 BDSM, unrequested identity headcanons, issuefic.

Do Want: Dark themes and content, complicated relationships that may or may not merit the label “unhealthy”, twisted/one-sided/manipulative relationships that decidedly merit the label “unhealthy”, explicit sexual content, sexuality-related angst, dubcon, enthusiastic consent, Bad Ends, hurt/comfort, possessiveness, bondage, Stockholm/Lima syndrome, emphasis on age difference in pairings where it applies, humiliation, dirty talk, “this isn’t technically sex because xyz (except it’s totally sex)”, aliens and robots misunderstanding human stuff but trying really hard to get it right anyway.

DISHONORED

The worldbuilding and characters in this game have me consistently like ♥_♥. I’ve spent way too much time playing it! Waaaaaay too much time. I’m only through The Brigmore Witches DLC, so... avoid extensive spoilers for Dishonored 2 or Death of the Outsider if you can help it, please. I’m spoiled on a few things, like Delilah’s good ending in DH2, but the bulk of it is mystery.

For this exchange, I’ve requested Delilah ships featuring characters introduced in the first game and its DLCs.

Delilah Copperspoon/Billie Lurk | Meagan Foster

Lots to work with here! I feel like these two could have serious chemistry of the “this is definitely going to explode” variety, in addition to the whole canonical betrayal / manipulation thing.

Prompts:

How do they meet? Fugue Feast encounter, “happenstance” that Billie later realizes was calculated, honest actual happenstance, fleeing a botched job, spying on the same mark, what?

Delilah makes Billie pay for that “bit of a bitch” comment in the Timsh estate.

AU: After Billie defeats Daud at the end of The Knife of Dunwall, she expects to assume control of the Whalers. Delilah has other ideas.

AU: Delilah’s plans succeed in The Brigmore Witches and she goes to track Billie down. (If she’s in Emily’s body at this point, I’d prefer no sexual content unless Emily is an adult.) Dark themes? Draw the curtains and turn out the lights, we’re heading to shadowtown.

Delilah Copperspoon/Lizzy Stride

Though she only appears in one of the DLCs, Lizzy ranks among my favorite Dishonored characters. I adore her pointy teeth, her awful bare feet, and her zest for the life of crime. Delilah could chew her up and spit her out, but do I want her to? Maybe.

Prompts:

Something goes haywire in the Brigmore Manor mission, and Delilah ends up taking Lizzy captive (crew optional).

Fugue Feast! Cutting loose and having fun with a distinguished (Delilah) or rowdy (Lizzy) stranger. Maybe they wear attend the same wild party. Maybe they run around in the street sharing bottles of whiskey. Maybe they’re teenagers and Lizzy wants to impress / mess around with / brag about having gotten it on with the arrogant lady in the pretty mask. Maybe Lizzy bosses Delilah around, or vice versa, or both. Just show me these women enjoying themselves at an event where they feel entitled to do so.

AU: Empress Delilah takes a keen interest in the affairs of a certain minor crime boss. (Is Lizzy her lover? Does she want something from her? Is this a fantasy in Delilah’s dream?)

AU: Delilah, not Daud, is the one who breaks Lizzy out of Coldridge.

Delilah Copperspoon/Vera Moray | Granny Rags

As may become apparent, I’m fascinated by evil old lady witches. Granny Rags is an excellent example of such and I am quite fond of her.

As far as I know, these two haven’t encountered each other in canon, but I’d imagine they’d have a power struggle or an uneasy alliance if they did... or, who knows?

Prompts:

Delilah and Granny Rags meet at an Outsider shrine.

Delilah's attempts to form an alliance with Slackjaw are repeatedly thwarted by an inconvenient muttering old woman.

A young Delilah confronts the scariest witch in the slums.

One of the things that drove Vera Moray mad on the Pandyssian Continent was an apparition of void-bound Delilah, unstuck in time.

Delilah and Granny Rags meet at an Outsider shrine, where Delilah is attempting to complete a somewhat risqué ritual.

One of the things that drove Vera Moray mad on the Pandyssian Continent was an apparition of Empress Delilah, stuck in her painting.

Delilah kidnaps an inconvenient muttering old woman and gets more than she bargained for.

PORTAL

I just played these games for the first time and I! Love! GLaDOS! Hello voice kink, hello hilarious ridiculous complex evil-yet-sympathetic female villain, hello AI with a definite gender, hello... WORLD. Or something.

Chell/GLaDOS

This may seem unusual for a ship where both characters canonically attempt to murder each other on multiple occasions, but I would prefer lighter/happier endings for this canon and pairing. Like, please seize and run with any dark thoughts that might accost you, but if I had to pick I’d pick Rated Explicit For Sexual Situations rather than Rated Explicit For Doom and Misery.

Note: I am SUPER INTO hurt/comfort for this pairing. And GLaDOS reluctantly relenting because Chell just continues to exceed her expectations...

Prompts:

Post-Portal 2, Chell runs into some problems in the outside world and reluctantly turns to GLaDOS for aid. GLaDOS agrees to help her, but there’s a price.

During Portal 2, after Chell and Wheatley have awakened GLaDOS, Chell finds that GLaDOS’s new tests have taken on an unusual new theme... a sexy (?!) theme. What’s going on?

At some point in any game, Chell fails a test. Instead of letting her die, GLaDOS rescues her and keeps her as a pet.

GLaDOS attempts to seduce Chell. Chaos ensues.

AU: Chell is an Aperture test subject while Caroline is alive.

AU: Chell is an Aperture test subject. Cave Johnson is dead and Caroline has assumed his position. But is the woman who oversees testing really Caroline? (Androids! Cyborgs?)

Chell is trapped somewhere for a bit, GLaDOS can’t physically reach her, but can talk to her for xyz reason. The taunting that ensues gets weirdly sexual.

Sex pollen goo.

ORIGINAL WORK

Divided by theme! tbh I’m loving these Extremely Specific Pairings That Function As Prompts In Their Own Right.

ROBOTS / AI

Robot Haphazardly Built Of Spare Parts/Glamorous Fashionista

Prompts:

The Fashionista, a renowned ditz whose heart of figurative gold remains concealed from the public eye, adopts a Robot because that is the thing to do. Dark societal truths come to light... or maybe they just hook up and it’s awesome.

They meet backstage at the runway. The Fashionista is promoting someone’s new line. The Robot is working as dress assistant, janitor, and/or decoration, for a pittance. What are these feelings???

The Fashionista’s Robot lover is her greatest shame.

The Robot’s Fashionista lover is her greatest shame.

The Fashionista has never had an orgasm. The Robot’s unusually shaped and/or vibrating appendage promises to change that.

The Robot has never experienced physical pleasure, at least not to a noticeable degree. But... the way the Fashionista attends to her...

A power couple enjoy a day out. Is it sinister? Is it sensual? Is this a boring prompt? Only you can say.

Nanite-based Shapeshifting Female Alien Robot/Space Explorer

Prompts:

[on their way]

Ice-Cold Mob Boss/Robot Bodyguard She Would Die For

Prompts:

The Mob Boss has always assumed her feelings for the Robot Bodyguard were, and would remain, unrequited. When she is injured, kidnapped, or otherwise placed in severe danger, this assumption is proven wrong.

Rival gangsters or law enforcement agents kidnap the Robot Bodyguard for information. They don’t expect the Mob Boss to care. They especially don’t expect her to personally storm their hideout / prison / whatever.

Rival gangsters or law enforcement agents, informed by a snitch of the Mob Boss’s secret feelings, kidnap the Robot Bodyguard. She knows it’s a setup exploiting her weakness. She personally storms the hideout / prison / whatever anyway.

Snapshots of the relationship between Mob Boss and Robot Bodyguard, beginning to end.

Female Sentient AI/Female Prisoner Recruited for Human Subject Trial

Prompts:

Question Prompts -- How ethical is the human subject trial and what is its purpose? What is the AI’s interest in the Prisoner, or vice versa? What was the Prisoner’s alleged crime, is she guilty or innocent, and was she justly or unjustly imprisoned? Is the AI supposed to be sentient, or is her consciousness a happy (depending on how you look at it) accident?

The AI gains or solidifies a consciousness while being tasked to perform increasingly sadistic experiments on the Prisoner. Does she continue the experiments or hatch a plot to rescue her subject?

These new sexually-themed tests would cause the Prisoner enough shame if they didn’t also turn her on. Is it just her imagination, or does the proctor AI seem to respond to her arousal?

Programmer/Rogue AI She Created

Prompts:

Question Prompts -- How has the AI managed to go rogue? Is this the cyberpunk future? What is the Programmer’s area of industry? Exactly what kind of stuff can the AI do?

Now a hostage of her own creation, the Programmer struggles to explain the decisions that led her to these circumstances.

WITCHES

Evil Spellcasting Witch/Evil Hedge Witch She Is Having the Spawn of their Evil Love With

Prompts:

Enthusiastic pregnant sex that may or may not be part of an evil ritual. (What exactly is the spawn...?)

Enthusiastic we’re-conceiving-the-spawn-of-our-evil-love sex that may or may not be part of an evil ritual. (Again, what exactly is the spawn?)

A torch-bearing mob descends on the cottage of the pregnant Evil Hedge Witch. Hark -- Evil Spellcasting Witch to the rescue!

Powerful Hermit Witch/Princess Who Comes Seeking Her Aid and Won't Take No For an Answer

0 Witch/Female Witch Hunter(s)

0POP STARS

Female Pop Star/Fake Girlfriend Hired by PR Team

Prompts:

[under construction]

Female Pop Star/Controlling Manager

Prompts:

[coming soon]

#optional detailed letters for exchanges tag

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