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asimplearchivist · 3 days

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𝓒𝓸𝓶𝓹𝓪𝓻𝓲𝓼𝓸𝓷 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓒𝓸𝓷𝓽𝓻𝓪𝓼𝓽

𝐂𝐇. 𝐕 𝐨𝐟 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐏𝐎𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐍, 𝐑𝐄𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐂𝐈𝐋𝐈𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍. 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐕 𝐨𝐟 𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐋𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓.

[𝓪𝓼𝓲𝓶𝓹𝓵𝓮𝓪𝓻𝓬𝓱𝓲𝓿𝓲𝓼𝓽'𝓼 𝓶𝓪𝓼𝓽𝓮𝓻𝓵𝓲𝓼𝓽] [ 𝐏𝐎𝐊𝐄𝐌𝐎𝐍 𝐌𝐘𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐘 𝐃𝐔𝐍𝐆𝐄𝐎𝐍 𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓] [ AO3 | SPOTIFY | PINTEREST ] summary ✨ ⤏ in which lucario and grovyle attempt to assuage eliana's concerns. pairing(s) ✨ [tba] word count ✨ 2.3k a/n ✨ [header credit] | [divider credit] ⤏ this is a shorter chapter, but be patient—there's more to come! :) ✨ MASTERPOST ✨ ✨ PREVIOUS CHAPTER ⤎ ✨ ⤏ NEXT CHAPTER [TBA] ✨

Eliana found the entire idea incredibly difficult to believe.

“Grovyle…” she began incredulously, “…you’re openly admitting that Dusknoir deceived you when you brought him back to the future..even if he, supposedly, had a sincere change of heart at the last second, after trying to murder you—to steal and possess your body in order to trick us again, no less…you still trust him?”

“He helped Celebi and I to stop Primal Dialga from destroying the Passage of Time on top of Vast Ice Mountain, which would have destabilized the paralyzed future all over again and would have completely undone your work in restoring Temporal Tower with the Time Gears,” Grovyle confirmed. “I don’t claim to truly know what ultimately caused him to change his mind, as he’s yet to share that information with me, but he rescued me and was almost killed as a result for revolting against Primal Dialga. Although grievously wounded, he battled with us to the very end, and he disappeared alongside us until we were restored.”

Eliana frowned at him, chewing on the inside of her cheek. Grovyle was being truthful, of that she hadn’t even the foggiest of doubts—he was virtually incapable of lying to her. Mental manipulation was out of the question, because Lu would have long since solved any issues with that since he was able to read Pokémon’s auras…her eyes narrowed as she looked at him. “And you’re vouching for him, too?”

“He hasn’t had a malicious thought since he’s lived here with Grovyle and Celebi,” Lu confirmed, sharing a brief glance with the wood gecko Pokémon. “Believe me, Eliana, I was just as suspicious and as skeptical as you are. It took a long time for Grovyle and Celebi to talk me down from chasing him right on out of Treasure Town. It took even longer for Dusknoir to rebuild my trust and faith in him, and longer still for me to even allow him to make reparations for what he’d done, but…we’ve made peace, and I’ve forgiven him.”

Eliana scowled. “Even though he’s tried to kill all of us on multiple occasions to save his own skin.”

“You recall how he treated us when he first arrived to Treasure Town?” Lu pressed, brow rising. “With kindness and generosity and compassion? How he rescued us expecting nothing in return? All the time he spent teaching us and allowing us to pester him?”

The painful memories that surfaced in the back of her mind caused Eliana’s throat to tighten—she remembered all too clearly her untainted and wholehearted conviction that Dusknoir had truly been great, and more than worthy of the title. She swallowed and cleared her throat, shaking the frissons from her pelt. “While he was leading us on so we wouldn’t expect him to drag us to execution posts?”

“That was before he realized who you really were, Eliana.” Lu tilted his head forward to peer deeply into her eyes. “Every second of that devotion was real. He sincerely cared about us. He had—and still has—a good heart. His fear drove him to do terrible things, yes—he’ll be the first to admit how much of a coward he was, and will just as quickly assume that responsibility as well as the guilt that overwhelms him in retrospect—but, for what it’s worth, that true side of him has emerged, and he’s a completely different Pokémon now.”

Lu was also a terrible liar—it had been a dead giveaway, the very few times he’d ever tried to fib to her, when he’d fail to meet her eyes as he spoke in a demure and shaky voice. Now he met her gaze head-on, completely assured of what he said. (Eliana almost wanted to pinch herself just to make sure she wasn’t trapped in another illusory nightmare.)

“You can’t honestly expect me to just drop everything and let bygones be bygones after he spent so long being the most rotten Pokémon alive,” she told them flatly. “There’s no telling everything he did under Primal Dialga’s orders.”

“Eliana,” Grovyle said gently, “we understand. I couldn’t sleep in the same room as him for months. Even now I’ll wake and startle when I see him, strictly on instinct. He knows, and he’s doing his best to make amends—almost to a fault, in my opinion. I can’t tell you all the good he’s done since we’ve returned to the mainland. We can’t walk through Treasure Town without running into someone he’s helped personally who wants to stop and thank him.”

“You don’t think he’s playing the long game this time?” she growled. “Waiting for all of you to truly relax so he can come in and betray you all over again with the lowest chances of failure? Why wouldn’t he want to finish the job?”

“No one can ever know things like that for certain,” Lu acknowledged, “but based on the last few years, he’s given no indication of reverting back to his old ways. You don’t have to forgive him, and you don’t have to trust him—but please believe us that he’s earnest, at least.”

Eliana sighed, glared out of the window to her right—the sun had long since slipped under the horizon, plunging the sky into pitch darkness save the full moon spilling mercurial light upon the landscape and the stars sprinkling the farthest reaches—and tried to resolve the tumult in her mind. Her time running from him in the future as a human combined with her time as an Eevee once he’d revealed his true colors could not be ignored. But, for the sakes of Lu, Grovyle, and Celebi (who she had no doubts would have eradicated Dusknoir on the spot had he shown any further signs of ill intent and wouldn’t have hesitated to do so given the prolific bounds of her abilities), she—reluctantly—decided to tolerate the ghost-type’s presence…for the time being.

“…All right,” she acquiesced, “if you’re both certain, I’ll…be patient. But I will take care of him if he takes one step out of line.”

“We know. We would do the same.” Grovyle, too, glanced outside, as though to assess the time. “…I should probably head back to the bluff. We’ve an early start tomorrow since we took some jobs to the north of here a good ways.”

“Go get some rest, old friend,” bade Lu, “and take that basket with you. I had Chimecho provide extra for all three of you.”

“You needn’t keep feeding us, you know,” said the wood gecko Pokémon wryly, although his eyes shone with gratitude. “We are perfectly capable of keeping our own larder stocked.”

“Just bring the basket back for a refill,” Lu dismissed with a toothy grin. “Best of luck to you.”

Eliana’s heart rose to her throat as Grovyle stood. He stopped to give her another tight and long hug, which she returned wholeheartedly. She blinked away the burning in her eyes as he pulled away.

“I will see you once we return,” he promised her softly, lithe form lingering close—he didn’t want to leave, either. “We can discuss your situation going forward then. Rest well.”

“You, too. Be careful,” she murmured. “Don’t get lost.”

“I won’t.” His eyes crinkled in a smile. Then he grasped the basket, hefted the handle over his lithe shoulder, and slipped out of Lu’s office. The door shut with a punctual thud in his wake and the silence that followed was hollow.

Lu set his basket, emptied by himself and Eliana once he and Grovyle had convinced her to eat, to the side and rose to his feet. “You can stay in the Guild’s guest wing for now,” he said, “until you decide what to do. We’ve refurbished it a bit, so it should be more comfortable.”

Eliana nodded and followed him silently through the dimmed, sleepy Guild. The somewhat hidden stairwell that led to the basement containing the larder and the aforementioned accommodations for privileged guests within the sentry tunnel was cool and damp, as it always was after a recent rain, but once Lu stopped at the end of the tunnel and opened the door leading into the extra room, a flush of warm, dry air swept over her.

True to Lu’s word, the room had indeed been altered. Updated furniture kept the place from feeling too sparse, but the same hearth merrily crackling in the end of the room illuminated the floors and walls enough that it didn’t quite feel like the buried burrow it was. A new, vivid, plush, woven mat covered the packed dirt floor, and a fresh straw bed had been fashioned in the furthest corner in the warmest spot. The narrow bracket of shelves next to the respective spring-fed wash and drinking basins nearest the door had been fully stocked not only with food, but also basic items and more personal ones that Eliana quickly recognized—her Treasure Bag and Wonder Map, a hefty sack of her own money, as well as a small locked chest within which she had kept her belongings while they’d lived at Sharpedo Bluff. Lu had obviously anticipated her arrival well in advance to go to such lengths to have the place prepared thusly.

“You’re spoiling me,” Eliana whispered, smiling shakily. She’d about had it with the tears that day, as exhausting as it had been.

“I’m making sure you have everything you need,” he told her, shaking his head fondly and slipping an arm over her shoulder to tug her into his flank. “This room could be yours, if you wanted. I’d considered taking you on as an official consultant and assistant, if you wanted to. Chatot handles the administration, but it would be helpful to have someone with more hands-on experience. The apprentices can be quite a handful sometimes.” He huffed softly. “But don’t make a decision right now. I really shouldn’t have even brought it up, but I’m just so excited that you’re finally home, I…”

“It’s all right,” Eliana told him, tilting her head up to gaze at him warmly. “I’m glad you considered me for the position. I’ll start thinking about it.”

“That’s all I ask—there’s no pressure, of course.” He chuckled. “You may want to retire from all this nonsense, after all.”

“We’ll see.” Eliana hesitated, then dropped her chin and scuffed her foot along the weave of the rug. “I’m…sorry, you know…about getting carried away earlier. I didn’t mean to cause a scene and embarrass you.”

“I almost attacked him on first sight, too,” he said mildly, “and you didn’t embarrass me. I had hoped to warn you before he got there, since I thought Magnezone would keep him occupied for longer, but…I don’t think the others will hold it against you. It was a big adjustment for them, too. You reacted in a way for which no one could possibly fault you—including Dusknoir himself.”

Eliana frowned with a flat, low hum at that and slipped away from Lu’s grasp, stepping over to the drinking fountain to relieve her thirst.

“That’s why he didn’t fight back, you know.”

She glanced at her partner from out of the corner of her eye while she lapped from the cold, fresh water.

Lu’s face was creased with empathy as he grasped the silver bow tied around his neck with both paws, his blunted claws wringing the thinned fabric—the first indication of his old anxiety she’d seen all evening. “He didn’t try to stop you, I hope you realize that. He just acted in self-defense to keep you from hurting yourself.”

The recent impression of his unnaturally cool and massive hand coiling around her middle and nearly engulfing her whole torso all the way to her spine made her stiffen. Her entire body didn’t quite fit into his palm anymore, but he could still crush her if he wanted to.

…Yet he hadn’t. She’d bitten him before he could have, but…

“Don’t entirely reject the idea that he’s capable of redeeming himself just yet, Eliana,” Lu murmured pleadingly. “Please.”

“…I won’t,” she caved, turning and watching the flicker of amber firelight play over the lines in Lu’s face. He looked simultaneously younger and older than she remembered. “For you. And for Grovyle.”

Some of the fretful tension drained from his rigid form at her admission. “Thank you. I can’t demand that you give him a second chance, but…I’d ask that you at least try.”

Unable to give him any further verbal confirmation, she nodded instead.

He returned the gesture, smiled, and stepped back into the doorway. “Don’t hesitate to come get me if you need anything,” he said, “anything at all.”

“I will,” she replied.

He stopped, the edge of his mouth tightening.

“I won’t hesitate,” she amended with an irresistible chuckle, “and I will come get you.”

“All right,” he accepted, curling his paw around the door latch. “Good night, Eliana.”

“Good night,” she returned with a smile.

He replicated the gesture, then the door shut with a soft click as the latch lurched into place and secured her inside. The earth muffled any noises Lu would have made climbing back up into the next level, and the only company Eliana now had was the fire rasping at her back and the gentle trickle of water passing through its natural course towards the town’s reservoir.

It struck her suddenly, then, that this would be the first night she would spend alone in nearly a half a decade.

Eliana swallowed roughly, walked over to curl up onto the warm, soft bed that still smelled as though it had been bathed in sunshine, and squeezed her eyes shut to avoid their stinging.

She dreamed of perpetual darkness so dense it could be felt, and of pale, outstretched hands.

#fisara's codices #fanfiction #pokemon #pmd #pmd2 #pmd 2 #pmd explorers #pmd explorers of sky #pokemon mystery dungeon #pokemon mystery dungeon explorers #pokemon mystery dungeon explorers of sky #explorers of sky #leafeon #lucario #grovyle #ao3: in the morning light

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lesbianpraetor · 1 day

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Extra Extra Initial thoughts about Furiosa now in bullet point format Summary the movie made me want to write several essays about George Miller's brain, but also I wish somebody had rained him in just a little bit. Spoilers Ahead!

-It was super obvious that George Miller was trying to expand images that he couldn't show in the first (fourth?) movie. Speciallyyyyyyyyy the History Men, Miss Giddy in Fury Road was a character by herself, but now the archetype is well and truly established with a very specific cosplaying Saruman in the desert with tattoos vibe. Also showing in detail the other two citadels, showing the green place, showing the absolutely vile way that the wretched live, going in depth with the war boys million other things as well. I personally loved it and the picaresque sense it gave the movie.

-The citadel looked soooooo similar to Fury Road it was eerie, since everything else looked so different. But I think it made an important point about stagnation and how the men at the top will keep killing the world for as long as they possibly can only even changing their methods when forced to.

-There's a whole extra movie in the vault about how exactly the wives that were there ended up disappearing. how the politics of it changed from women desperately trying to stay there to have the high life to five women deeply committed to their own liberation (with little Cheedo being the only detractor in retrospect when she is spooked by the wider world). I feel like there is a whole lit fic novel in there about them reaching a breaking point. Maybe a situation where Joe throws out all of them and only keeps the very very best because I counted a whole 11 woman in that vault, maybe the Wives from Fury Road are kidnapped all since wretched woman would not be able to give birth without any deformities? Is Angharad that inspiring? I don't think it's the first one because the fact that woman that chose to be there then decided they didn't want to live as things is much more powerful

-the other extra movie is how exactly Furiosa befriended the wives since she actually didn't spend that much time in the vault itself. I did feel it weakened my favourite reading of Fury Road a little bit, but oh well that always happens with new instalments.

-Talking about Furiosa I'm actually so deeply sad that they casted Anya Taylor Joy for this, not even because she did a bad job, although I think Young Furiosa did a much better job, but because I have watched Queens Gambit so many times that her mere presence made me think about the movie in Doylist terms. She also just seems too Holywood? I don't know there was something about her face that made me think that she was CGIed it was too smooth. Did she even shave her head? I felt Furiosa would not have let it grow out in between escaping the vault and joining the war rig crew, and don't tell me she couldn't, everyone else had short hair Praetor Jack had a nice salon haircut. But the acting itself was good! I actually think it was an effects and direction issue.

-Since we are talking about casting Chris Hemsworth did work for me and I'm questioning if I'm having internalized misogyny about him working better than Taylor. Maybe it was the copious amounts of beard, or that he wasn't the main character but I could really inmerse myself in his character and his parallels to not Furiosa, he was a fucking lying piece of shit about that, but to Immortan Joe. Can't quite articulate waht it was exactly but I think it hit whatever Miller was trying to hit with him. Although my favourite casting was the people I didn't know from anywhere, specially Mary Jo Bassa and the Biker Crew. Burn down the media establishment where we even see actors outside of their characters, it ruins the movies.

-Most viscerally hated character from that movie was the organic mechanic though, instant visceral disgust coupled with professional disdain at this point. You are trying to tell me you couldn't even try to steam the bleeding of the man's throat? you are trying to tell me you are giving birth on the floor like a fucking amateur? he probably didn't even know the anatomy necessary to start trying to close a neck wound. And it's cannon now that he didn't create either Immortan Joe's or Rictus breathing apparatus, because they already had them before the prisoner exchange. Absolute charlatan, no this has nothing to do with me still being pissed as hell as to how he treated Angharad what are you talking about? There's one man in the movie that instantly made me think in Watsonian terms I hate his guts so much.

-And in general I felt the hypocrisy of even the men trying to be kind to Furiosa much more keenly in this movie, which is to say that I did like Praetorian Jack as the pinnacle of the archetypical road warrior and parallels to Max are very interesting and I adored how it created even more parallels to Furiosa and Max's character development in the two movies. But, I don't know, there's something about how he carried himself with Furiosa that rubs me the wrong way I just can't quite place how, might need a rewatch. Anyway Furiosa's crush on him that honestly seemed pretty unrequited from his part was fun, although I hope people don't make it the most important part of the movie (it honestly reminding me of Cheedo and the Dag, they even had a similar was it a stolen kiss moment? but I digress, the parallels between him and Max were much more interesting)

-Back to the topic of the wives there was a moment in the beggining when Mary Jobasa didn't kill the woman who claimed to be a mother and then she betrayed her, which both shows the kind nature of the green place, how it really doesn't work like that in the wasteland and how exactly the vuvalini might have been so diminished in numbers. But my favourite part about this scene was when she said "I'm not to blame" that had to be on purpose because I wanted to shout at the screen " THEN WHO KILLED THE WORLD?" so bad. The fate of the world really hinges on the simplest choices since without that little bit of snitching they just get to go home.

-Honestly just Mary Jo Bassa appreciation, she died on the third day but damn what impressive three days. If I write fic it's going to be about her and Furiosa's other mother, who made the movie pass my personal Bechdel Test with the true purpose of the original Bechdel test, to woman talk to each other in a way that let's you see the Lesbianism in their eyes.

-The scenery of the green place definitely deserves a mention as well, it felt so tiny! it felt so different from everything else of course, they didn't linger to preserve both the runtime and the feeling of it being a place almost from Furiosas's dreams. But from space it felt tiny! the space shot of the outback with the most minuscle amount of green made it feel so deeply vulnerable, and the presence of the crows everywhere made me genuinely emotional. It did clearly have enough of everything to survive and for people to thrive and be super healthy, but it seemed like every millimeter was planned to the last detail to be of the best use.

-Honestly I think the relationship between Furiosa and her mother was the beating heart of the movie, I definitely liked the first third more than anything, it felt the most like something new and fully immersed not only in the setting of Fury road but honestly more of Road Warrior in way?, I don't know closest I got to crying was at Mary's death and her little good girl when furiosa killed a man to protect their home was the cutest most uwu part of the movie. Not to mention revenge of her death is the entire point of the final confrontation.

-Also I have to mention Mr. Norton. Mr. Norton I'm free on saturday for tying up to a motorcycle, I'm sure everything you did was totally justified and also super hot, thank you for your dirty rabid woman duties it was fucking awesome how you shot a man and the quartered your former boss.

-Last comment before I forget, that scene where Jack was killed had impressive Hector vibes. Tied to the back of the chariot while hounds eat you and disfigure your corpse? More to add fuel to the fire of George Miller adoring archetypical images, and I do too no complaints, it was gut-wrenching when I realized what was going to happen. The Horde in general had a mixture of Greek Charioteers and Mongol horde I really loved it.

-Also their first fight scene together where they work seamlessly together and then Furiosa threatens his life? classic crazy wasteland, you and Max really were identical. It also cements my idea that the movie is Fury Road backwards, since Max threatened Furiosa's life first and then they seamlessly worked together. I'll have to find where all the beats parallel and how they fit together, to see if I'm right.

In Conclusion honestly excellent movie, I didn't leave with the deep emotions Fury Road made but how much it's making me think about it is deeply appreciated.

#Mad Max #Furiosa #Furiosa Spoilers

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ivan-fyodorovich-k · 9 months

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As I now read that the state or federal government intentionally murdered dozens of people with a wildfire in Hawaii, I am once again wondering whether there is such a thing as a natural disaster or a genuine catastrophe in the minds of terminally online people who think everything was done by Them

And like

Every single time? Nothing bad has ever just happened? And it’s never incompetence or neglect? It’s always malice? It’s always because They planned it?

#the scrappy True Narrative is always almost exactly the same shit too #it’s like it’s written out of a script #if I didn’t know so many of them personally I’d almost think that the conspiracy narratives were damage control from the government #trying to hide the fact that they’re actually indifferent and incompetent because saying they planned it all at least projects power #and the point isn’t that the government is always perfectly transparent and nothing suspicious ever happens #because obviously the government lies constantly and the official narrative is going to be unreliable #and new details will emerge #and things will look different in retrospect #it’s just the confidence #the bitter and utterly trenchant and completely intensely and apoplectically self-assured confidence #that you always just immediately Know what Really Happened #and it’s always the same story

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averlym · 8 months

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litany of the martyrs (click for better resolution!)

#at some point i wanted to make an illustration for each character but in retrospect maybe each is multiple song-coded..#drew the sketch for a quincy thing after a chat with a mutual reminded me this song existed dfsghjkl and then spent weeks rendering this #quincy cynthius martin #adamandi #i'm finally done with this! the saints especially were joys to paint and the halo a menace.... this has been the most ambitious one so far.#but it also took quite long because i only worked on it <engages with quincy> when mentally okay to deal with the themes. i'm not religious #but i do identify with the irrational(?ish) guilt + family legacy + academic achievement + disregard for self. also more complex thoughts #about love [but depsite quincent being a large part of quincy's character this piece deals with mostly the Rest of it. so another time..]#anyways! in the original sketch- the saints had heads bent towards quincy so the halo spikes pointed at him. but this worked better! halos #of the saints implying/creating one for quincy was a concept from the start though. in the show they don't touch him directly here but #differences in mediums i think- i don't have time in an image to craft a narrative so everything has to be happening. also artistic liberty #misc inspiration for this includes stained glass windows. i might have maybe misinterpreted the saint costume but i think i logic-ed it out #as the cloth part following a nun's habit w the hood. and then halo above. the material is also more transparent originally but i had. um.#too much fun painting fabric folds.. if you look closely you can see the basis of faces though behind the cloth; but only the vague shapes #because smth obscurity + inhumanness// cassian is the only one i gave a mouth though. that stems from melliot's post about the saints and #st cassian as spokesperson (<- did research teehee!) that's also how i found out which costume = which saint. speaking of which.#left to right: 'st lucy take my hand' // 'st lawrence give me strength' (presses quincy forward; but hand on shoulder connotates guidance)#/'st cassian help me smile' (quincy's mouth is btwn a grimace and a smile; tilts up at side. also no direct touch bc added insidiousness.)#//'st jude [...] i hope your causes burn' (jude's hand is in two places to show movement- nearing the flame and then snatching back; burnt)#other notes: at the midst of the flame the core is shaped like a human heart /the saints and their wax are all melting like the candle for #fun visual effect and also this way they are even less tangible <real>. perks of painting as a medium i guess. // also insp from icarus?#wax and burning imagery; looking at the halo and rays as parallel to sun that burns. too close to the sun; melting; hurting; hurtling //#candles at bottom are a nod to the frankly gorgeous set// also the entire composition kind of stems from the lyric <what use is a candle if #both ends aren't burning>; the two sides between the concepts of catholic guilt and academic perfection that spur quincy #the halo above (saints and guilt; litanyofthemartyrs) and the 'halo' below (academic papers; insp from choreo for perfect at school)#the papers were originally supposed to be more glowy. but i like the idea of it now being a reflection of how quincy's priorities shift #also of note is that <candle> in centre = quincy; w burning candle + aforementioned heart in flame -> most human; idea of love + passion #last thoughts: kneeling + hands close tgt = prayer //wax dripping onto the red As make an effect that looks like blood. because i like #hiding that within the adamandi pieces :OO continuity!! // i've run out of tags but yeah! had fun with this one! every so often i go a #little insane in making art and the final result astounds even me. ngl i'm quite proud of this one. pretty colours <3333

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thatonecrookedsmile · 2 months

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["So what can you expect in the coming months?"] ["…you never know!"] ["He’s always watching me..."] ["-I saw Mister Drew the other day…was meeting with that Connor fellow, holding some papers."] ["I think they saw me looking though…"] ["Just too many secrets being cooked up in the kitchen!"] ["If I didn’t know better, I’d say there was magic there."] ["A well calculated understanding between creation-"] ["-big things are coming!"] ["-and creator."] ["Massive things!"] ["That smile…"] ["..you just learn to go with it."] ["He’s always watching me..."] ["You just watch…"] ["I’ve got a good feeling something great is going to happen…”]

...

…How very interesting,such… knowledge.

{A message from Wilson Arch}

-----

Yoooo, guess who is having a birthday today. Me,obviously. :D

Oh, and Wilson too, I guess. If you wanna be THAT guy.

Remember when this video came out there were people who heard the voice at the end and thought the voice was either Sammy or the Ink Demon? Man, those were the days. However with all due respect, I'm glad neither case was right in the end lol.

On this day 5 years ago, "Unknown - April 14th" was posted on YouTube, which means it's been 5 damn years since we first heard from Wilson...

man, what a damn BABY MAN, am i right folks

It's interesting to think that even though it's been 5 years, we've only known who Wilson really is for 2 years now (or more appropriately, 1 year and 5 months of those 5 years). Of course, now, after BATDR was released, we know who he is and what his place is in the Bendy universe. But between April 1, 2019 and November 1, 2022, all we knew about him was that he…existed. He was someone - someone bad apparently - who sounded old and who would have some relevance in the plot of Dark Revival. And that's it. We had no name, no appearance, nothing. He was someone, but we didn't know who.

It's no wonder he was only referred to as "Unknown" by fans during these 3 and a half years.

In the end, I would say that this drawing is a mix of 2 things. The first being the result of an idea I've had for a while, which is basically making a drawing in relation to the original video/"unknown" tape, but this time with Wilson, since now we know it was recorded by him. Plus it's been 5 years since the original upload,5 years of Wilson. I think this would be the perfect time to do this.

And second, a strange kind of redux/homage/"final chapter" in this kind of "collection" of drawings I did between 2019 and 2022 all based on the idea of "the unknown weirdo from BATDR saying How Very Interesting Such Knowledge" and so on. All of them having other characters in mind in the role of the Unknown. And now, here I am, redoing this idea again, only with The Man Himself this time. The real Unknown. Now as the Known, so to speak.

Going back to what I said before, you can see this drawing as a kind of farewell to this particular idea that I've kind of repeated over the years, as I've now done it again only with Wilson this time. (Does this mean I'll never draw this concept/line of thought again? I mean, I assume so. But there's no guarantee I can't make something similar again down the line. Who knows what the future holds. We will see what happens in the next 5 years.)

But,yeah. 5 years of Such Knowledge™.

Have a good April Fools' Day.

(Also, there are still a few hours until the day ends where I live, so for me it's still April 1st, so yeah, this still counts)

#bendy and the ink machine #batim #bendy and the dark revival #batdr #wilson arch #crookedsmileart #I'm going to start headcanon that Wilson's birthday is on April Fools. It fits him 😌#yo perspective SUCKS; who created this;i'm gonna beat them until there's no more.#also;lighting is so. hard;how do you all do it #Does anyone have tips for lighting; it would be a huge help /gen #also also;drawing the audio logs was a BATTLE. It was sooo boring; why do I do this to myself #so many details and I had to do it in 7 of them; and it's because these are the DR models;which have more details;#if I had to make them based on IM models I would probably make them simpler. But I wanted to be accurate :-)))#since we are on this subject (and I'm 99% sure of this)#Did you know that the textures in the audio log models used in the final game #are different to those used in the videos published between Feb and April 2019? and a little less detailed?#I realized this when I was looking for references for the drawing #the audio logs in those videos and the audio logs in the final game are not the same thing (at least in terms of texture)#Next time you play BATDR; think about this lol /hj #in retrospect; I don't think those audio logs published at the time would really be relevant to the game's plot #and I think that in the end their purpose was (besides worldbuilding i guess) just to tease the existence of Wilson #I still think that Joey's audio was supposed to be more of a meta thing since the real JDS was actually growing during that time #in my head; that at least makes sense (referring to the last 2 tags)#anyway;happy birthday Wilson;you old bitch #ok i finally post this;now back to the HOG

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mercymaker · 4 months

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love is truly the dumb fuck juice of all time because a man can literally tell you 'i have violent thoughts of harming you' and your ass will be twirling hair and kicking feet like 'but would we kiss after that or?' like

#life #nothing recent lmao just been thinking about my younger self #and how utterly in love i was with someone who didn't have their best intentions with my goofy ass #and i was EATING. IT. ALL. UP.#like sure i was in the absolute depths of depression and ping ponged from one suicidal thought to another #and at times those feelings were about the only thing keeping me from jumping off the 16th floor of my dorm building #but then again when he abandoned me like a wet dog on the side of the road #i uh.. almost killed myself yaknow.. maybe it was NOT worth it in the long run lmao #i lived bitch.jpg #but yeah nah just looking back at all that in retrospect and it's truly truly wild as shit how utterly in love my ass was #talking about that suicidio attempt i actually ended up writing about it because it was almost comical how i survived #when your darkest demons crawl out of the shower drain to roast you into living mi amore <3 #it helped me process the whole thing when i was in a much better place mentally #and i read it to my writing group with a bunch of people different ages different walks of life it was a great experience #suicide mention cw

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tsuncda · 3 days

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so am i right or am i right in my assertion that bridgerton doesn't actually do character work, it just rebrands it's main characters before their season begins and tries to recontextualize them as poor little meow meows.

#olive rambles #watched the first half of season 3 #was thinking to myself: huh. pen isn't that bad.#and then decided to rewatch some season 2 scenes to recontextualize who the characters are. y'know. so i can be an intelligent viewer #and all that jazz.#and damn you bridgerton i fell for your trap for a second there.#SHE'S NOT !!!!!!! THE SAME !!!!!!!! CHARACTER !!!!!!!!!#this isn't just about framing a narrative differently season 2 pen and season 3 pen are different girlies entirely #WHERE IS THE WRATH #i *want* a vengeful penelope featherington damnit #even if i don't like her as a person i could respect her as a character #and yet #they just make her a soft sadgirl #which also feels very cheap because women can be angry and messy and vengeful and still find love #honestly get polin out of here and get penelope angry again #i want to see BLOOD or season 2 is cheapened in retrospect #look me in the eye and tell me i'm wrong #you can't #i am the god of this chilis and i have spoken #i think over the summer i'm going to watch all of bridgerton over again so i can make a corkboard of theories #and be intelligent in my hate #PENELOPE WAS ANGRY AND LOUD ABOUT IT IN SEASON 2 AND SOMEHOW SHE IS NOW JUST SAD AND RUMINATING IN SEASON 3 #BITCH WHEN AND WHERE DID THIS CHANGE TAKE PLACE AND WHY #AND ALSO FOR WHAT ANGRY ACTIONABLE CHARACTERS ARE DYNAMIC AND HARD TO PREDICT AND MAKE FOR GOOD CINEMA #SAD CHARACTERS THAT SIT AND THINK ABOUT THINGS ARE OKAY TOO BUT THEY ARE NOT !!!!! THE SAME !!!!! AS THE FORMER ARCHETYPE #AND THEY SHOULDN'T BE!!!!!!!!

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polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup · 7 months

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megumi 🤝🏽 yuuji

dying even if it’s only for a good minute only to be brought back to life bc fate realizes if they died for real then they would need to find someone else to fuck over. those two are like fates favorite barbie dolls.

apologies if this post is going to seem all over the place, just bear with me. i don’t even know if you’re going to see this BUT it’s okay bc i need to get this out my system 😭.

starting off — god, imagine the chaos that will ensue when megumi tells nobara & yuuji about his very tragic history with the zenins. but like he wouldn’t even tell them straight up, he’ll just make a little deadpan joke (my sarcastic, sassy son) & the others would look at him like : ??? wtf do you mean by that sea urchin head???

like imagine itafushikugi going shopping for like traditional japanese clothes for a little festival or some shit (megumi was dragged by his spikes to come along) & nobara is having the time of her life finding outfits for her & the boys. like it got to the point where she’s dressing them herself & she shows megumi an outfit that looked similar to the robe he was forced to wear bc of the zenin (it’s obviously not the same) & megumi just refuses to wear a robe with similar color patterns to the zenin robe.

megumi: that looks like the outfit the zenin forced me to wear. i wonder what happened to it, cause the last thing i know, i got blood all over it. so as the second member of the zenin hate club, im not wearing that….

megumi: wait that blue one looks decent. i’m going to try it on.

nobara:

yuuji:

nobara: …did he really leave without giving us the “ getting blood on a zenin’s robe” story?

imagine maki complaining about naoya in front of the first years, & maki just brings up naoya’s onesided beef with megumi & her stories of how naoya was so petty back in his childhood made him remember who tf naoya is (megs have selective memory, it’s okay)

megumi: ugh, he was so annoying. i remember when he came to my middle school back when gojo was busy dealing with the aftermath of his evil ex boyfriend evil plan & he basically kidnapped me. i was stuck in a car with that man for 40 minutes..you would hate him nobara.

maki: yeah you would hate him nobara.

yuuji: i’m sorry he kidnapped you??? why did you say that so casually?

nobara: fuck that. megumi is a disney princess, we know this already. BUT we’re just gonna gloss over gojo had an evil boyfriend?

& imagine when megumi finally tells his friends about the zenin clan was when yuuji just came back from the dead & they were asking how tf that’s possible. & somewhere in that conversation megumi just let it slip that his heart stopped beating once & itakugi looks at him in silence:

megumi: yeah the zenin clan basically forced me to exorcise some curses & complete a ritual to get a snake — that snake fucking bit me. it was my least favorite. but yeah i basically died. then yuuta brought me back. then i was blind for a good minute.

nobara, yuuji, & even sukuna:

megumi: it was a terrible time for me. gojo was even more clingier & protective. it got to a point where he started treating me like i was 6 again… reading me bedtime stories, singing me lullabies & describing the pictures in the stories since i was…yknow blind.

cue itakugi & even sukuna wanting to burn down the zenin but ofc they can’t do that…so they settle for pulling pranks on the members & traumatizing them ofc.

IM ALSO imagining how funny it would be for yuuji to be jealous of yuuta. like bro is basically living yuuji’s fantasy world. i’m giggling at the idea of yuuji fighting for his life to be either megumi favorite or nanami’s favorite.

you also opened my eye to the potential of maki & tsumiki… like i also like to imagine that in a happier world, they would understand each other on such a deep level. but they would also find parts of the other that they wished they had. but on a happier note i like to imagine that megumi would suffer whenever it was brought up that his aunt is basically dating his step sister. like maki would be a menace to megumi. every little thing he do? maki is texting tsumiki in a corner.

maki watching itafushi cook together in the kitchen: i can’t believe megumi has a boyfriend. it’s so cute that he thinks that he can hide this from me. lemme go snitch to tsumiki.

maki listening to megumi describe his fight with sukuna, a cursed spirit who apparently has a stripping problem: oh my god. megumi is truly yuuta’s boy. they both got cursed spirits obsessed with them…i need to tell tsumiki.

maki to megumi after witnessing his suicidal tendencies: don’t make me tell tsumiki.

i honestly love your story. the way you added so much more to megumi childhood is beautiful. it just make soooo much sense. but also your characterization of gojo is so precious to me. i’m waiting for gojo to go apeshit on the zenin. i’m also giggling in anticipation at gojo finding out about yuuta attachment to megumi. i like to imagine him to be kind of worried about it actually, bc that’s not fucking healthy. but i imagine him getting used to it since megumi will have a protector in the form of yuuta & his power of love.

i’m also curious to see mai’s role in this story since.

*sighs in disappointment at gege writing choices*

since she had a crush on megumi…yeah. but imma just interpret that as she wants to be his family. it keeps me sane

i also wanted to ask if there’s a chance that you would write a megumi POV of what happened in the zenin clan? ofc i would understand if you wouldn’t since it leaves a much more ominous feeling to the events. plus yuuta running commentary is a good mix of angst & humor so ofc i understand.

Yuuji: man fushiguro almost checks the boxes for a Disney princess. except he was never kidnapped or enslaved

Megumi, sold to the Zenin clan, who later kidnapped him: *sweating*

Nobara and Yuuji would be the co-vice presidents of the "fuck the Zenin clan" club if they knew what happened. They would be the presidents but yuuta and maki are already in a death match for the position and they're trying to avoid the bloodshed. they are not allowed to be treasurer because neither of them know how money works.

megumi is unaware that a formal club has been formed.

Megumi is suffering SO HARD in any world where maki and tsumiki are together. they won't stop ganging up on him when it comes to his love life and general wellbeing and holding hands where he has to see it. maki lectures him about his suicidal tendencies in the field, holds up one finger, calls tsumiki, and lets her pick up where she left off. maki tries to talk to him about relationships one (1) time and he tries to drown himself.

see i'm pretty open to writing a megumi POV but it, like most of my stories, falls in this nebulous category of "if i have the time." like, i've thought about writing megumi's pov before, there's a lot of stuff that happened that exists as like, background knowledge for me that will never make it through yuuta's pov because it doesn't make sense for yuuta to find out about it. It would be very tonally different, but if i did write it, it would be a different work entirely and i'd be making sea glass gardens into a series.

i'm eternally tempted by the siren call of making my works into a series. If i did it with sea glass gardens, i would want to add a one shot of Megumi's pov during the time leading up to sea glass gardens and a short multi-chapter of the gojo, nanami, shoko teen parenting trio. If I have the time, it will exist; if i don't, it won't.

#ironically the one thing that WOULD endear yuuta to yuuji is finding out about all of this #yuuji would instantly love him for all he did for Their Boy. it's the only way i see megumi actually fessing up to what happened #i think megumi's just someone who's really private and uncomfortable with people knowing a lot about him and he would try to hide this from #itakugi for as long as he could. it probably eats at him that the second years all saw him like this. i think he just hates feeling vulnera #megumi gives him the /extremely/ abridged version of events to get yuuji and nobara to chill about yuuta and how he acts (yuuji is convince #that there's no one who could be that perfect nobara keeps looking for homosexual explanations) and they instantly veer hard into finding #out everything there is to know about the zenin and how to hurt them and also yuuta's like. beloved in their eyes. megumi is their boy.#they love their boy. yuuta saved their boy. ergo they love yuuta now. it's simple math.#tonal shift is a huge sort of struggle with me as a writer just because i change my styles with every narrator #which is why it's kind of hard to flip between works if the tone is too different. i was trying to juggle sea glass gardens and toy rosarie #and i was just internally screaming b/c yuuta and jack could NOT be more different with narration styles and i was like 'fuckkkkkkkkk'#with yuuta i structure sentences with a lot of 'space' in them. i don't have a better word for it i'm not actually trained in writing so #it's all just whatever shit i made up along the way i have no officially terms. anyway. Yuuta's sentences are structured to have this sort #of detached distance between the actual message and the start of the sentence. So we end up with a lot of sentences that start w/ structure #like “yuuta thinks” and Yuuta feels“ b/c I think of yuuta as a very detached person because of how he lived. it's a survival mechanism.#a lot of the meat of what he feels has to come in almost absentmindedly. So you end up with Yuuta's suicide scene and losing the knife and #him having a line like “He swears he never meant any of the bad things he did” and the fact that he thinks his own survival is a bad thing #/he's/ to blame for is almost backdoor'd in as a given premise. it's assumed. it's not even the point of the sentence. he's been living wit #jack murdock meanwhile is an intensively retrospective character that's meant to make you almost feel claustrophobic from how “close” his #narration style is. a lot of the actual message is conveyed through imagined scenarios and emotional recollection. he's a character steeped #in regret who has been torturing himself with it for years. yuuta's survival mechanism is isolation but jacks been yearning to get back wha #he lost for so long and dreaming of it that he's steeped in really vivid internal imaginings.#with jack you have multipage lamentations remembering his son buying cereal with him but yuuta drops the fact that his parents stopped #loving him at some point and it's not even the most important thing in the sentence. it's included as a qualifier because yuuta has accepte #so much of the bad things that happened to him when he shouldn't have whereas jack hasn't accepted ANYTHING that happened.#Yuuta uses a lot of very clean cut grammatically correct narration and jacks is riddled with a bunch of “ain't's” and grammatical errors.#he has an accent for lack of a better term. so you end up w/ two characters who convey information in different ways prioritize different #info in their sentences use different sentence structures etc. so megumi would have a /very different/ style and tone from yuutas that woul #sort of shape any fic that came through him because all of my fics are primarily shaped through the narrator's voice. it's also why I set #kind of hard lines about whether a fic can have any narrator or just specific narrators b/c it determines the whole tone.

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justsomerandomplanet · 1 year

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I just realized vol 13's inside cover is this, i wonder how they'll do this with the parallel covers that have characters

#rambles #my instinct assumes its gonna be gojo and megumi #but if im estimating this correctly the parallel cover may be the last cover #bc they started doing the parallels in vol 14 #so gojo and megumi could work for the final battle?#but i would rather it be different characters #yuji and wasuke plsplsplpslps #or literally yuji and another character idk man #let the mc be the mc!!!!!!#sorry im rambling a lot shibuya is really good #and looking at things retrospectively is fun

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the-clay-quarters · 7 months

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looking through storylets ive saved and realised that in the affluent photographer story, i was so annoyed by something she said that a. i forgot to save the whole thing and b. highlighted the particularly bad line

past me was so pissed he forgot all pretense of accurate archiving lmao

#context: revolution and coffee storylet #and i save certain things to discord bcus the ingame thing makes no sense to me </3 #anyway only looking at it again bcus i started it on the alt (story doesnt fit pem at all but i wanted to see the contrarians text too)#(hes Also annoying but in a different way lol)#in retrospect its not even that bad she just reminds me of like. twitter anarchists i think #chatter

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waterloggedtomorrow · 1 year

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In general I think my mother was right to cut our hair herself when we were kids, bc haircuts are expensive + hard to schedule + who Cares when you're a kid. But also walking into a barber shop is the Most terrifying thing ever + I do wish it were something I had more experience w.

#my brother went to a barber once when he was like 4 maybe + when he came out I said ''so I guess we're never doing that again'' + we didn't #it was a shitty thing for me to do but I did really just assume we were all on the same page abt it looking bad #in retrospect I was never gonna like it bc it was just different from what I expected

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carmarriage · 11 months

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i chose zexal btw

#literally stared at that post for a solid 3 mins trying to decide. absolutely agonizing #gx is really fun but zexals plot is better imo. and since its newer its generally better to look at as well #and nothing on this planet will ever be more iconic than keyshipping it cant be done #AND LIKE i wasnt kidding when i said i got crazy invested that shit had me SCREAMINGGGG at the vector reveal #cus i was livetweeting my first watchthru at the time and i happened to see a spoiler that was like #something about zexal having ''aliens that possess the bodies of dead kids''#and i had ALSO already been spoiled a little bit for vector so i was like ohhh thats gonna be the deal huh #IT WASNT...... IT WAS A DIFFERENT THING......#that enhanced my viewing experience like 10x lmao #maybe its cuz ive only ever seen gx dubbed but i never had that big of a reaction to anything that happened in it. its all so unserious #arc v was also kinda in consideration bc its like. arc vs premise is sooo cool #and it was also the series i started watching while it was still airing so it had a different Flavor #but man.... arc vs ending was so doodoo dogshit it kinda soured the rest of the series for me in retrospect LOL #and ive only ever seen 20-30 eps of 5ds and vrains so i cant really make a judgement #but i remember really liking 5ds i just havent gotten around to continuing yet #i didnt like vrains as much LOL the design of the stupid vrchat village world disappointed me so much i stopped keeping up with it #but i enjoyed what i saw of yusaku i thought he was really funny. 16 yo serious hackerman. i love it #thank you for reading htis. manifesto. i dunno what this is. kattobingu

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visualsine · 1 year

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i love all the art music and nature that the world has to offer but

#i sorta really hate living and i just want to start over fresh and like without the hardship of being transgender right #but i dont want to be a “41%er” cause thats horrible in retrospect and death is wide and unknown #i dont want to stop existing i just want to be reincarnated into a different body yknow its starting to feel like im utterly trapped #like every year it gets worse and no one will actually fucking listen to what i have to say #and i dont know whats worse to me #keeping everything i love but continuing my life not belonging anywhere and being forced to go through with changes that arent right #or losing everything but maybe getting another chance at something better #and look yeah i know things will get better and im still young #but everything seems real bleak at the moment even outside my stupid little bubble #literally may just be feeling this way cause ive left the house once in the past week and havent really seen anyone for more #than an hour at a time though

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exeggcute · 11 months

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the great reddit API meltdown of '23, or: this was always bound to happen

there's a lot of press about what's going on with reddit right now (app shutdowns, subreddit blackouts, the CEO continually putting his foot in his mouth), but I haven't seen as much stuff talking about how reddit got into this situation to begin with. so as a certified non-expert and Context Enjoyer I thought it might be helpful to lay things out as I understand them—a high-level view, surveying the whole landscape—in the wonderful world of startups, IPOs, and extremely angry users.

disclaimer that I am not a founder or VC (lmao), have yet to work at a company with a successful IPO, and am not a reddit employee or third-party reddit developer or even a subreddit moderator. I do work at a startup, know my way around an API or two, and have spent twelve regrettable years on reddit itself. which is to say that I make no promises of infallibility, but I hope you'll at least find all this interesting.

profit now or profit later

before you can really get into reddit as reddit, it helps to know a bit about startups (of which reddit is one). and before I launch into that, let me share my Three Types Of Websites framework, which is basically just a mental model about financial incentives that's helped me contextualize some of this stuff.

(1) website/software that does not exist to make money: relatively rare, for a variety of reasons, among them that it costs money to build and maintain a website in the first place. wikipedia is the evergreen example, although even wikipedia's been subject to criticism for how the wikimedia foundation pays out its employees and all that fun nonprofit stuff. what's important here is that even when making money is not the goal, money itself is still a factor, whether it's solicited via donations or it's just one guy paying out of pocket to host a hobby site. but websites in this category do, generally, offer free, no-strings-attached experiences to their users.

(I do want push back against the retrospective nostalgia of "everything on the internet used to be this way" because I don't think that was ever really true—look at AOL, the dotcom boom, the rise of banner ads. I distinctly remember that neopets had multiple corporate sponsors, including a cookie crisp-themed flash game. yahoo bought geocities for $3.6 billion; money's always been trading hands, obvious or not. it's indisputable that the internet is simply different now than it was ten or twenty years ago, and that monetization models themselves have largely changed as well (I have thoughts about this as it relates to web 1.0 vs web 2.0 and their associated costs/scale/etc.), but I think the only time people weren't trying to squeeze the internet for all the dimes it can offer was when the internet was first conceived as a tool for national defense.)

(2) website/software that exists to make money now: the type that requires the least explanation. mostly non-startup apps and services, including any random ecommerce storefront, mobile apps that cost three bucks to download, an MMO with a recurring subscription, or even a news website that runs banner ads and/or offers paid subscriptions. in most (but not all) cases, the "make money now" part is obvious, so these things don't feel free to us as users, even to the extent that they might have watered-down free versions or limited access free trials. no one's shocked when WoW offers another paid expansion packs because WoW's been around for two decades and has explicitly been trying to make money that whole time.

(3) website/software that exists to make money later: this is the fun one, and more common than you'd think. "make money later" is more or less the entire startup business model—I'll get into that in the next section—and is deployed with the expectation that you will make money at some point, but not always by means as obvious as "selling WoW expansions for forty bucks a pop."

companies in this category tend to have two closely entwined characteristics: they prioritize growth above all else, regardless of whether this growth is profitable in any way (now, or sometimes, ever), and they do this by offering users really cool and awesome shit at little to no cost (or, if not for free, then at least at a significant loss to the company).

so from a user perspective, these things either seem free or far cheaper than their competitors. but of course websites and software and apps and [blank]-as-a-service tools cost money to build and maintain, and that money has to come from somewhere, and the people supplying that money, generally, expect to get it back...

just not immediately.

startups, VCs, IPOs, and you

here's the extremely condensed "did NOT go to harvard business school" version of how a startup works:

(1) you have a cool idea.

(2) you convince some venture capitalists (also known as VCs) that your idea is cool. if they see the potential in what you're pitching, they'll give you money in exchange for partial ownership of your company—which means that if/when the company starts trading its stock publicly, these investors will own X numbers of shares that they can sell at any time. in other words, you get free money now (and you'll likely seek multiple "rounds" of investors over the years to sustain your company), but with the explicit expectations that these investors will get their payoff later, assuming you don't crash and burn before that happens.

during this phase, you want to do anything in your power to make your company appealing to investors so you can attract more of them and raise funds as needed. because you are definitely not bringing in the necessary revenue to offset operating costs by yourself.

it's also worth nothing that this is less about projecting the long-term profitability of your company than it's about its perceived profitability—i.e., VCs want to put their money behind a company that other people will also have confidence in, because that's what makes stock valuable, and VCs are in it for stock prices.

(3) there are two non-exclusive win conditions for your startup: you can get acquired, and you can have an IPO (also referred to as "going public"). these are often called "exit scenarios" and they benefit VCs and founders, as well as some employees. it's also possible for a company to get acquired, possibly even more than once, and then later go public.

acquisition: sell the whole damn thing to someone else. there are a million ways this can happen, some better than others, but in many cases this means anyone with ownership of the company (which includes both investors and employees who hold stock options) get their stock bought out by the acquiring company and end up with cash in hand. in varying amounts, of course. sometimes the founders walk away, sometimes the employees get laid off, but not always.

IPO: short for "initial public offering," this is when the company starts trading its stocks publicly, which means anyone who wants to can start buying that company's stock, which really means that VCs (and employees with stock options) can turn that hypothetical money into real money by selling their company stock to interested buyers.

drawing from that, companies don't go for an IPO until they think their stock will actually be worth something (or else what's the point?)—specifically, worth more than the amount of money that investors poured into it. The Powers That Be will speculate about a company's IPO potential way ahead of time, which is where you'll hear stuff about companies who have an estimated IPO evaluation of (to pull a completely random example) $10B. actually I lied, that was not a random example, that was reddit's valuation back in 2021 lol. but a valuation is basically just "how much will people be interested in our stock?"

as such, in the time leading up to an IPO, it's really really important to do everything you can to make your company seem like a good investment (which is how you get stock prices up), usually by making the company's numbers look good. but! if you plan on cashing out, the long-term effects of your decisions aren't top of mind here. remember, the industry lingo is "exit scenario."

if all of this seems like a good short-term strategy for companies and their VCs, but an unsustainable model for anyone who's buying those stocks during the IPO, that's because it often is.

also worth noting that it's possible for a company to be technically unprofitable as a business (meaning their costs outstrip their revenue) and still trade enormously well on the stock market; uber is the perennial example of this. to the people who make money solely off of buying and selling stock, it literally does not matter that the actual rideshare model isn't netting any income—people think the stock is valuable, so it's valuable.

this is also why, for example, elon musk is richer than god: if he were only the CEO of tesla, the money he'd make from selling mediocre cars would be (comparatively, lol) minimal. but he's also one of tesla's angel investors, which means he holds a shitload of tesla stock, and tesla's stock has performed well since their IPO a decade ago (despite recent dips)—even if tesla itself has never been a huge moneymaker, public faith in the company's eventual success has kept them trading at high levels. granted, this also means most of musk's wealth is hypothetical and not liquid; if TSLA dropped to nothing, so would the value of all the stock he holds (and his net work with it).

what's an API, anyway?

to move in an entirely different direction: we can't get into reddit's API debacle without understanding what an API itself is.

an API (short for "application programming interface," not that it really matters) is a series of code instructions that independent developers can use to plug their shit into someone else's shit. like a series of tin cans on strings between two kids' treehouses, but for sending and receiving data.

APIs work by yoinking data directly from a company's servers instead of displaying anything visually to users. so I could use reddit's API to build my own app that takes the day's top r/AITA post and transcribes it into pig latin: my app is a bunch of lines of code, and some of those lines of code fetch data from reddit (and then transcribe that data into pig latin), and then my app displays the content to anyone who wants to see it, not reddit itself. as far as reddit is concerned, no additional human beings laid eyeballs on that r/AITA post, and reddit never had a chance to serve ads alongside the pig-latinized content in my app. (put a pin in this part—it'll be relevant later.)

but at its core, an API is really a type of protocol, which encompasses a broad category of formats and business models and so on. some APIs are completely free to use, like how anyone can build a discord bot (but you still have to host it yourself). some companies offer free APIs to third-party developers can build their own plugins, and then the company and the third-party dev split the profit on those plugins. some APIs have a free tier for hobbyists and a paid tier for big professional projects (like every weather API ever, lol). some APIs are strictly paid services because the API itself is the company's core offering.

reddit's financial foundations

okay thanks for sticking with me. I promise we're almost ready to be almost ready to talk about the current backlash.

reddit has always been a startup's startup from day one: its founders created the site after attending a startup incubator (which is basically a summer camp run by VCs) with the successful goal of creating a financially successful site. backed by that delicious y combinator money, reddit got acquired by conde nast only a year or two after its creation, which netted its founders a couple million each. this was back in like, 2006 by the way. in the time since that acquisition, reddit's gone through a bunch of additional funding rounds, including from big-name investors like a16z, peter thiel (yes, that guy), sam altman (yes, also that guy), sequoia, fidelity, and tencent. crunchbase says that they've raised a total of $1.3B in investor backing.

in all this time, reddit has never been a public company, or, strictly speaking, profitable.

APIs and third-party apps

reddit has offered free API access for basically as long as it's had a public API—remember, as a "make money later" company, their primary goal is growth, which means attracting as many users as possible to the platform. so letting anyone build an app or widget is (or really, was) in line with that goal.

as such, third-party reddit apps have been around forever. by third-party apps, I mean apps that use the reddit API to display actual reddit content in an unofficial wrapper. iirc reddit didn't even have an official mobile app until semi-recently, so many of these third-party mobile apps in particular just sprung up to meet an unmet need, and they've kept a small but dedicated userbase ever since. some people also prefer the user experience of the unofficial apps, especially since they offer extra settings to customize what you're seeing and few to no ads (and any ads these apps do display are to the benefit of the third-party developers, not reddit itself.)

(let me add this preemptively: one solution I've seen proposed to the paid API backlash is that reddit should have third-party developers display reddit's ads in those third-party apps, but this isn't really possible or advisable due to boring adtech reasons I won't inflict on you here. source: just trust me bro)

in addition to mobile apps, there are also third-party tools that don’t replace the Official Reddit Viewing Experience but do offer auxiliary features like being able to mass-delete your post history, tools that make the site more accessible to people who use screen readers, and tools that help moderators of subreddits moderate more easily. not to mention a small army of reddit bots like u/AutoWikibot or u/RemindMebot (and then the bots that tally the number of people who reply to bot comments with “good bot” or “bad bot).

the number of people who use third-party apps is relatively small, but they arguably comprise some of reddit’s most dedicated users, which means that third-party apps are important to the people who keep reddit running and the people who supply reddit with high-quality content.

unpaid moderators and user-generated content

so reddit is sort of two things: reddit is a platform, but it’s also a community.

the platform is all the unsexy (or, if you like python, sexy) stuff under the hood that actually makes the damn thing work. this is what the company spends money building and maintaining and "owns." the community is all the stuff that happens on the platform: posts, people, petty squabbles. so the platform is where the content lives, but ultimately the content is the reason people use reddit—no one’s like “yeah, I spend time on here because the backend framework really impressed me."

and all of this content is supplied by users, which is not unique among social media platforms, but the content is also managed by users, which is. paid employees do not govern subreddits; unpaid volunteers do. and moderation is the only thing that keeps reddit even remotely tolerable—without someone to remove spam, ban annoying users, and (god willing) enforce rules against abuse and hate speech, a subreddit loses its appeal and therefore its users. not dissimilar to the situation we’re seeing play out at twitter, except at twitter it was the loss of paid moderators; reddit is arguably in a more precarious position because they could lose this unpaid labor at any moment, and as an already-unprofitable company they absolutely cannot afford to implement paid labor as a substitute.

oh yeah? spell "IPO" backwards

so here we are, June 2023, and reddit is licking its lips in anticipation of a long-fabled IPO. which means it’s time to start fluffing themselves up for investors by cutting costs (yay, layoffs!) and seeking new avenues of profit, however small.

this brings us to the current controversy: reddit announced a new API pricing plan that more or less prevents anyone from using it for free.

from reddit's perspective, the ostensible benefits of charging for API access are twofold: first, there's direct profit to be made off of the developers who (may or may not) pay several thousand dollars a month to use it, and second, cutting off unsanctioned third-party mobile apps (possibly) funnels those apps' users back into the official reddit mobile app. and since users on third-party apps reap the benefit of reddit's site architecture (and hosting, and development, and all the other expenses the site itself incurs) without “earning” money for reddit by generating ad impressions, there’s a financial incentive at work here: even if only a small percentage of people use third-party apps, getting them to use the official app instead translates to increased ad revenue, however marginal.

(also worth mentioning that chatGPT and other LLMs were trained via tools that used reddit's API to scrape post and content data, and now that openAI is reaping the profits of that training without giving reddit any kickbacks, reddit probably wants to prevent repeats of this from happening in the future. if you want to train the next LLM, it's gonna cost you.)

of course, these changes only benefit reddit if they actually increase the company’s revenue and perceived value/growth—which is hard to do when your users (who are also the people who supply the content for other users to engage with, who are also the people who moderate your communities and make them fun to participate in) get really fucking pissed and threaten to walk.

pricing shenanigans

under the new API pricing plan, third-party developers are suddenly facing steep costs to maintain the apps and tools they’ve built.

most paid APIs are priced by volume: basically, the more data you send and receive, the more money it costs. so if your third-party app has a lot of users, you’ll have to make more API requests to fetch content for those users, and your app becomes more expensive to maintain. (this isn’t an issue if the tool you’re building also turns a profit, but most third-party reddit apps make little, if any, money.)

which is why, even though third-party apps capture a relatively small portion of reddit’s users, the developer of a popular third-party app called apollo recently learned that it would cost them about $20 million a year to keep the app running. and apollo actually offers some paid features (for extra in-app features independent of what reddit offers), but nowhere near enough to break even on those API costs.

so apollo, any many apps like it, were suddenly unable to keep their doors open under the new API pricing model and announced that they'd be forced to shut down.

backlash, blackout

plenty has been said already about the current subreddit blackouts—in like, official news outlets and everything—so this might be the least interesting section of my whole post lol. the short version is that enough redditors got pissed enough that they collectively decided to take subreddits “offline” in protest, either by making them read-only or making them completely inaccessible. their goal was to send a message, and that message was "if you piss us off and we bail, here's what reddit's gonna be like: a ghost town."

but, you may ask, if third-party apps only captured a small number of users in the first place, how was the backlash strong enough to result in a near-sitewide blackout? well, two reasons:

first and foremost, since moderators in particular are fond of third-party tools, and since moderators wield outsized power (as both the people who keep your site more or less civil, and as the people who can take a subreddit offline if they feel like it), it’s in your best interests to keep them happy. especially since they don’t get paid to do this job in the first place, won’t keep doing it if it gets too hard, and essentially have nothing to lose by stepping down.

then, to a lesser extent, the non-moderator users on third-party apps tend to be Power Users who’ve been on reddit since its inception, and as such likely supply a disproportionate amount of the high-quality content for other users to see (and for ads to be served alongside). if you drive away those users, you’re effectively kneecapping your overall site traffic (which is bad for Growth) and reducing the number/value of any ad impressions you can serve (which is bad for revenue).

also a secret third reason, which is that even people who use the official apps have no stake in a potential IPO, can smell the general unfairness of this whole situation, and would enjoy the schadenfreude of investors getting fucked over. not to mention that reddit’s current CEO has made a complete ass of himself and now everyone hates him and wants to see him suffer personally.

(granted, it seems like reddit may acquiesce slightly and grant free API access to a select set of moderation/accessibility tools, but at this point it comes across as an empty gesture.)

"later" is now "now"

TL;DR: this whole thing is a combination of many factors, specifically reddit being intensely user-driven and self-governed, but also a high-traffic site that costs a lot of money to run (why they willingly decided to start hosting video a few years back is beyond me...), while also being angled as a public stock market offering in the very near future. to some extent I understand why reddit’s CEO doubled down on the changes—he wants to look strong for investors—but he’s also made a fool of himself and cast a shadow of uncertainty onto reddit’s future, not to mention the PR nightmare surrounding all of this. and since arguably the most important thing in an IPO is how much faith people have in your company, I honestly think reddit would’ve fared better if they hadn’t gone nuclear with the API changes in the first place.

that said, I also think it’s a mistake to assume that reddit care (or needs to care) about its users in any meaningful way, or at least not as more than means to an end. if reddit shuts down in three years, but all of the people sitting on stock options right now cashed out at $120/share and escaped unscathed... that’s a success story! you got your money! VCs want to recoup their investment—they don’t care about longevity (at least not after they’re gone), user experience, or even sustained profit. those were never the forces driving them, because these were never the ultimate metrics of their success.

and to be clear: this isn’t unique to reddit. this is how pretty much all startups operate.

I talked about the difference between “make money now” companies and “make money later” companies, and what we’re experiencing is the painful transition from “later” to “now.” as users, this change is almost invisible until it’s already happened—it’s like a rug we didn’t even know existed gets pulled out from under us.

the pre-IPO honeymoon phase is awesome as a user, because companies have no expectation of profit, only growth. if you can rely on VC money to stay afloat, your only concern is building a user base, not squeezing a profit out of them. and to do that, you offer cool shit at a loss: everything’s chocolate and flowers and quarterly reports about the number of signups you’re getting!

...until you reach a critical mass of users, VCs want to cash in, and to prepare for that IPO leadership starts thinking of ways to make the website (appear) profitable and implements a bunch of shit that makes users go “wait, what?”

I also touched on this earlier, but I want to reiterate a bit here: I think the myth of the benign non-monetized internet of yore is exactly that—a myth. what has changed are the specific market factors behind these websites, and their scale, and the means by which they attempt to monetize their services and/or make their services look attractive to investors, and so from a user perspective things feel worse because the specific ways we’re getting squeezed have evolved. maybe they are even worse, at least in the ways that matter. but I’m also increasingly less surprised when this occurs, because making money is and has always been the goal for all of these ventures, regardless of how they try to do so.

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hannieehaee · 7 months

Text

18+ / mdi

content: fratboy!seungcheol, smut, f reader, public grinding, penentrative sex, unprotected sex (wrap it up guys <3), oral (f receiving), etc

wc: 1584

a/n: not proofread </3

masterlist

fratboy!seungcheol who tends to not participate much in the parties his frat throws every week under the vice of 'keeping things in order' (whatever that means) and making sure none of his frat members get into trouble. despite no one ever asking him to, he gives himself the responsibility of watching over the parties without ever allowing himself to have any fun, claiming he's not interested in any drinking games nor has anyone ever caught attention anyways.

after multiple fruitless attempts from the boys to introduce him to girls or get him to stop stressing himself out over keeping his frat's reputation intact, cheol seems adamant in being a strict leader and giving himself the burden of keeping things afloat. that is, of course, until someone finally walks through the door and catches him completely off guard, causing him to forget any of his previous self-assigned duties.

he thinks he might've seen you before, but he cant be too sure. these parties tend to blend together for him, having always stuck to watching over his members and never having time to mingle on his own. he didn't care where he'd seen you before, though. he only cared to make sure he'd see you again soon. it had been a while since he'd approached a girl, not knowing very well what to do and just sticking to watching you have fun with your friends while he nursed a drink, back leaning against the wall. until his thoughts of you are rudely interrupted.

"could it be? choi seungcheol has his eyes on somebody?" it was yoon jeonghan, the second in command after seungcheol.

"what are you talking about," he asked, eyes still glued to your dancing figure from afar.

"like her? thats cute. wanna know her name?", now that peeked his interest.

"you're bluffing."

"promise i'm not. scout's honor," the younger made a cross across his chest as he said this.

"you were never a scout."

"same difference. wanna know or not?"

cheol hesitated, not wanting his friend's involvement in his first romantic endeavor in a while. he turned back to look at you, your pretty figure molded by your dress and your smile blinding him and made up his mind.

"fine"

y/n. that was your name. pretty name for a pretty girl, he thought. he hadn't ended up talking to you that night, chickening out at the thought of embarrassing himself due to lack of practice. instead he chose an easy and safe alternative; to keep a watch for you whenever his frat threw a party, which to be fair was quite often.

he'd watch you from afar, enjoying the varying dresses you'd wear to his parties, loving the way they stuck to the shape of your body. he didn't do much further than that. he felt like a bit of a creep, just watching you without letting his gaze be known, but the fantasy he was building of you in his head had him grow more and more in need of you every time he saw you. the thrill within him kept building up. he knew that one of these days he'd snap and finally talk to you, maybe even bring you to bed.

in retrospect, seungcheol should've realized that you'd eventually notice the brooding man atop the stairs watching you through the night. but he hadn't thought that far, simply enjoying the pretty sight, finally resting from his duties as leader.

you'd noticed him since day one, having one of your friends point him out while he was distracted speaking to your old lab partner jeonghan, letting you know of the guy whose eyes wouldn't leave your form. you weren't sure at first which of the two she'd been pointing at, but you hoped it was the man you knew as seungcheol, the head of the frat. you found both men very handsome, but something about seungcheol's demeanor immediately called your attention. you were happy to confirm, only a few minutes later, that the man who couldn't keep his eyes off you was the same brooding man you'd hoped. but it didn't stop there. you continued to notice his undivided attention on you every time you stepped into the frat, always making sure to wear something that would give him a reason to keep staring, occasionally throwing him suggestive looks of your own.

eventually you grew tired of this one-sided game of cat and mouse, wanting the real thing and not just the thoughts you had of him as he unknowingly gave you 'fuck me' eyes. it was only a few parties later that you decided to take action, wearing the dress you looked most fuckable in and walking through the fraternity's doors, determined to not come back home the next morning.

you danced for a bit, stopping for a few drinks every once in a while. you also threw him some looks of your own this time, making sure to catch his eyes every once in a while. you made sure to drink enough to be tipsy, but not too much that you wouldn't have full control of you scheme.

scheme was putting it lightly, really, seeing as you didn't really have much of a plan. how were you supposed to get him to fuck you without straight up propositioning yourself to him? no, you wanted to have at least a little bit of class. except things didn't go exactly as you'd planned, not that you were complaining.

he threw you a bit of a curveball, really. you hadn't expected him to approach you first, seemingly finally growing the balls to make direct contact. you'd been dancing, as you had been all night. you'd get the occasional guy or girl who would try and match your energy, dancing up on you. you were buzzed, so you didn't mind, usually just lightheartedly following along. what you hadn't expected was for one of those people to be seungcheol himself. you hadn't realized it was him at first, almost cussing him out when he'd started to get a little too close, usually setting up a clear limit when dancing with strangers, specially at a frat party. before you could say anything, though, he spoke up against your ear.

"been watching you. wanted to get you alone."

"what took you so long?", you whispered back, pressing your back closer to his front, if it was even possible.

he ground against you, making you gasp at what you felt against your ass. you felt a little flustered, having him shamelessly feel you up as you ground against each other in the middle of the frat's living room, surrounded by drunk people.

"aw, did i keep you waiting?" he coo'd sarcastically, keeping his arms wrapped around you.

damn him.

"yes. and you still are .. don't you have a room here somewhere?", you finally turned around to face him, almost gasping at the proximity. he was even prettier up close; so big and buff.

he looked down at you, eyes alternating between your eyes and lips, "follow me."

those were the last coherent words spoken between you, now unable to form any coherent sentence as he, for lack of a better term, fucked you into the mattress.

you'd never done this before; have such animalistic sex without a second thought, but the buildup between you and seungcheol had been long and grueling, having left you wanting him for weeks.

so now you were here, back arched deliciously as his cock hit you repeatedly in THAT spot that made you cry into the sheets beneath you.

"s-shit. fuck, baby. so fucking tight. so pretty for me."

"ch-cheollie, FUCK"

"been wanting you f-for weeks. thought about bruising these pretty hips. had me going fucking crazy wearing those dresses, shit."

"for y-you! did it for you," you cried out as he sped up, making you drop to your elbows, burying your face against the sheets, "wanted you to come fuck me .."

"i know, baby. shit. n im gonna fuck you all night. gonna fuck you to sleep, n then im gonna fuck you again tomorrow. gonna drag you to my room e- fuck. every time i see you at one of these parties."

he sped up even more, slapping his hips against your ass as you cried out for him.

"need you to be good n cum for me, yeah? gonna fill you up, promise. just need you to coat my cock with your cream, okay pretty?"

his words contrasted his harsh demeanor as he pounded into you mercilessly, only increasing the strength of his thrusts after claiming your orgasm, now desperately chasing after his.

"g-gonna cum, baby. fuck! in-inside? can i, baby? let me fill you up, let m-"

"yes! inside, please!"

he quickly reached his high after that, feeling you tighten up at the mention of cumming inside and filling you up with a groan. you finally let yourself fall on your face against the mattress, exhausted at your previous ministrations with seungcheol.

he didn't bother cleaning you up, simply flipping you around and dragging you to the edge of the bed, kneeling in front of you before speaking up again, "we're not done, baby. i said all night, remember?"

those were the last words spoken before he dove in, nose first into your pussy as he sucked and licked like a madman, making you delirious at the pleasure. overstimulated, but loving the feeling, you prepared yourself for a very long night, and possibly morning too.

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