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azrielbrainrot · 6 months

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SFW Alphabet with Azriel

note: I've seen a lot of people from a lot of fandoms do this so I have no idea who made the original prompts. Let me know if you do so i can tag them!

also I don't know what this is, just wanted to write down my thoughts

A = Affection (How affectionate are they? How do they show affection?)

I think Azzie is really affectionate but mostly in private. I see him always gravitating around you and giving you small soft touches when you're in front of the ic or other people but then being clingy as hell when you're alone. This man is touch starved, he needs to catch up.

B = Best friend (What would they be like as a best friend? How would the friendship start?)

I think you'd have to fist fight Cass for the title but he would be the best friend ever. I mean he's been nothing but soft and helpful with all of his friends. After you get past his millions of trust issues, Az is probably really easy to befriend. It might take a while for you to get to bestfriend but i don't think it would be hard.

C = Cuddles (Do they like to cuddle? How would they cuddle?)

He demands cuddles every night. I can see him being the little spoon as often as he's the big spoon, depends on what he's feeling up to that day.

D = Domestic (Do they want to settle down? How are they at cooking and cleaning?)

I think that's all he wants at this point and he's probably such a good cook.

E = Ending (If they had to break up with their partner, how would they do it?)

He'd probably be really firm but also really nice about it which would actually make it hurt infinitely worse. I can see him literally going down a list of your qualities and telling you how truly amazing you are while breaking up with you. He'd make sure you were semi alright before leaving as well but still make sure you knew this was final.

F = Fiance(e) (How do they feel about commitment? How quick would they want to get married?)

Well he craves commitment but he also has been running from it for over 500 years so I think it's a complicated feeling. I think he wants commitment more than anything but is also a tiny bit afraid of it and he only wants it with the right person.

G = Gentle (How gentle are they, both physically and emotionally?)

He's so gentle I could cry. He's been waiting all his life for someone to love and he will treat you with the most care possible both emotionally and physically.

H = Hugs (Do they like hugs? How often do they do it? What are their hugs like?)

I don't see Az being that much of a hugger but he probably gives the best hugs. Both arms (and wings) wrapped around you and face buried in your neck or in your hair type of hugs.

I = I love you (How fast do they say the L-word?)

I'm not sure he's ever said it to someone romantically (probably hasn't said it too many times platonically either) so it would probably take a while. He'd want to make sure it will really work out before saying it. You'd probably have to say it first.

J = Jealousy (How jealous do they get? What do they do when they’re jealous?)

I know this is supposed to be sfw but he probably ties you up with his shadows and fucks you within an inch of your life. I don't think he'd be getting jealous all that often (excluding the typical mate possessiveness) but he'd still fuck you extra hard just to make sure. Besides that I think he could actually feel really hurt by it if it's a more serious scenario like imagine you've been hanging out with someone a lot and he starts to feel excluded. In that case I think his abandonment issues would resurface and you'd have to remind him how much you love him and how silly it would be to even entertain the idea of wanting someone else.

K = Kisses (What are their kisses like? Where do they like to kiss you? Where do they like to be kissed?)

He gives the best kisses and I will not take any criticism on this. Like soul consuming type of kisses. Not only does he have 500 years of practice but even when he was young I just know he made sure to perfect it because he can't do anything half assed. His shadows might even give him little tips

L = Little ones (How are they around children?)

He has such a calming presence that I just know kids love him. And his shadows probably give him brownie points. He's probably awkward at first though.

M = Morning (How are mornings spent with them?)

Well he trains at the crack of dawn so you'd probably wake up to an empty bed :/ but he'd always kiss your cheek before leaving even if you're unaware. Might even leave you little notes on your nightstand sometimes.

N = Night (How are nights spent with them?)

Reading in bed together. Cuddling covered in his shadows, completely hidden away from the rest of the world. Tucked away and watching over everyone at parties with the rest of the inner circle. Flying over velaris when his insomnia gets the best of him. Cute picnic dates in an isolated place somewhere only the two of you know. (I didn't wanna say fucking because this is sfw but let's be honest). I think every night with Azriel would make you fall in love with him all over again.

O = Open (When would they start revealing things about themselves? Do they say everything all at once or wait a while to reveal things slowly?)

It would take time for Azriel to really open up and I definitely think he'd go bit by bit.

P = Patience (How easily angered are they?)

I think he tries to be as patient as possible but let's not forget he almost killed Eris and was the first to speak up when Tamlin was insulting Feyre. He's probably really patient normally, especially with his partner and family, but when he gets angry I think it boils over quickly.

Q = Quizzes (How much would they remember about you? Do they remember every little detail you mention in passing, or do they kind of forget everything?)

He remembers everything about you to the point you suspect he has a journal with every little detail.

R = Remember (What is their favorite moment in your relationship?)

Is it too cheesy to say he cherishes every moment he's had with you? He definitely cherishes just having you there in the moments he felt lonely before. Like coming home from a mission and instead of an empty room you're right there waiting for him, probably staying up to see him even when he tells you it's not necessary. When he has nightmares and you're right there comforting him and kissing his tears away. At family dinners when he doesn't have to feel jealous of his brothers and just reaches out and kisses your hand making you smile at him and have him thank the Mother for the thousandth time for gifting him the blessing of a mate as lovely as you.

S = Security (How protective are they? How would they protect you? How would they like to be protected?)

He's really protective. Probably keeps some of his shadows around you to make sure you're alright at all times. But I think he also wants to feel protected since he had so many times when no one was protecting him.

T = Try (How much effort would they put into dates, anniversaries, gifts, everyday tasks?)

He would go above and beyond every time. Always searching for new restaurants that cook your favorite foods or picnic spots that would take your breath away. He would give you the most thoughtful gifts too, things you barely remember mentioning. He'd give you these gifts out of nowhere too. He'd spoil you rotten really.

U = Ugly (What would be some bad habits of theirs?)

I don't see him being great at communicating. If he feels hurt by something i think he'd pull back instead of addressing it. I feel like he has some passive aggressiveness in him as well.

V = Vanity (How concerned are they with their looks?)

I don't think Azzie is as nonchalant about his looks as he appears to be. He's not as concerned as Rhys but I don't think he's that far off either.

W = Whole (Would they feel incomplete without you?)

Yes which makes me a bit sad.

X = Xtra (A random headcanon for them.)

Azriel pets and feeds stray cats and you can't convince me otherwise. He's also the top benefactor of every shelter in the night court.

Y = Yuck (What are some things they wouldn’t like, either in general or in a partner?)

People that aren't open minded.

Z = Zzz (What is a sleep habits of theirs?)

Not sleeping. jk He loves sleeping on his stomach with his face buried in your neck or chest and will literally purr if you pet his hair. I think he'd pull you to him unconsciously as well.

#azriel headcanons #acotar headcanon #azriel x reader #azriel x you #azriel shadowsinger #azriel acotar #azriel fic

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sarahowritesostucky · 4 months

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📖"First Taste"

Rated: Explicit

Pairing: Steve Kemp x reader

Tags: doctor/patient, medical kink, body image issues, oral sex (f!rec), fingering, dub-con, pussy worship, (inference of background cannibalism (b/c it's Fresh), but nothing to do with the plot or reader)

Summary: Steve Kemp sees a new patient for a consult about a rather ... intimate procedure.

Steve gets into the office at his usual time, coffee cup in hand as he catches the elevator. He sees Cassie jogging in from across the lobby in her colorful scrubs and holds the door for her. They greet one another amicably and ask how each other’s weekend was. She tells him about her new kickboxing class, he tells her about the pâté he made on Saturday.

“Liver?” She says dubiously as the two of them enter the office. She’s wrinkling her nose and laughing at him. “You’re some kind of Chef, Kemp.”

“I prefer the term gourmand. By the way is that Barbie on your—”

“Yep.” She goes behind the nurse’s station and hands him a clipboard. “Your morning appointments. Dr. Hickory went into early labor at like four am, so you’ve got some of hers.”

Steve’s eyebrows raise as he takes the clipboard and gives it a look. “What is she, thirty-eight weeks?”

“Thirty-seven.”

“Should be fine,” he mumbles. He frowns at one of the patient slots on his clipboard. “I see I have an FGM consult at eleven,” he says, eyes flicking peevishly back up to Cassie.

“Don’t be so dramatic,” she says, checking on her computer. “Yeah, Ms. Moreau. Be nice, she’s new.”

Steve narrows his eyes at the info. “You know I’ve tried to get away from doing those anymore,” he says, giving Cassie a look. Everybody in the office knows how he has a problem with the fact that Hickory’s turned their office into such a chop shop. Steve would’ve thought a woman would know better. Female solidarity, progressiveness, autonomy, kumbaya, whatever.

Cassie rolls her eyes at him. “Yeah yeah. Dr. Brendan the activist.”

“Hey, I told you, it’s—”

“‘Pathologizing the pussy’,” she recites with finger quotes. “We know.”

“Mm,” Steve grunts, assumes the ‘we’ is in reference to all the nurses at the practice. Those girls share a level of groupthink that is frankly eerie.

Steve works in plastics. He’s a vain man himself, so he knows he shouldn’t have gotten involved in a career field like this if he wasn’t prepared to be surrounded by other people’s body insecurities 24/7. It’s just… not how he pictured it.

Good thing he’s got this new side business venture going. He’s hopeful about it. Just last month he’d been able to send in the final payment for his student loans. Pretty soon he’ll have enough to get a house. He's entertaining the idea of a custom build, still scouting properties south of Portland. “I’ll see you later,” he tells Cassie. “Send my nine o’clock to exam three when they get here.”

“You got it.”

You arrive early for your appointment, plunking yourself down in the waiting room chair after the long walk from the train. You feel unpleasantly sticky underneath the cotton of your sundress. The office is cool, but it’d been hot outside. The near-boiling summer temperatures made you work up a sweat as you made your way across the city for this appointment.

Now, sitting in the chair, you can feel the sweat that’s formed on your body. It’s at your hairline, between your breasts and at the creases of your inner thighs. You worry about it, because soon you’ll be baring yourself to the doctor and you had specifically showered right before leaving for your apartment, used a pH balanced feminine hygiene product, just in case you were somehow scent blind to your own body. You didn’t want to be sweaty and gross when Dr. Hickory was going to be looking down there.

“Miss?” The receptionist smiles at you, holding out a clipboard from over the desk. “You need to fill this out, please.”

You stand, hurrying to go get it and the pen that she offers you as well. “Sorry,” you murmur. They’d told you that you would need to be there fifteen minutes early for paperwork. You return to your chair, feeling like such a hot sweaty mess, whereas the receptionist lady is so pretty and poised. You tuck some of your blonde hair back behind your ears and cross your ankles in an attempt to be even a fraction as put together as she is, you powder blue espadrilles knocking together as you prop the clipboard on your lap.

The office’s air conditioning is making the perspiration cool to your skin now, clammy and unpleasant. You read over the intake forms and fill them out. The second page has a line drawing of a naked woman’s body, front and back. It asks you to circle the areas you’re there to address. You bite your lip and circle the drawing’s pelvis. The anxiety you tend to get creeps back up on you, but you take a deep breath and let it out. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Dr. Hickory does this all the time. It’s her speciality. She will have seen it all, and you’ll be nothing new to her.

The door to the waiting room opens and a younger woman in hot pink scrubs peeks her head through. “Ms. Moreau?” she says brightly. She has café au lait skin, wild curly hair, and a genuine smile that helps put you at ease.

“That’s me.” You stand up, the only person in the waiting room. “Obviously,” you chuckle, grabbing your purse and following after her.

“I’m Cassie,” she introduces herself. “Hop on up here and let’s get your weight.” You step on the scale backwards and open your mouth to tell her that you don’t need to know the number, but Cassie cuts you off with a wry look. “Don’t worry,” she says, thumbing at her own chest. “I know how it is, girl.”

You flush and nod, glad that you don’t have to veer into that explanation. She records your weight on her clipboard and tells you to follow her to an exam room. Inside, she hands you a painfully thin paper gown and tells you that you can change. You fidget uncomfortably. “Um, actually I wore a dress so that she could just…” you make a gesture, “ah, dive right in. Is it alright if I just stay like this?”

Cassie nods and doesn’t try to foist the paper gown on you any further. “Have a seat,” she tells you. “The doctor is just finishing up with another patient.”

“Okay,” you whisper, getting up onto the exam table. After Cassie leaves, you look around the room, taking everything in. You’ve never been in a plastic surgeon’s office before. Everything looks just like any other doctor’s office would, except that instead of posters talking about BMI and heart disease, there are advertisements for laser therapies and Botox.

You spot a tray of breast implants over on a counter and can’t stop yourself from going over to look. You pick one up and poke at it, feeling it wobble in your hand. You giggle a little, before bringing it up to hold in front of your chest. Your own breasts haven’t ever bothered you much. They’re small-ish but have a good shape. One of your exes had complimented them excessively (though other parts had received thinly-veiled criticism). You pick up another of the implants, this one bigger and more viscous, and hold the two shapes up to each of your breasts, trying to imagine what it would look like…

“I wouldn’t recommend either of those for you,” a male voice cuts in, and you nearly jump out of your skin.

You spin around. You’re still holding the implants near your chest, startled as you blink at the man who’s entered the room. He’s wearing a doctor’s coat over scrubs, and his nametag says Brendan Kemp, MD. The bigger of the two implants rolls out of your lax hand, landing with a comical ‘plop’ right by your shoe. “Oh jeez. I’m sorry!” you say in a hurry, feeling like a child who’s gotten caught doing something bad. You rush to bend down and collect the implant from the floor. “Sorry I was just—”

The man steps closer with a smirk on his lips and gleaming eyes. He seems amused at you. “Everybody wants to grab the boobies,” he says, gently taking the implants out of your hands and setting them back onto the tray on the counter. “You’re fine, Ms. Moreau.”

You blink at him, stuck in place. He knows your name. “Oh,” you say, voice hushed, still embarrassed. This doctor is very good looking. He has a commanding presence, too. Something about his eyes draws you in, makes you want to be the object of his attention. He smiles warmly at you, perfect teeth flashing for a second, and you huff at yourself and try to laugh off your foolishness. “Yeah,” you mutter, rolling your eyes. “Guess I was just curious.”

“Hey, at least you weren’t juggling them. I walked in on that, once.” He winks. “What’s your accent? French Canadian?”

“Ah, y-yeah. I’m from—” You watch as he barely listens to your answer, his eyes sliding down to the level of your chest and staying there, assessing. You flush under the scrutiny. But you don’t feel like you can move away without being rudely dismissive. You squirm, uncomfortable. “Um, I’m not—”

“I’m Dr. Kemp,” he murmurs offhandedly, still staring at your chest. You see his hands twitch, as if he’s thinking of touching, but stopping himself. “A woman with your frame wouldn’t look right with ones that big,” he says, meaning the implants you’d just been holding.

You feel the need to defend your own taste. “Oh I know that. I wasn’t—”

“These,” he says softly, taking one of the more modestly sized implants from the tray and holding it up in front of you to see. You’re caught looking more at the sight of his strong, elegant fingers than you are the implant. “These would suit you better. Though I honestly wouldn’t recommend augmentation for you.” His eyes finally return to your face. “Your breasts are lovely.”

You feel your lips part in shock. “Um…” you feel an odd combination of flattery and confusion. Is it normal for a doctor to talk to a patient like this? Maybe it’s different with plastic surgeons, you think. They are paid to focus on their patients’ looks, after all. Comments on what is and isn’t aesthetically pleasing must be par for the course, here. “Thank you?”

But then there’s his gaze, the way he stares at you. It feels like he’s not just looking at your body for his job, but also looking for himself, as well. There’s too much interest there to be purely professional. Your breath catches when you feel your nipples starting to tighten beneath your dress, and sure enough, when you glance down they’re very visible through the fabric. Shit. You see Kemp’s eyes look back down.

“Sorry,” you say in a rush, turning away from his assessing gaze. You should’ve worn a bra, you chide yourself. You try to take a deep, stabilizing breath while you have your back to him. “I’m here for… for something else.” You look down at your pebbled nipples, which aren’t softening as much as you’d like, and you sigh in defeat. No doubt Dr. Kemp has seen plenty of nipples in his day. You need to just get over it. You turn around and climb back up to sit on the exam table, the paper crinkling under your butt as you settle. “I’m just waiting for Doctor Hickory,” you explain. “For a consult. They said she’s with another patient.”

Dr. Kemp sighs and holds up his clipboard. “Actually, that’s why I’m here. I’ll be seeing you today.”

“What?” You sit up straighter, alarmed. “But…” You’d specifically sought out a woman doctor for this. The idea of a man looking critically at you, there, is mortifying. “But, but Dr. Hickory—”

“Is having a baby,” Kemp says. “She went into preterm labor this morning. But we hear everything’s going well.” He smiles at you, as if this is good news. “She’ll be out on maternity leave for at least six months.”

“...Six months,” you repeat weakly. You hadn’t even known she was pregnant. They hadn’t said a thing to you when you made the appointment. You’d been counting on her being your doctor. And now this guy, this Dr. Kemp, was stepping in? You swallow nervously, uncomfortable with a man (let alone a very, very handsome man) being your doctor. Not for this. “Um, well I…”

Dr. Kemp is already looking over your chart on his clipboard. He’s going to see what you circled, you realize, mortified. You watch helplessly as he reads all of your private details. “Dr. Kemp…” you say meekly,

“You're here for a consult for…” he reads, eyes scanning further down the page. “Oh. You’re the Labiaplasty.”

You flush bright red at the word coming from his perfect mouth. You squirm uncomfortably. “Um, well… yes.”

“Don’t worry,” he tells you, placing a hand on your knee as if in comfort. He pulls it away before you can process it. “I’m more than familiar with the procedure. I trained down in L.A.” He says this like it’s supposed to explain something, and he winks at you again. It’s… upsetting.

You swallow thickly. “The thing is, I’d been hoping for a female doctor.”

Kemp’s eyes fly to your face as he realizes how uncomfortable you are. “Oh, Honey. I see.” You blush and he gives you a tender look. “You’re shy? That’s understandable.”

“Thank you, I—”

“But I’m sorry to tell you, Sweetheart, there aren’t any other women doctors in our practice.”

“Oh.” Your heart sinks. Getting this consult appointment had taken months, and you’d wanted to go to a place where you knew they were very good, very experienced. This place had been recommended as the best. “I see.”

Dr. Kemp looks pityingly at you. “Did you want to reschedule your appointment?” he asks gently. “Dr. Hickory won’t be taking new patients until after her leave, but I can have the receptionist take a look at next year’s calendar.”

You look at him with wide eyes, disappointed. “Next… next year?”

He makes an apologetic face. “Yeah, sorry.”

Sighing, you try to put on a brave face. You’re an adult, you tell yourself. Buck the fuck up. You’ve put up with male gynos before, after all. None of them ever looked like Dr. Kemp, but you shouldn’t hold the man’s good looks against him. He’s just here to do his job, to help you. “It’s okay,” you say, trying to approximate a friendly smile. “It’s fine. You can… you can be my doctor.”

Dr. Kemp’s eyes flash in satisfaction, but there’s something about it that’s more than just professional. “Good girl,” he says, and he says it all chipper and like it’s a normal thing to say to a patient, like it isn’t supposed to make your panties feel a little bit damp (and honestly, the sweetheart’s and the honey’s and the your breasts are lovely’s has probably contributed to the situation in your panties, too). “So,” Kemp says, sitting down onto the physician’s stool and rolling over. “Why don’t you tell me what makes you want this procedure.”

He’s giving you his full attention. He’s not even holding the clipboard anymore, and you find that it’s nearly impossible to meet his gaze for long. You look down at your lap instead, at your clasped hands against the white fabric of your sundress as you tell him, “Um, well I guess I just don’t, ah, don’t really like how I look… down there.” You nearly whisper the last words, ashamed.

“What don’t you like about it?” he asks softly.

“It just doesn’t look right,” you say, echoing the things your boyfriend had told you, things that you couldn’t help but to come to see as true. “It’s too much. Too big. It looks like…” you can’t even bring yourself to say the words that he’d used. “It’s just not pretty,” you whisper, cheeks burning in shame. “I want it to be prettier. Like other girls.”

“Other girls,” he repeats. “What other girls are we talking about?”

You scoff quietly and frown at your lap. “Like… you know. Like what you see in, in—”

“Porn?” Kemp says, voice tight. When you look up you’re struck by his darkening expression. He looks pissed off. “Let me guess,” he says, jaw working. “Boyfriend?”

You gape at him. “Ahm… no. Ex-boyfriend,” you murmur. Dr. Kemp looks very displeased, and you shrink back into yourself. “Is it… isn’t this like, a common procedure?” you ask meekly, wary of the man’s expression. “I looked at the website. There were lots of before and after pictures.” When you don’t get a response, you prod, “Doctor?”

“Steve,” he says, his expression lightening up somewhat. “You can call me Steve.”

You glance at his name tag that says Brendan Kemp, MD. “But—”

He scoots forward and puts his hands on your knees, rubbing over them. It pushes the hem of your dress up by the barest degree, but you ignore it. He’s looking you closely in the eyes. He looks sweet, and kind. And because of how handsome he is, how sure of himself too, it’s intimidating as hell. “Why don’t I have a look first, hm?” he says. “Give you my professional opinion, before you go deciding what needs fixing.”

You gulp and manage a tiny nod. “O-okay.” This is the part you’ve dreaded. Dr. Kemp (Steve, he’d told you to call him, but that just makes this whole experience feel more uncomfortable, more personal) scrutinizing your most private place.

He pulls out the stirrups from the end of the table and instructs you to put your legs up. “Take your shoes and underwear off and get comfy,” he says, smiling nicely at you as he says it, as if “comfy” is something you could possibly be while doing this.

He scoots away on his rolling stool to go over to the room’s counter and don latex gloves, giving you an illusion of privacy as you untie the laces of your shoes and slip them off your feet. They land on the floor with a muted ‘clunk’, and you slide your panties down your legs and tuck them under your lower back. They have a little wet spot on them that you don’t want Dr. Kemp to see. You slide down the table and put your feet into the stirrups, getting into the familiar, yet never-not-humiliating, position. You feel impossibly exposed, the cool air hitting between your legs and making you want to close them. As a useless, last-ditch effort, you straighten out the fabric of your dress so that it covers you to your knees, serving as a sort of barrier between you and him. “...Ready,” you say quietly, when it seems that he’s not going to return without your say-so.

He sits on the stool and rolls up close between your legs. You start trembling a little and you shut your eyes to try and calm down. “...Hey,” Kemp says, getting your attention. When you open your eyes again you see him standing over you, looking at your face instead of between your legs. “Honey,” he says gently. “You seem really nervous.”

You wince. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.” He looks kindly at you. “I just wanted to double check. You didn’t indicate any history of sexual assault on your intake form.”

You blanch. “Oh! N-no I— nothing like that.”

“Okay,” he says gently, patting your knee again. “Just wanted to make sure.”

You’re struck by how sweet that is of him, and you try to relax to show him you’re grateful for his care. “It’s okay, it’s fine,” you tell him as he sits back down on the stool. “This just… sucks, you know?”

“Mm.” You gasp as his gloved hands appear on your ankles and give an indicative tug. “Scoot down closer to the end of the table, Sweetheart.”

Heat floods you as you do as you’re told, putting your ass right to the edge of the table like he wants. It’s so humiliating. You want to cover your face with your hands, only refraining by gripping the edges of the padded table instead.

“Shh. Good girl,” he praises you, and you feel your belly clench at the words. Below you, he chuckles and self consciousness floods you as you think of what he must be seeing. You’re suddenly, horribly curious if you’re at all wet. Good God, you hope not. But your panties had been damp, that one little wet spot on the crotch… You tense again as Kemp’s hands appear on the inside edges of your knees, pushing them apart. “Open up for me now.”

You realize you’d been closing your legs together somewhat. “S-sorry,” you whisper.

He rubs your inner thigh—close to the knee but still shocking. “It’s okay. I know this is hard. I can tell you’re a woman who doesn’t spread her legs for many men.”

Your lips part as your mind reels, offended and horrified that he’d say that. Nevermind that it’s true, or that it sounds like he’s praising you, like he’s just calling you a ‘good girl’ in a different way. You seal your lips shut to keep yourself from scolding him.

The next thing you feel is him leaning closer. You swear you can feel his breath down there, but surely he wouldn’t be getting so close. You grit your teeth and try not to let your mind run away with itself. “So,” you say to try and make conversation, to try and prove to him and yourself that you’re a mature woman who can handle this. “So y-you can see. See what I mean.”

“Mm, still looking,” he says thoughtfully. You inhale sharply when he touches you, but you quickly slam your eyes shut and try to take calming breaths. You knew going into this that you’d need to be examined. He drags his fingers over your mons and down the puffy outer lips of your pussy. It’s extra sensitive to you because you’d shaved yourself completely bare before this appointment. Silly, maybe, but you’ve always thought that hair down there was unsightly, gross, and you didn’t want Dr. Hickory to have to deal with it.

Not that she’s dealing with you at all, now.

You bite your lip as you feel him exploring you slowly, with the barest of touches. He’s touching you in a way that feels more like a lover than a doctor. His thumbs gently dip into the crease of your outer lips and pull them apart, baring everything between. “Look at that,” he whispers, and you nearly cry out in mortification. You must whimper or something, because Dr. Kemp pauses and checks, “Still okay?”

You nod, eyes squeezed shut tightly. “Fine,” you say breathily. Deep breaths. He does this all the time. It’s no big deal to him. Just take deep— “Oh!”

He’s stroking the hood of your clit with the pad of a finger, just the barest, gliding touch. It’s slippery with something, and you feel halfway sick as you have to wonder if it’s a medical lubricant he’s somehow fetched, or your own arousal that he’s gathered up and is using to explore you. No, you think, it couldn’t be. He wouldn’t…

“You have a gorgeous pussy,” he breathes from between your legs.

“I… ex-excuse me?” you stutter. This time you can feel it when you clench and slick comes out of you. Dr. Kemp groans as if he’s seen it happen, and you feel your face flame. “I’m sorry,” you apologize, humiliated that you’re getting wet from this. “I didn’t mean to—”

“Shh sh sh,” he hushes you, one of his gloved hands smoothing over your inner thigh, this time much further up. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Your body’s just reacting naturally to being stimulated.” His gentle explanation does absolutely nothing to help with your situation, and you feel your belly tighten again in arousal. You whimper helplessly, somehow wanting him to comfort you. And he does. “Honey,” he breathes, going back to tracing the hood of your clit. His fingers move down, following the line of your inner lips, spreading them out and gliding over the thickest parts of them. Shame curls in your gut as you remember the words you ex had used:

“Fucking luscious,”

You blink at the ceiling tiles, shocked. Those had most certainly not been the words he’d used. “Um,” you start to say, but he interrupts you in a firm tone,

“Baby, listen to me, okay?” You’re frozen, unable to respond so he takes your silence for compliance. Between your legs, his fingers trace up and down the wet folds of your cunt. There’s no interpreting it any other way now—he’s caressing you. “This?” he says, whispering the words what feels like only inches from your skin. “This is your labia minora.”

You exhale shakily. “I—I know that.”

“Mm.” He keeps tracing them, keeps gliding around in the wetness that’s now becoming obscene. “It’s natural for you to look like this.”

“I just…” you stammer, still trying to bring this examination back into the realm of productive. “I th-think they’re too big. There’s too much…” you tense up at another wet stroke over your clit. “Too much...meat,” you grit out.

Between your legs, Steve makes a displeased sound. “That’s what the ex told you, huh?” He doesn't wait for you to answer, one of his thumbs sliding down, down, until it starts rubbing down at your taint, pushing right up against the edge of your pussy. You gasp and he shushes you. “There’s absolutely nothing wrong, here,” he murmurs, his breath a hot whoosh against you.

You whimper at the realization of how close he is to you now. “Please,” you whisper, “Dr. Kemp—”

“Steve,” he corrects gently, still thumbing circles of pressure into the thin skin at the edge of your hole, almost teasing, almost threatening with how close it is and how with only a little bit more pressure, a different angle, he could slide it right in. “I told you to call me Steve.” His other hand splays out over your mons, the thumb dipping down to swipe up and down over the hood of your clit. It’s a slick, gliding, barely-there touch. He’s hardly applying any pressure but that’s how you like it. You’re so sensitive there, and you can’t hold in the pitiful little moan that leaves your lips. Steve hums in approval. “Yeah,” he says, voice low and quiet. “You’ve got a prominent clitoral hood.”

You toss your head on the table, a whine building in your throat at his bold, clinical language. It doesn’t match his tone of voice or the way he’s touching you. This is so wrong. But you can’t stop it. You like it. He intimidates you horribly, and you like that, too.

He’s still stroking you there as he says, “What was that word you used, hm? ‘Meat’?”

You cringe.

“Well it is,” Steve says lowly. “Very meaty.” He traces your folds again, this time holding your labia delicately between his fingertips and rubbing the sensitive flesh. You just about die.

“St-steve, please,”

“And these lips,” he says, ignoring your pleas. “These gorgeous …juicy fucking folds.” he says, nearly growling the words. “Makes a man wanna lick, and suck…”

You go rigid at the first touch of his tongue. “Ohmygod,” you whisper, hips jolting up against his mouth without your permission. You’re about to apologize, but before you can, Dr. Kemp is loosing the filthiest, most appreciative groan, the tail end of the sound becoming muffled as he mashes his whole mouth against your pussy. “Holy—” Shit, you finish in your mind, unable to force words past your throat anymore. Steve mouths at you like he can’t wait, like he’s desperate, and you feel it as his tongue swipes broadly over your entire cunt. Your fingers spasm, digging painfully into the edges of the exam table as your whole body tenses up. “Oh, god,” you moan, hips jerking against his mouth.

He makes a muffled sound of pleasure and sucks everything he can into his mouth; your clit, your lips. He sucks, hard and sloppy, releasing it all with a loud, wet sound. “Fuck, honey,” he pants. “Never wanted to suck on a pussy so bad.” His hand returns to your mound, his thumb taking up the same swiping motion over your clit, only now you’re drenched and swollen, throbbing with sensitivity.

“Shit,” you whine, pressing up against his hand without realizing it at first.

He holds you down easily and flicks his thumb a little rougher, a little faster. “Yeah? He breathes, kissing at the edge of your sex, near your thigh in a move that is surprisingly sweet. “That feel good for you, Sweetheart?” You make an unplanned noise of assent, and he hums darkly. He’s pleased. “Good girl,” he says again, and flicks his thumb. “Such a big fat clit, and these pretty pink lips. Mmhm, so fucking plump. I could play with it all day, looove it.”

You toss your head, unable to take the words he’s saying. And he’s growling it all at you like it’s a good thing, like your pussy’s the best thing he’s ever seen. You can’t doubt for a second that he means it, but you’re just so overwhelmed by what he’s saying…

You make an embarrassingly high pitched sound when he presses a finger into you. “Oh!”

“Shsh,” he warns you, smoothing his other hand up the apex of your thigh, up under the fabric of your dress, over your belly. “Shh, honey. Don’t want the nurse to walk in, do you?”

You gasp, suddenly afraid of that possibility. He feels you get still and silent and soothes you with a heavy lick over your lips, the finger that’s inside of you curling. “You’re okay,” he promises, kissing your clit, sucking it and letting it pop from his mouth. You sob. “Shh. You’re okay.” He moves his finger shallowly, stroking you from the inside. It feels nice, and you exhale shakily, trying to calm yourself down.

“Steve,” you breathe. “You shouldn’t. We… I shouldn’t….”

All of a sudden he rises from the stool, standing to his full height and moving to the side of the table as he keeps his hand on you, in you. He stares down at you, his expression rapt but tender. It’s so much worse with him looking at you like this. It’s almost harder than when he had his face mashed against you and half your sex inside his mouth. It’s even more serious like this, you think as you blink up at him with parted lips. It’s more personal. He looks you right in the eyes, unfaltering, as he slips in another finger. You keen, and your hips press up into it, seeking. His lips curl, pleased. He moves his hand in such a firm, practiced way. He’s not pulling out very much at all. Not thrusting so much as he is rocking, grinding.

Inside, something starts to feel tight and desperate. You watch him watching you, watching it happen. He’s smiling, smug, he knows what he’s making you feel. “You’re soaking my hand, honey,” he murmurs, and you feel your cheeks flood hot with shame. “Uh uh,” he corrects you, stern. “No, it’s beautiful.”

He changes it, starts rocking deeper, curling against your walls and jabbing harder at that spot. It’s not an orgasm you feel so much as an urgency, and you squeak as the pressure builds. “S-something,” you try to say, try to tell him that something’s going to happen. But his eyes gleam in pleasure, like he already knows. Above your clit, the thumb of his hand starts rubbing in downward strokes: down down down. Holy fuck does it feel good. Your eyes slam shut as you feel it building, building and tightening. Oh—

“I want you to promise me,” Kemp says, and you’re shocked at how close his voice is. You open your eyes. He’s bent over, his face mere inches from yours as his hand keeps working. “Before I make you cum, I want you to promise me,” he growls. “Promise me that you’ll never let anybody cut on this fucking perfect pussy.”

You gasp, his words jabbing at the core of you almost as much as his fingers inside do, “Ahh-oh!”

“Promise me, Angel,” he says, rocking his hand harder, faster, harder. “Promise me now.”

“I… I…ha-oh! I pra–hom–mi–ssss!” Your eyes slam shut and your hips jerk against him as it happens. You cum, you cum hard. You hear him curse and know that he’s moving back down between your legs to look at your clenching cunt. He never stops jerking his hand into you, drawing the pleasure out. You’re loud. You squeal and shriek and jerk wildly through the whole thing, unable to control your body. It’s never felt this; this urgent, this out of control. You buck against his hand, feeling the wetness soaking everything beneath you, until finally it comes to an end.

He pulls out of you and uses both hands to spread your lips apart, staring. You whine and squirm, and then you really feel the extent of the wetness down there, and you blanch. “I—Oh no.” You try to sit up, try to pull away from him and get his hands off you, panicking. “I… I peed.” You struggle, mortified, pulling your feet from the stirrups and swinging them to the side of the table, trying to close yourself to him, trying to get off the table and—

“Heyheyhey, no. Hang on baby, calm down.” Steve stops you, his hands at your waist, keeping you seated on the table. He crowds you, holding you in place. “You didn’t honey, you didn’t. You’re okay.” He laughs. He’s laughing. You can’t believe it as you watch him. You begin to scowl, ready to be hurt and mad, but he hushes you with a kiss to your mouth.

You gasp and go silent, somehow more taken aback by this than anything he’s done yet. His mouth is so sure and confident over yours, his lips pillow soft but commanding. He pulls back from the kiss and looks at you. “You squirted, honey,” he explains, amusement still clear in his eyes, only now you’re calm enough that you can see the affection there, too. The satisfaction, the desire. He’s not making fun of you.

“What?” You look down to the end of the table, where you’d been splayed open for him. The paper covering and the vinyl padding of the table are soaked with a clear liquid. You look down to your lap, which is barely covered by the material of your bunched up sundress now. Between your thighs, it feels wet too. “I… I did?” you nearly whisper, astounded.

He laughs affectionately and leans in to kiss your forehead. “Yeah, Angel, you did. It was amazing.”

You flush and tuck your head down, feeling tingly from his obvious approval. The things he’d said about your body… “You really meant it?” you ask. “All the—”

“Yes,” he says firmly. He tips your chin up, forcing you to look at him. “Hey,” he says gently. “Remember what you promised me.”

You squirm uncomfortably. Maybe he finds you attractive, but you can’t help but to worry about other guys, about the future partners you’ll have. Steve might like it, but he’s just one man. The fact remains that down between your legs, you still look like most of the before halves of the before and after pictures. “I’m sorry,” you whisper, apologetic to dismiss his opinion of you. “But I just… I want my next boyfriend to think I’m pretty, there,” you say reluctantly, glancing up at him.

He has a fierce gleam in his eyes as he boldly tells you, “He already does,” and then surges down to kiss you again.

It’s been a long day. With both his own patients and a bunch of Hickory’s to see to as well, Steve is pretty tired by the time 5:00 rolls around and the office staff is closing up. He changes out of his scrubs and lab coat, back into his gym shorts and sneakers that he’ll jog home in. That’s how Cassie finds him. “Brendan, check it out!” She holds up her phone for him to see the picture of a wet, vaguely purple-colored newborn. “Boy,” she tells him. “Five pounds, whatever ounces. Small but healthy. She says they’re naming him Grady Harrison.”

Steve grins. “Awww.” What a horrible name.

Cassie puts her phone away and tilts her head at him. “A bunch of us are going for drinks. You want to come?”

Steve shakes his head. “I’m beat. Gonna head home soon.”

“Mm. You know your nickname is Boring Brendan,” she teases, grabbing up her purse and heading for the exit.

“It is not,” he laughs, waving her out the door. “I’m just gonna finish up with a few notes. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She waves goodbye and the office door falls shut, locking behind her because he’s the last one there and the office manager already left. Steve walks behind the partition of the nurse’s station and sits down, booting up one of the computers. He clicks the mouse over a few folders, typing in his password when it prompts him for entry into the patient data files. There’s one in particular whom he wants to learn everything he can about.

He finds the folder marked with her name:

Moreau, Ann J.

The corner of his mouth ticks up and he clicks to open the file. “Ann,” he murmurs the name, remembering the taste of her cunt against his tongue, filling his mouth, his senses. Mmm. She’d been delicious, exquisite. Not taking his eyes away from the computer screen, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out the tiny scrap of lace she'd left behind in her hurry to escape him. He holds the panties under his nose, inhaling. Fuck, he thinks, remembering her delicate body in that delicate cotton dress, how she'd cried out and creamed herself for him. So sweet.

He wants to learn more about her, fully plans on tracking her down and taking her on a date. On many dates, if he can.

Because he’s never been the type to be satisfied by just one taste.

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weirdmageddon · 7 months

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OK OK SO!!

First off!!! Hello fellow davejade enjoyer i see you. Second off—what sort of things do you wish you could’ve seen with these two in canon :0. Could be expansion on canon scene, arc direction, or just a new scene entirely. for me personally I would’ve loved to see some genuine fighting collaboration going on. I felt VERY teased with all the magic combo’s in collide.

Third! I know they do a lot of music collaboration in canon, and I’ve seen some things with them making a band together post canon. What sort of sound do you think they’d have/what artist do you think they’d sound like?

Thank you :))

okay god theres so much i wish was expanded on in canon with regard to dave and jade

this post is swan dive into homestuck meta and took me over a day to write. so i would appreciate feedback or discussion on this if you'd like, reblogs appreciated!

despite this question being posed as davejade related, my answers here are actually relevant for anyone interested in homestuck meta as well.

it’s just recently come to my attention that there are a a handful of people on twitter who are vocal davejade dislikers. i didnt know it was actually disliked until i looked it up on twitter, i honestly thought it was a joke blown out of proportion but no they exist! it surprised me a lot to see people think they "lack chemistry". not only because knowing what i know about them thats a ridiculous insinuation, but also i haven't seen the vitriol on tumblr. probably because we can actually poast about it on here in an unabridged manner which thus enables better, deeper critical analysis and engagement with the media. i think also people forget that dave strider is canonically bisexual and are too yaoipilled + facing the consequences of the epilogues to even give davejade a serious look/analysis. (dave dates terezi and karkat in separate timelines, thinks jane is hot, thinks roxy is a babe but shoves it down when he discovers she’s his ectomom lmfao. davesprite—an extension of dave himself—dated jade! but i'm going to cover that in more depth in this post since theres a lot of misunderstandings about the nature of that relationship in fanon.)

(as a side note according to what some people have told me in inbox and what ive seen lol i think that ive been inadvertently been getting people into davejade. it's all in my davejade tag here in chronological order if you'd like to get a Whiff. be sure to read the tags on posts in there too!)

even though theres a lot in this post as it is, it doesn't cover everything ive talked about wrt davejade, and i think it would benefit readers to have complementary posts alongside this for the full picture with stuff it doesn't cover. there's a ton about why theyre cute and why i think they work well together in that tag.

here's some highlight analysis posts, but be sure to check the tag because there's a more in there:

post a / post b / post c / post d / post e / post f (← one of my favorite ask responses ive ever gotten)

i think a huge chunk of the issue has to do with how the narrative handles dave and jade. one of the most damning things to me is how glossed over their canon interactions were in act 5 despite them collaborating on one of the most important things in the story. i haven't talked about this yet but i'm going to do so here. because they’re put on the backburner by the focus of the narrative during act 5, people who don’t read carefully will miss the implications that are there all along in canon but easily passed over.

under the cut ive separated it into multiple parts

1. Jade’s Quest: What Frog Breeding Entails

this is an analysis examining apart exactly what jade and dave did while frog breeding. i wrote it while high which was extremely enlightening and it allowed me to comprehend it and hopefully explain it in an understandable way. i also discuss how shitty the lack of on-screen communication between jade and dave was for this part and the next.

2. Jade & Dave vs. Jack Noir

ive discussed this one before on my blog so it's not as dense (see davejade tag). but i still sewed the gifs together and discuss how unfortunate this was to be be delegated to a banner at the top of mspa and the neglect of that whole arc despite the outcomes of it being reissued by characters thousands of pages later

3. Davesprite and Grimbark Jade

i get into davesprite's head here and try to make his motivations about the breakup clear to the extent that i can infer because jesus fuck i love these characters way too much ive known them for a decade i understand their core personality structures and why they think what they do and what is most likely to happen when extrapolating? i also talk about how grimbark jade changed the way the fandom perceives their relationship, leaving davejade on a low note instead of a high note. and then hs epilogues had even worse consequences for davejade but i wont get into it because it was character assassination all around and doesnt deserve my time or yours. but if you wanna know what i think, here

4. The music question

where actually answer this ask like it's an ask and not an essay

1. Jade’s Quest: What Frog Breeding Entails

i wish we could have seen what collecting frogs entailed for the two of them. what exactly were they doing? jade’s quest is one of the most interesting.

before i start i want to take a tangent and say the frog breeding reminds me of back in 2020-2021 when i would breed hybrid flowers in animal crossing new horizons to get a very specific gene sequence for these flowers to not only use to breed for hybrids, but to get known gene sequences that i could use to “check” the genes of other flowers. the goal is to get two parent flowers whose sequences when bred would make a specific phenotype 100% of the time.

this sounds complicated but here’s what i did for the lilies:

(“rare island” refers to one of the first acnh patches that removed a nook miles island from the pool that had hybrid versions of your native flower of very specific phenotypes for each color. i wrote out the breeding chains to get parents that would always breed that exact flower found on the rare hybrid nmt island that is no longer available.)

the cleanup ALL TO GET the white 2-2-2 lily looked like this. and after i got white 2-2-2 lily it was smooth sailing

after all that i could use the orange 2-2-0 lilies and white 2-2-2 lilies made in the black lily process and get rare island orange 2-2-1 lilies 100% of the time. in mendelian genetics these numbers (2-2-1) are quite literally RR-YY-Ww.

RR-YY-ww (orange) x RR-YY-WW (white) = RR-YY-Ww (orange: heterozygous Ww gene)

and all that effort into getting white 2-2-2 lilies enables me to get it over and over again now. i don’t have to repeat that process to get rare island pink lilies. all i need to do for the pink 2-0-2 lilies is breed two default bag red lilies (2-0-1) together. 50% will be red (2-0-1) lilies, 25% will be black 2-0-0 lilies, and the last 25% will be pink (2-0-2) lilies.

anyway sorry back to the main point. FROG BREEDING. it just reminded me of it. now that i think of it the frog breeding process also reminds me a lot of artbreeder back from when AI was only a fun little toy 4-5 years ago

ok so have a look at what kanaya says about what jade must do. this is the coolest quest imo because of how it progresses and how long it actually is

here’s how it works. remember back in act 2, when the wayward vagabond needed to tie a longer cable to descend down the ship (and refused to give up the ones that made up his mayoral sash)? he used the appearifier in the ship to appearify the extra cable across the gap to his location? that’s how the appearifier normally works when when it’s locked to the present. it’s very straightforward.

when jade appearifies a frozen frog, it shows us this exact thing. she appearified the actual frog itself (the same way WV appearified the actual cable across the gap) to her exact location. it can get the frog out of the ice in the way WV could untrap serenity from the amber. if something’s destiny wouldn’t otherwise be changed, it will not be paradoxified, it will just simply itself be warped to that location, with precise carving if it is somehow trapped inside of something else.

if you could appearify it to your location right now, you wouldnt be able to take it out the appearifier’s crosshairs in person later to alter its destiny because the object won’t be there at that time. it wouldve been with you the entire time. unless you decide to take the appearified item back to that location so that you could appearify it in the past, but that’s the most pointless time loop ever and doesn’t change its destiny.

for this icicle frog jade and dave weren’t capable of changing its destiny anyway, because it was completely encased in ice, and just didn’t bother to go after it. partially because it was with jade at the appearifier the entire time anyway and she can’t exactly put it back in there in the future. the point is, besides jade appearifying it to her location, the frog had no other possible routes of destiny. in that part of lofaf where she appearified the frozen frog from, the ice is too deep to get anything out of it (other than appearifying it) and i’m not sure the forge would have melted it in time before their reckoning ended anyway.

the goal of jade and dave is to target frogs on the appearifier screen and trust that their future selves follow through in altering the frog’s destiny. if so, then the frog’s paradox slime will appear instead and its genes would be collected in addition to creating offspring between multiple paradox clone frog genes. then, dave and jade would necessarily have to go out adventuring and find the frog so that they end up following through for their past selves.

if i understand correctly, jade is creating all the frogs on her planet that grow up with manually modified genes. these frogs must be genetically altered from their parents so that the frogs she creates don’t grow up to become one of their parents (as they’d be identical). the mutant offspring frogs “generation A” she ectobiologizes will eventually mature from tadpoles to frogs, assisted by dave’s time travel. then she will eventually target “generation A” with the appearifier to get their paradox slime to fuse with some other frogs’ paradox slime and create new slightly altered frogs “generation B” (and then follow through on altering the “generation A” frogs’ destiny so their slime and genes can be paradoxified by jade and dave’s past selves). repeat until the genes are fine tuned for the genesis frog.

this is why i compared it to my breeding in animal crossing. getting the genesis frog reminds me of the blue rose paths. i worked with the garden council back in the day and i used backwardsN’s “cesspool” method, except i honestly gotta say my white 2-2-2 lily thing was much more involved and carefully maneuvered in a way that i imagine frog breeding is more like. backwardsN’s “genepool method” was basically making a red-orange-black rose primordial soup and waiting for a blue rose to emerge out of it, just increasing the chances seeing a blue rose sprout the next day after watering with each generation of offspring. you KNOW my ass was using time travel, even if i happened to get lucky and got a blue rose without even finishing the big turtle plot. without time travel, most players (95%) will get their first blue rose before these # of days. (open up advanced tag)

there must be so many daves running around to help her going back in time all within the span of a few hours while still having their own linear, older timelines that are much longer than the “time stage” they’re actually functioning in. this sounds complicated but it’s not. think of this “time stage” as analogous to the 3 days until the moon falls in majoras mask. it’s the “time window” all the time travel takes place within, but link doesn’t become a day younger when he travels to a day ago. the timeline of his “self” is older but is kept within the confines of the 3-day timeframe. similarly, in tears of the kingdom, two master swords exist simultaneously for most of history, but the one on the light dragon’s head (who was above the cloud barrier before the upheaval btw) is further ahead on its own linear timeline: it starts as the other, pre-gloomed master sword → broken by gloom → sent to the past to be repaired → renewed over time, existing at the same time on the “time stage” as its own pre-gloomed past self but ahead on its own linear timeline

now imagine this but within the “time stage” of just a few hours within the same 24-hour period. kanaya says frog breeding ordinarily takes weeks. multiple daves can exist simultaneously because they’re operating in the same few-hour-timeframe but one can linearly be days ahead of another. it’s the exact same thing as breeding flowers in animal crossing for irl days but to your game it’s whatever date you have it set to. your irl progress isn’t lost if you go back a few days in settings. i’d often find a week in june to use as a “time stage” to loop through when it would rain at least one hour on each day of that week which would save me the hassle of watering my flowers every day before time traveling to the next.

it must’ve sucked for dave to hear jade say the same things over and over again. the novelty probably wore off pretty fast lol…… dave says he saw his future self fighting and dying to jack and knew that’s what he’d eventually have to do as well. every single dave at all points of his linear timeline understood that and it probably settled something horrible into his heart.

im imagining during the original run dave was thinking to himself: “im bored but cant alter anything about this without creating a doomed timeline. if i dont see my future self hugging jade then i cant hug her even though i really fuckin want to. note to future self: hug jade. aww shit look at me go guess i remembered. hell fucking yes cant wait for that to be me in a few hours” and gives a thumbs up

future dave pov, hugging jade and watching his past self give him a thumbs up from afar thinking to himself: “ahaha i remember exactly what i was thinking there” and gives a thumbs up

but anyway. goddamn. JADE AND DAVE. what did hussie do to you.

this is a goddamn atrocity.. what the hell man. i wish we could have at LEAST seen the text file jade sent to kanaya. we got to see ConversationWithAVeryStupidGirl.Txt but not daveisafunnyguy.txt?

i mean i GUESS the humor is delivered through this

and like, yeah that is pretty funny? but i feel like the single laugh this gives me is nothing compared to the joy i wouldve gotten out of seeing what dave has to say about the cloning apparatus for ants here and talking himself into circles about frog procreation enough to make not just gigglehouse jade laugh, but kanaya too

we spent so much time learning about the mechanics of the punch designix and hardly anything about creating the seed of the actual new universe. we learn about it through kanaya and karkat messaging jade, instead of dave and jade working that out through SHENANIGANS. even though this is JADE AND DAVE'S session. it’s fine that kanaya is helping them, as she should, but we’ve seen parallel pesterlog conversations before so i dont get why we didn’t get that here! jade and dave frog breeding is one of the most important events in homestuck, and yet it was terribly glossed over. everything in the story, their futures, are predicated on their success. not just in their unwinnable session, but the one they split up for 3 years and escape to.

at first i thought, maybe their lack of shown interaction has to do with hussie working out the intricacies of pesterlog/dialogue thing? as he once stated on tumblr:

shoshaumbay asked: In the intermission of act 6, it says that they get to talk. Does this mean that their guardians couldn’t talk to them before and that is why they left them notes all around their houses? The achievement badge only upgraded their ability to speak to each other as presented through the comic. I.e. it permitted them to speak to each other… WHILE WE WATCH! Do you think all the trolls were hanging out together, not talking at all? Or Dave and Jade were doing all that frog hunting without a single peep?? That’s ridiculous. On the other hand, abstraction weaves itself through the Homestuck reality, and it can be hard to pin down where abstraction is to be taken literally. The truth is, there is not much distinction between the layers of abstraction and the reality they are meant to stand for. John was both literally named on his 13th birthday, and not quite, because that’s silly. The guardians are both literally silent automatons, and not really, as there is indication through allusion they function as normal people too. And the kids went through a huge adventure, achieved immortal god status, and even then had to gain a few more levels just to gain the achievement of simple dialogue as a literal upgrade, as well as not literally, because that makes no sense. The reality is inseparable from the way the story is presented and the way the “game” is played. But those abstractions are also a facade for a more life-like reality beneath it as well.

then i realized, this is not only an arbitrary cop out that affects my enjoyment of the comic in retrospect because they wind up being able to talk later anyway and that makes me feel cheated in these moments, but also still actually awful within these parameters because hussie breaks his own rule here, proving he could have shown us dave and jade talking in person at any time regardless of needing the gift of gab achievement for us to watch them as readers. recall this is also the first time john and rose met in person (at least when rose wasn't asleep):

2. Jade & Dave vs. Jack Noir

this is where i take out my frustration over this being delegated to a banner at the top to the point where readers forgot it occurred.

(also i want yall to take a moment to acknowledge this ^)

youtube

i wish their time on lofaf frog breeding and fighting with jack was front and center and wasnt just in the banner at the top of the page. it makes it seem not as important when it completely was, considering that characters brought up what had happened in that scene multiple times.

it is significant because it is at that point that jack noir has killed all of the kids at least once. the only one left being jade who he refuses to kill due to bec’s loyalty

THIS IS WHAT THE REFRANCE (foreshadowing)

jack noir killed john on his quest bed which allowed him to ascend to god tier. then he killed john AGAIN but it wasn’t a heroic or just death so john was revived

jack killed grimdark rose. john smooched rose’s corpse, allowing her to take over on derse.

jack killed dave by redirecting jade’s bullets into dave’s body instead. jade smooched dave’s corpse, allowing him to take over on derse.

after jade shoots him through jack, he’s down for the count. she kisses him and he wakes up on derse; all he and rose have left of “themselves” in an existential sense are their dreamselves. they didnt know they were going to ascend to god tier delivering the tumor. they assumed they were just going to die like for real and not come back which is why dave went with rose since he didnt want her to die alone.

it was also an important point since her time spent with dave on lofaf is the first in-person contact jade has had with another living human since she was probably 4 years old with her grandpa.

for jack noir, we got [s] seer: desend and [S] ==> (3696) which were hella impactful. seeing jade and dave essentially go through the same thing but with an extended battle sequence honestly kinda warrants a flash in my mind. (the sad thing is that unite synchronization was originally written with those pages in mind (the track was originally called redshift) but of course malcolm brown couldnt have known what was going to happen unless hussie commissioned him for a specific track for a specific story beat, probably like whatever he did to coordinate cascade’s music with toby ahead of the 10/25/11 release of the flash and publication of volume 8 on bandcamp)

i think one of the worst parts is that entire conversations were referenced, but cut or never written.

this is a real forgotten homestuck fact: jade was completely freaking out after filling dave with bullets until karkat had talked her through it. very easily forgotten since even though it being referenced twice we never actually saw the conversation. (i overrode the black scratch background so it's easier to read)

wow thats so crazy i as a member of the audience dont in fact remember! would it have killed to write it my guy

and we find out thousands of pages later dave was thinking more about how it wouldve made jade feel to watch him die than knowing he was about to fucking die. if you even care btw

i wrote more about this here

3. Davesprite and Grimbark Jade

davesprite—an extension of dave himself—dates jade but breaks up because he feels inadequate at being the dave that he thinks jade deserves. NOT because they fought or anything. they were still on good terms. davesprite just felt inherently unlovable. john seemed more upset about the breakup frankly.

what davesprite did was because he thought it was in jade's best interest. there is nothing to suggest it was a fight / clash break up. they still seemed to be on good terms, davesprite asking where she went and all. jade says the breakup “is complicated” and “hes going through a lot of stuff”. given the context i think it's reasonable to assume that davesprite's thought process was: “we're coming up to the new session soon and youre going to meet up with dave again and i dont want to make shit awkward with you dating knockoff dave. you deserve to be with real dave instead so im gonna cut what we have going here in advance and distance myself from your life”

jade probably protested about saying how he's just as real as “real dave”, but davesprite made his decision already. im sure it wasnt easy for davesprite to break up either. with emotions running high (sadness, not anger) he probably just left to be alone and distance himself from jade, and seems to harbor guilt about it as we see in the log. that's probably why he wasn't at john's movie party. this is just speculation on my part but it doesnt seem in character for the breakup to be explosive because jade seemed more understanding than john. sad, but understanding.

i feel like a lot of people forget this. grimbark jade made it seem like davesprite did it to hurt her, or for this to mean that dave and jade are not actually good for each other, which is a wild mischaracterization of what happened but the one that stuck with the fandom nonetheless.

not only that, but davesprite's existence tragic and he's understandably depressed. after spending about a year in sburb (accounting for time travel) without john or jade, only to go back and give up your personhood to advance the alpha timeline and become forgotten is fucking crushing, and i think the breakup is also about davesprite coming to terms with that trauma, being okay with his existence as a sprite instead of being a bootleg stand-in for the dave that jade knew.

basically what vintagegamebro says,

it was such a tragic way for them to part for 3 years with no communication, and it was only proceeded by more tragedy because jade then had no one but davesprite to turn to, and davesprite needed anything but romance at that point

grimbark jade isn’t a good reflection of jade’s actual self. she pushed the mayor into lava for fucks sake which normal jade would never dream of doing, grimbark jade is straight up unhinged. i’m sure jade was hurt because all breakups hurt, but it was blown out of proportion (see how calm she was above a few days after the breakup?) because of Evilness. but also as @vintagegamebro mentioned it also felt somewhat … “off”? or out of left field? especially seeing what the nature of the breakup was from both sides in the above screenshots.

when dave says “theres no way i would have done that to you” i genuinely believe him. i have no reason not to believe him. look at him above asking for questions and clarification. thinking about how what davesprite did, a version of himself beyond his control and how it reflects on himself, i think it's obvious dave cares a lot about how jade feels about him

even after this confrontation in the game over timeline, dave laid down his fucking life to defend her corpse from the becs in he hope she could be revived by jane

and to think that after all this he still chose to save her, like always, probably knowing he had little to no chance, just because he cares for her, her life and who she is beyond this moment, really meant a lot for them. i really, really was mad that this would be the last time they would truly ever be together in a way that to me mattered

4. The music question

i wrote this post regarding instruments with this song in the back of my head if its anything. takes about 12 seconds to start after you press play for some reason

this too, closer to the “style”. i like imagining dave going apeshit on drums

#homestuck #dave strider #jade harley #davejade #homestuck meta #hs

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tblsomedoodles · 2 years

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The promised 'how Angelo got to 2003 Dimension" post (with an animatic panel b/c it's cute.)

note: This is sad. i didn't intend for it to be so sad when i started this au, that's just how things went. For a three year old to activate mystic powers, i imagined it would have taken a lot of very strong emotions to do. So it's sad. It's 'i'm putting it under a break and a content warning' sad.

brief (kinda stupid) summary in the tags for those that don't feel like reading it in it's (admittedly pretty vague) detail. (I'm probably going a little overboard adding a content warning but im doing it anyways)

Content warning: Attempted kidnapping and attempted child violence.

Angelo got separated due to a combination of the twins darting off while Angelo got distracted by a bucket of paint. Splinter was so busy chasing after the twins he didn't notice Angelo's hand had slipped from his. (By the time he does, he's already gone.)

While he's separated, another mutant sees this tiny thing painting a picture on the wall and decides he's an easy meal.

(that mutant is pretty much just Old Hob (from the TMNT idw comic) if he had been mutated by Draxum and escaped into the sewers. Not quite as conniving yet. Still very much relying on cat instincts at that moment rather than people ones. but he will get there. (I liked the fact that Hob is the reason Raph was separated from his family in the comics, so he's also the reason Angelo gets separated from his Rise family here.))

Anyways, Hob takes the small turtle and is halfway back when Angelo starts making a racket and trying to escape (he was stunned before then. He didn't understand what was going on. He still didn't but by then he just didn't want to be there anymore.)

All this does is make Hob mad. He tries to hurt Angelo to make him stop.

Tries.

Because at that moment, Angelo is scared. He's so scared. He scared this mutant will hurt him. That he won't ever see his family again.

And he so very wants to see them again.

Its enough to get his ancestors' attention. For them to see one of their young descendants in mortal peril and decide, that just won't do.

You see, that fear and desire to see his family was strong enough for Angelo to unlock his mystics, but he wasn't strong enough to use it. So his ancestors give him a boost. Admittedly a too strong boost. b/c instead of helping Angelo to make a portal away from there, they helped him make a portal away from the whole Dimension.

a too big portal, that Hob also fell through (though was far too stunned to do anything to stop Angelo from getting away.)

Raphie doesn't know this is what happened. He simply finds a crying turtle tot in the sewers and brings him home.

Eventually he starts realizing something bad happened to get the kid there (a small crack in Angelo's shell, bad nightmares, etc) but Angelo refuses to talk about it. and Raphie doesn't have the heart to push the issue.

Hob would probably be the main antagonist for the "Angelo grows up in 2003" arc. He would blame Angelo for him being displaced as he is. (he's also the dude in-charge of the lair invasion that results in Angelo getting sent back to Rise.)

So that's how it happens.

#tmnt #tmnt 2003 #rottmnt #adopted au #animatic wip #again #my doodle #long story short #mutant tries to kidnap angelo #ancestors pull a ''not my descendant you b!''#helps angelo make a portal #oops portal too strong #now he's in 2003 #the end

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businesstiramisu · 3 months

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@canyourfavesurvivecastledracula -- I'm trying out the "argue at you" approach. tagging you b/c you don't have submissions open and I think this long enough to be an annoying ask. I don't think you know or care about this character, but *I* do, so here's my argument :P

Can Alphonse Elric survive Castle Dracula?

[the answer depends a LOT on which part of which canon we're using, but we're going to go vaguely with "middle part". That is to say, armor]

Al has one HUGE advantage against Dracula, which is that he has no corporeal human body (for now). He's not completely free of blood though -- if Dracula learns about the blood seal tethering his soul to this mortal plane, I fully believe he's learned enough Dark Magicks at Scholomance to fuck it up. So the question is, would he find out? Al is usually pretty good at hiding it… unless he just decides to tell people. So it depends on how their dynamic plays out.

Al would accept the crucifix from the townsfolk, and listen to their other advice. Even if he doesn't believe them, he's a polite boy, and you never know what information might be useful! Maybe their folktales have clues about the Philosopher's Stone, you never know. (Also in one version of canon he can understand German, so let's say language barriers aren't an issue.)

Dracula is bemused when an alchemist in full plate armor turns up asking to see his library instead of the solicitor he requested. Alchemists? He hasn't run into any of those in a while. But hey, the lawyer's not here yet, he's got time to fuck with this guy and have an extra snack.

The shaving incident wouldn't happen obviously, but Dracula might realize something is amiss because Al doesn't sleep. Or will he? Does Dracula pay enough attention to know when normal humans should be sleeping and Al isn't? If so, he will probably investigate, push boundaries, or stage a confrontation until he finds out Al's deal, and then he will be PISSED. No lawyer, and now no snack! This is bullshit! From here on out, it's WAR. If not, then...

If Al realizes this is a kidnapping and not a library loan, he will play along. He might not even mind. He's been kidnapped before, and it always worked out fine. Dracula might be more creepy and threatening than his other kidnappers, but Al's dealt with a wide variety of creepy and threatening in his quest, I just don't think he'd be fazed. And he is, as already mentioned, a polite person who would want to be a respectful guest! Hmm kinda creepy that he just implied I'll never leave this place alive... oh well! Nice table setting, sir, compliments to your staff.

Being a respectful guest might not extend to staying in his room as instructed; he's a curious guy and only a stickler for the rules compared to his brother. The girlies aren't a problem for him, because he's still wearing the crucifix, but they might clue him in that Something Is Wrong and lead to Al himself forcing a confrontation with Dracula.

But even if everything goes smoothly, Al would eventually get bored with Dracula's library (if there was anything useful about the Philosopher's Stone in there, Dracula wouldn't be a vampire). At some point, Al would decide this kidnapping is over, and he would provoke the confrontation in trying to leave.

I haven't written any reason for Al to tell Dracula about his fatal weakness, so I'm gonna say Dracula can't actually do much to Al; but unfortunately I don't think Al can harm Dracula either. I don't actually remember what allowed Jonathan to hit him with a shovel but I think it involved special circumstances that do not apply to Al. However, Dracula also can't prevent Al from leaving -- neither thousand foot cliffs nor wolves are much of an obstacle to him. (Well actually, if you physically overpower him and take the armor apart, he can't walk away -- but people almost never think of that, and Dracula probably won't either.)

Which is all to say that Alphonse can survive Castle Dracula, but he probably won't have as much useful intel as Jonathan did. Mind you, he took notes! He just didn't get personal experience with as many of Dracula's powers.

And of course, his goal after this is to track down his brother -- if anyone can figure out how to kill a vampire it's Ed. Where the fuck did he get to, anyways? He'd better not be stranded in Weimar Germany. Al can absolutely walk to Munich from here, but waiting around 25-30 years for Ed to turn up would be a drag.

#also if i do it this way i can tag ramble #which is to say i am NOT sorry for ending on a Conqueror of Shamballa joke #yes it is terrible and no i will never resist #fma #dracula #fanfic #or something #long post #Al could run into the Polycule while looking for Ed. Maybe in London?#but if the Polycule is Vampire Hunting then that means Jonathan's ordeal went down and Al wouldn't have any new info for them. alas #can your fave survive castle dracula?

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autisticlancemcclain · 1 year

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fic rec friday 13

welcome the the tenth fic rec friday! where, on friday, i rec five of my favourite fics.

1. i was always yours (even before you knew it) by paladarns

Lance thought Keith was just an asshole. Lance has always thought of Keith as an asshole, all throughout traveling into space in a large mechanical lion, all throughout bonding moments. All throughout becoming closer as teammates and friends.

Even now, with his hands pinned above his head and Keith’s thighs straddling his waist, Lance thinks Keith is an asshole.

Lance had always thought he could see right through people, but now he’s starting to think he has a bad judgement of people.

---------- a fic in which keith is obvious and lance is a bit of a gay nervous wreck

takes place as if season 1 is the only season to exist but its now years later

so many things to love about this fic. so so many. so i am going to list them. a) secret relationship bc i love that shit and eat it up every time, b) ‘takes place as if season 1 is the only season to exist but its now years later’ -- paladarns my love thank you for this truly excellent description of where i write my fics like 80% of the time. c) keith has game, and d) HE WAS ALWAYS KEITHS EVEN BEFORE HE KNEW IT IM SOBBING BEST TROPE BEST TROPE

2. Wake Up, Sleephyhead! by @transbakugou

Keith has never loved someone like he loves Lance. Lance is his sun, his stars, his happiness. Their hands fit together like they were created to do nothing but hold each other, and he fits perfectly inside of Lance's arms. But he can never let anyone find out how much he loves this boy, how wholly and endlessly. Who knows what the Galra would do with that kind of information?

One morning, the lie comes crashing down around them.

Maybe it won't be as bad as they feared.

i love gay whipped klance and truly every single fic that has ever been written based on a vine is truly amazing, this fic is no exception. also secret relationship lol i am a sucker

3. Something Secret by @kingswriting

It was funny at first. Their arguments became more banter than actual disagreements, yet the entire team continued to assume they were at each other’s throats.

And Lance knows they’re not. He is fully aware that every sharp word, every sly smirk, every heavy handed push, and everything in between is anything but malicious.

But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t miss the softer side of things.

Or, Lance and Keith are in a secret relationship, but honestly want to omit the 'secret' part.

okay u can always tell what tag im following obsessively at certain times lol. for yall i present yet another secret relationship fic. ahem. this one is cute! banter and flirting and misleading and kisses and GOD its so sweet

4. Things Held Sacred by yarrie

So maybe, just maybe, Pidge was right. Maybe, just maybe, Keith had shot himself in the foot with his first attempt at resolving the blanket-hogging situation, because now Lance seemed to think it was a game and the rules were: steal the blankets, get sex.

To be fair, Keith hadn't exactly been...dissuading him very well.

okay so heres how this works. every fic rec friday so far has been from a specific collection of mine called ‘rereadables’, which was literally started because of this fic. i dont even know what specific part of this fic gets to me so hard, but you know when you read something that makes your stomach go all swoopy? and you can’t stop smiling? thats this fic! i remember i finished it for the first time and then i scrolled right back up to the top and read it again, then again, and again. like i cannot get over this fic. it gives me butterflies every time

5. Communication is key, they say by @ellana17

They already had communication issues before… Or: a malfunction with a healing pod leaves Lance able to speak only Spanish for a few days.

the idea of lance getting stuck in spanish and then almost immediately using that to flirt with keith without him knowing. like. i love that SO much that is quite possibly one of the funniest concepts to exist

that’s it for today!! i’ll see y’all back next friday for the next fic rec post!!!

#secret relationship focused bc i am annoying #fic rec #fic rec friday #vld #voltron #lance #lance mcclain #keith #keith kogane #klance #secret relationship #cuban lance #longpost #queue

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ranboo5 · 2 years

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The Beeduo Meta

So, c!beeduo is unimaginably hard to analyse for the same reason the entire SMP is hard to analyse, especially in post-Doomsday DSMP when a lot more Offscreen Time became relevant: there are different backfilling assumptions. This is also complicated by the fact that it’s, well, a dynamic, and this fandom has an unimaginably hard time dealing with dynamics, because of “show me the clip” analysis being the norm. This kind of emphasis can be unsuited to dynamic analysis, because individual interactions cannot be taken as by themselves definitive of a dynamic without examining the framework they exist within.

My aim with this post is to establish the patterns we see in c!Ranboo and c!Tubbo’s interactions, to examine each successive one with the context of established precedent in mind, and to assert the thing I have known since February 2021: the framework assumed by the fandom and the framework that actually exists and makes sense to exist (regardless of authorial intent!) are incongruous, to put it lightly.

Will be dropping character tags from now on, but obviously all c! and /rp

Disclaimer also that this is very much coming from a c!Ranboo main – I am trying to do c!Tubbo as much justice as I can but being a boober is going to influence how I come at this, pretty obviously

Ranboo will be referred to with it/its pronouns in a couple places throughout, a) for clarity and b) because I want to

Under a readmore because it’s unimaginably fucking long there is a TL;DR at the bottom

Beeduo starts with imbalanced expectations because of the situation Ranboo shows up into and how Ranboo interacts w/ situations he considers high risk. In New L’Manberg, Ranboo quickly becomes functionally the only one in Tubbo's corner in several important respects. They are genuine friends, dgmw, and at this point it hasn't quite spiraled, but from the start the established dynamic is Ranboo thinking he has to care for Tubbo bc no one else will, and Tubbo ending up with Ranboo being the only one who really appears to respect him as president and stand by his side. Even before the cabinet actually has tensions in it, this is a suspected thing, which is evidenced in the manner in which the cabinet’s dynamics deteriorate as New L’Manberg wears on

Even before this deterioration, this setup is immediately extremely high stakes for Ranboo. One of their first interactions, while Ranboo is still calling Tubbo honorifics uncertainly (which Ranboo doesn't even do generally man is still throwing spaghetti at the wall in terms of how to interact with him), is Ranboo having to talk a tripping-balls Tubbo off a cliff edge while he's standing there high and rambling. Stakes of this kind are not immediately damning, but they can be something that complicates matters if handled poorly. They will be handled poorly.

This precariousness is also immediately dangerous for Tubbo, because Ranboo is a yes man. It knows it needs to comply, or appear to, to maintain its safety and autonomy. In other words, this is a tendency to partial duplicity and disingeniety in the interest of one’s own safety. Ranboo’s apparent alignment with anyone or anything cannot be assumed to be exclusive or even genuine. At this point he genuinely does think the best of Tubbo and his decision making, but this does not last, bc Ranboo takes ppl on good faith and gets disappointed.

As Ranboo befriends like 30 enemies of the state and is also repeatedly reminded of the danger he faces (the Butcher Army, the armor thing, "be loyal"), the stakes only get higher, especially as Tubbo gets more and more unpopular. This culminates in Ranboo’s statement on Doomsday about how he's literally expecting to be executed. This Is Indicative of the stakes he has been and continues to be living under.

Tubbo, meanwhile, has had it told to his face with receipts that Ranboo is a traitor... and immediately enters copium central, blaming it on Ranboo's memory issues. This is setting out a pattern that will continue all the way to Tubbo absolutely refusing to implicate Ranboo in Tommy’s death and beyond – Tubbo cannot consider Ranboo to have the capacity to be a threat. This will be bad for both of them.

For now we go into Snowchester. It is important to note Ranboo is actively afraid of Tubbo at this point. The urgency in his mind ebbs some by the time they get married, but at this point he is actively considering Tubbo a more-than-latent threat. The tower scene happens, which is a continuation of Tubbo being ableist to Ranboo, this time to the point of trying to experimentally cure its memory issues against its wishes – people will say Ranboo said yes technically, and it did, but again remember: Ranboo is a yes man, and it is residually afraid of what Tubbo might do to himself or to Ranboo if it missteps. Consent given under threat is not consent, and it is extremely indicative of what Ranboo actually feels about this happening from his initial resistance, his attempts to weasel out of the procedure/leave early throughout, and his reaction after. In true fashion of a yes man who is trying not to set off alarm bells while keeping his head, he is resistant without openly refusing throughout. To be clear: this is not Tubbo intentionally violating Ranboo's consent (nor are any of the other ensuing experiments and/or proposals). This is their heldover power dynamic. Tubbo is not evil or malicious or anything – the two of them just have a fucked set of expectations, and that set of expectations is not going to improve, because neither of them have the framework to challenge it. Even if Ranboo recognizes something is wrong on a conscious level (which he refuses to as part of the strat), he will not acknowledge it, because of aforementioned tendencies, and Tubbo will not recognize something is wrong, because Tubbo does not have the healthiest ideas abt individual consent and personhood in general, because when in any of DSMP history has anyone shown Tubbo that as a priority? In fact, What Tubbo Thinks about a situation has been repeatedly dismissed, and at this point he has long learned this. To the Joker Tubbo this is just a normal interaction, and he continues to see Ranboo as someone who is at least mostly reliably in his corner, and at least mostly reliably his friend (especially after Exile fucked up his relationship with Tommy), so he has no reason to believe this would be a problem. Bringing this up as an issue is a threat to the stability of their relationship and the surrounding circumstances, which is not tenable; Tubbo has been looking for stability this whole time and is not interested in losing it again, and Ranboo is staking a lot of self-convinced morality on the fact that he's being good to Tubbo technically, and also is still extremely afraid of what Tubbo might do if he isn't there to catch him.

(Literally catch him! There is a scene where Tubbo jumps off a roof shouting for Ranboo to catch him, which idk if cc!Tubbo thought he was in character for, but cc!Ranboo definitely was. You do not react with off-trailing closed-off genuine fear and worry to your friend maybe doing a clown in video games. I know my little guy’s voice that was c!Ranboo I know it was.)

In the absence of being able to unpack the problem, they go for the next best solution to this threat of losing stability, which is to codify that stability by getting married. Michael is part of this. We never got a deeply in character discussion for why they decided to adopt Michael, which leaves us with the interaction where Tubbo is (jokingly?) threatening to “commit adultery,” and Ranboo replies that he can’t because “Michael is our son, Michael is our adopted son." This is evidently news to Tubbo – unsurprisingly, because this is the first time Michael is referred to as anything more than a pet.

Again, absolutely do not get me wrong – both of beeduo are genuinely affectionate for and extremely attached to Michael (Ranboo has so much sentiment and love and kindness in his hearts). The aforementioned scene is also dubiously canon at best – I only mention it at all because the essence of it is consistent with the previous established dynamic and with how it keeps going. They care, and it’s absolutely ridiculous to pretend they don’t, but Michael’s ultimate importance outside the (again, very extant) sentimental aspect is as a prop in the game of house these morons are playing because they are so so so afraid of losing everything – in Tubbo's case, of losing everything again, and in Ranboo's case, of failing to be there for Tubbo and prevent whatever Tubbo does.

Including with the nukes! I didn’t forget about the nuke scene! We’re talking about the nuke scene!!

For those who do not remember the nuke scene, a summary: it takes place shortly after the silo’s inception, before the marriage. Tubbo, obviously jumpy and nervous, asks a visiting Ranboo out of the blue if he wants to see smth secret, and says he’ll just stress Ranboo out to make him forget it afterward. Ranboo, to this offer, says no, he would rather not be intentionally triggered into situational memory loss. This was, however, not an actual offer, as Tubbo ignores him and leads him into the silo anyway.

Tubbo’s literal world destroying weapons bolster the stakes I’ve mentioned earlier that Ranboo perceives in this dynamic; Ranboo, trying to hang on to what could become an extremely dangerous complicating factor, goes to write it down and Tubbo tells him to put the book away. When Ranboo hesitates, Tubbo threatens him. Tubbo is counting on Ranboo’s memory loss here to be able to trust him, after all, as he has before and as he will again.

In fact, this is relevant in the literal next arc beeduo have relevance, which is outpost arc.

I've gone off abt Ranboo's ideology 40 million times and I'll go off abt it more; for Ranboo to function safely he needs an environment where he does not feel surveilled/scrutinized, where he is not subject to others' whims, and where he is not expected to be specifically and exclusively allegiant. See earlier discussion of his yes-man tendencies – he doesn’t want to be that way! These are character flaws and he knows it! But he must keep yes-manning for the sake of surviving in a society that will not give him the ability to breathe!! Ranboo is a mf anarchist for a reason he needs his agency!!!

And you will notice this is not raising green flags for his dynamic w/ Tubbo. Outside of the implicit coercion elements, Ranboo has actual positive motivations to align with Tubbo: he shares Tubbo's desire for peace and stability, and he feels genuinely sentimental and affectionate to Tubbo. Both of them want the same things, because wanting to have a peaceful happy life is a generally appealing goal, and they want to have it together, because they’re friends and care about each other. Unfortunately, they have a radically different understanding of most everything about how to get there, including in regards to personhood. Including what it means to value someone. What it means to be happy. What it means to love someone.

Ranboo does not want to confront this, but outpost-burger arc beeduo is where this conflict makes him. This is the arc where it is made absolutely unambiguous that Ranboo and Tubbo have a dynamic where neither can love the other like the other loves him, because they have fundamentally philosophically different understandings of what that even means. "Maybe he built those walls to protect me" KILLING ME WOULD HURT LESS, RANBOOLIVE

(While we are here, and I am getting a glass of water to calm down, re: the love point: the romanticity, platonicity, queerplatonicity, etc. of it is not the relevant part the point is that it's philosophically in com fucking patible. Are we clear. Are we clear this is not relevant discourse. Good. Okay)

Ranboo is suffering increasing confusion and confabulation and stress as the arc goes on, almost certainly bc he is again in a political situation; he makes explicit that this is another instance of it "happening again", like he did at the worst parts of his spirals irt his situation in New L’Manberg. Tubbo is not the only factor in this; Ranboo has complicated dynamics w/ Quackity and the cookieduo (Ranboo and Slime) arc is also relevant, but Tubbo is Ranboo's first priority and Ranboo is putting his brain thru the blender for him! We do not see him in a comparable consistent state like this at any point except New L’Manberg! Ranboo is fucked up in outpost arc!! And Tubbo obviously is too; the entire arc is about his lash-out and he is obviously paranoid doing it. And both of these only make it clear that the unbalanced expectations the whole dynamic was built on, of reliance on Ranboo as specially in Tubbo’s corner, are still fucking there

Ranboo’s behavior is extremely worth scrutinizing here. When Q sends Fundy and I am pretty sure Foolish? to go check out the outpost and they trash it on the way there, Ranboo cleans it up (and leaves threats, which is not a Hinged Action and is something he knows is self-compromising, which goes to show his state of mind) w/ the explicit motivation of keeping it from Tubbo. Ranboo talks to Quackity abt Tubbo and repeatedly makes excuses abt how Tubbo is neurodivergent and a minor, and sure, it says the same thing about itself, but then it continues saying similar shit to rationalize Tubbo's behavior on its own. Ranboo has very expressed interest in portraying Tubbo, both to any audience it has AND to itself, as someone who is not responsible for his actions, because he’s Going Through A Lot, and it has been doing that since the mention of the experiments/tower scene in character.

Tubbo has to cling to the idea that Ranboo's treasonous tendencies are tied to his memory loss. Ranboo has to cling to the idea that Tubbo’s erratic and violent behavior all doesn't really matter bc Tubbo is ~ twaumatized ~, because he “has a lot of problems,” and they both have to cling to their ableist copium, because if they don’t, then each has to admit that his husband would hurt him, and in fact has.

Outpost arc is also where we get "you'd tell me if I was a bad person right" "yeah I’d tell you if you step out of line" – I talk about it in connection to the things I’ve discussed earlier more in depth here, but further: it’s extra chilling when you consider 1) Ranboo does not genuinely concur with Tubbo's philosophies, is not kept safe by them and he knows that when in his right state of mind as evidenced by his active ever-present weaseling-out-of-this maneuvers; 2) that Ranboo is demonstrably extremely good at aforesaid weaseling; and 3) that he is extremely ideologically critical and fiercely independent and arrogant, all the time! And this is the evidence point for what I say in the tags of that ask: Tubbo is the closest on the server to come to ever having control over Ranboo ideologically

Ranboo is so good at 5D chess. Ranboo outmaneuvered Wilbur and Quackity and Dream. Ranboo, increasingly freely, is able to disagree and bring up concerns to Phil and Techno (not fully obv but more than everyone else he talks to lmao), whom broadly he agrees with and has seen the benefit of the philosophies of, but still doesn’t think are Fully Correct, because he doesn’t think that about anyone but himself. But with Tubbo, Ranboo conceded so much that he could have lost the game if Tubbo hadn't proceeded to fold during the burger arc. And Tubbo didn't even know! He didn't even realize anything was off!!

That fold is the next relevant point in this torrid saga. Tubbo reaches a breaking pt with Wilbur's return; Ranboo gets even more visibly freaked out at all times bc of the complicating situation; it’s here when we get the conversation where Tubbo talks abt the outpost and having signed it over.

This hits Ranboo in a way Tubbo is going to miss, because, again, when has anyone on the DSMP given Tubbo a precedent for caring about that? He has literally 0 example reason to consider all the work™ that any individual put into a project as far as he’s concerned that’s not going to work. Ranboo, unfortunately, not only does, but also has RSD. This already hurts. And then Tubbo makes the to-him extremely innocuous statement that yeah, now that he has a job and a faction and a direction that he isn't buckling under the weight of losing, he's finally happy

Ranboo, who is extremely dubious abt LNV's labor conditions anyway, fully hears that Tubbo never needed him. Tubbo is finally happy in service to the exact construct that Ranboo has repeated concrete evidence fucks himself and everyone around him, Tubbo included, up. Ranboo hears that he has been soundly cucked by the concept of sides, to put it a little facetiously. He has been checkmate liberals’d.

(This, understandably, does nothing for his mental state.)

And before I continue I must mention again: Ranboo and Tubbo do care about each other. They do legitimately want the best for each other. They have legitimately bonded, and are genuine friends (&c).

But you also have to remember that Ranboo is extremely calculating, and if you’ll also recall, he is still in a high stakes and high delicacy political situation where he has to be making a lot of those calculations. Now, he's just heard that he was never needed for one of his primary goals. Yes, this hurts, but it carries an important second significance to those calculations: if keeping Tubbo stable was never Ranboo’s doing, this is a reason to deprioritize it.

And that is how we go into Hitting on Sixteen/The Wilbur Van. That is why Ranboo is able to snap at Tubbo in Ho16/TWV. The sheer contrast between the "I'll tell you if you step out of line" agreement and Ranboo dismissing and yelling at Tubbo in this is the biggest and clearest indicator – and the deciding difference is that in Ho16, Ranboo has the goddamn burger van interaction in his information bank, the one where Ranboo was told that his concerns were useless and could be deprioritized. He has been functionally dismissed from his post – he no longer has to worry about appearing good and trustworthy and respectful to Tubbo, and with greater things hanging over his head than maintaining those appearances, he goes full mask off. He prioritizes mitigating Wilbur over mitigating Tubbo in that scene, and he feels bad about it bc he likes Tubbo, and he feels bad for yelling at him, especially considering he is lying – dismissal of everyone who isn’t himself aside, Ranboo knows just fine that Wilbur is dangerous and doing something harmful! He is lying!!

But that's the thing with Ranboo. Ranboo will lie to fucking anyone. It will lie to your motherfucking face with full confidence, and then it'll feel soooo bad about it later, it'll tear him up inside, and you will hear about none of it, and he'd do it again, because it'll be another calculated concession. Because Ranboo is a yes man and a survivor and a political agenda haver and is balancing like 478363 conflicting priorities at any given time because he has to

So it lies. It mansplains Wilbur Soot to Tubbo (and I do not use that word as a joke I use it as shorthand) and it lies and it can do this so immediately because it did not have to lose or shake a long-standing respect for Tubbo – at that point, its initial wisps of respect for Tubbo had been disintegrated and gone for months. He was never trustworthy to Tubbo – Tubbo put his trust and his reliance in a liar and a traitor, because Ranboo's lies were the only semblance of respect and understanding he got, and it was against what both of them wanted for Tubbo to realize that ever. Tubbo is married to a motherfucking stranger.

Tubbo appeals to a better person that Ranboo isn't, to a loyalty Ranboo never really had, and bc Ranboo doesn't have to pretend to respect him anymore Tubbo gets berated and condescended to, again. Like I cannot emphasize this shit enough! Ranboo was shit to Tubbo in that scene, and even if he had sacrificed himself for Tubbo, it wouldn’t have done fuck anything to address how awful he was in that moment and why it was so deeply such. And Ranboo didn’t even “sacrifice himself”! People made that up!

Yes, Ranboo's political motivation was in large part that Tubbo, someone he cared about, was being repeatedly endangered and used as a prop from where Ranboo was standing, and Ranboo found that kind of mistreatment of a person he cared for the wellbeing of untenable. He cared about that, genuinely, because he cares about people and about their individual safeties, and even when he hurts them it’s, again, a concession. It’s something he wants to avoid. So Tubbo is in danger and Ranboo acts in the capacity of his care for Tubbo and gets Tubbo out, makes sure that materially his loved one is safe – and then, having dealt with the danger to people, turns around and deals with ideology.

It's not for Tubbo that it kills itself, because Ranboo, again, cares about people. Ranboo killing himself did nothing for Tubbo, and it fucking knows that; Ranboo’s critical eye is extremely good at seeing past the notion that benefit to some ideology is necessarily the same as benefit to some person without being able to draw a clear line to the effects that ideology has on that person. The division between effect on people and effect on system – the concept that the ideologies one live under affect people rather than breathe as them, and that they thus have to justify that effect being good rather than having symbolic gestures take priority over individuals – is the whole motherfucking point of people not sides.

Ranboo killed himself as a symbolic gesture in service to a rhetorical point he was making to Wilbur and Quackity. Ranboo killed himself to win at 5D chess. Ranboo thoughtlessly made it so his husband watched him die, because after saving Tubbo, he had bigger things to worry about.

Ranboo killing himself is, extremely intentionally both in universe and out, evocative of Wilbur doing so because in a sense it was for Wilbur, and it was thought out. Ranboo’s suicide was not nonsensical revenge; it was not emotional protectiveness; it was the callous, cruel, condescending, twisted logic of a man who has shown this flaw in its ways of thinking again and again and whose lack of sleep the night before was specifically emphasized. Ranboo reaches drastic action and violence when he finds himself when he finds himself desperate and alone in the corner he’s backed into, and left with his own mind and only his own mind, he thinks himself into the deranged awfulness of the brainspace he was in when he made the decision. Though the choice itself was likely spontaneous, it was a culminating manifestation of a thought process that had been building for this kind of opportunity the whole time.

Yes, Ranboo is emotional; yes, Ranboo is sentimental; Ranboo does, however, think with his fucking head. He does it too much, in fact, and here he thought with his head into deprioritizing Tubbo, and functionally leaving Tubbo behind while he pursued his own agenda – which is really what he had been doing all a-fucking-long; he'd just been lying about it out of worry and fear, and Tubbo had believed him out of desperation.

The love was there, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was the need, and the desperate belief from both of them that the other could fulfill that need.

TL;DR: - Beeduo is based on a fundamentally imbalanced dynamic where Tubbo trusts Ranboo to be in his corner in a way no one else really is - This is bad because of the expectations it places on Ranboo and because of the way that it’s not something that Tubbo can actually rely on - The second Ranboo was no longer coercively held to pretending, everything fell through - Both of them clung for the longest time to ableist copium that dismissed the other’s capability to harm him to get away from the fact that they have already hurt each other and continue to - While they care about each other, their understandings of personhood, love, relationships, agency, and happiness are fundamentally at odds

TL;DRTL;DR: Ranboo is a liar and Tubbo is an auth

#Dream SMP #Tubbo #Ranboo #beeduo #c!beeduo critical #c!Ranboo critical #c!Tubbo critical #you are not immune #for the approval of the forum #FINALLY. FINALLY AFTER ALL THIS TIME #SEVENTEEN MONTHS. 4.1K WORDS.

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emevergreen · 19 days

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OC lore time (weird boygirl edition)

thank you sm for the tag @zoroarkthief!! I'm always happy to share about my wol :'))

Khed'a Dakwhil

—B A S I C S

Name: Khed'a Dakwhil

Nicknames: His adoptive mother called him cicada :> The scions will sometimes call him khedy (tataru started it and then everyone else followed). Aymeric calls him angel as a term of endearment.

Age: 28 at the beginning of ARR

Nameday: Second Astral Moon, 16th Sun

Race: Keeper of the Moon Miqo'te

Gender: Nonbinary, Genderfluid

Orientation: Bisexual with a slight lean towards guys

Profession: He's held every odd job you can think of but predominantly considers himself a white mage.

—P H Y S I C A L A S P E C T S

Hair: Dark brown bob

Eyes: Orange-Brown

Skin: light skin tone

Tattoos/scars: He has a scar of hardened skin in the center of his chest. He also has crystalline streaks going up his forearms. Both are a result of prolonged exposure to earth attuned aether.

—F A M I L Y

Parents: His birth mom is [redacted], and he doesn't know who his father is. His adoptive mother, Aria-A-Yan, was his conjury mentor when he was taken in as an orphan to the conjurer's guild. She was really supportive of him and helped him open up.

Siblings: None!

Grandparents: He heard stories of his grandmother but never knew her.

In-laws and Other: I really like him with Aymeric and considering the end of Heavensward, he's not on good terms with his father-in-law. Lol. As for other relatives, he's very close with the brother of his adopted mother, E-Sumi-Yan, and considers him like an uncle.

Pets: He has a little bird that follows him around named Thistle. He befriended it on the road to Ishgard.

—S K I L L S

Abilities: Khed'a has precise aetheric control as a highly skilled white mage. Due to the condition with his body, he has to keep a careful eye on his aether. During his time with the padjal, he learned how to properly manage and control the aether in his body. He is a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to healing. He learned self-defense techniques while among the padjal that later served him when he moved on to pick up lancer/dragoon as a job.

Hobbies: He enjoys collecting and brewing different teas. He also really likes going on walks, especially when he is in a new place or just needs some time to think. Khed'a has a journal where he takes notes on the local flowers, plants, and insects of an area (and will sometimes press flora in it). He also likes to keep plants, though as a traveler he's found that difficult to maintain. He has a plant in a small pot that he's kept alive by propagating every so often. Khed'a also enjoys birdwatching.

—T R A I T S

Most Positive Trait: His resilience and commitment to making the best of things in any given situation. He doesn't get discouraged despite it all.

Most Negative Trait: He's sometimes too willing to help others, to the point of stretching himself thin. He has issues with being objectified/being treated as a tool for others. He still falls into that role and struggles to properly adovcate for himself since it's a deeply ingrained pattern of behavior he's unlearning.

—L I K E S

Colors: Deep green, earthy browns, red, deep blue, smoky gray.

Smells: Freshly fallen snow, bergamot, chamomile, freshly washed sheets, a warm fire, flowers in bloom.

Textures: soft fabrics like silk and satin, freshly polished wood, the steadiness of a lance, leather, smooth pieces of metal (like jewelry or trinkets).

Drinks: He likes tea most, especially bergamot. He will also drink juices and lemonade. He enjoys hot chocolate as well.

—O T H E R D E T A I L S

Smokes: Nope.

Drinks: He doesn't drink alcohol but he will enjoy tea :3

Drugs: Nope.

Mount Issuance: Black Chocobo gifted from his friend Haurchefant. He will also use the unicorn he befriended as a conjurer, or the witch's broom mount.

Been Arrested: Yes (Post ARR :) Aside from that he hasn't run into too much more on that front.

I tag @freckledfemme @redgemwink @eirikaily @lululeighsworld @cogentsummoner @gnusnoteunuchs & anyone else who wants to talk about their wol/oc in general :3c

#oc: khed'a #thank you again for tagging me this was so fun :')#.txt #ask meme #ffxiv #wol

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mamawasatesttube · 1 year

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So, I'm not a writer, but I am very curious 👀 What do you look for in a fic that features Kon? 👀 What kind of things do you want Kon to do, or experience? 👀 What characteristics of Kon do you absolutely wanna see? 👀 What characteristics of Kon you didn't like but want to see adressed in a fic? 👀 When you're writing, what are three major things about Kon that you MUST INCLUDE NO MATTER WHAT? 👀👀👀 Sorry about the many questions!!!!!

OHHHH this is such a good question okay okay okay. let's see.

what do i look for? primarily, kon having an actual character voice. that's the lowest bar to clear (and yet already takes out... a good chunk of the fics ive seen in the kon character tag 😭😭). he needs to be silly, geeky, deeply kind, earnest, etc. not every fic featuring him will necessarily get into the way he's also existentially lonely and has a Lot of sadness and self-esteem issues (esp after rex leech's roller coaster incident. this has been on my mind today. ough. his self-image never recovered after that one!) but by GOD does he have his issues, so if its a fic going into emotions i want it to do right by his. will def admit thats smth im incredibly picky about.

as for stuff i want him doing? honestly i am here for so much!! i want soft simple character studies. i want action showcasing how fucking powerful ttk can be, especially with a dose of creativity to its use. i want wacky yj space adventures. i want good good whump and hurt/comfort. i want him getting swept off his feet. you could sell me on almost any plot if it's well-written.

re: characteristics... i don't really split them up quite like that, i think! he's a well-rounded character, and that includes both strengths and flaws. ideally, a good fic will include both of these and represent them fairly (like, he's not perfect by any means, and he can do stupid things and struggle with personal issues, but on the other hand very few things tick me off more than portrayals where he's just completely incompetent and dumb as a rock, lmao).

BUT REGARDING MY OWN WRITING. ohhohoohoohooho three things i ALWAYS have to include? a) geek-ass loser (affectionate). i think it is SO endearing and also very humanizing as a quality that he's a trekkie/wendy fan/star wars nerd/etc. b) mixed-race metaphors. they may not be overt depending on the piece but the "child of two worlds that doesn't quite fit into either" thing is Deeply intentional. and c) HES A JUGGERNAUT!!!! i firmly believe adult fully realized kon (a kryptonian, with full kryptonian powers, WITH TTK) is a force of fucking nature. i like this so much and i specifically also always like it when he is at any given moment about 0.4 seconds from freaking the fuck out about how it's Too much strength.

to me, kon is a character made of some very delicious contradictions. he's so painfully human and yet grapples hard with his own personhood and humanity. he's a kryptonian and an alien but he's a child of earth. he's terrified of his own power. he wants nothing more than to protect everyone he loves (and everyone he doesn't love, too). he's always ready to crack a joke or make a silly reference, but he is deeply sad and spent so much of his early life suicidal. he contains multitudes. (and this isn't even getting into my hcs on his gender/sexuality crisis! ksjdhf)

i feel like a gripe i often find myself having when looking for kon fics is that he often gets slotted into the role of "emotional support boyfriend with no personality or role of his own" though, which i guess is why "does he have a distinct character voice?" is my first litmus test for whether i'd want to keep reading or not.

a good kon fic will embrace all his contradictions, i think. (a good fic for any character, really, should show them as well-rounded and three-dimensional.) and i for one love his Problems and Issues, bc man, it's a very fun space to play in! <3

#thank you this was fun to answer!! ive been ruminating on it for a good chunk of the day tbh!#kon #rimi talks #answers #thefantasmarex

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hungerofhadarr · 3 months

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After being tagged by both my friends @house-ofhope and @sixteenstrikes I decided that I Should fill out this little character question sheet …. cannot think of anyone to tag at the moment but if you see this and want to participate Please do ! I would like to see

Doing this for the Beastie himself …

Name: Giilvas Quickfoot

Nickname: Ohhh okay . Karlach calls him ‘ Strings ‘ or ‘ Strums ‘ or whatever matching nickname to ‘ Mama K ‘ she comes up with midfight . Halsin ends up calling him ‘ Brown Bear ‘ . Lae’zel ends up calling him ‘ Quick ‘ on occasion . Wyll gets to call him plenty of things but ‘ Rose ‘ , ‘ Knight ‘ , and ‘ Big Heart ‘ are the most common ones . His stage name is a joke name . Lonch Mune , pronounced Lunch Money , the joke answer to why he does the whole Bard Thing

Height: Large . Over 6” . 6’5 ? 6’6 ? How tall can I make him before it’ s too tall . 6’7 . I’ ll keep adding inches just say when

Gender & Orientation: 2spirit queer gay transmasc they/he reporting for duty

Nationality/Ethnicity: he doesn’ t claim a nationality , if asked he just says ‘ Baldurian ‘ and that’ s that . Even if he’ s never been to Baldur’ s Gate . His ethnicity traces back to mainly wood elves in the dales , a few half - elf distant family members that he thinks are in Waterdeep maybe ? He’ s also sure that he has Gur relatives .

Favourite Fruit: oranges . Oranges . Blackberries too . Also anything he can pick while they travel .

Favourite Season: That in between summer and fall . Whatever you can call that he likes that the most

Favourite Flower: he always SAYS it’ s roses to keep up with his ‘ golden rose ‘ image and everything . Truth be told , it’ s lilacs . And water lilies . And lilies of the valley .

Favourite Scent: Rain , wood smoke and anything that even in passing reminds him of Wyll . Certain smells just connect back to him regardless if Giilvas can name the smell or not

Coffee, Tea or Hot Chocolate: Going for coffee most days . Tea just doesn’ t taste good to him even if he can sit around smelling the tea for ages . He doesn’ t mind trying to sweeten his coffee , but if he’ s just looking for sweet then he’ ll go for hot chocolate

Average Hours of Sleep: Varies . Either he can be in his elf-sleep for half a day or he can’ t bring himself to rest for more than like 45 minutes . No healthy 8 hours either all or none

Dogs or Cats? Woof

Dream Trip? No one place really . He wants to go where the excitement is

Number of Blankets? One super thick, heavy one or like . 4 regular ones . Bundle him Now

Random Fact: the one main reason he kept the ability to wild shape to a Tibetan Mastiff was to enter cities and towns he thought he might have issue in bc a) who is gonna stop a big dog ? And b) people don’ t care if a dog hears their conversations . He still does it in camp sometimes bc a) why not b) easier to lay on Wyll and not smush him and c) sometimes he can get better rest while wildshaped

#THANK YOU BOTH FOR THE TAGS EEEK #bg3 #bg3 tav #giilvas #finally did a tag game before it slipped my mind forever ….. wipes brow

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aceouttatime · 16 days

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15 questions for 15 friends

tagged by @korblez! thanks dearie <3

ARE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE?: My deadname was my mother's favorite name. My chosen name, Alex, is very similar--I kind of just flip-flopped the gender of it. I also chose my middle name when I was getting it legally changed, and I decided on my father's name.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED?: Probably about ten months ago. I can't remember, but it's been way more difficult since starting testosterone ~2 years ago.

DO YOU HAVE KIDS?: No. Observe: A. I'm as gay as a room of monkeys on nitrous oxide, B. I'm a trans man who does NOT intend on using the uterus he was given, and C. I'm 20. We ain't ready.

WHAT SPORTS DO YOU PLAY/HAVE YOU PLAYED?: Was a cheerleader against my will for 12 years and a gymnast for 10. Those are. Uh. Very uncomfortable activities for a closeted trans man. Also messed up my body (abdominal issues, back issues, joints that crack like bubble wrap), but hey, I have a few cool party tricks to pull out now! I also played basketball for a few years and peewee soccer when I was real little.

DO YOU USE SARCASM?: No. (I am a liar.)

WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE?: How they hold themselves, i.e., body language like tense shoulders, a puffed-out chest, downcast eyes.

WHAT'S YOUR EYE COLOUR?: Green! Olive green with a few dots of brown.

SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS?: Depends on my mood. Do I want a think piece? Psychological horror, all the way. Am I sad and need Comfort Content? Happy endings please or I will cry inside.

ANY TALENTS?: I can fall asleep anywhere, anytime, given five minutes. I can do a great worm and also flips. I can draw pretty pictures sometimes that usually have gay people or aliens (or both) in them.

WHERE WERE YOU BORN?: the USA BAYBEE RAHHHH 🦅🦅🦅 Ohio, specifically. It's mostly corn, highways, and the occasional building here (if you spot any signs of civilization, please let authorities know, as it is a rarity and must be documented for research purposes).

WHAT ARE YOUR HOBBIES?: Drawing, reading, writing, skiing, rollerblading, hiking, biking, embroidery, bracelet-making, video gaming, window shopping (poor college student with Spending Anxiety), taking care of my plant children, stopping my roommate's cat from eating plants (she has no survival instinct but is Very Cute), and many more that I can't think of at the moment.

DO YOU HAVE ANY PETS?: One dorm cat (my roommate's, she's a ragdoll mix) named Eda, and two dachshunds (my parents') named Dunkin and Bailey. Dunkin is barely out of his puppy years, and Bailey is Strange and Brick-Shaped.

HOW TALL ARE YOU?: 5'7. 5'8 if my spine is not Fucked-Up that day.

FAVOURITE SUBJECT IN SCHOOL?: Science, history, and English. Psychology, if that counts (it's what I study in college)!

DREAM JOB?: Clinical psychologist for NASA (basically I'd help research, implement programs for, and monitor the mental wellbeing of personnel). Pipe dream? Yes. More reasonable career path? Clinical psychologist working private practice somewhere nice (and warm and maybe not in the States). -----TLDR; Astronaut therapist.

I'll go ahead and tag (with care, no pressure!): @straypurplebread, @who-is-riley, @swaps55, @daisywalletchains, @sparatus, @thetrashbagswasteland, @whiskynorocks, @notjumpinglamps, @threewhiskeylunch, @westernlarch, @maxiepenguin,

#acetxt #tag game #tag meme #get to know me

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simomo-the-smol · 19 days

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Simomo Simo

B A S I C S

Name: Simomo Simo!

Nicknames: None.

Age: Mid-late twenties, I thiiiink?

Nameday: 21st Sun of the 4th Astral Moon.

Race: Plainsfolk Lalafell.

Gender: Agender really, has never had a thought about gender, it's something other impose on her, she is v much an any pronouns binch. She doesn't care what others register her as.

Orientation: Grey Ace, pan but rarely interested. Believed none of that was for her before she fell for Raha.

Profession: Adventurer, omni crafting artisan.

P H Y S I C A L A S P E C T S

Hair: Black with mid green highlights, fringe and ponytail.

Eyes: Green

Skin: A reasonably pale popoto, with white freckles.

Tattoos/scars: None visible

F A M I L Y

Parents: Her parents are farmers in Middle La Noscea, her father regularly making trips by foot into Limsa to trade. Humble family, employing former pirates looking to go "straight". As such, Simo has had a propensity for swearing since she was pretty young!

Siblings: None, Simo is an only child.

Grandparents: ???

In-laws and Other: In a relationship with G'raha Tia, not intrinsically mono, but has never thought about it one way or another. Views the Scions as family, and has a constant (platonic) companion in Rivi Feathersage @feathersage

Pets: Simomo's chocobo is called Greffie- named after Grehfar, the Yellowjacket Lift Attendant stationed in Bulwark Hall, Limsa Lominsa. Grehfar showed a little too much willingness to listen to little Simo's stories when she started venturing into the city on her own, and as such became Simomo's first proudly-declared friend of her own in the city.

Greffie is a pumpkin orange Belah'dian Jennet chocobo who has accompanied Simo into many battles and over varied terrain. His favourite food is curiel roots. Despite his diminutive size, he can hold his own in battle and in play with other 'bos.

S K I L L S

Abilities: Simo first learned arcanima when they began adventuring, inspired by the stories of their forebears, subsequently specialising into summoning. A chance encounter with a dance troupe who had arrived in Limsa. While at first discouraged by the troupe's flowy attire, Simo realised one could dance in all manner of garb, and has been throwing chakrams at ne'er-do-well faces ever since!

Hobbies: Foraging, as this is something done since Simo's childhood to supplement farmed produce, and in turn, crafting with said gathered materials. At the end of the day, there will always be a certain lure to the market board for a Lalafell, after all!

Simomo also spends a somewhat questionable amount of time in the Gold Saucer, especially enjoying tests of agility like the Cliffhanger and Leap of Faith GATEs.

T R A I T S

Most Positive Trait: Her giving heart, Simo will seldom turn from someone in need, lending a hand with even quite minor gripes even after battling to save the very star. She's generous with her time and complimentary to (almost) all.

Most Negative Trait: Zenos may have had a point... she does enjoy the fight. Not that she's ever admitted her answer to any of her loved ones.

Some may also argue the fact that she will put ketchup on pretty much any savoury foodstuff.

L I K E S

Colors: Hunter green.

Smells: Vanilla, cinnamon, sweet spices in general.

Textures: soft fabrics that move with her.

Drinks: She's partial to a cup of tea!

O T H E R D E T A I L S

Smokes: Nope.

Drinks: Doesn't drink alcohol regularly, but can hold a surprising amount of drink due to the upbringing around pirates and in and around Limsa Lominsa!

Drugs: No.

Mount Issuance: Greffie, issued from the Grand Company of Limsa Lominsa, The Maelstrom.

Been Arrested: Simo has, thus far, always managed to talk herself out of sticky situations. Gods know how, given how goofy she typically is when trying to do said talking!

Tagged by: @feathersage

Not tagging anyone bc I think everyone's probably been tagged as I am late to the game, but if you see this and want to do it, I'd love to see yours, so pls tag me!

#ffxiv #final fantasy 14 #ff14 #graha tia #endwalker #zenos yae galvus #rivi feathersage #simomo simo #lalafell #ffxiv lalafell #wolgraha #wol

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chawarin-panich · 1 year

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cant believe big dragon would be something i need to sit with/sleep on. really the most confusing part for me last ep was their conversation because what were they even saying? it was like everything they said kept flying over each other's head and it was so frustrating because it felt like they had their points and were having roughly the same conversation but also...not? and i have to thank @lelephantsnail for her tags on my post because it really helped streamline my thought about this.

this kind of subtle and nuanced form of miscommunication is not only unprecedented in thai bl but rare in media overall. however, it happens all the time in real life - where you are having a conversation and you understand each other's words perfectly but not each other's meaning/perspective.

b/c the truth is as fuckboi extraordinaires they have different stakes in this issue of Mangkorn's engagement and they're both right to prioritize their own skin in this game - in fact it's the healthy thing to do.

So some of the critical points of miscommunication in this convo (according to me) under the cut

whether or not to share this secret:

this was hard because on one hand mangkorn is trying to set a boundary and he does it in a fairly decent way: there's something im dealing with and i need time to deal with this and ill tell you everything when im ready. But...this is a fairly insane boundary to set with your lover esp when this 'problem' directly affects your relationship. Yai is right to demand to know more because you cannot deal with a problem affecting a relationship one-sidedly. But Mangkorn is also operating here in good faith - he has no intention of betraying Yai, he has all intentions of being with him so why does he have to admit something that will make yai misunderstand and leave him? Mangkorn wants a chance because being duplicitous is not his intention or his goal and its not fair that Mangkorn has to sacrifice his chance at love because of something that was decided for him. But Yai needs a chance too! A chance to decide if he wants to pursue this relationship despite the risks. And this is a good thing! Perhaps putting your life on hold for the dude you've been hate pining over and had one night of hate-love fucking is not the best idea! And thinking about his own heart and impending heartbreak is the right move.

He corners Mangkorn into telling him and Mangkorn tries his best to curtail the pitfalls - you'll understand me, right? im scared you'll leave me so you'll stay by my side right? - and Yai's answer 'its better than knowing nothing' isn't a promise that he will stay with Mangkorn. He's saying that at this point the only chance Mangkorn has of keeping him is by telling the truth. But Mangkorn hears what he needs to hear to tell Yai the truth. And so when Yai's reaction is this:

When Yai's first reaction is to think about himself and not focus on how difficult this situation is for Mangkorn (which it is!) it feels like a huge betrayal!

I had warned him it wasn't going to be easy and he reassured me we will be fine (he hadnt) so why is he saying this to me now? All I'm asking is for him to keep faith so why is he assuming the worst of me?

and Yai isn't assuming the worst of Mangkorn but of the situation itself but you can understand why Mangkorn feels so attacked because he's all raw and vulnerable from sharing something he did not want to share and his partner has reacted in exactly the way he was afraid of the most despite him saying he wouldn't react in that way (yai hasn't said anything of the sort)

And then being classic fuckbois - which honestly relatable - they say the absolute worse thing they could have to each other:

its like they picked the one thing the other was most insecure about and threw it in their faces which honestly was almost comic. they have tried for this long to talk like normal human beings and at the most critical moment of showing support and reaffirming commitment - they both default to their baser instincts of running away from hard things [which fair lmao].

And l love that they are able to call each other out on it! That they don't take the stoic okay that's done then bye! route. Mangkorn expresses what's hurting him - you're my partner and you're supposed to support me - and yai expresses whats hurting him - was giving me a choice in this relationship ever important to you? And of course Mangkorn just gets down to it. Things are spiraling and there's really one way out of this where they can stay together: that despite all the hurtful things they just said to each other - is there a way out of this together Yai knows what Mangkorn needs to hear but Yai answers in a way that is consistent with what he's shown is important to him: honesty and god is it heartbreaking and the way Bank plays it here is so GOOD

So no this conversation achieves nothing and narratively the two characters will engage in the terrible decision making that they would have had they not been so real with each other - Mangkorn will try to run away and Yai tries to distract himself. But boy, if they are to come back to each other in a way that feels realistic and not in a fantastical 'true love conquers all' copout way that can really only ever happen in stories, then having this conversation was absolutely critical.

#big dragon #mangkornyai #big dragon meta #big dragon the series #this is one of the longest meta i have ever written for a show #let alone for one scene #big dragon and its surprising amount of depth is a slap to the face for sure #gotta go and cleanse my heart!#i was promised nonsense! and i was given it! but with a side of whatever this is #nani's hot takes

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polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup · 10 months

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don't wait for tumblr to give u more tags. go off about tony and steve and zola pls i am humbly requesting

As a part of my ongoing war on my ask box this is a very old post regarding a tumblr tag essay i made forever ago. i half answered this ask when it came in and then forgot to finish. without further ado:

Anon is talking about this post about Steve and Tony’s relationship. I HIGHLY recommend the original post it's great but i copied the original tags essay below since it's been so long since the ask arrived.

#I feel like anyone who writes Tony stark for marvel should have to go watch bojack horseman first as like a mandatory assignment#because that show understood the premise of Tony stark better than any MCU writer ever has and it wasn’t even writing for tony stark#in sum bojack horseman follows the titular bojack who is a washed up 90s sitcom television star#bojack himself is extremely self destructive and the show follows him as his selfish and egotistical tendencies erode at his relationships#However bojack himself is an extremely sympathetic character. his harmful acts are all tied very directly to the trauma of his life#he’s a survivor of generational abuse whose own substance abuse problems stem from the fact that he was in such a neglectful environment#that he had started drinking at an INCREDIBLY young age got himself sober only to relapse due to a spiked drink after fame

#this sympathic is increased by the fact that he does geninuinely love and care for his friends and often goes to extreme lengths to show it#but what the show understands that MCU writers dont is that his tragic past doesn’t excuse the harm or pain he causes and the show goes to#LABORIOUS extents to emphasize the consequences and suffering his actions cause in his attempt towards making amends#it is FASINCATING to me that MCU just fails to grasp this because it’s really the core of Tony’s character. his story is one of redemption#and regret. but what it never seemed to get is that requires recognition of wrongs and change and his relationship with steve is a prime ex.#when they meet tony is 40+ and Steve is 23-25. steve has been awake from world war 2 for less than 2 weeks everyone he loves is dead and hes#visibly haunted by his time in the ice. his ptsd flashbacks to crashing the plane is how his character is introduced. Tony spends the time

#calling him ‘capsicle’ and talking about how much he can’t stand steve. the narrative plays it off as a gaff of little consequence but#practically speaking that’s INSANE. like can you imagine you’re a traumatized war vet who got out of a coma 2 months ago and woke up to#discover everyone you ever loved is dead and this stranger twice your age at your new work nicknames you coma boy and hates your guts bc of#his daddy issues? like Tony in avengers is borderline cruel but the narrative and the fandom never acknowledge it. it’s like removing the#laugh track on a scene from one of those old sitcoms and realizing how mean it is. and while we can fully acknowledge that Howard hurt Tony#that doesn’t make it Steve’s fault and doesn’t give Tony the license to take it out on him. like at the end of the day your healing is your#responsibility and the MCU fails to grasp that with Tony. honestly it does a disservice to the depth of his character b/c Tony should have#already grown past this by the time of Avengers. he had already gone through iron man 2 and grappled somewhat with his relationship w howard#while that doesn’t mean he’s healed yet it does mean that his character needs to learn to grow past it or he risks stagnation. mcu just#happily embraced stagnation and it made the character worse for it. Theres a scene in the comics where Tony is the first to reach out to#Steve post ice. he takes him to the air&space museum and welcomes him to the future. THATS the growth we want. Bc fundamentally even if we

#sympathize for Tony’s abuse by Howard lashing out at someone who was functionally dead at the time of ur dads mistakes is a very juvenile#mindset. /growth/ is deciding to be better than the person who hurt you and the MCUs obsession with blaming Steve for howard cut that off#CW would have been SO MUCH MORE COMPELLING if Tony had formed a relationship with Steve bc Steve would be torn between past and present but#instead Tony is saying how much he hated Steve during the fucking movie and Steve’s taking it with grace. like you’re 50 man you gotta work#past this at some point. out of tags but I have Opinions about Tony and actually zola too but we won’t get there give me more tags tumblr

Fundamentally, my issue with Tony and how he's written for the MCU is that he has the potential for one of greatest redemption arcs ever and the writers are fucking allergic to giving it to him, and his dynamic with Steve is a a prime example of it. How poorly Steve's relationship with Tony was mishandled is a pretty perfect case study as to how Tony as a character was mishandled as a whole.

As stated in the Tumblr Tags Essay above, by the time Steve came on the scene, Tony should have already grown past his hate for Steve. To be clear, that is not saying he should have gotten over Howard or any harm that he suffered as a result of his. Howard was his parent who was, to some degree, at least emotionally neglectful, if not abusive. Healing and learning helping coping mechanisms does not demand you forgive your abuser.

But Steve was never his abuser. He's a 20-something year old guy who has been trapped in a block of ice for Tony's entire life and who woke up two weeks ago to find out that everyone he ever loved is dead or suffering from alzheimer's and that his sacrifice was for nothing because he was just told the thing he drove a fucking plane into the fucking arctic over is Back Again Because We Learned Nothing.

And the thing is that the realization that "This man can hold literally no complicity in my abuser because he was frozen in the Arctic Circle the entire time" requires a level of emotional maturity you generally achieve at the age of thirteen or so. Tony is fucking fifty. Mentally, he's over twice Steve's age. At absolute best, the way Tony treats Steve from the outset is immature and more accurately it's downright cruel. Voluntarily killing himself by driving a plane into ice only to wake up and discover that he has lost everyone he ever loved is undoubtedly one of the most traumatic things that has ever happened to steve, and he just woke up from it. He is two weeks out from this. He's actively having flashbacks of what happened right before Tony starts cracking jokes about it. It'd be like if Steve walked up to Tony right after he got back from Afghanistan and called him Waterboarding Boy and everyone treated it like it was a cutesy character trait.

That's one of the most egregious parts of how Tony's character is written--things that are objectively things that need to be addressed in his character arc area treated like acceptable and borderline justified quirks in his personality. Tony's relationship with his father is one of the cornerstones of his backstory and who he became. While he doesn't have to forgive his father on the road to recovery, he does have to realize when he's using it as an excuse to hurt others and stop it.

That's also something he never does, and one of the reasons why i think that the writers for him need to watch Bojack horseman. In the same movie he's claiming to that he was Steve's friend, he's still saying to his face how much he fucking hated him over things that happened when Steve was supposed to have martyred himself to save the world.

There's multiple parts of Tony's character that could have formed the basis of an amazing character arc if he grew and improved from them, but the narrative refused to even recognize them as problems, let alone have him overcome them, and his relationship with Steve is a perfect example of it. The writer's refusal to recognize that brings down the quality of his entire arc and cheapens him as a character.

If Tony had been allowed to recognize that Steve was not to blame for his father, accepted it, and given a man half his age who just lost everything a lifeline, that would have shown an amazing amount of growth. Instead, they left him as immature and cruel. It's a shame and an insult to the potential of his character, and it's a mistake that they repeat again and again. Tony was supposed to be completely against developing weapons for others, but he canonically helped build a major part of Project Insight. Tony's entire stance in Civil War was meant to show that he had accepted that he made mistakes and that he needed to be held accountable for his actions, but then he went and unilaterally built EDITH, whose existence violates multiple international treaties including the Accords and had so few safety precautions that a teenaged boy was able to accidentally call out a missile strike on his teenaged classmate. He's in a movie where he's driven by his guilt for causing the death of someone's college-aged son, and in that same movie he blackmails a high-school-aged boy to join in on a fight he knows nothing about, that goes directly against his interests, and could get him killed even if he was certain that Team Cap wouldn't use lethal force. Rhodey got paralyzed from the waist down from friendly fire. Tony had a moment in the same fight where he had reason to fear that Peter had been injured if not killed.

Ultimately, Tony's entire character is built on a foundation of repentance and growth. That's why he has so much potential and why he's so compelling. The fact that his writers were unable to recognize when he even needed to repent, let alone allow him to grow, was honestly insulting to what he could have been.

Zola:

The reference to Zola is actually more of a response to fandom’s response to Zola as a whole than the actual specific person who made the comment.

Overall, the majority of fandom response that I've seen just seemed to be sort of besides the point? The thing about Armin Zola working for SHIELD is that I personally have only seen discussion about this in context of talking about how Peggy and Howard are Bad or talking about how steve would feel betrayed when he discovered it. To be honest most of the discourse I’ve seen has just been about hating Peggy Carter and using this as a sledgehammer in that discussion.

It’s not that I disagree with that reading of it—like, I do think Steve felt betrayed by the realization that Zola was recruited in the end, and I think it’s bad to have recruited literal Nazis—but I do think that fandom elevated the most tangential point of it to the detriment of its entire narrative purpose. I've only ever personally seen it used in character discourse and shipping wars--which like, anyone can draw on any plot point they so choose while participating in fandom. But Zola's recruitment was the thematic core of Winter Soldier, and it always seemed kinda weird to me that it was treated as a personal defect in Howard and Peggy when it was the entire argument of the movie and one of the best social commentaries that the MCU ever made.

Zola gives what I think is one of the better MCU villain speeches in the bunker about how Hydra recovered after the war. He states that they realized that taking the freedom of the world by force only galvanised people against them. It led to their own downfall. But he explains that Hydra realized that the people of the world would freely give away their own rights and freedoms if you made them comfortable. If you say you’re doing it for their own safety and comfort, then they’ll effectively look the other way while Hydra seizes control of the world. And that entire monologue is bolstered by the fact that that is exactly what happened in Zola’s case.

Zola was brought into SHIELD as a part of operation paperclip. Operation Paperclip was a post-war initiative by the United States government to recruit key Nazi scientists into United States scientific development. This entire initiative was brought about in response to the Cold War arm’s race and it was justified on the basis of dire national security need. Both America and the Soviet Union were EXTREMELY CONCERNED about losing the cold war. As a result, they were willing to take pretty much any strategic advantage they could, including After, President Truman, who gave the final go-ahead for the initiative, said that "this had to be done and was done."

Even after it became public knowledge, it was defended as more of a necessary evil and the cost of the practicalities of governance than a world power welcoming war criminals with open arms. Multiple participants have been linked to human experimentation, slave labor factories, etc, though none were ever formally found guilty of anything--which may be because the US aggressively whitewashed their pasts and then went so far as to help relocate one of the members of the initiative to Argentina.

This was, again, all a part of the Cold War arms race with the USSR--who had an identical program going at the same time, Operation Osoaviakhim.

En arguendo, let's just assume that all of this was done with the best possible intentions and execution. The nominal rationale was the Cold War. While analyzing the Red Scare and the entire Cold War period would take way too long, I think a solid premise we can agree on is that nuclear war is bad. It would have been disastrous for anyone alive if the Cold War had escalated, and recruiting top scientists from the Nazi regime 1) kept the USSR from doing it instead, which they were actively doing, and 2) helped prevent strategic advantage in one country or another that may have led to an escalation. Now, I'm not a historian, and all of these premises can naturally be debated, but these were the like, best faith premises that world leaders had at the time. If you want a nuclear deterrent, you need the biggest stick.

The thing is that, if you assume these premises as genuine for the sake of the argument, the absolute best this leaves you with is doing a very bad thing for a very important government purpose. You're supposedly preventing nuclear war, but you're doing so at the cost of justice for all the people who suffered at the hands of these people, and the risk of future harm that they may cause.

Which, thematically, is the core of the Winter Soldier.

I've usually seen Zola's recruitment discussed in terms of Peggy or Howard making the decision to let him in, when in reality, they probably didn't make the call themselves so much as become complicit in it later. Zola was captured and recruited right at the end of CA:FA (he later clocks this at 1945) but Peggy and Howard didn't even have an organization at that point, let alone the power to recruit a head Nazi scientist. This was two decades before SHIELD was ever founded, and if we take the Agent Carter series as binding canon, at the time of Zola's transition into American government would, Peggy had so little sway that she couldn't even get anyone to listen to her, let alone recruit a nazi scientist, and Howard was potentially on the run and definitely not involved in any formal governmental decision making. Even if you assume that they were somehow in charge of a government agency at the time of Zola's recruitment, the actual recruitment and function of Operation Paperclip was conducted by independent agencies (Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency and the Counterintelligence Corps) that Peggy and Howard weren't a part of, and the person who made the call for Operation Paperclip itself was The Literal President Of The United States. Whatever way you cut it, Peggy and Howard probably had nothing to do with Zola's initial recruitment--what most likely happened was that two decades passed (the time between Zola's recruitment and SHIELD's founding) and when resources were being allocated some big-shot in the overseeing body was like Yeah You Do Weird Stuff? We Got A Guy Who's Been Doing Weird Stuff For Us For Like Twenty Years and then when Peggy and Howard saw him they were like Oh Its This Motherfucker.

To be clear, this is not at all to absolve howard and peggy for working with a guy they knew did literal human experimentation because he did it on one of their best friends. But this is to more clearly reframe it from Decision They Personally Made to The Ways Being At A Certain Level Of Government Makes You Complicit With Horrible Things, which perfectly encapsulates the heart of the movie.

At the open of the movie, Steve is visibly on a fucking ledge with SHIELD. Fuck, Fury and Nat spend most of the opening trying to keep him from flying the coop. And it's because Steve for the very first time has to grapple with the consequences of being an active participant in a governmental body.

Straight up--Steve spent the entire war going AWOL. His entire military career was spent doing what he wanted and flipping his superior officers the bird. The man was a terrible fucking soldier but by the time anyone figured it out they had already given him a comic book and the Medal of Honor and the man could bench press a tank it was simply too late. Then, he got encased in ice for 70 years, woke up, had two weeks of fun future integration activities like Not Getting Therapy For His Problems and Looking At Pictures Of His Dead Friends, got tapped in because they fucked up with the exact thing he lost everything to stop, immediately went AWOL again, almost died again, went on a roadtrip of self discovery, and at some point between then and CAWS started working as one of the main STRIKE members of SHIELD. This is likely his first time having to ever deal with the realities of being a hand of the government.

One of the most insidious things about high-level government work is there's rarely some Main Guy sitting behind a desk signing Evil Decrees and responsible for everything. Power is allocated and things get messy very quickly.

Take Ghost for example. One of SHIELD'S Main Guys falls out with another Guy, smears his name, which makes the Ex-Guy so desperate that he takes unnecessary risks in his experiments that predictably blow up in his face and leads to his young daughter having a debilitating power that results in her uncontrollably phasing through objects. Another Guy tries to do the right thing and help her, but Other Main Guys think "This kid would make a GREAT assassin" and leverage a cure for her debilitating health condition into turning her into a forced operative. This health condition starts to kill her, but the Main Guys were so happy with their new forced assassin that they never looked for a cure to begin with and was going to use her until she died. She goes rather reasonably goes AWOL, and in her attempts to cure herself, she's willing to do just about anything to get cured, and including contemplating kidnapping Scott's daughter as an option.

Steve obviously wasn't called in to help with that (he was AWOL himself at that point) but assume he was--he would only get pulled into this mess at the very end when all the damage is done and there's a highly unstable assassin kidnapping little girls. SHIELD was at fault for every horrible thing that happened to this person. He has a strong sense of justice, and he'd likely to be furious to find out that SHIELD took an orphanged child and abused their incredibly painful and terminal medical condition, which was indirectly caused by them, in order to force them into becoming a highly skilled operative.

But there isn't just one person that he'd be able to find and blame for what happened with this--culpability was stretched out over Multiple Main Guys who made bad decisions, a lot of Lower Guys who built the suit, trained her, handled her in the field, and experimented on her to learn her limits, many of whom likely didn't even work for the organization any more.

Who do you go after for that? The Main Guy who smeared her dad? But he didn't have anything to do with the assassin business or the actual accident. The Main Guys who made the calls for the assassination thing? Better candidates, but is it that simple? What about the guys who just get orders every day and have no decision making authority, who were handed a little girl who was vulnerable and in pain and told to train her to kill? What about the ones making a child-sized tactical suit with no details about what was going on but who had reason enough to suspect it wasn't all good? They were just following orders, but so were Nazis working the camps.

How do you go after people for that? Fire them? It's been decades. Most are probably retired. And that's a pretty lame punishment for what they did. He doesn't make the calls for legal action, they definitely have qualified immunity for their decisions, and there's a whole host of problems with proving anything.

But, on the flip side, what does he do about Ghost? what happened to her is terrible, but if she had kidnapped Cassie Lang, he couldn't exactly sit on his hands and let it happen no matter the justification. There's a very good chance he has to stop her and become another link in a chain of what's been a lifetime of abuse. Things get messy when you're just a cog in the machine of a sprawling agency that has a lot of power to abuse.

While we don't know what Steve's been doing while he worked for SHIELD, we do know that it pissed him off to high heavens. The very first thing we see him doing for SHIELD is recapturing the off-course Lemurian Star from pirates, and he is the exact opposite of a dutiful soldier during it. He doesn't just salute and follow his orders without question--one of the first lines of his mouth is calling them out for lying about the ship being in those waters because it was off-course. He's like "Oh, so it's not off course, it's trespassing" to which Nat says "I'm sure they had a good reason" and Steve replies "I'm getting a little tired of being Fury's janitor."

He's saving the hostages, and then all of a sudden he finds Natasha in the control room downloading the drive and realizes that this was about SHIELD's data to begin with but no one clued him in on that fact. He's pissed because the hostages could have died, which is a fact he immediately goes after Fury about.

There is so much character jammed into those few minutes of screen time. This is visibly an old argument--at one point, Fury says to him "It's damn near getting past time for you to get with the program, Cap" to which Steve tells him not to hold his breath. Steve doesn't like or approve of a lot of SHIELD's actions, but he's called in after all the bad things they did went to shit. Like, what's he going to do--say, sorry, the Lemurian Star was obviously Up To Some Shit that I don't want to be a part of, RIP to the hostages but I'm just going to let them get shot in the head? He's the janitor and he's sick of getting called into SHIELD fucking something up through their own immoral actions and calling him to pull their ass out of the fire. He spends the entire first half of the movie on the verge of flying the coop entirely, and Nat and Fury visibly know it and are trying to get him off the ledge in every interaction they have on screen with him--which directly contributes to the fact that Steve doesn't trust either of them for the first half of the movie.

It also is likely the motivator behind why he does ultimately trust Sam. Steve spends the first half of the movie getting Managed. He's increasingly pissed and distrustful of SHIELD and its agents, and he's got good reason to be--Nat and Fury hide things from him and keep trying to persuade him to stick with the program (to be clear Nat's (and to a somewhat lesser extent Fury's) own actions and whether any culpability for things like project insight could possibly be imputed to her has to be analyzed under an entirely different lens due to the difference in her personal history and character type, but this is already way too long to tackle that here. this isn't actually meant to assign blame to her, but more to analyze the likely results on steve). Fury takes him for a tour of his Fascist Death Machine and tells him that's what the world needs. The neighbor he was growing increasingly intimate with was a SHIELD agent who lied to him about her name and the fact that she was spying on him. At the end of the day, the majority of the of the early movie is spent with his desires and principles are treated as secondary and unwanted complications to the fact that they really need him to keep throwing that shield on SHIELD's behalf (whether this is actually what nat and fury specifically are trying to do is, again, a separate analysis we don't have time for, this is just to go to how it likely affects and appears to Steve).

Sam, meanwhile, is beautiful and charming is the only one who openly expresses a genuine concern for Steve as a person and not steve as a solider. Sam spends the entire first half of the movie reaching out to someone in a position he's been in himself and trying to get him help. his entire first meeting with Steve is defined by him trying to help a fellow Vet recover from war. he tries to gauge where Steve's at with the future, invites him to the VA, and packages it in a easily-seen-through excuse that gives them both plausible deniability--Steve can come by and get the help he needs not as Captain America The Man The Myth The Legend Who Is Really Fucking Struggling, but as Steve the guy helping Sam impress the girl at the front desk.

When he comes to the VA, Sam has the direct opposite response that everyone else in the movie has to Steve questioning his place in SHIELD and in government work--he's like "Quit. Quit now. Be free and beautiful like me. become an ultimate fighter or whatever the fuck you want." He doesn't give two shits about what the world will do without Captain America keeping it safe--he just cares about what Steve needs.

This all goes to a greater analysis about how Sam is beautiful and charming the perfect parallel to Steve, the only one who could possibly have taken up his shield, and actually wrong in that line he says about how he does what Steve does but slower because he consistently decides to do the right thing before Steve is another analysis that would go too far off the point to get into. The point being is that Sam exists in the narrative as the direct opposite and alternative to the reality fury and nat offers Steve. Steve spends the beginning of the movie with Nat and Fury seemingly sacrificing the means for the end, but there's Sam, beautiful and charming someone who made the same decision he's now faced with, being like "fuck it. sometimes you have to walk."

Steve's entire struggle about his position with SHIELD reaches its climax when he first finds out the truth of Project Insight.

For the avoidance of any doubt, SHIELD secretly being infiltrated by HYDRA has no effect on how wrong Project Insight was from the start--it just emphasized how horrifically wrong it could go. But "Space Super Death Weapon That Can Immediately Kill Dangers To National Security" is a bad idea no matter who is in charge of it. First off, Steve is right--punishment follows the crime. No government has a crystal fucking ball and anyone who justifies things on the basis of "taking out threats ahead of time" is talking out their ass. to be clear, i'm not saying you need to wait for someone to be on a plane and flying at the twin towers to stop a terrorist attack--in law, we have a designated level of "closeness" that lets us say "yeah you were totally actually doing what we don't want you doing" at which point you can charge them with attempt, and often a lot of the earlier steps leading up to the Big Harmful Thing are actual crimes you can intervene with.

Project Insight was the flagship of of a "quantum surge in threat analysis." It did exactly what it was designed to do: it took out threats before they became threats. The only difference between SHIELD being at the helm and HYDRA is who gets defined as a threat. HYDRA would have defined that as anyone from a high school valedictorian in Iowa to Stephen Strange, but it's not any better if SHIELD's defining that as some random kid in Afghanistan who shows whatever traits show a risk for one day becoming a combatant.

And yet, steve's the only one in the movie who says this. We don't actually know how much Nat knows about Project insight itself, but Fury is fully aware and a participant in it, and Tony Stark apparently took one look at the thing and said "your engines are shit. i'll improve them." Steve takes one look at them and calls it fascist bullshit.

At the end of the day, you can never justify shit like this under the assumption that the people controlling it will use it for the best, because you cannot trust the people controlling it. Yeah, Project Insight was probably pitched with being used against the worst threats. Dangers to public safety, terrorists, that kind of thing. Do you want to know who else was considered a danger to public safety? MLK, who the FBI fucking murdered. The people who define threats to national security are the ones who have the same incentive to maintain the status quo in an unjust world. Even if we assume Project Insight was made to stop the next 9/11, we also have to assume that at least some of the strikes it would have carried out under not-HYDRA control would have been for the wrong reasons.

What the fuck does all of this this have to do with Zola?

Operation Paperclip and Peggy and Howard's decisions within it directly mirrors Project Insight and Fury's decisions within it, directly mirrors Steve's journey and central conflict over the course of the film, and directly contrasts with the alternative Sam poses within it.

CA:WS at its thematic core, says that initiatives that sacrifice justice for claims of national security and public safety are exactly what robs us of our rights and freedoms and ultimately endangers us all. It's not even subtle--Zola says it out loud in his evil villain speech. but operating at a high level in a government agency puts you in a position where you're meant to make that decision again and again, even if we assume you have the best of intentions.

Peggy and Howard were people who believed that they had to make the hard decisions to save the world. They were handed a decision where perception of culpability was obscured by how distributed out the blame was, and the direct public benefit to national security was posed to be overwhelmingly good. It leads to SHIELD's infiltration. Project Insight went through on the exact same reasoning. Fury, Maria Hill, possibly Nat, and Tony (off-screen) all do the exact same thing and justify the means by the end, and it leads to the helicarriers being made.

Steve spends the movie being told, explicitly, to "get with the program" and start making the same decisions. His central conflict is being someone on the inside of this club, being told that he needs to start understand what keeping the world safe demands, and his journey leads to him refusing to do it. The climax of the movie is a character so minor that we never learn his name refusing to launch the helicarriers with a gun pointed at his head, even though the complicity he carried in it would have been just as attenuated as Steve's was as SHIELD's janitor. And all throughout it, there's Sam, someone who left the military explicitly because he couldn't follow the rules he was being given anymore.

Peggy and Howard's decision to go along with Zola in Operation Paperclip is a direct parallel of the decisions Fury made with Project Insight and the decisions Steve ultimately refuses to make himself. Making Peggy and Howard complicit in what let in Arnim Zola encapsulates the entire core argument of CA:WS and it's so weird to me that I've only ever seen it discussed in shipping wars and discourse as to whether a Character Is Bad.

Peggy and Howard, ultimately, were members of a governmental task force who made the Hard Decisions for The Public Good. As an inherent part of that role, they did bad things. Unjust things. They undoubtedly saved the world multiple times over as a part of their tenure as the head of SHIELD, but it would be absolute naivety to assume that anyone in that position didn't become complicit in terrible fucking things. It's the direct product of their positions in the government, and it's exactly what leads to Steve's position in Civil War. it is absolutely bonkers to me how people watched Winter Solider and then reacted to Steve's opposition to the Accords like Local Imperialist Military Boy Refuses To Listen To Anyone Else. Steve just had a masterclass in how people in the government make decisions that sacrifice justice up to and including people he once trusted with his life. Of course he didn't fucking trust General Human Experimentation And I Consider Bruce Banner The Property Of The United States Military with his every action as Captain America. He had just learned that he couldn't even trust Peggy and Howard with it.

#this became very long #and you know what #if i want to say the same thing in the tags of some unsuspecting person's post then that's my right #more tags when #more tags NOW

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