#isn't bad but nothing can compare to that era
Text
I actually really like the idea of a Scooby Doo prequel centered around the Mystery Gang before they became friends.
Velma is your typical nerd who's interested in true crime. She started off solving small mysteries around her neighborhood, like where someone's missing cat went or who stole someone's bike. Then, some sort of really big mystery happens that the police completely overlook. Maybe students are ending up dead or missing or something like that.
She goes to the same school as Fred, Daphne, and Shaggy, but never talked to them due to personal assumptions. Fred is a popular jock, and a lot of his teammates bully Velma and force her to do their homework for them, so she doesn't trust him either. Daphne is a pretty rich girl who hangs out with a group of mean girls who also make fun of girls like Velma. Even though Fred's group and Daphne's group overlap, the two of them have never really spoken to one another before. Then, there's Shaggy who always shows up to school late, never knows the answer to teachers' questions, and sleeps through half of his classes.
Eventually, one of Daphne's friends get kidnapped. So, one night, she sneaks into the school to find some clues at the same time as Velma. Fred's there because he forgot his uniform, and Shaggy just likes hanging out at the school to do his homework in peace and quiet. They all team up for a while until security gets involved, and Fred helps them into a speedy getaway as the only one with his driver's license.
With Fred driving them home, the group decides to at least have a temporary team-up. Daphne and Velma have a shared goal, Fred likes having friends for the first time in forever, and Shaggy doesn't want to be the odd man out.
They get closer as they solve the mystery together. Fred isn't a jerk, and is super sweet and amazing at building all sorts of things, especially traps. Shaggy always brings the gang food he made, and eventually introduces them to his talking dog who may or may not be immortal. Daphne invites everyone to her house for sleepovers, helps Velma explore her style in a way that's still comfortable to her, and reveals her endless knowledge about every single person in the entire town.
The mystery gets solved, and the four stays friends. The End :)
#velma#shaggy rogers#shaggy#scooby doo#velma dinkley#daphne blake#fred jones#daphne#scooby#fred#norville rogers#what's new scooby doo#will always be the best version of the mystery gang#velma show#velma series#hbo velma#velma the series#velma hbo max#scooby doo mystery incorporated#isn't bad but nothing can compare to that era#moth speaks
5K notes
·
View notes
Text
𝐢𝐟 𝐢𝐭 𝐛𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐬 | 𝐞𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐞 𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐧
You don’t mean to make an enemy of Eddie Munson — he’s handsome, and talented, but he’s the biggest jerk you’ve ever met. Eddie thinks you’re infuriatingly pretty, emphasis on the infuriating. Too bad you just can’t seem to leave each other alone. [13k]
fem!reader, enemies-to-lovers, rival rockstars, mutual pining (and hatred), slight miscommunication, angst, hurt-comfort, eddie has mixed intentions, kissing / heavy petting, hickeys, sexual tension, eventual hate-fucking, some misogyny (not eddie), TW readers bandmate is a bully, TW drugs/alc/smoking, disclaimer: I can’t play an instrument
𓆩❤︎𓆪
Indianapolis International Airport, Indiana, Late 1988.
There's a really sweet-looking boy sitting in the chair across from you. The airport is blotted out by both your headphones —huge chunky cans, the best you could afford— and your sunglasses. He's a shade of sepia from the lenses, dark hair darker still where it's tucked into the hood of his hoodie.
There's no way he could possibly know you're staring at him while you're facing your lap, scribbling lyrics for a song that'll never get made with your body curled inwards, and yet he looks up from the novel in his. He smiles, his cheeks pulled up, and he looks younger. He isn't old by any means but something about his smile is transformative.
You don't mean to give yourself away. You smile back just a little.
He says something. You push your headphones around your neck and break the seal, soft 70's rock replaced by the sounds of the airport, footsteps and clicking and children laughing somewhere behind you.
"I'm sorry," you say, covering the cans of your headphones to cut their weak buzzing, "what did you say?"
"I said you have good taste."
He nods toward your guitar case patterned in overlapping band stickers.
You notice his own case on the seat next to him. It's more conspicuous than your own with only one sticker, a band you've never heard of.
"I wish I could say the same, but I don't know who that is, 'Corroded Coffin'?" you ask, purely curious.
He sits forward, a picture of casual confidence as he drops his face into his palm, elbow digging into the ripped jeans covering his knee. "I'm offended, sweetheart. They're only the best sound to come out of Indiana in the last ten years."
"The Stacey's?" you offer, scandalised by his suggestion. "Doorway to Cooperstown? The Cats?"
He blinks at you. "You know the scene."
"It's my scene," you say.
You don't mean to sound pretentious, and hopefully you don't, but music is your life.
"It's mine, too," he says. He leans forward and scrubs a hand through his hair, scratching absentmindedly. "Where are you going? Must be pretty important to tear you away."
"New York. I'm– I'm a techie for Godless. I will be, once I get there." You sound smug and nervous at the same time.
"Holy shit," he says. He smiles a gorgeous, awful kind of smile, like you've been friends for years, and your good news is his. "No fucking way. Go you."
Godless have been compared to loads of bands but the one you favour is a heavier, feminine The Clash. It's an emerging sound, punk rock stolen, repurposed, and remade. Reborn by girlhood rage. You love their sound (though you have some notes), you love their statement, and you're probably the happiest you've ever been knowing you'll be behind the scenes of a new era of music.
"And you're taking her?" he asks, gesturing to your guitar case.
Inside is a beat up old bass guitar you got for nothing. You're self-taught, you're good, but you don't have any disillusions on what you'll be doing on tour.
"She's worthless," you say, "mostly taking her for company." You reuse his pronouns, though you aren't the type to assign personality to your instruments. "What about you, uh–"
"Eddie," he says, taking his guitar case into two fine hands. Your eyes snag on his ragtag assortment of rings, and he leans over the neck of the case to retake your gaze. "This… is Sweetheart."
—
Hotel Edison, New York, Early 1990.
"We have to go. Why are you guys never ready when I tell you to be?"
You panic slightly. "I need a minute."
"Ananya, could you find, like, a modicum of patience? Fucking annoying."
Sharp, Morgan's unhappiness sounds over the droning drill of your shitty hair dryer. You shift where you're kneeling in front of the floor length mirror to check she isn't talking to you — unusual, but not impossible that her hostility would be aimed at someone who isn't Ananya.
Ananya stands in the middle of the hotel room, thick eyebrows pulled into a familiar scowl.
"Get it together," she says disdainfully, like Morgan's nothing more than a mild inconvenience.
You wish you had her confidence when it comes to Morgan's tantrums. You stand up, clad in nothing more than underwear and a pair of black stockings, your t-shirt in one hand and the hairdryer still humming in the other. You turn it off and let it drop to the floor, worried you're just another rockstar cliche as you take in the state of your room. Your suitcase is open and your clothes are all over the place, laid flat in an attempt to dry your rain-soaked clothes. Your underwear dangle from the lampshade, a mix of pretty lingerie you've yet to wear and full-shaped panties that had made Morgan laugh for a minute, no pauses.
"I can see why you're so desperate," she'd barbed.
You slip your shirt over your head in case you have to act as a human shield. It's honestly not the worst thing they've had you involved in this year.
"You're not wearing that, are you?" Morgan asks.
She's a fascinating creature in that she isn't always talking with thinly veiled passive aggression. You genuinely believe she's looking out for you sometimes, or believe that she believes it, at least. She doesn't say it with malice, simply asks.
She's multi-faceted.
"No," you say, though you'd been meaning to.
"Good, skirts really aren't your thing. You look blocky. I have a pair of flares in my bag, wear them."
And Morgan — Morgan's the lead singer of Godless. You don't really have a choice.
You find the pants she'd instructed you to wear and half tuck your shirt, scrabbling for your shoes as Ananya starts lamenting the time, sat on the small table by the TV.
"They have to wait for us, babe, that's the whole point," Morgan says, fussing over her eye make-up.
"No, they don't. And we really don't need the attention right now."
"That's dramatic."
Ananya leans forward and clicks on the TV with a perfect finger. The screen buzzes to life. She clicks through the channels until she gets to the local news station, and then she slumps over the frame on her elbow.
You giggle behind your hand. Onscreen, images of Morgan are blown up and slated, your bandmate sloppy drunk on the steps of Covey Gold. They've caught you red-handed in the background pretending you aren't with her, but luckily Morgan's too obsessed with herself to notice.
"I really don't see the issue," she says breezily, slipping into her tiny heels one foot at a time. "I look sick."
She looks stunning, easily, but that's not the problem.
"You have a fucking snow trail," Ananya says.
Unfortunately, Morgan's left nostril is crusted with coke.
"It's punk rock!" Morgan's moved onto earrings now, and she's jutting her tiny pointed chin toward the door. "Hello? We're late."
You don't roll your eyes, but you could. You slip your shoes onto your feet and tuck the laces inside without tying them while the news anchor on TV continues to relay current events.
"Fletcher isn't the only rockstar making a mess in New York City this week. Members of up and coming heavy metal band Corroded Coffin were sanctioned by Flume Venues Tuesday night for damaging twenty six thousand dollars worth of equipment when their lead guitarist kicked over an amp and caused a quote unquote 'domino effect.'" The anchor laughs. "Their PR has certainly felt some corrosion."
You look up at the joke and are just in time to catch a picture splayed across the screen of the band. You're so close that their faces are made up of red, blue, and green, more colour than photo. Your skin glows with the image. Your eyes widen, perplexed.
"Do we know those guys?" you ask.
Morgan grabs your hand and drags you up. "They know us," she says. "That's what matters."
Ananya turns off the TV.
You're thrilled at being included in the 'us'. You've been an unofficial official member of Godless for four months now. Each one feels more unreal than the first, and each one brings a solidity. In Ananya's words, you're on 'probation, given you can keep up', but you look at her now, her hopeless expression as she closes your room door behind you, and know she's not hoisting you off the stage anytime soon. She'd have to deal with the world's tallest toddler alone.
Your tour manager and assorted personnel meet you in the hotel's lobby, furious and panicky at your being late. Morgan spouts the same spiel as you get shepherded into cars idling outside of the hotel.
"We're the talent. What were you gonna do, throw the gig without us?"
You're both embarrassed by her and impressed. Morgan is pretty and talented and extremely loud — she's not afraid to stick up for herself, even when she's (nearly always) wrong. She sees each hurdle in her life as an unfair disadvantage. Insanity, in your opinion, considering nearly all of those hurdles have been jumped by means of a favour, rather than any expended effort on her part.
Her bad attitude aside, she's a good singer. She's gorgeous, exactly the kind of face that obliterates mainstream reluctance.
She sits between you and Ananya and kicks her feet out over the console, boots between your driver and your tour manager, Angel.
"You guys can't be late like this. You have half the time you need for sound check now, you realise?"
"I don't need practice," Morgan says.
"It's not practice, Morgan, it's–"
Morgan laughs and bursts into song. She does it whenever she doesn't want to listen to Angel, and she sings an apt tune: Angel by Aerosmith. You look out the window rather than watch, eyes snagging on the wet New York streets and taxis and people, so many people despite the weather, black umbrellas like inverse stars lining the sidewalks.
Morgan has a great voice, raw when she wants it to be and full of life when she doesn't. You can't hear Angel's venue instructions under it and are barely paying attention as a lanyard gets tossed into your lap. It sounds stupid, and a few months ago you wouldn't believe it, but you get used to the motions. Ferried from one place to another, all anybody cares about is technicalities, politics, public image, and how you look on stage. All you care about is the music. Your bass guitar in your hands, that familiar weight, the strings as your pick slides across them, and the sea of the crowd. Its waves and ripples, hands and eyes and mouths like poppies, red-pink tongues and black throats at the centre as they scream. When you throw your pick people want to catch it. They fight over it. You throw a few. There's always more in a box in some poor techies bag.
The cushy car you're in pulls up and parks outside of the venue's main entrance. You climb onto a wet curb and shield the top of your hand with your head, dirty rain splashing down in fat, sparse drops that chill your scalp. Morgan blitzes inside and Ananya tags behind her. You go slower, eyes following down the sidewalk where, in a couple of hours, fans will wait to see you, shivering in the cold.
—
Every breath Gareth takes sucks in Eddie's short sleeved t-shirt. Eddie scowls at the top of his bandmate's head and tries to shift away.
"Seriously, man? There's a whole fucking couch," Eddie grouches.
Gareth sits up with bleary eyes furrowed into a scowl of his own. He's pale and missing his glasses, giving him the appearance of a concerned zombie.
"Shithead."
Eddie has a lot of emotions he wants to express and none he feels he can properly articulate. The injustice of his current situation, for one, is a burning irritant. How the fuck can you get grounded by your manager? And why did his warden have to be the most boring member of the band? Sorry Gareth.
"Can't you sleep in your bed?" Eddie asks.
"You'll sneak out."
Eddie will sneak out. He's a fledgling rockstar in New York. Suddenly, there are a hundred colourful boozy doors wide open to him, and he intends on haunting the threshold of each one accordingly.
But you kick one amp and boom, you're the antichrist.
"You know this is stupid."
Gareth rubs his eyes. "I mean, do I know that?" He reaches behind the couch armrest for the two-litre bottle of soda stashed there, and he talks as he brings the lip to his mouth. "You've been a real pissant lately, Munson."
"You're a pissant, pissant," Eddie says, really scowling now.
Gareth kicks him across the sofa. Eddie kicks back, foot jamming into the side of Gareth's knees. Soda spills in a shoot over the carpet. Gareth is a know-it-all with a predisposition for being as unpleasant as he can possibly be at all times, in Eddie's opinion, and Eddie knows the second the soda lands what he's going to say.
"Nice going, hotshot. This is why you're fucking grounded."
Eddie's halfway across the sofa when the door opens, an unimpressed Jamison standing with the light behind him. He flicks on the main switch and glares, brown skin golden in the resulting yellow light.
"What are you losers doing?"
"I prefer the term 'freak'," Gareth says, glare softening. "I'm fending off Munson's advances, what does it look like? No means no, asshole."
"You're disgusting," Eddie says.
"You look disgusting," Jamison echoes. "I don't know who forgot to tell you, but they invented running water a century ago. Go shower. I'll watch baby boy."
Eddie thinks Jamison is hot in the freaky way — Jamison is conventionally attractive, and Eddie would let him get freaky if he asked. He has a perfect complexion, the most attractive of the band by far, medium brown skin and a broad-shouldered frame. He's the eye-candy, literally; they'd admitted him into the fold based one parts on his talent, two parts his image.
He can play piano, guitar, bass guitar, violin, all that shit. He's a musician, and he's better than Eddie at everything but the guitar.
Nobody's better than Eddie on guitar. At least, not anybody running in his circles.
"I can't shower, I'm watching him."
"I'll watch him," Jamison says, like this is extremely obvious and Gareth is an idiot.
Eddie pulls a couch cushion over his face and drags himself onto his back, whining into the fabric unhappily. "This is fucking bullshit," he mutters
"This is due diligence," Gareth says. Eddie feels his weight lift off the couch and lets his legs slide into the empty space.
"This is fucking bullshit," he repeats.
There's a silence. He sulks. Gareth collects toiletries and the bathroom door clicks open and closed. The shower spray begins to sputter, and then the pillow is being tugged out of Eddie's hands and tossed aside.
"Jame," he protests.
"Shut up." Jamison stares down at Eddie. "Are you done being a child?"
"I already told you, it was an accident. Yeah, I kicked the amp, because my fucking string snapped and nobody would listen to me. I didn't know it was gonna actually move."
"If we go out, can you behave?" Jamison asks quietly.
Eddie sits up ramrod straight. "Absolutely… Why? What's so important?"
"Jeff's asleep, I'm bored, and-" He shrugs offhandedly. "If you got 'em, flaunt 'em?"
Jamison holds up a silver pair of car keys. They clink together, the sound music to Eddie's ears.
—
So you and Eddie meet for the second time like this.
“Does it have to be this loud?” you shout over the music, pleading gaze on Ananya, who shrugs.
She looks better after a show, even drunk. Her lipstick is a pink-red with a darker but incomprehensible outline, leaving her looking kissed sick. Her dark eyebrows are ruffled and thick, their minimal gel sweated off. She has the most heartbreaking expression about her, and you think it isn’t truly fair, how she can look so pretty and be so talented at the same time. A tragedy that other people have time for both. You feel as though you barely have the time for one.
Despite the volume, you love the sound. This is your sound. Small town hatred in a big room — begging to get out and the music proof enough that you did. It’s passionate and anxious, a two-chord progression that’s boggling simplistic but drawing you in anyhow. Wrinkled noses and bored eyes say it’s not to everyone’s taste, but you’d hazard a guess that whoever plugged it into the stereo isn’t the kind of person who worries about public opinion. If Godless worked more on your choices, this is how you’d sound.
“Whose house are we in?” you ask.
“Babe,” Ananya says, “seriously, there’s a whole room of people who want to answer you. Go bother someone.” Else. Go bother someone else.
She dismisses you with little more than that, slinking into the kitchen with a toss of her thick hair. The red of her corset top darkens to a bloodier shade in the mood lighting. She looks as though she’s bleeding out from the back.
You aren’t sure Ananya’s right. You aren’t, in the eyes of the people here, anything impressive. A techie who’s been filling in isn’t anything new, no, you’re only impressive if you get to stay, if you play better than anybody else. You’re never gonna prove that under Morgan’s thumb, and you’ll never prove it without her.
I need a bump, you think. Morgan’s coke nose flashes in your mind and you change your mind. I need something to drink. Something fucking cold, but if Ananya thinks you’ve followed her into the kitchen she’ll throw a pissy fit in front of everybody.
The room is a gaudy yellow, a tobacco stained fingerprint over the lampshade with whorls of dirt in lines, darker patches where shadier reconciliation plays; in one corner, a bag of coke, another something worse. This had been a surprise with age rather than location, the commonplace of cocaine and the bravado of its sufferers from high school and up. You’d die for some of that cocky confidence now, numb gums and a sullen credit card.
I need to get paid.
The heat of a cigarette tip kisses your shoulder. In your ear, the sound of someone taking a long, slow drag, crackling paper. You turn into it slowly, looking up slower, right into the skinny face of your missing-in-action bandmate.
“What’s up?” Morgan asks, blowing her smoke in your face. Your eyes burn.
She’s placing the cigarette between your lips before you can answer. Whether she believes she’s tormenting you or throwing you a life raft, you’re grateful for it, sucking in a blistering breath and wincing as it floods your nose.
You blow it away from her.
“Ashtray?” you ask, pinching the cig between two fingers.
“The floor’s fine.”
You raise your eyebrows, unsurprised at her cavalier suggestion and flick it still smouldering into your cupped palm. The door is perpetually open, guests flicking in and out like the froth of a cresting wave, a rushing entrance and a sluggish recession.
“Can you get me a bag?” you ask her.
“I’m not your daddy,” she murmurs.
“Bored already?”
“I have to be bored?”
To bother bothering you? Yes, Morgan would have to be bored. Bored or wasted, and she doesn’t seem inebriated. You place the cig between your teeth and lean your head back to look at the ceiling rather than give her the attentive watching she desires, the roof of your mouth an uncomfortable heat.
You remove it, blow all your smoke skyward, and drop your head. “How are you gonna fuck with me tonight?” you ask plainly.
You find you aren’t asking Morgan.
In her place stands a much taller, much more handsome face, big eyes set into pale skin. You don't recognise him at first. He wears the uniform well, in company with every other guy in the room, a crumpled shirt you imagine discarded and re-discarded on different floors. Ripped, dark jeans. He could be wearing nothing at all and the air of intimidation surrounding him would survive — there's something behind his eyes that alarms you, a knife's edge. Sweetness bordering cruelty.
"I don't know yet," he says. An insipid smile takes his lips from corner to corner as he eases the cig from your hand. "I'm sure we can think of something… together. Sweetheart."
Boys don't always give you the time of day, not the nice ones, and he doesn't look very nice. He looks like he's trying to calculate what he can get out of you. You're thinking you'll pay just about anything if he can get you a bump of something fun.
He sees your look too, his lips poised to mention it, but you've just realised where you know him from.
"I saw you on TV."
"Yeah? In Madison Square Garden?"
"In court." You give him your best doe eyes, a soft, sweet look, far from mastered and yet effective where it counts. "How much did you have to pay for all the stuff you broke?"
His smile shutters, realigns. A split-second and enough to let you know his cool gaze is nothing more than a parlour trick.
"You look familiar," he says.
You hum. "Rollerboy paid, huh?"
He glares, the idea that his record label might pay for the damages he'd caused laughable and undoubtedly correct. You aren't trying to make enemies, aren't attempting to play someone you're not — you're meek mannered, mollycoddled, too naive to be in the industry for very long. You can see it on his face, exactly what he's thinking, and it's easy to see because everybody else is thinking it too. Even you.
Before you can repair the offence you've caused, he's dropping your stolen cigarette on the ground and grinding out the flame.
"Nice to meet you," he says slowly.
You stare straight ahead and listen to him leave. Smoke tickles your nose. When you look down, the cigarette is smouldering. You squat down, pick up the flattened bud, and drive it into the floor until your fingers are black with soot.
You wrap those same ashy fingers around the neck of a bottle of coke and try not to be too pissy about it. Fucking rockstars and their fucking egos. He did something embarrassing, and you're the villain?
You feel bad halfway through your coke. Maybe he'd had nice intentions, but how could you know? You'd talked for all of two minutes. And even if he was bad news, he likely wouldn't have been any worse than half the jerks here.
He'd have had a handsome face to look up into while said intentions were being acted out, at least.
You frown more. Wishing you'd been nicer to him because you're bored enough to want to get laid isn't strictly kind. Human, maybe.
The feeling worsens when his appearance garners a small crowd. He sits in a nest of dirty couch cushions and a cloud of smoke, the smell of green strong enough to irritate you from here, telling a story with frenetic hands, and despite the cool look he'd given you earlier, he's making a show of it. Cussing, giggling, blunt between his lips as he ushers for a zippo. A pretty girl with surfer curls relights it, an act of flirting in the way she pulls her shoulders in.
He takes the blunt from between his lips and blows the smoke so it misses her completely.
"Thanks, sweetheart," he says, voice rough as hewn stone.
You kick one shoe behind the other and squeeze your tired thighs together. You get this feeling like a matchstick, red powdered head flicking against gritty scratchpad but failing to strike. Something is familiar about the way he speaks, his sticky inflection.
Or you're lying to yourself, and you just like the way he talks
The way he would've spoken, thick fingers braceleting your wrists as he forces your hands into the pillow behind your head, the weight of his body on top of yours, the snugness of a knee between your soft thighs. Your hotel light would've kissed his left side, dividing his curls into strands, the individuals glowing like silver thread as they danced over your cheek and temple, as his breath warmed your lips, as he closed the distance.
Joan, you could hit him.
"That's an unfortunate hand. Are you sober?"
Cheeks full of heat at being caught in a fantasy, you lift your eyes and meet light, almond brown eyes almost entirely shielded by darker eyebrows. A man stands in front of you, a comfortable gap between his nondescript skate shoes and your worn boots. He's tall and pretty and surprising: he's smiling at you like you're something worth smiling at.
"I'm–" You brandish the bottle as if that might explain it but harshly set it aside. "No, not sober. I mean, not willingly. Coke's were out here, so…"
"Oh, right," he says, nodding knowledgeably. "Right, I was sorry to hear about that."
You lick your lips. "'Bout what?"
"They banned beautiful women from the kitchen," he says. "Hadn't you heard?"
"No, that one passed me by."
"I'm Jamison," he says, holding out his free hand.
You take it. You tell him your name.
—
Morgan is crying. Big heaping sobs that she attempts to talk through, creating this ringing whining sound that fills you top to toe with anxiety. You lean back in your hotel bed, wondering what it is in the world that could've happened to her as a kid to make her this unsatisfied now. Ananya blows on her freshly painted nails though they've been dry for hours, knee to knee with you atop the squishy hotel sheets.
"I can't fucking do this," Morgan cries, tears dripping down her bare skinned cheeks.
The three of you have been sworn off of makeup, junk food, and unapproved wash products for the next four to five hours. You're happy for this to continue until the end of time. Morgan, less so.
You're trying to decipher exactly why she's crying, feeling a confusion you'd liken to the first modern day archaeologist that laid eyes on ancient hieroglyphics. All these symbols and colours and stories. No clear translation.
If Ananya were an archaeologist, she's the kind who got to see the Rosetta stone. Morgan's moods make sense to her, and while she often doesn't empathise with her, she at least knows what to say to appease the worst of it.
"It'll be alright, Morgs," she says, her faux sympathy unconvincing.
You feel a little sorry for Morgan and clear your throat. "And you're not by yourself. We're here."
"Fucking amazing help you've been," Morgan says. Her voice does a theatrical peak, pure hysterics.
It irks you how good she looks. You think that, maybe, if you could make your problems pretty the way that she does, you'd be a lot happier overall. You've often lamented that you suffer the kind of unhappiness that makes people uncomfortable and unwilling. You cry ugly, and always alone, hands over your mouth to smother the sounds, and that's when you do cry. Mostly, you bounce around inside yourself and feel very afraid that this feeling is forever.
But, you think presently, that isn't Morgan's fault. Not all of it.
Morgan throws her hands out at you and Ananya and spins on her heel, through the bathroom and into her own separate room.
"At least the backdrop of her breakdown is nice," you murmur, hugging the pillow against your stomach, heels digging into the mattress to keep your knees up.
Ananya snorts and flicks to the next page of her magazine. "Right?" She stretches her naked legs out over your sheets. You know she's decided to ruin your bed with her after-waxing oils rather than her own. "Better here than back home."
"Why's she so upset?" you ask.
Already, your thoughts are starting to drift. You take another peek at the phone across the room and will it into ringing.
"She draws them on everyday anyway," Ananya says agreeably.
You summarise that Morgan's eyebrows are the root of the problem. You don't blame her for wanting to look perfect tomorrow night. Your stomach is a weight every time you think about it, solid as petrified wood. This will be your first TV appearance that isn't a recorded concert, a mid-show performance for the Prover Music Awards, and it should further cement your place in the band. If you look good and people like you, public favour might be enough to keep you around. If they don't, there'll be a couple hundred different audience members with industry links. If you play well, and you're certain you will, you might finally prove to Morgan, Ananya, and the rest of the management team that you're worth choosing.
You want it badly. You want lots of things, and being a real part of Godless could hand them all to you on a studded platter. Recognition of your talent, further experience, the chance to perform and be supported, to be adored, and the money isn't something you'll pretend you don't think about. A rockstar's salary is hardly stable, but a lack of stability is almost always supplemented by the amount. Wouldn't that be nice? To buy your own bass, to buy whatever you liked. To go out and have spa treatments like the one you'd had just this morning whenever you please. To get to feel beautiful and limp as this all the time. More than anything, you want the validation, the poster that comes with it.
If Godless decides to keep you, it's a huge, blinking, neon-lit sign that says you're good enough.
They chose me, and you're stupid for letting me go.
They chose me. I'm something worth something. You didn't see it, but it's there in me.
The subtext isn't important.
You're scared shitless at the reality of performing tonight, knowing any fuck up could follow you, or worse ruin your hopefully budding career in rock for the rest of time. You have this body and this name, and if you want to keep your life you have to be good. It has your fingers itching for your piece-of-shit bass guitar where you know she's hiding under the bed. You should be practising, but this entire week has been practising. The dress rehearsal went well, and you'll give yourself a pass for having certain distractions.
Morgan warbles. You glance at the phone.
"Waiting for someone?" Ananya asks. She misses nothing.
You both wince as Morgan screams and throws something across her bedroom, the eventual clattering smash indicative of a fragile target.
"Think room service will send up a sedative?" she asks.
Room service won't send a sedative, nor will they send the single hashbrown Morgan is apparently craving. You're starting to panic when the solution practically jumps at you.
"Morgan," you say gently, standing in the doorway of her room with a tentative smile, "can't offer you something, can I?"
You hold up your little pouch. Morgan doesn't know you well, but she knows it's where you keep anything interesting. She should know, she pilfers it of anything truly exciting within the day.
"Don't be stupid," she scathes. "My eyes will be bloodshot. You know smoking doesn't agree with me."
You hold in a comment on how she'd literally been smoking out of the window last night.
"It's a brownie. It's a couple days old, but… perfectly edible." You offer her the pouch, dropping it at the end of the bed among her things.
She picks at the brownie, timid princess bites that make you want to roll your eyes. You often think the worst thing about Morgan is that you love her, or you could love her more, if only she felt the same way. She isn't all evil and she never will be, she's just a person. But she takes shit out on you and makes your life harder than it needs to be, so even her most endearing moments fall short.
"This tastes awful."
You laugh and kneel down at her dresser to start putting her thrown jewellery box back together. "It wasn't that nice when I got it," you lie.
You clean her room. Morgan never wants to do anything she knows can be done for her, and you know she won't bother here, not when room service will spend the hour it takes themselves. You think of some poor service worker squaring away the impossible amount of stockings and garters for a sad $3.45 an hour and the task suddenly becomes much more enjoyable.
Morgan doesn't say thank you. You don't insult her intelligence by thinking she isn't aware of what you're doing. She sniffles and blows her nose daintily with a balsam tissue.
"I saw you talking to that guy from Corroded Coffin."
You brush off your knees as you stand. "Which one?"
"Eddie. The rhythm guitarist."
"The loud one."
"He's kind of hot. If he calls, you should go out with him."
"That's not–" who I'm waiting for. You squint at her. "Morgan, that would be terrible."
"Can you get me something from the minibar?"
You kick open her minibar and grab a cold can of seltzer. She slides onto her back and accepts it, pressing it to her eyes with a relaxed smile. Eyebrows forgotten, it seems.
"That would be perfect. He can be the cat to your mouse."
"Your definition of perfect–" You cut yourself off again when she starts to laugh. You don't believe it to be genuine.
She lounges in bed for an hour until she's high, reappearing in you and Ananya's suite with a dizzying smile. You don't mind high Morgan. She's smoked enough in her time to bypass the dizzying, giggly kind of stoner. This Morgan is relaxed, almost easygoing. She sits at the end of your bed and watches you pluck out a bass line proposal for one of their current works in progress, head bobbing.
An hour again and the stylists appear to spray you down with smells and oils and make up, and soon you've been strapped into a short shining dress with a cowl neck, dark black stockings that shine like oil, and heels you can't really walk in. You complain about them politely enough that Mel, the man in charge of your 'costuming', swaps them out for shorter ones.
"This fucking corset is a nightmare," Morgan grumbles.
"Sorry, love, that's all we've got."
The commute is over in a blink. You arrive outside of the venue for the Awards, staring up at its imposing silhouette against the skyline, a dark building in the strange blue night. The sun is unseen but light illuminates the wet streets in blinding patches, so white they glow violet behind your eyes.
There's a modest red carpet where you thankfully don't have to pose for many photos. After all, besides being a temporary member of the stage, you aren't truly in Godless. Most casual fans (the majority of their fan base) only know the faces in the magazines and on TV, and you have yet to be in either until tonight.
After a bundle of shy and regretfully nerve-wracking photos, you're drawn inside the building and away from all the flashing hubbub. You sit in your seats, short rows divided by the occasional table for drinks, and you try not to sink into the carpeted floor. It smells insanely like nothing at all. No bleach, no air conditioning cleanliness. Every now and then another guest walks past your row and you get a whiff of perfume.
A familiar scent pricks your attention.
You look up, slightly over your shoulder, and your eyes meet familiar sticky brown.
He drops down in the seat next to you, and you think, No way.
He holds up the placard that had been under his thigh. His name is typed in clear blocked letters.
It's a strange humiliation to have been read for filth like that. You're you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me expression can be pretty telling, evidently.
"Hey, sweetheart."
Matchstick against the box. You tilt your head and try to place him for the tenth time.
"Have we met before?" you ask.
He actually grins like this is the best thing you could've said. "You met my friend," he says, pointing down the aisle.
Jamison stands talking to a woman who is admittedly gorgeous, and, to your sinking horror, much prettier than you. They kiss each other on the cheek and it's the kind of over friendly to make you sick.
Eddie pouts at you. "Better luck next time, sweet thing." He throws one leg over another. "You look different. New haircut?"
"You look exactly the same," you say.
It's surprising how untouched he is. Sure, he's had some makeup applied and his hairs been tousled into life, but his outfit is remarkable in its simplicity. Surely rockstars can wear suits too? He looks neat and dark and tidy, but he also looks effortless. It's irritating.
This phenomena is not self contained, you find, as his bandmates sit down the row with their managerial chaperones and one date. Jamison sits right at the very end. He doesn't look at you.
You avert your eyes and wonder if it's possible to die from embarrassment.
The venue gets increasingly busy as the bigger names and bands flood inside. Soon, you're sitting amongst legends, people who pretty much spearheaded late 80s glam rock, punk, grunge. People you've only ever seen on TV. And it isn't restricted to alternative sound, there are pop stars and their supermodel girlfriends shaking hands and kissing cheeks in the row behind, while producers with names big enough to make your mouth dry up clap each other on the shoulders in front.
"You'll catch flies."
You turn to Eddie. He doesn't sound entirely cruel. He doesn't sound like much of anything. You could almost believe him to be a friend.
There's a smudge of eyeliner on his cheek.
"You have–" You point at your own cheek, a mirror.
His lightness fades. "Nice."
"No, seriously, you have something. Make up, on your cheek. I have a wipe if you want it."
He scrubs at his cheek ineffectually.
You're reaching out to help before you can stop yourself, witnessing your own actions with a strange out-of-body horror as you wipe the small black line gently. It spreads, and you panic and dab at it until it's an unfortunate grey shadow.
"Let me get the wet wipe," you say. You'd been holding your breath, awkwardness stiff between you, and it sounds too much like a laugh.
Eddie flinches away from your touch and covers his cheek. "I got it," he says stonily.
He leaves, stepping over his bandmates feet like stepping stones, earning a cacophony of protests and disparagments.
Dick, you think. Again, that had been a little bit your fault. Not all of it, he seems to be in a perpetual bad mood that can't be your doing, but you can understand why he might think you were laughing at him, and the defensiveness that comes with it. When he comes back you'll apologise.
Or that's what you tell yourself. The lights go down, the curtains open, and the venue erupts with applause. By the time Eddie takes his seat again you're too afraid of disturbing the quiet.
After half an hour you're ushered backstage. You have to move in front of Eddie and the rest of Corroded Coffin as you go.
He looks up at you in silence. Head tipped back, face barely lit by the lights while you stand in between his legs. His lips part and he's all rockstar, his brown eyes and their edging of straight dark lashes, his pink, pretty lips. He has a distinct line to his nose, a cupid's bow perfectly shaped. His maker must have looked at him and known somebody, somewhere, would want to kiss him right there. His lips twitch.
"Can I help you?" he whispers.
You stammer a response that won't form and Morgan shoves you.
"Fucking move," she says.
His expression flickers.
"Sorry," you say, unsure of who you're talking to. "Sorry." You sound pathetic. A kicked puppy.
You keep your eyes on the floor until you're in the aisle, where a new set of nerves tries to swallow you whole.
—
Eddie knows exactly who you are, and he hates himself for it. He remembers you, the first you, shy and sweet and so excited, sitting pretty in Indianapolis International Airport with your guitar and your huge leaky headphones pounding death metal. While fame has broadened the amount of people who want to sleep with him, it hasn't changed his type, and you'd been a ringer, right there in the middle.
You'd been pretty and maybe you knew it, maybe you didn't, it didn't matter — what he liked most was the way your hands had moved as you spoke, hummingbird thrumming, an energy he'd seen in himself and every other musician desperate for a chance. He loved the passion and your eyelashes and the way you'd smiled as you'd waited for your plane, the two of you destined for New York, where you both seem to have looped back now. Only, he'd been cursed with remembering your every detail, and you either didn't remember him or don't care. Both sting, but he likes the second better. He'll take purposeful cruelty over the casual any day.
Like your thumb pressed to his cheek. The heat, and then your laugh.
"The fuck is this?" Gareth asks, leaning over the space between their two chairs.
Eddie looks up at you on stage and shrugs. While bands made up completely of women aren't new, they aren't as common as bands made up of men, obviously. He likes it, likes your sound, though it's not the kind of thing Corroded Coffin would ever play, and he won't join in on Gareth's doubt. Even if you are, like, a magnanimous shithead. You're good.
"She's hot," he furthers.
"Jesus, Gareth."
"What? She's fucking hot."
He has to squint to see you from this distance, and he can't truly make out many details. Gareth's not wrong. You're pretty, and out of the three members of the band you're the only one who actually looks like they're having a good time.
The lead singer trails around the stage pulling Blond Ambition poses. She can sing well, she has a strong voice that does whatever it is she bends it into, but her propensity to drop the guitar slung around her neck to grab at the microphone stand like it's escaping isn't helping anything.
The girl on drums is arguably given a pass, fighting to keep up with the pace, sweat sticking her thick hair to her neck in glossy spirals and her huge eyes set in concentration. Her messy lipstick sparkles under the stage lights, a party pink that pops against her brown skin.
He thinks you might be trying to cover up the lead singer's sloppy playing. You're good, sure, but it's not the easiest to tell when it's ragtag and rough like this. Only because he's watching does he notice your pick slipping between strings to the floor, and your willingness to strum with the sides of your fingertips. He likes that. The dedication is hot.
"I've never seen a girl on drums who didn't look like a guy," Gareth says. "She's killer. Think I can get her number?"
Eddie groans. "No, you fucking loser."
"I was just asking."
You bounce around and Eddie shifts in his seat, annoyed that he'd assumed you were the one Gareth was talking about.
He claps for you when the song is over and hates how you return to your seat during the break, back in your cute dress and beaming, practically dripping in deodorant and post-show adrenaline.
You apologise again as you step over him, and if there's one thing he doesn't want from you it's a sorry. Twice now you've spoken to him in the last week and twice you've made fun of him like some plaything under your thumb. Eddie isn't in the habit of being under anyone's anything. Apologies feel like salt in the wound, even though he knows you aren't saying sorry for the stuff that's pissing him off.
"What the fuck was that?" Lead girl asks you, sounding about as uptight as she looks as she climbs over your leg. "What were you doing?"
"Morgan, I don't know if you noticed, but you didn't play half of the song," you say defensively, the skirt of your gem-encrusted dress glancing off of his thigh. The gems are tiny, like pinprick stars in country night skies. They shine purple, green, orange.
Morgan holds her hand up for an attendant. When one approaches, she says, "Appletini," and nothing else, waving dismissively. She pulls at her stockings and doesn't notice the ladder she makes near the calf. "You're here to play what you're given."
"I did."
"And only that."
Your silence speaks volumes. What he'd thought to be an edge in Godless' sound may have been an improvisation, something Eddie personally applauds.
"Christ," Morgan says, "you're more trouble than you're worth. I hope you know that."
Eddie believes the sting of her barb to be in the presentation rather than the words themselves, though what she'd said is hardly kind. She looks away from you as she says it, like she's giving instruction far below her station. Factual, concise.
You barely wince. The lights dim, and he watches you contend with how you're feeling from the corner of his eye.
Eddie isn't evil. You may have gotten off on the wrong foot, and he's definitely holding his resentment at being forgotten tight to his chest, but nobody deserves to get shit on like that. You'd played well, you'd had a great time, and that should be commended. What's worse, your lack of a reaction tells him this is a common occurrence.
"I'm gonna go to the bathroom," you say.
Morgan waves you away like she had the waitress. You stand, and you say, "Excuse me," to every person you pass. Eddie put his hand on the back of his chair to follow you up toward the back of the room where the sign for the bathrooms glows green.
He sets his eyes back on the stage and begs himself to stay sitting. Corroded Coffin's nomination for best up and comer has already passed, a loss, and there's no reason he can't nip to the bathroom himself. There's also no reason he should go after you.
Fuck it, he thinks.
What could go wrong? What could go wrong, outside of the women's bathroom, where he has so obviously followed you, where he waits for you like some creeper trying to paw one off on you. He can't hear anything but the running tap. For a moment he thinks you haven't come here to collect yourself after all, you'd needed to pee, which makes his situation that much awkwarder.
Stuck between indecision, he leans against the wall between the women's and men's and digs for a cigarette. His pockets are empty, a precaution for exactly this moment. You can't smoke in the Prover Theatre, pissant.
You appear and blitz past him.
"Hey," he says before you can go too far, "d'you have a card?"
You turn on your heel. Hands already in your purse, you dig out an unopened box of cigarettes and offer it to him. You don't look as though you've been crying or anything like it, but you don't look him head on, so he keeps his theory.
Eddie peels the plastic off of your box and slaps the end against his chest for good measure.
"I don't think you can smoke in here," you say finally. Your voice is tired.
He raises his eyebrows and peers down into the box, pulling a cigarette free and sliding it between his lips. He holds out his hand for a lighter and you give it to him, already waiting with it between two fingers.
He lights it, inhales sharply, and passes you back your carton and lighter with a clouded, "Thanks."
"Yeah."
He's surprised when you don't move. You stand there and watch him smoke, whorls of pearly smoke dissecting the air between you, spider-webs over your pert face. You're waiting for what he doesn't know, so he'll give you something. He's nice.
"She's a piece of work."
You shift uneasily.
"I'm not the feds," he says, pulling the cig from his lips to talk unfettered.
"Forgive me for wondering if you have my best interests at heart."
He beams at you, really smiles, startled and enamoured by your sharp tongue. "Now why wouldn't I?"
You don't say anything, only pull at the neckline of your dress in what's likely a nervous habit. He gets a flash of the top of your chest and looks away. He thinks you're beautiful in a rather understated way, and he doesn't not want to see what it is you're showing, but he knows you don't actually mean to be so forward. He might be an asshole, but he's not like that.
It's quiet here in the foyer, like standing outside the doors of the movie theatre. You can hear the announcement of a new category, the roaring applause. The hallway and the bathrooms feel cordoned off from it in a strange way, an uncanny energy that has him on internal tenterhooks.
"You always let her treat you like that?"
"Like what?"
He steps toward you because the distance feels unnecessary. "Like that. Like you're a dog."
"Fuck you, I do not."
He pouts, the taste of smoke thick on his tongue.
"What would you know?" you ask.
"Besides hearing it all fucking night, nothing. You must like that shit."
Your eyes go wide. He hadn't meant to say it. There's a light behind them now, some life, something to cover up that shitty wounded despondency you'd been wearing. Your hands bunch in the soft skirt of your dress, shaking. He's touched a nerve.
"I must like it," you quote, strained.
"Woof. Do you do any tricks, or is it just the one?"
He doesn't mean for it to happen this way, he wants it on the record. He's a dick, he's a loser, whatever, he hadn't meant to argue but he will. And, you know, there may be a slight possibility that he isn't as sure in himself as he appears, and that there are nerves he keeps too close to the surface, too.
"You can teach me one of yours, if you want," you offer, voice tight with annoyance, "I'm thinking smug asshole picks easy target, but I'm open to other options."
That's funny. He takes another step toward you, another, your cigarette between his lips smouldering at the tip as he inhales through his smirk.
"Yeah, like what?" he asks, smoke licking your cheeks as he breathes out.
"How you get your head through the door might be a good place to start."
He waits for you to explain, knowing the silence will force you to fill it.
"You know, considering you're in the exact same place as me, only one of us performed tonight and it isn't the one acting like God's gift."
"You think they invited you to play because you're good?" he asks, feigning an earnest tone.
"I know exactly why they didn't ask you." You hike the strap of your purse higher up your shoulder, chin lifted in a snooty superiority that makes his heart pound. "Wannabe rookie who had too much smoke blown up his ass and thinks he's somebody. But you're not," you say. "You're a child. They've seen a hundred guys just like you in the Indiana circuit."
"You're a jumped up fucking groupie that got lucky," he says.
The light behind your eyes dims. He takes that last step, the step that's gonna put you shoe to shoe.
He should stop now, he would, but suddenly his anger is real, this isn't strictly fun anymore. He says what he knows is gonna hurt you.
"You're a stand-in, a temp who's already overstayed her welcome." He flicks the tower of ash between your heels. You follow it down, watch as it settles into the fibres of the carpeting. "You're a burnout waiting to happen."
Your breathing is loud in his ears. Slightly too fast.
"You don't know anything," you murmur.
"If it barks like a dog, and it heels like a dog," he says, pausing, words coming out thick and slow, "it's a dog."
Your face flares with hurt. You're gone before he can say anything else.
He's glad for it. Honestly, he's not sure what else he would've said, and later, he'll regret this, regret blowing up at you, regret following you out here and making you feel worse when he'd wanted the opposite. But tonight he's lit up from the inside out, your words a reverberation. A hundred guys just like you.
"Yeah, right," he says to himself, scoffing with a surety he doesn't feel.
—
Donington Park, England, August 1990
"I'd be a little more excited if I knew they weren't desperate this year," Jamison's saying, "that's all."
"They're hardly desperate."
"Last time they had KISS, Iron Maiden, Megadeth." Jamison sighs and falls back into the couch, muttering about the stale smell before continuing, "and this year, what do they have? Poison? Thunder? Who cares."
Eddie thinks he might actually have an opponent for biggest ego right now.
"You know they put Godless bigger on the poster," Jeff says with a bright smile.
"Can we not talk about them for one fucking day?" Eddie pleads.
He's a little disappointed at the lineup too, but that doesn't make this entire festival a bust. Monster of Rock may not be the most prestigious event they've ever attended but it's still impressive to be asked to play here, and this is only Corroded Coffin's third festival. Eddie's a smug bastard and even he knows Jamison sounds like a bitch. Besides that, he's so, so tired of talking about Godless.
"They finally stopped stringing that poor girl along. What was her name?" Jeff asks, clicking his fingers. "Eddie, you know, the one who said she didn't know you in the magazines?"
"What?" Eddie asked. "They cut her?"
Jamison sits up, eyes lit with mirth. "What's it matter to you, heartthrob?"
"It doesn't."
He's not being truthful. His bandmates are all unkind, and none extend the generosity of pretending they believe him.
"Nah, she's not cut, she's official. Writing credits on the new album and everything, 'cordin to Rolling Stone."
"You have it?" Eddie asks.
Jeff laughs at him but digs it out of his suitcase, brandishing it all rolled up.
"Shit better not be sticky," Eddie mutters under his breath.
"... Skip the interview with Kim Gordon."
Eddie gags and flicks through the pages until he finds the article on you, or rather the column.
"All female rock band Godless finally welcomed a new bass player this month after the departure of Millyanna Richardson in '89. Y/N L/N, 24, had been with the band for almost a year under a 'touring only' basis, though she performed live with remaining members Morgan Fletcher and Ananya Roy at the Prover Music Awards in early June. Fans have praised her talent and finesse, and are looking forward to her contributions to the band's next album expected this December. Hopefully she has thicker skin than her predecessor, who branded the band's inner politics as 'gruesome' and 'unlivable'."
There's a grainy photograph of you and your bandmates at the Prover Theatre overtop. You look exactly as you had that night, pretty and glitzy. He scowls at your printed face.
He can't fucking stand you, let it be known, and he thinks your frontman is the most spoilt brat he's ever seen. He hadn't seen the article, but he'd heard via word of mouth that you'd both had something to say about him. His approximation goes as follows:
Interviewer: …and you guys will be performing at the Monster of Rock music festival in England this August, right? Any faces you're excited to see?
Morgan: I think I'm better than everyone despite being in a mildly popular band that didn't qualify as hard rock until, like, three months ago, and I totally shit on our bass player for trying to make the change by the way, so I'm not excited to see anyone besides myself in the mirror.
Interviewer: How sophisticated and mature of you. And you, Y/N, are you excited to see anyone? Photos from the Prover Music Awards show you were sitting beside Corroded Coffin's Eddie Munson, did you two hit it off?
Y/N: Who was that, the guitarist? I'm so sorry, I don't really remember getting a chance to talk to him, but I'm excited for the opportunity to meet more people in the scene right now and to get to play for a new audience. Also I suck and I want Eddie sooooo bad.
"I wish I were asleep." Gareth squints at the ceiling. "Asleep or back home."
"Miss mommy?" Jamison asks him.
"And Cindy."
"Oh, god," Eddie groans, "I don't want to hear it, seriously."
"She always had smooth legs, you know?" Gareth says. "Always shiny, soft. Fuck, I miss her legs. Girls on the road never shave their legs."
"Do you shave your legs?" Eddie asks.
"Fuck off, Teddy, you know you like it better when they shave."
"Do I know that?" Eddie asks.
He turns to Jamison, giving him a much-used 'make him stop' expression. Eyebrows raised, lips parted. When Jamison says nothing, and Gareth starts to talk about hair removal in other places, Eddie scrubs his eyes with both hands and stands up.
He's a guy. He has guy thoughts. Yeah, he thinks about girls, and their legs, and everything else, but he also thinks about them as actual people, something Gareth hasn't quite grasped yet.
"Remember why Cindy said she didn't wanna come with you?" Eddie asks.
"Because she was jealous of my success."
Eddie snorts and shrugs on his jacket where he'd left it thrown over the ratty couch. "Because she was going to beauty school," Eddie corrects. "I'm going out."
"We're miles away from anything interesting," Jeff says, magazine crinkling in his hands.
"I'm sure I'll find something," he says, and doesn't add that it should be easy.
What counts as interesting has taken a sharp turn since arriving in Donington. Which isn't to say it's boring, exactly, there's a rich culture Eddie isn't familiar with, and a fucking castle, but he's so used to loud dives and backroom parties that this has been a stark change. Wending had said to think of it like a vacation to get his head screwed on tight. Paula had said to think of it like a punishment, which had been funny at the time. Now he's wondering if she was serious.
He knows there'd been a convenience store somewhere down the road from the hotel. Or rather, the bed and breakfast, a strange cottage situation where the hosts keep an eye on you under the guise of making your dinner. Eddie's first world problems continue.
He could get weed, possibly. He doesn't know where from, but he knows someone who knows someone who must know someone, right?
Then he starts debating with himself about if he should smoke just to escape boredom. That sounds like a terrible idea, life isn't even bad right now, he's just hungry, and—
Eddie turns the corner, wet sidewalk dark as pitch under his feet, and spots the back of your head as you disappear inside of the convenience store. The corner shop, as Wending had informed. Eddie doesn't understand because it isn't on a corner, but he has bigger fish to fry. He considers waiting for you to leave. What are the chances you'll walk back this way? Pretty likely.
Don't be a bitch, he tells himself.
Light rain spots his neck as he hurries inside, the bell above the door ringing to announce his entrance. He's confused as soon as he looks up, because in front of him is an aisle, and to either side is an aisle, and he can't make out where the cashier is. He takes a tentative step in, eyes tracking muddy footprints down the way to the drinks fridge humming loudly at the back of the room.
Claustrophobic, he makes his way through the aisle and stops in front of the drinks. Because luck isn't ever his friend, you're standing toward the leftmost part, where a second fridge hums, filled to bursting with canned beer and litre bottles of cider. Eddie isn't sure it's really you until you turn to the left slightly and reach out for a colourful glass bottle. He should walk away. He doesn't like you, he has no business watching you, but there's something so sweet about it.
You in the humming chill, a coat pulled tightly around you, your chin hidden by the multicolour of a yarn scarf. You turn the bottle in your hand delicately and blink slow as you read the ingredients. Your hair is frizzy from the wind, flyaways surrounding your face in a little wave. His fingers twitch.
You keep the bottle and pick up a second, nails clinking against glass. Your movement pulls like you're moving through jello, and Eddie turns to the fridge in front of him hurriedly.
He can feel your gaze on the side of his face.
He picks up a couple of drinks without thinking, his face burning with heat. When he chances a glance your way, you've moved. He stares at the rainbow of drinks and the gaps where you've taken what you wanted.
He leaves some time between your departure and follows the way you must've gone down an aisle of more alcohol that's unrefrigerated and pet food, wondering how they organise here, and is confronted with you again at the end.
It's a snug building. You're blocking the way past where you're standing in front of the cashier's desk, a plexiglass shielded cube decked out in hanging sweets and cigarettes.
"Do you have Newports?" you ask mildly.
"Sorry."
"That's okay, uh, I'll just take a carton of whatever you think is best?"
The cashier retrieves a light blue box of cigarettes. "Lambert and Butler blues," he says. "Total, sixteen fifty six, and I'll need to see some ID."
You pull your passport from an already opened purse and offer it to him. While the cashier's checking it over, you peek at Eddie, and you don't smile but you don't not smile, a formal quirk of the lips.
"You're American?" the cashier asks.
"I'm visiting for the festival," you say.
Apparently having passed his test, the cashier hands your passport back and accepts your card.
"Are you paying together?" he asks, nodding at Eddie.
Eddie grins unconsciously, worse when you say quickly, "Oh, no, we're not together."
"Your brevity wounds me," Eddie says.
You snort with a similar geniality. "You don't need me to pay for you, do you? I heard you're rich now."
There has been an improvement in Eddie's finances lately. Your album breaking into the Billboard top 100 does that.
"I thought you didn't know who I was?"
"I thought that was kinder than what I really would've said."
He hates how your snark makes him smile. You're not looking at him, waiting for your change with your eyes forward as the cashier clicks a couple of buttons on the till.
"What were you really gonna say?"
The cashier hands over your change. You slip it into your purse, put your purse in the pocket of your coat, and slide your hand through the weak blue handles of your plastic bag.
"Thank you," you say sincerely. You take a step like you're going to leave, but you pause, and you look Eddie in the eye and say, "I would've said you were mean."
His jaw drops. You look hurt, and you leave with a discomforting frown.
He puts the drinks he's carrying down on the cashier's desk and says, "I'll be right back," before following you out.
You've pulled your hood up to defend against the thickening rain, walking with your face angled down. Eddie beats along the wet pathway.
"Hey! Hey, wait, wait a second, princess."
"You can't be serious."
"I'm so serious," he says.
He weaves in front of you and stops. You look cold as he feels with his red-tipped nose and stiff fingers, your arms drawn together over your chest. You look pretty and he's so sick of thinking it and not saying it.
"You're hot when you're mad."
You glare at him. "I wish I could say the same."
"Hey, hey, okay, we had a spat, but we got off on the wrong foot, you know?"
"I thought that too," you say.
He smiles. "See, we're– you're fucking with me. Nice."
You start laughing, edging around him. He moves in front and you shrug, stepping off of the sidewalk and into the leaf litter clogging the gutter.
"Don't be stupid," he says, hands held up in surrender "get back on the sidewalk." You keep walking. "Come on, don't get hit by a car. That would really put a damper on the festival."
You take a step further into the road, the kind that would make a collision unavoidable. He checks both ways for cars and sees none, knowing you're fucking with him and hating it anyway. The two of you are locked into a stand off, grey skies above you and wet ground underneath, your face partially occluded by your scarf and your hood and the dribbling rain. If he listens, he can hear the small sounds of the festival preparations a half a mile away, guitars hooked up up an insane array of speakers and the pounding of a beat through the floor.
You start walking again. He follows, treading backwards to keep your attention.
"Seriously, come on."
"No."
"No?" he asks.
"No. I don't have to listen to you."
"You're being stupid."
"Eddie, I truly, honestly, don't care."
"Sure." The sound of tires on the road draws his eye. A car appears behind you, approaching fast. "It's your funeral."
"What do you get out of this?"
He bites his top lip, shaking his head from one side to the other. "Out of what?"
"Tormenting me."
"Tormenting you? Sweetheart, we hardly know each other."
"Exactly!" You almost trip over your own shoes. "Exactly, you don't know me, but you thought you could say all those things–"
"You started it."
You laugh again and Eddie would be pissed but the car is still coming, headlights beaming through the light downpour. He huffs and grabs your wrist, tugging you up onto the sidewalk with his second hand on your waist. He doesn't mean to rag you about, feeling especially apologetic when your face knocks into his chin. The car spins close and validates his concern. You have enough sense to realise what's happened, watching over your shoulder as the car beeps and whizzes past. Still, you yank your arm out of his.
"Don't touch me," you say quietly.
He dips his head to force you to meet his eyes. "Next time I'll let you get hit by a car. Great idea."
"I wasn't going to get hit by the fucking car."
You're infuriating.
Infuriating, and yet he feels bad for pulling you around. He lowers his voice, softens his tone. "Sorry," he says. "I don't know why this happens, everytime I see you, I…"
You look intensely uncomfortable. "I have one of those faces, I guess." You shrug away from his reach. "Try to play well tomorrow? I don't want to go on to a dead crowd."
His mouth snaps closed. "If you need me to warm them up for you, just say that."
—
You go to watch Eddie's set because you're awful. You want it to suck. You want Corroded Coffin to bomb it and you want it to be his fault, anything to wipe that pretty smile off of his face, smother the electricity of his bouncing steps as he bounds from one side of the stage to the other. He's entranced by the crowd — it's hard not to be. Ananya had told you on the plane that UK festival audiences are a different kind of enthusiastic, eager and loud, and it's obvious now that she was right, and that Corroded Coffin had more than a few loyalists in the sea of people.
The barrier bends under the force of it, thousands of warm bodies throwing themselves against one another despite the terrible weather, mud to the shins and sliding. You've never seen so many people happy to be covered in dirt.
Neither Morgan nor Ananya had wanted to join you so you stick to the shadows with your lanyard pass. You refuse to think about why you've dressed the way you have, a black, stiff corset type top to cinch your chest, exposing the soft hills of your breasts, and the flare pants Morgan had insisted make your thighs acceptable. You're bedecked in pretty jewellery and your hair looks perfect, and it's all for your show, you swear, all for your set straight after his.
Eddie's dripping with sweat and rain at this point, darker curls wet and slick and sweet around his face. His brows are furrowed like he's in pain, and his thumb has split on the strings, blood like cherry juice running down the body of his guitar, a Warlock NJ Series electric with a red and black tortoise shell design. It shines like mother-of-pearl.
You're impressed by him, and worse, there's a heat stirring in your abdomen you despise. He's attractive, you've always thought him pretty, but on stage he's something else entirely. The passion transforms him, makes him a different person. No trace of agitating smugness about him.
And he's good. You're not a critic, an expert, and your opinion hardly matters, but if he's this good now you'd love to see him at Hammet's age, at Hanneman's. He could be one of the greats.
You're riddled with jealousy. Bass and rhythm guitar are not the same, and they're comparable in some ways, incomparable in others, but you know you're not like he is. You want to be the next Entwistle, the next Ian Hill, but practising You've Got Another Thing Comin' until your fingers bleed is never going to give you what Eddie plainly has.
You hide your bandaid covered fingers in your back pockets and shake your head. You can pinpoint the moment Eddie notices you on the side stage despite the small audience they've attained. His neck snaps to the side, and his eyes bore into yours for a split-second.
You could pretend you aren't here. If he ever calls you out on it, you could lie. You want me so bad you're seeing me places, Munson.
You don't do that.
You wave.
You've never been the prettiest girl. You know you aren't model material, people aren't shy about letting you know that, and so, you're practised in the art of quiet flirtation. Your wrist straight, you wiggle your fingers sweetly, a face of fresh make up and your sweetest smile, like he's a guy across the bar and you're trying to get a ride in his passenger seat.
For a split-second you adore him. It's the meanest thing you can do.
You aren't expecting him to fuck up. His hand slips down the neck and that's it, one missed second of sound. He throws himself back into it and doesn't look your way again, a storm of emotions clouding his handsome face.
Not what you'd meant to do, and yet. There's a cruel satisfaction in knowing you'd had any sort of power over him.
There's a ten minute gap between sets, twenty because of the shitty weather. Morgan and Ananya are nowhere to be seen as Corroded Coffin pour off of the stage and down the short stairwell where you're waiting, picking at your clear nail polish absentminded. You don't look up, and the resulting quiet makes you think they've all left.
A wooden board creaks.
You look up.
"Hey, you–"
Eddie takes your shoulder into his warm, big hand and pushes you back. You wobble and rush to correct your posture, hand clamping around the crook of his elbow. Even though he's soaked through, wet to the skin, his hand is a blistering heat.
Your shoulders collide with the wall under the stairwell. It's a snug fit, dark and out of view.
"What gives?" you seethe, pushing at his chest.
"You fucking–" Eddie tucks a lock of wet hair behind his ear, and his hand stays at that height, hovering between you. "What's wrong with you?"
"What's wrong with me?"
"You want to mess with me, is that it?"
His hand takes to your face, index finger following the line of your cheek, his thumb along your jaw. He isn't kind. He isn't cruel. He's touching you, just touching you, and your mouth is bone dry at the sensation, the stuttering beat of your heart.
"I don't want to do anything to you, Munson."
"We both know that's not true." You've never heard his voice like this. It's scratchy– pleading. It's a desperation.
He's breathing hard. Your proximity means you feel each one as it comes, heat fanning over your lips. You look to his, find them parted, the barest hint of pearly teeth between pink dewy skin. They look soft.
You lift your chin.
I dare you.
His hand slides down. He presses his thumb into your bottom lip and inclines his head. You close your eyes, fine stands of his hair drawing lines of wetness against your face as he boxes you in.
"Are you going to–"
"Shut up," he says, crushing his lips to yours.
It his nose you feel more than anything, the force of it as he moves in, bridge sliding down your own. His hands, and how they tighten, fisted in the slope of your shoulder and clutching at the underside of your jaw like you might slip away. His touch brings you in, his hips force you back, wedging your spine tight to the panelled wall behind you.
You let him kiss you, let his lips work over yours, let him take what it is he wants. Your fingers slide softly up the chilled leather of his jacket, coveting the wet mess of his hair. You weave your fingers into it, their tips pressed to his roots, and pull him away.
You steal the gap between you and try to take control. You don't know how to kiss like he is, you don't know where all that meanness comes from. You force his hand from your face and nip at his bottom lip, imprecise, stammering pecks that reveal too much.
Eddie inhales hard, pulls the breath from your mouth.
"Don't play games," he says.
He presses a firm, hard kiss all lopsided into your lips and pulls away, yanking your hand from his hair and setting it against the line of his waist.
"You like games," you argue.
He tilts your head to one side a millimetre at a time, tilting his own to follow you. A teasing light burns behind his eyes, a playful flare of his lashes that worries and excites at once.
His thumb haunts the column of your throat, pressing, releasing, pressing again. Never enough to hurt.
"Stay still."
You stay still. You aren't expecting him to weave the other way, the hot and unapologetic scratch of his teeth against your pulse. You laugh at the feeling, find it gets all clogged up when he starts to bite. The hand that isn't anchoring your head roams down your shoulder, your back, falling into the small of it as though it were made to be there. His fingers spread and pull and your pelvis pushes hard into his own.
"Is that a–" You cough on your murmuring, chastened by his thumb outside your windpipe. "S'that a micronta quartz in your pocket, or are you just," —you hiss as his hickeying turns brutal, hand pawing ar his waist uselessly— "happy– Happy to see me?"
Your shuddering makes him smile. He lets your bruised skin slip from between his lips only to scandalise you further, kissing and nipping, licking a humiliating stretch until he's under your ear, speaking into it.
"I'm never happy to see you," he murmurs, hand turned, the back of his index knuckle stroking a tender back and forth. His forehead kisses your temple. "You should know that by now."
A picture of composure but you know what you feel. You roll your hips to revel in his subtle groan.
"You want me to mark up the other side?" he asks.
His question sounds so genuine, you almost say yes. He laughs at your silence and kisses wherever he can reach, crescent moons, spit-damp and branding.
He pauses to speak into the corner of your mouth. "Mess me up again during a set and I won't be this nice."
"You're not nice," you say, lashes skimming the skin under your brows as he stands at full height, widening the gap between you to a safe distance again.
"Exactly…" Eddie squeezes your cheek until it aches. His eyes are unreadable. "Have a good set, sweetheart."
Unreadable turns smug. He pats your panging cheek, gaze dancing over the sore stretch of your neck, and turns without a second glance.
You press the heel of your palm to the cold wall behind you and blink. Once. Twice. In that moment you hate him more than you've ever hated him, hate him like you've never hated anyone, because his retreating figure is unaffected, and you're dizzy with the lingering press of his lips.
You have to hand it to him. He's good at the game.
You'll have to be better.
𓆩❤︎𓆪
I wrote the bulk of this really quickly so please forgive any major errors I missed during editing, I’ll go back again in future and make more corrections! Thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed, and if you did please consider reblogging or telling me what you thought, I promise it makes a big difference <3 I was super nervous about this one and I still am lol
#eddie munson x reader#eddie munson x you#eddie munson x y/n#eddie munson imagine#eddie munson#stranger things#stranger things fic#stranger things x reader#stranger things 4#eddie munson x fem!reader#eddie munson fanfic#stranger things fanfiction#fem!reader#rockstar!eddie#rockstar!eddie munson#rockstar!eddie munson x reader#rockstar!eddie x reader#eddie munson fic#eddie munson angst#bite the
2K notes
·
View notes
Text
You know what really sucks about art history and AI?
These days, I can't go on Google and look up "Renaissance" or "Rococo" or "Baroque" art without the results being absolutely littered with shitty, modernized AI pictures. If I'm studying 18th-century portraiture, I'm looking for themes and motifs specific to the period (composition, shape, emotionality, emphasis, etc), so I can better understand the cultural values of an era, and then deconstruct and experiment with them in my own art. I don't want to see some generic hot girl in an inaccurate Marie Antoinette dress, or a Chad Napoleon that's even more ridiculous than the Jacques-Louis David propaganda. Jesus Christ. This garbage isn't even comparable in how awful it is, and it's infecting everything.
For reference, on the left is the work of Artemisia Gentileschi, an actual Baroque artist (click for full size), up against "Baroque Style" from a website selling AI prints. Ew. I won't even explain how Not Baroque the image on the right is, it's so bad it's actually criminal.
Examining historical art periods in modern works is one thing, but this shit isn't even trying. This is another reason why AI isn't art. You can click a button and make something aesthetically pleasing, but you learn nothing. You evoke nothing. You say nothing. There is not a single ounce of value to be had here, other than demonstrating our culture's most superficial ideals, your complete lack of personality, and absolutely no foundational knowledge or intuition. It's a joke is what it is. Artists are trying to do actual work over here, you're just a waste of air.
#//personal#vent#art history#shaming ai users is morally correct#ai is for the shallow and simple-minded#even growing artists have more to offer than this contrived shit
136 notes
·
View notes
Note
Lena thank you for the spanking bit, has to be one of fav kinks ever because it just... fits every single yan regardless of who they are??? Kinda like a "universal" thing, just top notch. Do you think we could ever get headcanons for it?
Thank you for this anon, you're absolutely correct it is a top-tier kink
Also I've been wanting to write more about god-era Morax so thank you for the opportunity to do so, I rambled way more about him than the others here sorry lol
As for those who fit the kink best imo I’m going with Childe, Diluc, Ayato and Morax
//major spanking kink material (obviously) but gets kinda bad in severity/intensity, also mentions of hair-pulling, biting, throat fucking, anal, two cocks for Morax again (as always 👌)
--------
Childe is probably the best one here to end up at the mercy of here for once, for the sake of your poor ass at least.
Not that it isn't still awful and painful — he’s a sadist at heart and just adores making you squeal and cry. What at least makes it comparatively at least bearable is that he tends to use his hand — although that does make it more personable, more humiliating.
He tells you, though, exactly what he intends to do. You're being such a little brat today… come over here…
He doesn't even seem angry, but rather excited. He's all smiley and cooing in a way that feels so utterly humiliating and degrading.
Oh, but please do run. Please, please make it so much more fun for him, run away and try to hide. There's virtually nothing in the world that turns him on as much as either a game of chasing you or hunting you down wherever you're hiding. The fact that you're that scared of getting your ass beaten is kind of cute, actually. Are you that sensitive to pain, or is it more protecting your pride that gives you so much resistance? Not that he's complaining or anything.
He'll even give you a very wide opportunity to run, make sure you have plenty of avenues to do so. His heart rate begins to go up seeing the look of realization in your eyes when you spot an opening to run off, and he'll give you a minute or two of a head start. It doesn't take him long to find you nonetheless, hauling you up over his shoulders and carrying you back to your room with obvious excitement, like a predator dragging squealing, still-living prey back to its den for its inevitable fate.
That being said, doing that will make it worse for you — at that point you probably do deserve a belt at least, you know? Regardless of the instrument of choice though, he keeps you bent over his knee — he can feel your squirming more that way, and he can grind his hard-on into your stomach as you thrash around and squeal. Each strike still lands on bare skin, but rather than having your lower half naked, he likes to sometimes move the hold on your back and grasp at the waistband of your panties instead, jerking them up to wedge between your cheeks, effectively holding you in place and baring your skin at the same time.
He's so mean about it, taunts you that same voice you hate so much—
Aw, are you actually crying? Maybe I'll stop if you beg for something else…
There's no set number or standard of how much you'll be punished for any particular offense, which can be more torturous than anything. At least if you were given a number, you'd know how much more you had to endure. Instead, you just lurch and squeal each time his hand or the leather comes down... you kick your legs and thrash about, to no avail. In fact, you're pretty sure it just makes him hornier, you feel his cock twitch and his breathing grow more ragged the louder you cry out, and his hand on your back forces you down harder.
He’s actually totally shameless about getting off to it, too, so you can’t use that against him.
God, you're so cute when you cry like that... squeal louder for me...
The only real upside is that it's usually abruptly cut off at some point once he's too aroused by it to continue, and needs to just bury himself into your holes. You get slid off his lap onto the couch or bed, barely getting any time to recover — still sniffling and whimpering— before being contorted to whatever position he wants and rammed into without warning… thus for once, him being perpetually horny and having virtually no self-control actually becomes a positive. It still doesn't help, though, that the sex makes his hips smack against your sore ass with each thrust, but crying out about that only makes him go harder.
You know it could be much much worse — he makes sure to remind you that he could easily keep going until you completely break down, but he's so nice and you should be grateful for that — but you're still sore, and it leaves a pinkish-reddish tint under your natural flesh tone — something he likes to point out to you later, groping at your ass and laughing when you jolt at the sting. Your nose wrinkled with your expression of disgust as you jerk your head away from him, and you mutter under your breath.
Bastard...
And then, you squeal and lurch forward as one more harsh smack lands on your backside. You try to ignore the chuckling that follows as your eyes well up with embarrassed tears, and you bury your face beneath the covers of the bed.
-------
Diluc’s punishments are awful in terms of pain, but thankfully they're over fairly quickly because it's largely an act of momentary fury and irritation, and once he gets that anger out of his system, the punishment will be over, too.
He's still very intimidating about it, and it doesn't help that it's always a sort of spontaneous thing he decides on in the heat of the moment — thus you see the exact moment you know you've crossed a line, but also know (or at least, quickly learn) that there's nothing you can say or do at that point that will get you out of being punished. His eyes narrow and his voice lowers and he tells you to get over here in a voice that makes you feel like your heart just stopped, and your stomach feels as if it twists into a knot when you see the confirmation of your dread when he takes his belt off.
Running is not advisable — it's not like you'll succeed, and you'll just make him more mad. He's rough with how he handles you, dragging you by your clothes and hair over to bed, counter, or the back of a couch, forcing your head down.
How bad any one particular spanking is varies a lot depending on how mad you've succeeded in making him. He's not merciful at all, so he hits with force based on the level of his frustration. Thus, your attitude is important — you can technically commit a lesser offense, but if you keep backtalking and being bratty and fighting it, you'll likely get a worse punishment than you would for a worse offense for which you were apologetic and submitted to punishment easily.
What does change with the severity of your offense is that if what you didn't isn't so bad, you can keep your clothes on, but for particularly egregious transgressions, even in spite of the heat of the moment, unfortunately, he doesn't forget to pull your clothes up or down and off to make sure you're bared first.
He virtually always uses a belt, much to your dismay, and prefers to bend you over various surfaces since he can strike harder that way. It’s painful, you always end up in tears quickly, begging and pleading and spilling apologies for whatever you did, but he never has any mercy on you.
Much like you can’t get out of it to begin with, there’s also nothing you can do that will make it end any sooner than he feels like it. Over and over, grumbling with each strike about how you’re such a brat, how you can’t just behave, how it’s your own fault, until your flesh is reddened and burning badly enough that even when it’s over, all you can do is slump forward and cry.
If he went really hard on you, he might feel a little bad afterwards, getting you a wet cloth to soothe the burn… but he’ll still remind you that you wouldn’t be lying there all shivering and sobbing if you just learned to behave yourself properly.
For him, it’s more of an actual punishment first and foremost and not really an intentionally erotic thing, at first he’s too mad to think much about the eroticism of it… but seeing you lying there sniffling with your butt so heavily marked and welting, admittedly he does quickly get hard… and he’ll get incredibly flustered and embarrassed if you accuse him of getting off to it.
But be careful — push him too much on that matter, and such antagonism might be grounds for a round two on your already-stinging ass.
-------
Ayato’s punishments are particularly unpleasant, but the thing is that if you're in that situation, you deliberately chose it. Because he's gracious enough that you get a lot of warnings before reaching that point.
If you're being bratty, temperamental, rude, or whatever other behavior he doesn't like, you get a certain look first. The standard half-lidded eyes, unpleased expression, the universal ‘stop that right now’ glare. Maybe a passive aggressive comment if he can slide one into conversation.
If that fails — in other words, if you keep being a brat regardless, deliberately ignoring his warnings — you then get a verbal warning. He'll address you directly if it's just the two of you, but gods forbid you’re digging your own grave by misbehaving in front of others, he waits for a moment where everyone else's attention is on something else before pulling you close in a faux gesture of affection (with a grip harsh enough to ensure you get the message but not enough to alert anyone else in the room to his quiet fury), lowering his voice, whispering directly into your ear.
We’re going to have a talk about your behavior when this is over. Do you understand?
You know by now what a "talk" actually means, and hearing the words makes you stiffen and swallow. Granted, by the time it reaches the point that you've been that bad, you won't escape without at least a few swats, but if you persist, you'll just make it much worse. All you can do is nod your head and wait in dreadful anticipation.
As soon as the company you had leaves, you try to slowly back away, looking for an opening to run, but he has you grabbed by your clothes or hair and is dragging you off before you can even try. The total silence on his end as he drags you over to your room only serves to amplify your dread, and thereby your little whimpering protests.
The primary thing that will make it that much worse is what he uses to punish you, because from the day he brought you home, he anticipated a need for discipline at some point, and thus had a whipping cane custom-made just for you. One of those thin wooden canes designed for no other purpose than infliction of pain and punishment, which he leaves sitting out in your bedroom at all times, making sure it's always within sight as a subtle threat, a reminder of his power over you and that your behaviors have consequences.
He doesn’t raise his voice, doesn’t get heated, yet somehow that makes it so much worse. He’s perfectly calm as he holds you down on his lap, a hand wrapped into and grasping your clothes on your back to ensure you’re not going anywhere with each sharp pain on your bare skin. He’s very disciplinarian about it, ensuring to emphasize the reason and intention of the punishment itself—
Remember that you had every option of avoiding this. This is only the consequence you deserve. Do you realize that?
You nod and whimper and try to apologize, but it doesn’t make each swat any lighter. He’s rather harsh about the severity too, the degree of pain, duration, number of swats and outright humiliation often feel disproportionate to what is in your opinion a mild offense, although you know better than to voice that thought.
You beg, sure, you cry and whimper and say you'll take any other punishment, but it goes in one ear and out the other, your words have no effect, and while his voice has that characteristic gentleness to it, he's still cold and firm in his reply, if he even gives you one.
You're not getting out of this. Hold still.
He does take care of you afterwards, so lovingly and gently it makes you angry. He reminds you again that it wouldn't have to happen if you behaved, that you have no one but yourself to blame, all while kissing your crying face, holding you close and gently massaging the newly formed welts.
He also likes to make you gauge how many lashes you deserve beforehand, often making the total number a certain multiple of how many times you mouthed off or did something against your rules. And of course, whenever there's a fixed number, he makes you count.
Listening to your voice grow more and more shaky and begin to crack, your speech becoming slurred with sobs and oh, how precious is the sudden panic in your voice when you realize you've lost count. The way you tense and start begging and whimpering when he replies—
I suppose we'll have to start over...
-------
Morax’s punishments are always by far the worst.
That's largely because there's a maddening element of psychological torment involved. It's slow, drawn out, the dread and anticipation are almost worse than the punishment itself. He actually employs a variety of corporeal punishments, each of which make your stomach churn just to think about, but unfortunately, putting you over his knee and beating your ass until there's a deep red hue to your skin is a personal favorite of his.
What makes his style of discipline so unbearable is that you’ll be punished for literally anything. There is no possible offense, no rule to be broken, that won’t earn corporeal punishment of some kind, most usually on your poor ass. You get a very clear set of rules, rules you’re expected to know and obey from day one. Countless little rules, so many of them meticulous and pointless. Things you must do, things you must not do, and rigid standards for your attitudes and behaviors.
Each and every violation is its own offense — not to mention, things like lying when asked about what you did, objecting to punishments, even talking back or trying to defend yourself when accused count as individual offenses too. Sometimes you don’t even realize you’ve broken a rule until he tells you you’re going to be punished for it, and any protest or whining counts as another offense.
Really, you’re lucky if you can go a few days in a row fully able to sit without any stinging pain, and it’s not uncommon for you to earn back-to-back punishments one day after another. You know for a fact that your record of days in a row without ending up laying in bed, whimpering and crying and clutching your backside in pain is a single digit number.
Sometimes, if it’s severe enough, you’ll get put over his knee right then and there, but he’ll also tally up the small offenses and, at the end of the day, punish you cumulatively for every small offense you’ve made, because he can’t allow even the slightest offense to go unpunished.
It’s not limited to things you do in his presence either, because he has ways of finding out everything you do.
Every day that you can't accompany him, he has an established routine for when he returns. Firstly, of course, you're supposed to greet him when he comes in (any attempts to be petulant by giving him silent treatment or hiding away will result in further punishments), but then, as he sits you down, holds you close, he asks you the same question.
Have you done anything you should not have today?
It's a torturous question.
On one hand, you could have very well been very well-behaved, in which case you can answer honestly with at least some confidence (although even then, part of you hesitates thinking maybe you committed some offense unintentionally).
But when you haven't been well-behaved and you know it — that's what's torturous.
It's a gamble. He asks every single day, so him asking itself is not a dead giveaway that he knows what you did. If he doesn't know — well, you might be able to lie and get away with it. Inversely, how unfortunate would it be if you told him, and it turned out he didn't know, and then you had to suffer when you could have gotten away with it?
On the flip side, if he does know — well, you'll soon be squealing like a stuck pig regardless, but things are much, much worse if you try to lie. You would know — you've taken that gamble a few times now and lost.
He seems to have ways of finding out everything — you only lied when you were absolutely confident, thinking there was no way anyone saw the thing you did, only for your stomach to lurch when you feel the soft stroking against your thigh stop, and are met with a low voice—
…Is that so?
And the tone, the way he says it, you immediately know you've messed up.
Of course, you could hypothetically keep denying it, but entrenching yourself further in a lie is, by that point, the worst decision you could make — you would know, you tried that once and you couldn't sit down normally for over a week. The best thing to do now is to confess… you won’t get any mercy or a lighter punishment, but you’ll avoid the additional punishment you’d get for doing anything else.
But even then, he can’t even give you the decency of forcing your body to bend and getting it over with. It has to be drawn out, torturing you to the greatest degree possible — sometimes, he does this by delaying it, telling you he has something else to do first, leaving you to sit around and wait in anticipation for an hour or more. If an offense is bad enough, one session might not even be enough, and you're told that you'll get another one tomorrow, adding to your dread.
But most of the time, the torment comes from forcing your own participation. He keeps you firmly in his lap, reaching down to grope at the flesh where your butt meets your thighs.
What do you think you deserve to have happen to you?
Another test, a question for which you’ll only receive something worse in addition to whatever will happen already if answered incorrectly. There’s only one right answer—
…Y-you should... punish me...
On the bright side, he’s genuinely pleased once you start learning well enough to know what the right answer is.
You’re stood up, guided over to the drawers, hands firmly on your shoulders to ensure you don’t get any ideas about running. You hate that one drawer, it makes your stomach churn just to look at. He has a damn collection for you— leather straps, whipping canes, paddles with holes in them just to hurt that much more. He tells you to pick one.
That, too, is a test— you know which ones hurt more. You're supposed to gauge what you deserve based on the severity of your offense, and he'll be that much more displeased if you go too lightly on yourself, and will consequently be more forceful, which you do not want. Eventually, you manage to make your choice, biting your lip, pointing with a shaky hand, tensing as his hand runs motions that would be soothing in any other context up and down your thigh, pausing to grasp at the fleshy part of your backside.
Then you're led back— sometimes to face the wall or bend over a counter, but most often he prefers to keep you over his lap. Not that you'll be forced down either— not unless you make that necessary, which of course, you do not want. Unless you want it to be that much worse, you follow the commands— pull your robes up, the waistband of any underwear down, bare your skin (always, no matter how mild the offense), lay down on your stomach, put your hands behind your back so he can grasp your wrists.
And even then, even then you have to be tormented further.
Now, what did you do to deserve this?
You recall to the best of your ability, hoping you didn't forget anything, lest you be accused of trying to be deceitful in hopes of escaping consequences, which will add another tally to the list.
It’s painful. It always is. You've reached a point where your resolve to not cry and squeal is defeated pretty early. You used to try your best not to for the sake of your pride, but you know by now that it will go on long enough that your tears and crying out are inevitable.
He manages to somehow be so stoic and calm and yet somehow so, so cruel about it.
Does it hurt?
Your shoulders quiver with little sobs, you go tense as he gropes and kneads at the raw flesh.
Y-yes, it hurts, it hurts so bad, please no more, please—
You cut off with a high-pitched cry as the stinging pain strikes again. And again. And again. It's always so much, so unfair compared to the weight of whatever you did. That slight pinkish undertone isn't quite satisfying enough either, he never stops until there's a deep, deep red tone to your flesh.
If you've been especially bad, you may have to count… but he actually tends to prefer not giving you a set number. You're more fearful that way, uncertain of how much more you have to endure.
You're certain he gets off on the pain for one thing, the sound of your cries and the way you jolt and squirm, but the humiliation is worse than the pain itself, for you. He knows that, revels in it. He's told you before—
You're such a prideful little thing… that will certainly need to be fixed.
Repetitive subjection to something so inherently humiliating and vulnerable, and being made to break down, any semblance of toughness and dignity being torn away at his hands, is a way of slowly breaking down your pride. You know that, it makes you so angry, but you can't help but let that vulnerability be exposed every time, to act in such a way that ensures he knows how badly it humiliates you.
Your go limp with exhaustion when it finally stops.
What have you learned?
You can barely speak, voice hoarse from the strain of your cries and speech muffled by sniffles and sobs.
I'm sorry… I won't do it again…
And then, he has the audacity to be so, so sweet to you. Looking down at your tear-streaked face, smiling— no, smirking, a belittling, amused expression— leaning down to kiss your forehead.
Poor thing.
Kneading at the sore flesh in spite of how the touch makes you wince. As if it isn't his fault, as if he had any mercy on you the whole time you were begging for it to stop.
It only makes you angrier. More than once now, you've earned a second round for how you reacted to his undeserved kindness. So ungrateful.
It's never a solitary punishment either, always coupled with something else, always something equally humiliating and discomforting, if not painful. You know he gets off to it, because the second punishment is almost always a direct sex act of some kind.
You'll take his cocks down your throat, grabbing your skull and fucking your face without any restraint, forcing you to swallow every last drop of seed, even forcing your head down to lick up whatever you spill off the floor. Your saliva just provides the lube to force you to bed and fuck you until you can't even stand, and all the while his hips bounce off your poor ass, each movement stinging against the sensitive flesh. He'll bite your flesh, unnaturally sharp teeth even piercing you skin, leaving you covered in marks. If he's feeling really, really mean, you don't even get the semblance of pleasure of it ramming into your poor sore, raw pussy— you'll take both cocks into your tight little ass instead, a stretch that makes you squeal and thrash and cry. Your legs kick and you lurch forward, desperate to pull yourself off, but you're jerked back with a growl as he slams into you, completely bottoming out. Eventually, you give in as the stretching pain ebbs away and trying to take whatever pleasure you can from the faint stimulation to spots of pleasure through the walls of flesh. But the act is utterly humiliating nonetheless, your hole left twitching and gaping for hours as cum leaks out and onto your skin. You can't even sit for days, both your poor asshole and backside sore and tender.
Your embarrassment and resentment builds. You loathe him for it, feel so humiliated and angry at yourself and how deeply you dread the punishments that it makes you nauseous.
And thus, in one particular incident, fed up and filled with spite, you made the greatest mistake of your entire time trapped with him— you decided to run, seeing that for once you had an opening to do so.
A stupid choice, really. You don't get far. Not even a full ten steps.
You know immediately that you have severely, sincerely fucked up. The sheer harshness with which you're grabbed, the back of your clothes grasped and twisted with unprecedented force, the draconic growl to his voice that makes your blood run cold.
Oh, dearest, you have no idea how badly you've just stepped out of line.
His other hand latches onto your throat.
You're going to be sleeping on your stomach for quite some time, won't you?
The statement alone makes tears well in your eyes, any bitter pride quickly crushed. You shake your head profusely, start begging for forgiveness, but you know in your heart that it's far too late for that… it still doesn't stop you from whimpering and apologizing as you're dragged back down the hall, no doubt to one of the worst punishments you've endured yet.
#man this was unholy levels of degen even by my content's standards#from what little i know i feel like the two new guys would also fit this so maybe ill add them later
194 notes
·
View notes
Note
I love your Stephanie Brown post. It verbalized this feeling I've had about her character for awhile but didn't quite know how to phrase.
Just wanted to thank you for that!
ah thank you <3
yea to me, the super frustrating thing is that dixon's sexism gives her flaws that i find super narratively compelling and interesting and 3-dimensional and overall strong in a way that other writers somewhat miss the mark for me (i actually have a lot of criticisms about bg2009 and how bqm wrote her--overall i find it a very surface level girl power story veneered over pretty standard 2009 era sexism wrt the dynamics between women that has not aged super well and doesn't do much for actually giving steph interesting depth as a character & i find it's weakened by the fact that it is a doylist apology for the absolutely horrific way editorial treated steph prior to her death (which. she does deserve an apology and to be treated better), but also by doing that it makes almost every other character such as babs seem unreasonable and bad for their very understandable watsonian response to being wary of steph for many valid reasons and also makes it hard to actually give steph any flaws that aren't just quirky or clumsy--she's not perfect because she's adorkable). dixon steph has so many problems, being written by dixon, but she's truly my favorite flavor of steph because despite how horrid dixon is, you can absolutely tell how much he truly cared about her as a character. like. i bet if you asked him, he would have nothing but positive things to say about her personality and other characteristics. in fact, i believe a lot of the letters to the editor that talked about her back in the early robin issues had a lot of super positive things to say about her! like he created her! she's his blorbo! he wants to put her through the struggles!
like so many of her struggles when he's writing her is so much due to his sexism (she's never quite as competent as tim, and shouldn't be because she's The Girlfriend--compare to characters like babs and dinah and helena that were women but also written as extremely competent and good at what they do) and also because he wanted to put her through the wars, give her adversity to overcome! like steph is treated horribly a lot. by everyone. but it's partially because he wants her to perservere through it because he likes her and wants her to succeed. like a couple of very common threads through dixon's storytelling for her are the following:
tim is condescending (because that's how boys and girls are. see also: every 90s tv show that had a beleaguered sensible man with a nagging, over the top, ridiculous woman who does silly things that the man Puts Up With) -> steph gets mad -> tim thinks to himself that he shouldn't be so hard on her and usually apologizes -> well, actually tim was probably right because steph did get into trouble but steph making constant mistakes isn't actually narratively seen as "hey, maybe she should stop if she's making mistakes" because dixon wants her to continue.
or
more experienced vigilante (male or female--tim gets a lot of flack, but honestly, almost every single vigilante in batbooks at the time seemed to think steph wasn't quite good enough--batman, dick had his reservations about her, barbara didn't really necessarily want to train her, *cass* straight up told her she shouldn't be doing this, dinah didn't want to be her mentor, etc) tells steph not to screw up -> steph screws up -> steph has to get bailed out by more experienced vigilante -> steph keeps trying despite this
like so many of her diary entries that steph writes involve some flavor of "i've been told not to do this, but i have to, it's something i need to do despite all the naysayers". and it's sexist! because chuck wouldn't necessarily write the 'screw up and overconfident which usually leads to needing to be bailed out but keeps trying anyways' kind of a narrative for a male lead character (male characters get the 'i'm super competent but insecure/humble about it and when i make mistakes i'm able to figure out how to fix them by myself' narrative). but at the same time, it's what he truly believed for her--that she deserved to keep going despite any naysayers. if he truly believed that steph shouldn't be a vigilante or thought poorly of her, she would have been written out and/or he would have written her as making a mistake so bad she wouldn't have continued her activities as spoiler and finally agreed with everyone that she's not cut out for this. but he didn't. dixon writes her as not as competent as her peers because he has a worldview where girls are lesser and not capable of being as good as the boys. but he writes her with dogged determination to keep trying despite this because dixon truly thinks she deserves to keep going despite any mistakes he writes her making and that her perseverance should be rewarded.
like consider the arc where steph finds out tim's identity. dixon makes steph seem unreasonable for daring to change her mind and realize that yea, she does want to know the boy under the mask she's dating after all (because dixon thinks that girls are fickle and change their minds and boys shouldn't have to put up with that kind of nonsense behavior, not because this is a super valid thing to want) -> he has her go beat up an innocent boy named tito and stalk him in the hospital (because dixon is a sexist who things girls are just like this) -> tim does rightfully get mad about this and leaves in a huff -> batman tells steph tim's identity and she gets what she wanted?? -> tim is mad at her and batman until JLL when this is all swept under the rug and they go back to happily dating again + at this point everyone is open to training her/finally giving her a chance (until murderer/fugitive when she gets locked out again--which also leads into the era where dixon is no longer writing her--and after this is when we really get a lot of the really iconic unfair treatment towards her because at this point didio wanted her gone). and it creates this absolute interesting dissonance where you can see the overt sexism in dixon's writing and it's infuriating. and at the same time dixon also rewards her for the sexist way he writes her and she does generally get what she wants because dixon wants to give her the reward for her perseverance.
hell, consider the pregnancy storyline which is beyond overtly sexist and conservative but is probably the part where steph is most treated the best/in the right. tim and her mom are shown as in the wrong compared to her "correct" decision to keep the baby and they have to come around to support her. not just that, but for her to be given a teen pregnancy storyline in the 90s and not be shown as a Bad Girl for getting pregnant as a teen? dixon hates women and yet to him steph is a good girl who makes a mistake (something something he'll judge others, but when it comes to his daughter that's a different case. exceptions apply.) and she gets an ultimately supportive good boy boyfriend who helps her go to birthing class despite the fact that i'm sure dixon looks down on unwed teen mothers a lot.
it's just. i want to study it under a microscope. there's so much to unpack there.
#anyways apologies for the super long answer#i am just fascinated by dixon's treatment of her#it's sexism! but he does it because he wants to give her something to overcome! but it's definitely sexist!#scintilly ask tag#annah-kitathryne
165 notes
·
View notes
Note
just got home from work lol - a dq worker.
i had an idea of Time reacting to someone who worked as a fast food worker, specifically dairy queen cause of the potential for a funny interaction:
"oh yeah i worked for Dairy Queen™"
"you worked for lon lon ranch?"
"no there is literally a company named Dairy Queen.. i sold ice cream.."
and then starts a whole conversation on what the hell ice-cream is lmao.
gonna be very honest with you dq-anon hope you don't mind me calling you that I've only really heard of dairy queen through that one girl's tiktoks because they don't exist in the UK dvjcedfc one of my wives (@angry-trashcan) told me more about what they're like and I focused more on the ice cream/ customer service voice part of it - I hope you like it!
“So you've mentioned needing to get back to your own world for the sake of your job, if it's alright may I ask what just what it is?"
"hmm? Sure? it's not really private, the only reason I haven't talked about it is because it hasn't come up in conversation yet."
"I work at a place called Dairy Queen™ or at least I did, they might have fired me…"
Time looks like he's about to ask me a question, not that I can blame him. Our worlds are very different. I doubt he's heard of it ever before. Well, I know that because it doesn’t exist here.
"I don't think I've ever seen you at lon lon ranch before, well and the fact that you've already said you're not from Hyrule."
"... There's a company called Dairy Queen in my world. we sell ice cream."
There’s the look I expected from him, utter confusion. Hyrule really doesn't have anything in common with my own world, nothing I could compare to the chains anyway. How could the post-industrial era even hope to compare to a mediaeval land where magic actually exists?
“...Ice cream?”
Yeah, I shouldn’t have expected him to know what that was. Really though does Hyrule not have ice cream at all? It’s not hard to make; with magic, it can’t be too hard to make a freezer.
“It’s well, it’s frozen cream with sugar and flavour? Honestly, I’m not sure the best way to describe it when I can't just show you. For now, I’ll just say that it tastes amazing and that you’re missing out.”
“Maybe you could show me some time then, we should be able to find the correct ingredients at some of the villages here and Wild has a spare ice rod or two to freeze it.”
“Keep the money for more important supplies Time, it’s not that big of a deal.”
Here’s where I’d happily take bets with the others for if he was going to drop it or not, what with how he rarely drops lectures it wouldn’t surprise me if he didn’t drop it until I agreed with him. But he seems to have more respect for things that people don’t want to talk about with their past than accidents so who knows?
“Aside from that then, what is your work like?”
"It's work..? I mean the only real skills I picked up are accidentally tipping drinks on people and my 'service voice'."
Most of this is just going to be him all confused, isn't it? what I wouldn't do at this point to show him exactly what I mean…
"You haven't got any more questions have you?"
"... what was that?"
"well I can't show you most things are like where I work, but I can show you how I act around customers. So how can I help you sir?"
Laughing at his face was so easy at this point, the fear in his eyes at how much I can change my voice so easily, worse than it's been towards any monster he's faced on this journey.
He’s more worked up about my voice than the shadow…
“...please don’t do that again [name].”
“Come on Time, it can’t be that bad can it?”
“You - you can stop pulling that face Old man.”
He really does live up to that name, now I can’t help but wonder if ‘old man’ is Hyrule’s equivalent of boomer, from how they use it? How mean would it be to teach wind and wild what that means? Introduce Hyrule to ‘Ok boomer’. I’d just have to make sure time never learns what it means or that it's from my world.
“Can we just… just go back to explaining what ice cream is?”
“I think I would prefer to tease you more. But fine I can go back to trying to explain it better for you.”
#sorry this took a while for me to write!!#I've been really busy with work and uni prep!!#hopefully when I start uni I can be more consistent#linked universe x reader#link x reader#lu time#time x reader#moss✦answers#moss✦writes
172 notes
·
View notes
Note
ommggg i read let me down easy today and i kept re-reading it bc its TOO GOOD AHH !!🦅🦅
it hurt so much but im a whore for angst first, and a human second🫶
just thinking about the reader suffering in silence because she feels guilty for having any negative feelings towards finnick :(( the way she dismisses those feelings bc she thinks that whatever she’s going through is nothing compared to what he’s been through :((
also thinking abt finnick’s slow realization that she’s suffering because of him :(( like the incident at the market is when he began to notice the changes :(( and later when he fully understands how his behavior affected her IT MESSES HIM UP SO BAD
i just know he was remembering his past interactions with reader (where she breaks the glass / when she rejected his money at the pearl necklace stand) AND CRINGING …and it only gets worse when reader spills her guts about what she went through. omg ik he was sick.
another #thougjt i had was how this might mess up the reader for a bit after too #idk (that just might be me tho lmaoo) bc i feel like once you’ve been in that cycle of feeling depressed/insecure for so long it’s hard to snap out of, even with constant reassurance 😔
But maybe that’s just my angsty side talking HAHA
but i loved this fic, 11/10🫶
-🦅
omg yes, literally my favorite thing I've ever written. ik I wrote it, but it's the only thing of mine I reread bc it's like the perfect expression of how I feel, like if I could represent myself in one fic it would be that one if that makes any sense. it's like a concept that always haunts my mind no matter what I'm hyperfixating on maybe because I'm just like melancholy like that 🎀🎀🎀
but thank you so much, I'm literally so glad people are enjoying it because it literally is my own roman empire
yes she wants to be angry, she is angry, but refuses to let herself be because his issues are what she needs to prioritize. how can she be angry when he is constantly suffering? even if it's not so slowly tearing her apart, like a piece of paper sitting in water, she's trying to stay connected for the illusion of it all, to be strong for him.
her being loving isn't new to him, so he isn't thrown off by that, only slightly confused by her waking up earlier then usual. so her gifts have little bearing when he's used to it and he really doesn't want to feel loved right now because he's trying to reject whatever will make him seek comfort. when she starts changing her clothes and makeup, it's different, but he's not responsive because she's always been his pretty girl and always will be, her buying new clothes doesn't make him perceive her any differently or wonder if there's a reason, people try out new things.
when he notices how other peoples interactions with her have changed that's when he really starts to notice, if everyone else perceives her as melancholy then something has to be wrong. even if he's not quick to point the finger back to himself. he tries gifts, maybe she wouldn't buy something because she wanted him to do it, some sort of attention, but it's not big enough part of the issue to have any bearing on the effects it's now had on her. the girl rotting depression era shall we say. eventually through that, what people say to him, self-reflection he gains full consciousness of what he's been doing, how he's been hurting the person he loves so much. and the guilt is incomprehendable.
how could he be so selfish? so closed off as not to process all the clear cries for help? thinking about how he was getting annoyed, feeling like she was being moody when she insisted on doing the dishes until the dish broke. how she ran out into the ocean, in the rain without a care to regain some sense of composure, composure to try and make him happy. then the necklace thing, how could he miss her clearly trying just to be with him, be near him, have the interactions with him that he was giving to the girl at the shop instead? he was so unresponsive to the emotional needs he just assumed it to be a material need that he was willing to give. so when she rejects the money it just doesn't compute, to buy it she needs it, and then she tries to send the message that buying something isn't what she's asking for but he misses it completely. he gets snappy and it snaps her.
so when he's finally talking to her, he needs her to tell him the truth, the nuances because he's been so blind to all of it. he needs to know how he hurt her and it really is like a full wake up call. he can't let his own trauma consume him, allowing it to traumatize her in different ways. like when she mentions her getting to the point of just wanting him to want her body if he wouldn't want her because that's how people perceive him, that's what was hurting him, but he inadvertently made her feel that way. it breaks him to think that he did that to her, that he hurt his girl that way. then the idea that she would have let him cheat on her, she would've picked being with him over her own well-being, well she did, and he doesn't deserve that. he can't fathom how he could be with someone who loves him so blindly as to choose being with a ghost of him over not having him at all, when she deserves so much better. when he has been so callous with such a precious kind of love. or the fact that he even made it seem like he had interest in anyone but her.
there will be a fluffy, smutty requested sequel but readers issues afterwards will be lightly touched upon in it. but yes, she would have to spend so much time mending her relationship with herself afterwards. he's totally on hand and knee trying to make it up to her, to prove how much he loves and needs her, to give the attention she deserves. but she's still paranoid about cheating, insecure, scared, even if she tries to mask it. but he knows. he could, and does, spend hours praising her, telling her how pretty she is, how she's the only one, how sorry he is, how much he adores her, but it doesn't stop the nagging voice in the back of her head. she tries to hide it but she's clingier and he's okay with that, she needs him more.
but yes there's lots of long term effects the incident has on there relationship. and they have to try and navigate that together.
thank you pookie, I love your thoughts sm 💋💋💋💋💋💋
#wanda 💋#finnick odair x reader#finnick odair x y/n#finnick odair#finnick odair fluff#finnick odair angst#finnick odair x reader fluff#finnick odair x you#🦅 anon
34 notes
·
View notes
Text
Alastor's Whitewashing And Appropriation (Hazbin Hotel Discourse)
Now that Hazbin Hotel is entering mainstream consciousness, it's a good opportunity to bring attention towards some issues that need addressing.
Indie queer productions have an unfortunate trend of propagating racism, sexism, transphobia, ableism, etc. That's nothing new, and we all have to come to terms with it. A good way to do that? Just get the conversation going. Put the word out there that, 'hey, I have sincere complaints about ___.'
Alastor is, without a doubt, one of the most popular characters of the main cast. We can celebrate the victory of Alastor being a beloved canonical aroace character, while also criticizing his flaws.
Mainly - his race, his cultural appropriation, and his strong link towards racialized violence.
(1) Alastor is canonically mixed race Creole. His skin is medium-toned, but fanartists are sometimes drawing him as light-toned.
Although we don't know his full ethnic makeup, Alastor is canonically portrayed with a darker skintone than some fanartists choose to depict him as, whether in his current demon form, or a fanon-popularized mortal form.
'Creole' isn't a race, it's an ethnicity, and Creole people can have any array of complexions. But that doesn't excuse the trend of literally bleaching his canonical skin hue.
As many people have pointed out, it'd make a lot of sense if Alastor was specifically mixed black, thanks to his association with voodoo, and also according to Depression-era racial census of New Orleans. We know that mixed race black people can look like Pete Wentz, Vin Diesel, and Wentworth Miller. Him being relatively pale, with a pointy nose and straight hair, it wouldn't contradict a black identity.
In the show proper, there's been a wild array of lighting effects, and they also put a shallow gradient burn over the bottom half of the screen at most times, which can complicate accurate skintone shade picking. But you can clearly see that Alastor is darker than many other characters, and is more similar to characters voiced by people of color - Niffty, Vaggie, Carmilla. In fact, his skincolor value is on par with Vaggie's, just with more saturation, giving it the illusion that it's brighter.
(2) Haitian Voudo/Louisiana Voodoo is a closed and heavily marginalized practice. Cannibalism and violence have been long-standing smear campaigns made against it.
A 'closed practice' means that you need to be initiated into it, not just choose to practice it. New Orleans Voodoo has been couched in political prosecution since its inception, and continues to be marginalized. According to the historian Carolyn Morrow Long, "Voodoo, as an organized religion, had been thoroughly suppressed by the legal system, public opinion, and Christianity." Because of its association with free black people (and the country of Haiti), you can imagine the hate crimes it's faced for decades.
Some of its most infamous fearmongering included reports of human sacrifices, cannibalism, and animalistic orgies. "{...} the Westerns’ view on Vodou was proof that the “black republic ‘’ cannot claim to be civilized."
So of course, a mixed-race cannibalistic serial killer using 'evil' magic couched in floating vevè symbols can leave a bad taste in the mouth. Just because the symbols are accurate ones doesn't mean the misappropriation isn't there.
It has never been blatantly stated that Alastor is a Voodoo practitioner, or has any real history in Louisiana Voodoo, aside from in the pilot where Charlie briefly says the word 'voodoo' in reference to Alastor's magic. But the inclusion of actual vevè symbols is a solid enough connection. And it's an unfortunate one.
Compare with Disney's Princess And The Frog, where the directors made an effort to include Mama Odie as a more accurate depiction of a manbo, while the antagonist Dr. Facilier is hinted as not being able to practice real voodoo at all. There are more delicate and considerate ways to approach Alastor's association with Hollywood 'voodoo', and hopefully, we will get to see them as the show goes on.
(3) Wendigos are specifically from Algonquin folklore. Many pop culture interpretations of Wendigos are inappropriately abstracted from its cultural context.
Canonically, Alastor's demon form resembles a deer because he was mistaken for a deer by a hunter, and shot square in the forehead. We've seen him let out elk bugle sounds, and also his antlers growing in conjunction with his power. When he puts his game face on, his entire body gets spindly, his teeth grow sharper and longer, his hands turn into huge claws, and he sometimes eats his victims alive.
This, of course, is making some viewers ring comparisons to 'wendios', thanks to Alastor's large appetite and preference for human flesh.
Similar to his 'voodoo' connection, the show has never gone on record to say Alastor is supposed to be a Wendigo, or that his history and appearance was meant to invoke a Wendigo. The connection here is a bit weaker than his Hollywood voodoo, and it's mostly an audience reaction that I find questionable.
For those who don't know, a Wendigo is specifically from Algonquian folklore. a malevolent spirit who eats people and is never sated. English-speaking audiences owe their awareness of Wendigos to Stephen King, The X-Files, Supernatural, Until Dawn, and more. Very few of these depictions were respectful towards indigenous culture. Most of the time, 'wendigos' have been almost entirely divorced from its indigenous American contexts.
It's a classic example of appropriation. They take some cultural facet from a marginalized people, do minimal research, and depict it with little owe towards its creators. That's insulting no matter who you are. It's a form of violence when the culture is a persecuted one.
A character can be a skinny deer demon that eats people without trying to cash in on the whole 'wendigo' thing. This might be what Alastor is supposed to be, but the audience is using the word 'wendigo' inappropriately.
So. In one single character, we've got the whitewashing, the Voodoo and Wendigo appropriation, the anti-Blackness, and an overall racism.
It's no surprise that Alastor remains one of the most divisive characters of the show.
This would be like, if Niffty (voiced by Japanese-American Kimiko Glenn) kept being drawn as a pale woman with bulbous blue eyes, had weird radioactive atomic powers thanks to her method of death back in the '40's, and was obsessed with spearing people through their stomach with long blades. It's not super great.
So far, Hazbin Hotel's canon material has avoided many of the overtly bigoted humor and hijinks so common in adult TV, and that's something of a victory. But what's not problematic doesn't cancel out what is.
The more a reasonable criticism is circulated amongst its audience, the more driven the creative team is to pay attention.
42 notes
·
View notes
Text
What Fallout Games Should I Play?
Hello! My name is Skipper, and the Fallout games has been a special interest of mine for a few years now. With the resurgance of the fandom, and new people coming from the shows, I figured I'd make a post helping people figure out what games to play!
This is going to be the main 6 games (1-4, 76, NV), though I may add more if I play some of the other games. Feel free to add on, ask questions, or generally interact with this! I'm always happy to help people get into the games and love talking Fallout with people. :)
This is going to be as spoiler-free as possible, though I may mention some game locations vaguely, so be warned if you think that may ruin the experience.
For further reading, I highly reccomend the Independent Fallout Wiki! A lot less ads in your way, and the people over there are lovely. However, be careful, as there are spoilers there!
TLDR; New Vegas for story, Fallout 4 for gameplay and introducing concepts, Fallout 1 for authenticity, and Fallout 76 for multiplayer but absolutely nothing else of value.
Table of Contents
Fallout 1
Fallout 2
Fallout 3
Fallout: New Vegas
Fallout 4
Fallout 76
Last Updated: April 22, 2024
Fallout 1
Released; 1997
Setting; Southern California, 2161
Wiki Page
Almost a hundred years after the bombs fell, Vault 13's water chip has broken, and the Vault Dweller was selected (through random chance) to venture out into the wasteland and save their vault.
Pros:
The Original Fallout Game!
One of my favourites, story-wise.
Harold!
The game is relatively short compared to the others, and the story isn't overly hard to digest, in my opinion.
The 'talking heads' animations are super cool (Aradesh, Harold, Etc Etc)
Later character who I won't name but once you meet them YOU'LL KNOW
There's no limit to how many companions you can have at a time
I generally love the setting.
Cons:
The graphics do not age well. Even for the time, they were a bit lacking. (For reference, Doom came out in 1993, 4 years earlier).
Bit of a learning curve! But once you get it, it's pretty easy to use. The turn-based combat was the hardest to get a handle on.
The game DOES NOT hold your hand. Later games have objective lists and markers, but this game just has a list and memory. Pretty fun, if you're into a more difficult game!
Combat and general survival is difficult. The experience is authentic - which means you can and will die during the first combat scenario. Again, once you get it it's not that bad, but combat will remain difficult. But for some this could be a pro!
Fallout 2
Released; 1998
Setting; Southern California, 2241
Wiki Page
80 years after the Vault Dweller's heroic rescue of their Vault, the village of Arroyo is suffering a severe drought. The Chosen One, a descendant of the Vault Dweller, has been sent to retrieve a G.E.C.K. to save their village.
Pros
The story again is very good!
A lot of the strengths of the previous game.
There's something melancholy about exploring the world of Fallout 1 with so many changes and losses. It's perfect for the setting.
Sergeant Dornan. You'll see when you meet him.
More Harold!
Cons
This was released only a year after Fallout 1, so a lot of the graphics & gameplay remain the same, if that's not something you're a fan of.
This is where the idea of "wacky vault experiments" is introduced, something I've never super loved, but that's subjective.
Fallout 3
Released; 2008
Setting; Capital Wasteland (Formerly Washington, D.C.), 2277
Wiki Page
200 years after the war, the 19-year-old Lone Wanderer's father has mysteriously left their home at Vault 101. It is up to the Lone Wanderer to track him down and figure out what's going on, all while navigating the dangerous Capital Wasteland.
Pros
Brought the Fallout series into the modern era!
Some pretty cool locations, like Megaton and Rivet City
Sort of a pro and con, a lot of the game is spent in the underground Metro system. This is cool, but I'm not a huge fan of interior spaces. Still - it feels like a real DC Wasteland!
Galaxy News Radio is introduced, which is great background noise - and I love Three Dog. He's so silly.
No sprint button. It's not felt super bad in this game compared to Vegas, but it still can be annoying.
It feels like a post-apocalypse. The whole world is this muddy, almost sickly green, grey, and brown colour. All of the sets are carefully designed, full of dirt and debris and trash. Buildings are crumbling or outright hollowed out, the ghouls look like walking corpses (as they should be), the mole rats are nasty and all of the creatures feel gross. As they should be! This is a post-apocolypse, everything should be gross and dirty!
Lots of good world-building. Because this is based in the Capital, we get to interact with a lot of old-world history, and see how similar and different it is from our own.
Cons
Story is... not great, in my opinion.
Some of those DLCs physically hurt me. They definitely lean into the 'silly' aspects of the games, but I feel it hurts the worldbuilding and realism.
NOT Bethany Esda's best work.
Leans more into the 'game' and less on the 'role-playing', which was a big part of Fallout 1 and 2. The protagonist is 19, their father is James, and we see a bit of what their childhood looked like. You can work around it, but it's not as fun as the other games.
Sometimes the npcs are annoying. There's collision in this game, but sometimes if you step on something it'll move and a npc will shout 'Watch where you're going' or something, which gets on my nerves. Also, if you so much as look at a locked container, you get a 'That's locked for a reason'. Probably minor, but annoying.
Fire ants.
Fallout: New Vegas
Released; 2010
Setting; Mojave Wasteland (Formerly Mojave Desert), 2281
Wiki Page
Courier Six, or just the Courier, is in the middle of a delivery when they are interrupted by Benny and shot in the head - though they make a miraculous recovery and now need to figure out exactly what kind of mess they've landed themselves in this time.
Pros
I mean, it's Fallout New Vegas. This is a lot of people's favourite, for good reason. Story is phenomenal, the entire world feels real and interactive. If you shoot someone, there's consequences, and the other npcs will acknowledge it.
THE BEST radio. All of the music slaps and helps you feel the setting. Plus, I love Mr. New Vegas, the radio host.
The characters are amazing.
The world is not too silly but still silly. Like yeah, this makes sense for a post-apocalypse. But it's also so objectively funny. Some of the best memes come from this game.
Yes Man.
As usual, I love the map design.
Instead of greens for Fallout 3, this game is bathed in oranges and brown - making it feel warm, perfectly capturing the desert setting, and dusty.
the DLCs are amazing!!
We love the companions in this house.
I love how morally grey it is. No one is perfect, no faction is outright good or outright bad (except the Legion, fuck those guys). It's up to you to pick which you think is the lesser evil, which is the best future for the Mojave. Or you can kill them all, up to you.
Cons
The development for this game was pretty famously rocky. It was outsourced to Obsidian, and they were given only 18 months to make it. Therefore, this game is very similar to Fallout 3, with some general improvements here and there.
There is still no sprint button, which is definitely felt here. A lot of the stuff is spread out, so thewre's a lot of wandering through desert, slowly making your way to your destination. It also feels more empty. The great city of New Vegas is sparsely populated, quiet, and desolate - despite it being such a big deal and supposedly so popular.
Honest Hearts DLC :////
Fallout 4
Released; 2015
Setting; The Commonwealth (Formerly Boston, MA), 2287
Wiki Page
In 2077, the Sole Survivor (default names Nate or Nora) is ready to start a family. In their little neighbourhood, with their white picket fence and infant son, it is a time of new beginnings - despite the war raging around them. Unfortunately, the war quickly catches up to them, and their family is forced to take shelter in Vault 111, where they are frozen in time for 210 years. They emerge following the kidnapping of their infant son, into a time so different to their own, battling this new world alongside the ghosts of the old.
Pros
The graphics have been updated, and it looks great! Mostly. Instead of washed-out greens and browns, this game is bright and vibrant.
Some more awesome companions. Honestly, I love them so much.
I really like the level-up system in this. I prefer 3/NV, but the tier system is fun and visually neat.
Better crafting system. And more crafting systems in general.
Settlements!!! This game introduces settlements, which basically means there's a bunch of set locations around the map that you can take over and build in! You get a lot of freedom and are responsible for meeting the needs for people in the settlement. You can get some mods for more freedom/flexibility, and you can mostly ignore it if you want.
Cons
The story is... also lacking. It feels almost... unfinished? Some beats are strange and it's just like. What.
Playing this before Fallout 3 pissed me off so much, because there's so much that is ripped off of Fallout 3. The Commonwealth is brought up, the radio music is the same, the vault numbers so similar, there's even an early version of Vault 111. It feels lazy. Fallout New Vegas was more creative, and they had a fraction of the time 4 has.
40-50% of the game is spent in loading screens.
Preston Garvey deserves so much better. "AnOtHeR sEtTlEmEnT nEeDs YoUr HeLp!"
Nick Valentine is non-romancable.
It's so easy to forget about the main objective, and hard to really care about it. This is a common problem I've heard, so it's not just me.
Radio host gets on my nerves :/
Nuka-World DLC is frustrating. But at least it's not. Sideyes Honest Hearts (Fo:NV).
Game is... easy. Too Easy. Deathclaws are supposed to be dangerous and difficult to kill.
Fallout 76
Released; 2018
Setting; Appalachia (Midwestern US mountain range), 2102-2104
Wiki Page
25 years after the bombs fell, all members of Vault 76 have been kicked out in order to rebuild society.
Pros
It's. Multiplayer? Kinda.
I made some friends on there, which was neat.
Return of item condition. So.
CAMPs are fun. Like the settlement but without NPCs to look after and allows location flexibility.
Has. Some new songs on the radio?
ALMOST HEAVEN. WEST VE-
Amazing map design! The outside is gorgeous and feels like Appalachia, for the most part.
Honestly, I prefer this version of VATS (the game's targeting system). In other games, VATS will pause and slow down combat to help with aim, and can be kind of annoying. Here, the combat speed is the same, you just spend some AP (stamina) for aim assist.
Cons
I prefer settlements tbh
What's not to mention? Story sucks, game sucks, etc etc. It's pretty famously bad.
I usually love the story, but checked out very fast and spent most of my time running around. But I honestly didn't last long even then.
The game is broken. Like, fundamentally broken. You are constantly subjected to crashes, bugs, etc etc. Fallout 4 is buggy, but this takes it to an extreme.
50-70% of the game is loading screens.
The interiors are huge, and there is no local map, so you very easily get lost.
Generally the story is so stupid.
Fallout 1st is a cash grab.
Unbalanced.
Bad.
Some videos I like about Fallout 76
Internet Historian's video on the history and release. I'm iffy on Internet Historian as a creator, but I do like the video. Let's just hope it's not plagiarised.
Joseph Anderson's video on the game at it's released state. Primarily focuses on how poorly the game plays and how broken it is. Super funny.
PrivateSession's video released in 2023, reviewing a more current version of the game. More focused on story.
PatricianTV's 4-part series released in 2023, reviewing a more current version of the game. More focused on the game and gameplay.
In conclusion; thank you for reading! As I mentioned, any criticism, questions, and suggestions are welcome! I hate/love fallout and am always happy to drag people down with me.
Also, would people be interested in a post discussing the story/setting/timeline? Like where I infodump further about the universe. To make it easier to digest and answer questions. Or give me a chance to infodump further about fallout.
#fallout#fallout show#fallout 1#fallout 2#fallout 3#fallout 4#fallout new vegas#fallout 76#fallout amazon#fallout tv series#fallout games#fallout info#basically i infodump about fallout for way to long
25 notes
·
View notes
Text
"Transl. from Eliksni" Flavor Text translated into Eliksni Conlang
Here are those flavor text lines I've been mentioning in every SotConlang post since the dawn of time! Finally! These were more of a "chip at it when there's downtime" project, since they're fairly short and simpler compared to than Null Composure. I'm very proud of them, as this is the culmination of several months of background work and my first completed translation project! *throws confetti*
side note: on Ishtar Collective, some items say "transl. from Eliksni" and others say "trans. from Eliksni". i definitely didn't only just find that out when I was close to being done w the original lines i found..... anyway idk what the reason for the difference is (probably diff ppl wrote the flavor texts) but now you all know if you want to go look these up yourselves. I made them all say "transl." for consistency here.
Translations are all below the cut, plus maybe some notes if I have the room/energy to write them!
New here and confused? This post is part of my ongoing project to create a language for the Eliksni! For more information check out my masterpost linked here.
"The Barons fight together." —Elykris, transl. from Eliksni
Aaviks Bahrenesni or’thrys.
"They gave us nothing… so we'll take everything." —Elykris, transl. from Eliksni
Teskem ak nam ryk elan… liium roksun el drrha.
"The Great Machine isn't killing us. We're killing ourselves over the Great Machine." —Brivi, transl. from Eliksni
Nam’mrathiik Aalosiisrohkani iven. Mrathiik el elanov nviks Aalosiisrohkani.
"Let them have the Great Machine. They deserve it." —Mithrax, transl. from Eliksni
Niidreh dreskibr kaas Aalosiisrohkani skeyris. Ksohls ak eyka.
"The Kells are dead or mad. The era of Houses is over. So I came to the Shore." —Arrha, transl. from Eliksni
Keles vaath’iir priit neyv. Dei’grehs iikrimni eyd Bohs. Liium estyrem neh ryk Nateskiini.
"I was of kings. Then of exiles. Now I'm here. The Shore is bad… but everywhere else is worse." —Brivi, transl. from Eliksni
Liirem neh eyd Bo-Usriis. Grev Bo-Nama. Rak ilo. Nateskiini pehka... drand eil drrhapriistis ar’pehka vei Nateskiini.
"I was at the Final Attempt. I saw a Guardian wield a gun that left molten gold in her wake. I ran and never looked back." —Avrok, transl. from Eliksni
Liirem neh yan Grehsriivaenni. Biir’em neh, greyraabt vathyarov heythiks usar’em, yan orey’em’iir neyok bev eydka greyr sriivikem. Thekrem neh taap namiik tamr biirem neh.
"We are a long way from home." —Arrha, transl. from Eliksni
El ksaan shak ketch.
"Here we can start over." —Mithrax, transl. from Eliksni
Ilo vaad niivrey seykrim el.
"How do you think we got here?" —Avrok, trans. from Eliksni
Greyraabt iruuksis klii, giire el ilo estyrem.
That was a whole lot of stuff so I think I'll leave the notes out (theyre not anything super special anyway lol). Might reblog to add some rambles later if anyone is interested!
22 notes
·
View notes
Note
Can we talk about more important things like jimin?
I know it's been days but oh boy, his last live made me feel tingly inside. After weeks and weeks of radio silence I wasn't speculating much about his activities, but it's clear that he's been marinating something. I just can't help but giggle thinking of him sitting down like he always does, like he's 6ft 5 tall and his cock is way too heavy, and just analyzing frame by frame every little thing he did during Face era, and that's classic jimin but at the same time I feel like his demeanor changed yet again? Did anyone else feel The Vibes~? Were the super shy mimi days left behind and there's no need to hide behind Legos anymore? I loved to see that he was able to talk without feeling awkward, and loved to hear him talk about his need to change, gives me the feeling that he's gonna pick up from where he left off with set me free pt. 2.
A couple of days ago I was doing some deep cleaning and I ended up going through his photobook again, I still can't believe the way he ATE that, every single concept? Insane. Would love to see him go further and keep exploring that side of him, I want to see and hear a brighter, happier jimin, maybe jimin in love, jimin in lust, so many things, why am I so greedy when it comes to him? Lol I can't help it.
That Most Important Thing: Jimin - The sequel. We can and should talk about him.
I did notice a different vibe. Right from the beginning. I don't know how to explain it, but it was as if he was less burdened, compared to the livestreams he did pre Face and during the promotions. The stress must have been really high back then.
Now, it's like he discovered what he has to do, he's doing it and feeling confident about it. Maybe it's an act, putting on a brave face, but to me, he just seemed more carefree. I've seen some reactions, people actually being worried about what he said about starting from scratch because of what the majority of us think it's related to that infamous encore. It might be, I hope it isn't, or that it didn't produce some long term effect on his self confidence. But to me it sounded like instead of wallowing, he picked himself up and went back to work.
Again, that doesn't mean he did a bad job with Face, far from it. We know it would be ridiculous to say that. It's one of the best kpop albums so far in 2023.
I love that it had coherence, a vision. Everything was interconnected and every single layer and element of the album was carefully crafted. Nothing was lacking. It wasn't like there were mediocre lyrics, but a good melody or vice versa. None of that.
The photofolio (again, he ate that. He did more than everybody) and the first album are an indication that he's on an interesting path. What I hope is to see an evolution, taking some steps further, more courage. Jimin plays it a bit on the safer side. He pushes it, but just enough. I want him to just push the limits bit by bit. Because he can and because there's potential.
I liked how you introduced his heavy dick in all that praise. Makes perfect sense in the context.
37 notes
·
View notes
Note
If you were asked who is the better antagonist in JJK or BNHA, who would they be? I found some similar ask that asked, "who is better antagonists between Kenjaku, Toji or Sukuna"? And what I think about is the antagonist in BNHA are cool, too.... What do you think?
I can't tell if this is a comparative question of JJK vs BNHA or just generally the best of both soooo I'll try to answer to the best of my interpretation.
⚠️ There's a spoiler warning for the below, I'm just riding the struggle bus today so assume spoilers through recent chapters.
Jujutsu Kaisen
🏆 Best Antagonist: Kenjaku
The Competition
Don't get me wrong, Mahito and Toji are certified demons too but their impact on the story is not as expansive. Admittedly, this is kind of silly considering Toji and his justified denouncement of jujutsu culture is precisely what creates the chasm that informs the greater conflicts we're currently in the midst of. Personally, I think Toji will make one more comeback on the side of the good guys, somehow. It's not outside of the realm of possibility and, based on spoilers around Chapter 236, he's been potentially alluded to as some sort of insurance. Who else's father could Gojo have been talking about unless Jin is still alive?
Regarding Mahito, I think an interesting insight into his character is buried in one of the light novels. He mentions it in the fight with Yuji to a degree to in that he's a mirror of humanity. He rampages as he sees violence in the world. But when encountered by a human at peace, he, too, found peace and his interest piqued. Ultimately, Mahito was a knife in the heart that just kept twisting but he was nothing more than a rabid dog interested in seeing what kind of curse Yuji's turmoil might bring about. How many times could he rend his soul without laying a finger on him.
Kenjaku, however, is insidious in the fact that his power spans millennia and I don't think we've seen the full exposition of his impact. With his ability to commandeer bodies, he did whatever he wanted throughout history using the bodies of countless people and why? Sick curiosity. There's no rhyme, no reason, he just wants to see how big of a clusterfuck he can make of the world and, so far, we've only seen a few of the ripples of that. He is both unpredictable and, yet, exceptionally cunning and resourceful. Who knows how many back alley deals he made with the reincarnated sorcerers. How many other cursed paintings, artifacts or vessels he forged that haven't revealed themselves. Where Toji and Mahito kinda allowed themselves to fly off the handle, Kenjaku is playing a long game of chess. I've considered whether Geto was doomed by the narrative and, I think we'll find that Kenjaku was a part of what pushed Geto to his ultimate defect to better line up his next body. Scarily, Kenjaku had the time and means to plot where that possibility isn't that far off.
Sukuna, similarly cunning, is the villain of the story with all the traditional markers of being the big bad and, seemingly, unredeemable but Kenjaku effectively could have put the whole course of events into action a thousand years ago. I also always think its funny that Gojo randomly rattles off facts from other eras/periods. I don't know that that isn't by design either.
My Hero Academia
🏆 Best Antagonist: Dabi
The Competition
I think we've seen the resolution of Toga's story and, as far as antagonists go, she added a degree of mayhem on the final battlefield when, in mourning Twice, she let forth his Sad Man's Parade. While she has the quintessential recipe of being cast aside, misunderstood and vilified on the basis of her quirk (see also: Spinner and Shigaraki), I think she more served as a device for character development or a parallel to Deku. Having found acceptance with Ochako, her current status is unknown.
Spinner really had a big moment at the hospital but namely as a pawn for AFO. He kind of waffled around, wringing his hands over whether LOV was true to Stain's vision before choosing to follow Shigaraki. But his lack of resolve coupled with a forced power up ultimately fumbles what could have been a huge win for the LOV at the hospital. Actually, Spinner probably could have been utilized better but his story was overshadowed by Shoji coming into his own. Maybe his purpose was really just to be the real time example of someone wanting to do the right thing, ending up on the wrong side, having so many opportunities to do better but sacrificing that path for whatever acceptance he found with the League.
Shigaraki is an obvious choice for villain but, we can see how tenuous his connection to villainy is. He, like the other members of the LOV, are ultimately the product of never having someone reach out a hand to help but I think we're getting closer to Deku untangling the knot of his trauma and it'll be what frees him of the grasp AFO has on him. Further, while Shigaraki was ultimately dubbed the prodigal successor of AFO, his struggle to enact a grand scheme to unite the League and the Paranormal Liberation Front, I think, is more indicative of what we've noted to be a really immature mindset. He's no diabolical genius.
Which leads me to the best antagonist, in my opinion. Ain't no vengeance like that of Touya MF Todoroki. In addition to burying the lede of his identity for so long just to build up to one magnificent, triumphant dance, Dabi's origin story is so zesty. Born into the pinnacle Haves of quirk society, he was on track to follow in Endeavor's footsteps only to have so many odds stacked against him. The right quirk but incompatible with his body. Still, he wasn't deterred and his similarly obsessive commitment to besting All Might for Enji causes him to self destruct. He winds up in AFO's clutches. Found and rehabilitated by Garaki, he dips without so much as a name only to resurface years later. Still a phantom. Still guided by his twisted need to make his father just as miserable as he was when he found out he was not sought after despite the years that passed. Not only that but, spoiler for the big Shiggy Showdown (chapter number escapes me), but he is unaffected by the reconciliation of his family. Unbothered by their pleas or the fact that he'd burned through his own skin, nerves, pain receptors, organs. He is possessed by his need to wreak havoc and he cries tears of blood to boot. This doesn't undermine the tragedy of his origin story - his stolen birthright, the inequities of what should have been his given his quirk and tenacity, the fact that at the height of his power he can't help but cry. Just like the rest of the League of Villains, he is just the product of a family who did not adequately support or care for him and a society that cast him aside. He just also happens to have grander schemes at play, the exposition of which provided a more comprehensive understanding of hero society and its failures which was Shigaraki's desire all along to shift the whole paradigm. What sets Dabi apart from other antagonists, in my opinion, is that there really aren't villains in MHA. Just people waiting to be moved by how earnest Deku is or rehabilitated by their own recognizance. This is as it applies to Stain, Gentle Criminal, La Brava, Lady Nagant and even Overhaul (so I won't bother going into them individually). But Dabi stays 10 toes down on his commitment to madness. I'm still uncertain whether his charred corpse will actually see redemption but it stands to be seen.
All For One is of course the irredeemable demon lord and I'm not sure the power of friendship is going to affect anything there.
Winner Take All
Best Antagonist: Kenjaku. This largely stems from my belief that, despite his death in recent chapters, we're going to get additional exposition into his depraved dealings or another layer of his plans that lays in wait and is ready to devastate us all. The possibilities there are endless with the way the story oscillates from present to past.
Bonus, Best Villain: Gege Akutami. They know what they did.
#neon asks#anon asks#manga with me#manga with me jjk#manga with me mha#jjk#bnha#mha#jujutsu kaisen#boku no hero academia#my hero academia#kenjaku#dabi#touya todoroki#league of villains#anime antagonist
14 notes
·
View notes
Note
To what extent were the nations of ancient and medieval Europe just as malicious, cruel, genocidal, and/or otherwise evil as their post-1492 era counterparts?
Genocide, as both an actual physical practice and a semantic concept/political strategy is, in my view, a decidedly post-Columbian notion. It first got going and had an immensely complex legal, military, religious, and cultural framework built to justify it, after the "discovery" of the Americas in 1492. Before that, kings and rulers obviously did kill and mistreat political enemies, sometimes in large numbers and for ideological purposes, but I wouldn't argue that it was done with the same overall aims (or indeed, sheer multi-level/multi-national complexity that requires modern infrastructure) as modern genocide. People sometimes try to argue that the crusades (1095-1291) were genocide, which I disagree with. The primary aim was the capture of territory, not the extermination of people and culture, and that designation obscures the complicated and reciprocal Christian-Muslim contacts, conflicts, and political/diplomatic relations that took place at all levels and involved substantial exchanges apart from just the battlefield. That is the "a bad thing can be bad without affixing every bad buzzword to it" fact that Tumblr often struggles with; the crusades were Bad and involved people of different beliefs killing each other, therefore they must be Genocide! However, war -- even religious war -- and outright genocide are two different things. You can condemn the crusades for what they were without also arbitrarily making them every other bad thing in history too.
This is why it always drives me crazy when people insist on describing every act of violence or seemingly indiscriminate killing/torture as "medieval." First, it separates out the "medieval" as a category which is somehow always inferior to modernity by its very nature, and second, it resists any realization that modernity has invented some things that are much worse than they were in the premodern era, simply because technology and the development of mass/industrialized murder became so much easier. There is nothing comparable to WWI, the Holocaust, and other mass-casualty events of the twentieth and twenty-first century, which we have become able to produce and rattle off at a scale simply unheard-of by medieval technological or geographical capability. I saw someone the other day describe the action of BOMBING A TRAIN STATION (in the Ukraine war) as "medieval." How, I ask you, is using a bomb (a modern weapon) to attack a train station (an institution not invented until the 19th century for a mode of transportation likewise that became current in the 19th century), in a modern war stemming from modern reasons, MEDIEVAL? It is just a catch-all term for "violence that we like to think ourselves too good to inflict, while ignoring all the violence we have endlessly inflicted, so we act like it has no place in this century, while using more and more of it in even more sophisticated ways."
Whenever I point this out, I usually get people crying that MEDIEVAL TIMES WERE BAD TOO!! as if I somehow don't know that, or otherwise trying to justify, partition away, or excuse the existence and targets of modern violence, because they're uncomfortable with examining its ultimate roots and justifications. When it comes to this fact, the modern world is not peaceful or pacifist or free of violence or morally superior to the medieval world in any way; indeed, if anything, it's become overwhelmingly reliant on the military-industrial complex (another thing that has no meaningful medieval analogue) to solve its problems. This isn't to say that no violence or war or murder existed in the medieval world, as it obviously did! That should not be controversial! But genocide, colonialism, imperialism, and other such wide-scale and deliberate destruction of people's ways of life, culture, language, political system, collective memory, etc, simply are not medieval phenomena. They are early modern, modern, AND postmodern. But because we are so used to lazily affixing "medieval" to every practice that is bad from a modern liberal perspective, we don't see that, understand it, or take steps to coherently confront it in our own up-to-the-minute systems, institutions, and leaders.
166 notes
·
View notes
Text
I have no idea what to make of "The Prince and the Product." This episode was basically a remake of "Saturday Morning Fun Pit" with toys instead of children's cartoons and a completely irrelevant framing device. Redditors have been comparing it to Interdimensional Cable, but those episodes had a clear concept: Rick and Morty watching TV from other dimensions.
I don't have a clue what was going on here. The ads had nothing to do with the A-plot and didn't even play at points where you'd expect a commercial break; they just barged in whenever. I guess the writers had to make room for the real advertisements (unless you're subscribed to the ad-free tier!)
The car plot was mainly a rehash of the Anthology of Interest episode where Leela kills everybody. Leela ditching Fry yet again made me roll my eyes--and OK, it turned out that she was under a "science spell," but that made no sense either. Then Bender the ship crashed into Earth, revealing that the entire episode was non-canon with no explanation.
"And now, what's left of Futurama" sounded like an in-joke from the writers. Did they know that this episode is bad? And if so, why did everyone approve it and send it to the animation team?
What's weirder is that this episode actually had some great jokes and a heartfelt plot that showcased Bender's devotion to Fry, making me wish those scenes were in a good, canon episode. I think that good writing can elevate a bad concept, and "The Prince and the Product" had clever moments sprinkled within the insanity.
I rate weak Futurama episodes on three tiers. The first tier is "original era-bad," which means the episode is mediocre but not unwatchable. I've seen fans rate "The Cryonic Woman" as the worst episode in the Fox run. The second is "Comedy Central era-bad," which encompasses garbage like "The Butterjunk Effect" and "Yo Leela Leela."
Finally, the third tier is "Hulu era-bad," which includes episodes that I didn't care for ("How the West Was 1010001", "Parasites Regained") but wouldn't call objectively bad.
Yeah...this one goes in the second tier. I'd rank it among the Comedy Central era's worst episodes--i.e., the worst in the entire series.
Admittedly, I've never been a fan of episodes where the characters aren't "themselves" to begin with. "Naturama" from the Comedy Central run is decent, but I don't watch Futurama to see fish--I watch Futurama for the Planet Express crew. Still, at least "Naturama" and similar episodes committed to the concept, while "The Prince and the Product" was a weird mishmash of ideas.
Oh well; one bad episode out of nine isn't bad. The rest have ranged from decent to excellent. Hopefully, next week's episode will be a return to form.
17 notes
·
View notes
Note
I love your Brickubbles hc! How different did Brick treat Bubbles before their relationship? And did he ever get jealous when he noticed a lot of people would fall in love with Bubbles also?
DHLAHFLKSHG THANK YOU!
Very interesting questions. I'm gonna talk more about how Brick treated Bubbles before he caught feelings. You know that meme where someone is like "Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, you're cool, and fuck you." That would be Brick to everyone and then he tells Bubbles that she's the cool one. But in the respect that she is the least bad of the Powerpuff girls (in his eyes) and not that he actually likes her. Brick tries to stick with his hatred of the Powerpuff Girls the longest, so he still tries to diss and taunt the girls every chance he gets. It's just that Bubbles always just pretends she doesn't get them.
"Well if it isn't little Bubbles. >:)"
"I think we're both pretty small"
"..." and his brothers are laughing at him in the background.
But outside of fighting scenarios, Bubbles's eccentric personality piques his interest quite often. Like she'll say something a little quirky and Brick just plays along to see how it plays out. Honestly, you'll need to wait 5 business days if you want a clearer picture of how that works. There are a lot of things that Bubbles just has that are also conversation starters, like pins on her bookbag and quirky earrings. Brick takes the fucking bait, asks about it, and Bubbles takes advantage of that to plant these seeds of friendship. And all of a sudden, Brick the leader of the Rowdyruffs is friends with Bubbles. And Bubbles is totally the type of person who is like, "omg like can you believe we're friends now? That's so crazy, like I didn't expect that at all. Omg what were your first impressions of me." and Brick is like "I mean,,, my first impression of you wasn't exactly a secret."
And the jealousy thing, one hundred percent yes. And they all piss him off so much because he finds them annoying for "no apparent reason". But also he probably sees a lot of these suitors as pesky lil' flies that are nothing compared to him. But when these bitches start one-upping him when it comes to romantic gestures, cue Brick humble era.
Anyways, i die
#steaki speaks#ppg#brickubbles#these hcs probably suck#this is why i need to bounce my ideas off other ppl
16 notes
·
View notes
Note
But then it's not just BTS members Jimin and Jungkook having these differences in treatment. Talk to literally any solos they'll have a list of worries their bias faced during solo era, nothing was as bad as face tho. Rest members atleast got free timeslot for their promos while Jimin didn't even got that.
Joon's album didn't got any special promo, not even a good debut stage. The only English speaking member didnt even promoted in west, his vinyls are shipped after 7 months of release. I think after Jimin he got the worst treatment from HYBE. Only yoongi got perfect timing of schedules and even a tour but it flopped because songs weren't good (not being solo but saying it as someone who enjoys yoongi's rap the most in bts). Jin also released a single like JK isn't it ? What did he got other than a performance with CP ? But see JK getting full on promo and push for his English album.
The only member who was favored in every way is JK only. The differences is Jimin has strong fb who raises voice everytime while rest solos are not powerful as jm fb. Now see Tae's album won't be any different from a non-Jk album lol. His album will also have a mid treatment like rest members album from company's side as he's definitely not the favorite of hybe nor BPD as he'll always call them out for their BS unlike Jimin (Jimin is too sweet to it publicly). But Tae solos definitely won't be silent. If Jimin solos are bad then tae solos are worst. As much as I hate them I hope they'll use it to rightfully call out that company and their picking and choosing between members
Hello anon,
Yes, all the members haven't had extra perks. They had the basic promo which they all picked according to what they wanted but we have to be honest and say that Jk got extra things.
I found this pretty interesting:
I feel like we can exclude column 7, and 8, maybe because each member did decide the direction they wanted their solo to go in.
The difference is so obvious between Jin's single and Jk's single. It's sad they did Jin dirty like that.
I'm inclined to believe that Tae will have normal promo too. And army will probably defend him. So will taekookers. And kths.
But back to Jimin, what has happened to Jimin is not just normal promo and that's it. Like you said, it was only 9 days and till the day, we are still battling with Spotify, the company not restocking the cd, having the YouTube views deleted, Jimin not even getting a cake, all the stuff that's up in the chart I shared.
Thanks for stopping by.
15 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
yanmistost
Yanmış Tost
thehermitsoracle
The Hermits Oracle
heycerulean
hey, cerulean.
relentosolar
Deixa fluir...
the-grizzam-society
Grizz