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#tagging my fandom for good measure

originalaccountname · 4 months

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I don't expect the results to be particularly telling, it's more likely to be an even split, but to scratch the itch of knowing:

When enjoying a story and the characters are shown to be very close, but you do not see them as romantic, do you tend to interpret it as a sibling bond instead? Do you think of them as sibling-like instead of calling them friends?

Whether they have a notable age difference or not, whether other people ship those characters or not, how do YOU choose to interpret it?

Think of whatever examples you want, and try to see if it's a pattern for you to interpret close platonic relationships as siblinghood in the absence of shipping intent. If it helps, compare your habits to what you see the rest of your fandom(s) do. For science.

#tagging my fandom for good measure #bsd #bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs #nawy's polls #apparently i talk sometimes

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soullessjack · 1 month

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🔥 jack

oh my godddd I have so many unpopular opinions where do I even start….HOLY DISCLAIMER BATMAN!

anyways so in no particular order or tier system:

✯ i don’t think jack would wear anything feminine im sorry spn fandom. for lolz he has same-outfit-pattern-everyday autism and for serious it’s like. Really weird how fandoms tend to HC/portray non-binary amabs (and men/transmascs in general) almost exclusively as GNC or fem-presenting…like DGMW that is a real and valid form of self expression but it’s not the Only type of non-binary expression that exists. and honestly…**dare I say that most fandom/queer spaces just need to realize that queer masculinity exists and it doesn’t always have to be a matter of breaking gender norms??

** genuinely do whatever u want idc I can’t stop you i don’t want to stop you yada yada. paint his nails and put him in a skirt all u want but Please recognize patterns yall 😭

✯ more headcanon complaints (see disclaimer above ⇧) but I promise to switch it up soon. anyways every time somebody on this lil website says something along the lines of “Jack can’t handle/doesn’t like [insert violence, scary or adult-oriented thing], he prefers [soft or blatantly childlike things]” I shrivel inward like a dead spider. It’s annoying, it’s completely inaccurate to his canon personality and interests, it’s annoying ˣ2, and whether ppl wanna admit it or not—it stems from infantilization. not necessarily ableism, as infantilization is not exclusive to disabled people, but still just about the same thing.

honestly all I see of majority jack headcanons are ones that set him back to just being a child or otherwise being treated like one. for example, the one about him being able to shapeshift is pretty cool...until it just becomes about him deciding to age regress, yknow, to an age set he canonically chose not to go through, showed no desire to be in, and is more offended than anything to be considered as such. all of his interests have to be some shit like bluey or animal crossing, and he drinks apple juice from a sippy cup instead of beer. BARF.

I’ve lessened on my keyboard warring over babyjack in the past year but I have not lessened in being a hater. and I’ve said this before, but the baby-jack au already breached headcanon containment a long time ago when it’s not only so widespread that ppl take it for canon and it makes having any intelligent conversation about him nearly fucking Impossible, but it also lead to harassment and accusations of being a fucking predator, to anyone who dared find a whole grown man attractive. any potential jack ship, like jackharper? automatic grooming case to them. it’s like the fandom is just so dead set on this idea that jack really truly is a child in every aspect you can think of, and for what? if it’s just a headcanon, something you know is not part of the actual show, then don’t go Travis the Chimp levels of apeshit when you see him being treated like he is canonically 💀

unpopular opinion numero 3 which is slightly connected to 2:

✯ baby-jack and a handful of the domestic au’s are BORING (see disclaimer again ⇧), not just on a surface level to my suiting, but also because I feel like it just ..misses the point of the show?

the ragtag untraditional found family is now as nuclear and traditional as the Atomic Age. Dean and Cas are the most heteronormative “who wears the pants in the relationship” gay couple ever, Sam is demoted to the uncle that gets written out of his own family, Jack is just there to make his gay dads look cute and emphasize that they’re a gay family (while still being very heteronormative), and at least 5 of them could be found in a California gated community. everything that made any of them unique or defined their personalities is just scrubbed off, even for an AU.

so much of the later seasons focus on Sam and Dean realizing that they don’t have to make a hard splitting decision between the lives they want to live; that they can find a balance; be happy and have good things—namely families—without giving up hunting (and vice versa, that they can have hunting without giving up on family or happiness). everybody loves the gay hunters from S10(?12?) and what they represented for Dean, but I almost never see that be put into practice in the fandom.

THEY’RE ALREADY DOMESTIC!!! AND WITH THAT PERFECT BALANCE!!!! Season 13 quite literally gave Team Free Will a surrogate son to raise and established them as a family; highly untraditional, largely dysfunctional, overall not fitting of a family family, and yet they are a family still. Dean wears an apron and cooks and bakes for everyone; he built himself a man cave and established two separate family night events that they all ritually keep up; Sam has a morning jogging routine and visits his girlfriend every so often; Jack was taught how to drive, has normal chores like washing dishes, and gets groceries. And they didn’t just have that while fighting monsters—they had that while fighting a whole fucking archangel. Even if it did go down the gutter by the end, they still had it: domestic familial bliss and violent messy hunting without having to trade one for the other.

✯ I truly genuinely think Jack’s relationship with Dean is the best, most interesting and most misunderstood out of the three, and I also think that the problems with his relationship to Cas and Sam are hugely overlooked by the fandom—granted they are very small, especially if you’re comparing it to Dean, but they’re still there and I think we should bully Cas and Sam about it more. I shan’t elaborate because it’s 5AM and this was an impulsive add-on ❤️

✯ getting normal now…his plaid pattern jacket from the first half of Ouroboros is ugly as SHIT i have never liked it and don’t think I ever will. but I cannot deny it; he got that shit on.

✯ most unpopular opinion of all, I wanna do insane shit to his cervix 🙌

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yanderespamton78 · 2 months

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i made a thing

my friend told me to draw them iceskating so here we are

i couldnt be arsed to do a background raugh. also the dress blue is wearing is was inspired by the dress pink addison was wearing in that cool aurora borealis snowgrave MAP here (GO WATCH IT ITS SO COOL AND AURORA BOREALIS IS A BANGER). idk not my best work i feel like the anatomy looks a bit stiff but i might as well post it bc tumblr nice and wont bully me. im happy with the colour choices tho (i actually swatched the colours to see how they would look next to eachother instead of winging it for once wow). also i spend like all yesterday afternoon working on this and when i was finished i left the file open in case i wanted to do a bg and then MY WHOLE ASS COMPUTER RESET IT HAS NEVER DONE THAT BEFORE WTF. thank fuck krita has an autosave feature but if it didnt i would jump into oncoming traffic.

sketch below the cut bc why not i already have it

i made addispams coat longer cus it was bugging me

#whhy do i always sound so dead when i post art wtf #idk im tired i just wanna post it and gooo #rendering was a massive pain in the ass for some reason (idk why its normally pretty fun)#also i promise that the colours look brighter on my drawing tablet im not just shit at drawing #edit holy shit you guys i was confused why this had literally 0 notes I FORGOT THE FANDOM TAGS OOPS #deltarune #spamton #addispam #blue addison #spamblue #welp that was a bit silly of me oops #pixel art #< ill add that that for good measure

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presiding · 8 months

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What is your favourite thing about Billie Lurk?

(Answers are obvious possibly but i love when people talk about her👍)

thanks for the ask!! YEAH ME TOO I love when people talk about Billie! I can't say I have a favourite thing specifically, but I can explain why she's my fav. apologies for not taking this qn literally, but -

short answer: she’s really cool

& you can stop reading there, or, for the maybe 2 mutuals who might have time to read this my thoughts on her as a character, her meta, and her character as raw potential...

long answer:

i considered making this entire thing a gush so you could read a gush about Billie. but, part of what draws me to her is that she’s not always well written, and in fandom she’s underrated for a literal protagonist.

since you ask...

billie is a cool character

when I played Dh2 (hadn't played Dh1), I was excited to see a black woman with disabilities who was captaining a massive ship by herself. wow.

then I discovered Billie’s backstory with Deirdre, the way she responded to that, then having to survive while living on the run, and her bisexuality. as well as her history with daud & delilah. fascinating!

she’s an outsider who has so much to lose, and knows what it's like to lose everything - having lost everything not once but three times - but nevertheless speaks truth to power. she's so brave! she went and helped Emily & Corvo and she must have known they might kill her! plus, she’s smart, she’s funny, she gets shit done, she’s gorgeous.

but... the meta

mild critique of fandom & arkane incoming.

skip this bit if you want - you've been warned twice now - jump to tired Hayao Miyazaki and read from there if you'd like my thoughts on writing her.

i thought Death of the Outsider was going to be amazing and then... well. *sad trombone* i've written about that before so i won't keep banging on. i figured others must be disappointed too, so I joined a few fandom spaces in hopes of finding camaraderie.

most people with complaints about DotO didn’t like how the Outsider and Daud were handled. which is valid & I agree. but it seemed like most paid no attention to Billie; when people talk about her it’s with respect to Daud, as opposed to in her own right. you could argue for fandom misogyny because people don’t talk about adult Emily Kaldwin that much either, but in Billie's case, it’s misogynoir (compare & contrast with the popularity of thomas, particularly the popularity of thomas portrayed as a white man for no particular reason that i've been able to discern - i keep asking around, is it in the books???).

i think this is a LOT better now than it used to be, which is fantastic. or perhaps i have found the correct echo-chamber? ha.

ultimately, The Fandom is a fraction of the entire picture, and not even the important bit since The Fandom is not who these games are made for. you can't make money relying on only your hardcore fans even if all of them spent a fortune on merch, this is true for any AAA game.

while it's true that Billie is underrated from a fandom perspective - but Billie as an underwritten protagonist is squarely Arkane’s fault.

it was reasonable when she was a side character - the lack of info in Dh2 makes perfect sense (if anything there was more lore in Dh2 which is kind of wild)-

- but as a protagonist in Death of the Outsider?

.... there’s lousy writing, and there’s whatever is going on with Billie Lurk, a black woman who mostly exists as a foil or saviour for light-skinned characters. In her own game there’s barely any of her own lore except where it's relevant to saving two dudes.

lore hints at, but barely touches on what race means in the Dh universe (xenophobia is stronger in Dh1; separate essay i guess), but Arkane has patted themselves on the back for portraying non-white characters, which feels like the same thing as the aesthetic of diversity we're seeing in advertising currently because it’s in marketing trend guides. it's self-congratulatory and it's a missed opportunity for deeper storytelling.

you can see an example of diversity at its most shallow in the way that Billie’s written: there’s little engagement with her as an entire person with history & wants & preferences, and the world she walks through in that game feels like it has nothing to do with her. you could make a case for alienation as a theme, but then, how do you handle the titular premise of 'Dishonored' without ever letting Billie make changes in an environment without a chaos system? it's disappointing from that angle too.

in my opinion, whatever it's worth, it was an accident Arkane created such an awesome character - they needed someone to betray daud. congrats billie.

all this said, it makes her an underdog as far as characters to enjoy & create art & stories for. it's nice to find so many like-minded, switched on people! <3

billie's character potential

she’s got a wealth of unexplored lore, being deeply intertwined with both Karnaca & Dunwall’s fates & criminal underbellies, as well as her connections to the witches & whalers, and three Empresses.

she’s lived a few distinct lifetimes and in the games we get to meet her at two peaks (KoD & DotO) & a low (Dh2 as Meagan).

her voice is very distinct, her dry & often dark humour is entertaining & fun to write. her perspective is really interesting - she’s had the widest variety of void-powers of anyone canonically, and she’s also lived through the highest highs and lowest lows.

she's got everything going for her :) i couldn't really pick a fav thing!

#i assume my followers are cool enough to let me give a brief measured critique on fandom trends and DotO #thanks for the anon question!! what fun!#i love billie lurk <333 #jumped on the opportunity to rant n rave #what part of billie isn't my fav! (im a guy who likes the bad stuff too. mmm interesting meta)#trying to be not unfair or mean- i'm not targeting anyone but rather trends. and it's ok to be disappointed with something you love #fuck it. make it part of the appeal! her writing sucks! plenty of room for me & other creators!#its easier for me to indulge my billie brainworms when it sorta feels like she's not getting as much love as she deserves #you know? i want stories where her history is explored and her agency is important so i guess i'll roll up my sleeves #tumblr is a terrible place for this sort of critique IMO- lots of nuanceless empathy-free guilt-trip-ish rhetoric #so i hope i avoided that. but not so much that i seem forgiving.#that said i'm not tagging this one with fandom tags! no thank you.#i am blaming arkane yes. but that is also not without games industry context #i could complain about amateurish writing but that also never happens in a vacuum. industry problem(s) for sure.#people love to blame writers for things #and yeah a couple really fucking good writers can push a boulder uphill #but its usually a company problem #hire lots of diverse people in your company. give them authority and respect and reasonable workloads. and no crunch.#ah fuck this is a separate essay in tags. again #THIS WAS A SIMPLE QUESTION #*clutches head in hands*#uh if you're still reading at this point im SO sorry and thank you and i love you

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shipping1addict · 5 months

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Whenever I am in need of a show featuring queer women and have no starting point, I go to the Wikipedia site of queer characters in TV shows.

Now.

Quelle surprise, when for new shows in the year 2023 there were maybe.. idk three(?) listed. Not that there weren't more than 3 shows with queer characters. Just that all the others were about men - specifically mlm.

I just.

There has been a draught and the only shows we had got cancelled.

#I could go on an ramble about how the fandoms act as if showrunners suddenly got so open minded #when in reality they know they have a way broughter marked for mlm centric media #meanwhile all good wlw rep gets cancelled and I feel like I'm back in my early teens so desperate for content #that I watch a show just so I can have a two second sapphic glance #I will tag all the wlw shows listed on the wiki fyi #the fall of the house of usher #gotham knights #las pelotaris 1926 #the last of us #special ops: lioness #there have been a few german and austrian shows which featured queer ladies #but the way inwhich their stories were told and handled could be better #you have to always measure those stories on different scales

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the-music-maniac · 5 months

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Not that I read mpreg all that often (not really my thing generally speaking) but I came across some "Sanji is pregnant" fics in the sanzo/zosan tag, and not nearly the same amount for Zoro. It got me thinking about the trope. I think the lack of Zoro fics here is a tragic oversight. I think we as a fandom are absolutely and tragically ignoring the potential comedy gold of Zoro being the one to be pregnant instead.

Because when people write Sanji, the general trend I'm seeing (upon scanning through some of the fics quickly) is that he's cautious about it. Conscientious, careful to make sure things are okay. Which - arguably I could see, Sanji is probably the more practical of the two (not by a whole lot but still)and he didn't have a good childhood. Sanji being pregnant is usually a fic about his heaps of parental issues, childhood trauma and angst - which is fun to read. It's good. It's amazing, even.

Zoro being pregnant is ONE HUNDRED PERCENT gonna be a COMEDY. We're talking about a man who once tried to fight Kuina holding like 20 bokkens. We're talking about a man who got stuck in wax and thought the reasonable solution was to cut off his legs.

The entire crew spends the next 9 months tearing their hair out, preventing Zoro from doing stupid shit (exhibit A: cutting off his own limbs). They spend the same amount of time trying to stop Luffy from gum-gum-grabbing Zoro and yeeting him anytime he needs to get them out of a sticky situation.

The crew (mostly Sanji) is on 24/7 prevent-zoro-from-drinking-alcohol duty (impossible). Chopper is constantly stressed in the later months cause no one puts it past Zoro to get lost somewhere, give birth out in the woods and come strolling back with a baby tucked under his arm. They have to start hiding Zoro's dumbbells.

Franky and Usopp design and build a nursery and spends the entire time suspiciously teary eyed. Sanji tries to pretend he's unaffected but spends an entire night creating a 9 month meal plan of all the nutrients Zoro and the baby are gonna need. Not even a day later, one of the crew finds him up at 2 am making a mountain of food because Zoro made the mistake of offhandedly mentioning he had particular pregnancy craving within earshot of Sanji. In the end Zoro has to sit on him to stop Sanji from running himself ragged.

Robin keeps spouting morbid childbirth facts and quotes from parental advice books in equal measure. Nami keeps going on shopping sprees for cute baby clothes and adding the cost of them to Zoro's debt. Brook keeps writing lullabies and trying to sing them to Zoro's stomach. Zoro 100% uses his pregnancy belly as an excuse to walk around without a shirt 24/7 without getting nagged.

Somehow word gets out that the famous pirate hunter Zoro is pregnant, and at the next big fight with the Marines, half the soldiers refuse to fight him and instead start telling him to sit down, take it easy, shouting advice at him etc. Etc. Zoro loses his shit a little bit and cuts their boat in half.

Mihawk, upon finding out, tells Zoro in no uncertain terms that that is his grandchild and he's expecting them to visit so he can meet the baby when they're born. Zoro vehemently denies that Mihawk is his father (he is). Zeff upon finding out, is almost as bad as Sanji when it comes to being a mother hen. Perona buys even more baby clothes for the baby. She buys one singular shirt for Zoro as a joke, and it coincidentally happens to be the exact same brand of "mama" crop top he was forced to wear in that one filler episode. Zoro tries to chuck it into the ocean (he fails).

I'm essentially saying it would be absolute chaos, and it would be the funniest thing I've ever read. 9 months of Marimo wrangling. Can you imagine the look on Zoro's face if one of the opponents he was fighting were to tell him that he's "glowing"?

PLEASE, I would actually wheeze myself to death. The best part is you can still have plenty of Sanji angst. He still has parental issues except now they're flavoured with "I'm not ready to be a father" and "I'm terrified I'm gonna become my biological sperm donor" and "please don't die because of childbirth complications, that happened to my mother(sort of, I know she died after but it kinda counts), and I can't handle that happening again to you". Lots of cute/tender moments of Zoro comforting and reassuring Sanji. We can even have Zoro angst. He probably views protecting his crew as the one and only job he's good for (not true but that's probably what he thinks). Not being able to fulfill that is probably not helping his self esteem, and that sense of uselessness warring with his need to protect the baby - but the contradictory thing here is that to protect the baby he HAS to sit back and let other people do that FOR him. That plus all the other restrictions, people treating him differently, but him at the same time refusing to view his own child as a weakness. Imagine the havoc that would wreak. Oh my god.

Y'all don't understand, I don't even read mpreg that often and yet this is literally my ideal fic HAHAAAAA

#we already know Zoro would be a good parent considering how he is with kids but pregnancy? different matter entirely #i don't know much about jimbei yet so sadly i can't write much about him feel free to comment any headcanons y'all come up with though #zosan #sanzo #zoro x sanji #roronoa zoro #black leg sanji #cat burglar nami #monkey d luffy #nico robin #op franky #op brook #god ussop #tony tony chopper #mpreg

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thealexandriaarchives · 2 months

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Dune Fandom, We Need to Be Hornier About Fluids

There's something wrong when we don't sexualize how much Feyd-Rautha canonically drools like a broken spigot the second he looks excited, and look, we all got distracted with the arranged marriages, the omegaverse, the gender swap fics, the Bene Gesserit Voice kink, the nonstop breeding kink fic, the 'in another life I would have been your wife' soulmate fics. I get it.

But if ever there was a fandom designed almost solely for the purpose of fetishizing the hell out of every variation of the Wet & Messy tags, along with the sacrilegious guilt inherent to Arrakis over wasting water? It's Dune.

Drool. Sweat. Cry. Piss. Cum. Bleed.

There are 1001 prompts from 'so filthy it's profane' to genuinely kind of heartwarming but I want it to get the intensive fanfiction attention.

How do we treat some of our most common forms of humiliation in a world where spitting on the floor in front of someone is a show of greatest respect? Is boot-polishing for someone as a submissive with your tongue an honor or a shameful act because it wastes the water? What are the ramifications of Bukkake on Arrakis?

Imagine someone who has internalized Fremen values and beliefs with an Omorashi kink. Maybe they don't even know they have one, they've used a stillsuit for so long, but suddenly they're exposed, and full, and all they can do is just close their eyes and chant to themselves 'Don't Let It Out' as a litany.

Awaken Dacryphilia kinksters. A literal miracle is documented in the book about the first time Lisan al'Gaib wept and gave water to dead. Villeneuve takes this and makes it into a perverted dream that Muad'Dib steals from the heart of a Southern tribal elder.

Not feeling the PWP stuff? That's fair, we're all still one or three really good fics away from being a little too into something.

How about Hurt/Comfort and Whump fics? I haven't seen any really good severe dehydration scenarios, we need a couple. Stillsuits & Stilltents fail, or are damaged in battle. The old 'drink of my flesh so you may live'. Let's get dirty with Dirty Water. Or honestly, it seems like you can survive at least temporarily with only one canister of it taken.

In general just so many opportunities for bloodplay. But if you wanna stay tamer with it (though Feyd-Rautha's pets at least are canon cannibals) how about the fact that a Crisknife drawn cannot be sheathed without being blooded. This was shown but not stated in the 2021 Dune, so drawing one must be a thoughtful and measured act as you slice your own palm and spill your own water if you put it away in peace.

I speak now with the voice of the Lisan al'Gaib the ghost of Frank Herbert on ZERO authority and call upon all the Dune fandom to get HORNIER about being WET.

#dune prompts #dune fandom #dune #dune part 2 #dune 2024 #dune fanfiction #dune fanart #feydpaul #feyd rautha #paul atreides #margot fenring #dune 2021 #dune movie #burn after scrolling #gifs by 5ummit #gifs by #gifs by screenbeans #duneposting

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anonimusunnoaniswriting · 2 months

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𝑮𝒐𝒐𝒅 𝒎𝒐𝒓𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈, 𝑴𝒚 𝑳𝒂𝒅𝒚 | 𝑷𝒂𝒓𝒕 𝟐

(𝑺𝒆𝒃𝒂𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒂𝒏 𝑴𝒊𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒆𝒍𝒊𝒔 𝒙 𝑹𝒆𝒂𝒅𝒆𝒓)

⚠️MDNI. 18+ ADULTS ONLY⚠️

🎀Age in bio or blocked🎀

Rating: Mature

Category: F/M

Fandom: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler

Relationship: Sebastian Michaelis/CielsCousin!Reader

Characters: Sebastian Michaelis; Reader; Ciel Phantomhive; Elizabeth Midford

Summary: After spending the day with your cousin and his fiance, the night air makes for pleasant company, as does the butler who reveals a dark secret...

Additional Tags: Fluff and Smut; Eventual Smut; Neck Kissing; Kissing; Gentle Kissing; Surprise Kissing; Making Out; Implied Sexual Content; Phantomhive manor; Reader-Insert; Victorian

A/N: not beta read. We die like men. Again.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

𝕮𝖍𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖊𝖗 2: 𝕿𝖍𝖆𝖙 𝕭𝖚𝖙𝖑𝖊𝖗; 𝕴𝖓 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝕹𝖎𝖌𝖍𝖙

The day passed without much incident. A wall seemed to have broken down, between you and the butler after your morning rendezvous. Throughout the day, he looked after both your needs and his young master’s as well. You had spent some time with your cousin today as he hadn’t had too much on his schedule like he usually did. Breakfast, luncheon and supper were all had with the boy who kept your mind occupied with discussions on business and society. And Sebastian served you while also making sure to linger longer than necessary by your side, whether it was him pouring wine into your glass, or brushing against you while bringing you your plate. Surreptitious movements that luckily went unnoticed by your young cousin.

Lady Elizabeth joined the two of you for supper. Though she was from your side of the family you had never met the child personally. The girl had a lot of energy. She loved dressing up as was evident from her clothing. You had heard of her mother being a fearsome lady, one who could fight a tiger barehanded and win, but the daughter carried no such resemblance.

“ –And then, Mother let me make two more dresses to match with the jewellery she bought me!” You had missed the initial conversation but gleaned from the few lines that she had an affinity for fashion and clothing. It was not unlike a lady of her stature.

“Oh when I was your age, I loved getting new dresses made!” You smiled at her. “After I fell sick the first time, however, I started to dislike it a bit.” It was true. You used to have dresses made by the dozen. The seamstress saw your home more than her own shop! But your repeated illnesses have changed this. Every measurement taken anew showed how your body had changed. Warped into the form of the disease. And standing for the tape was exhausting. You found comfort in the clothing you already owned and preferred to have less made.

Elizabeth frowned. “Perhaps, Lady Phantomhive, you can come with me and we can have the tailor take your measurements too for a gown. I’m sure your mama and papa wouldn’t mind!” You blushed and shook your head. Perhaps your parents wouldn’t and even if you did have the energy to stand tomorrow, you would have to cover up the innumerable marks Sebastian left on you from your morning's tryst.

You laughed a nervous chuckle and replied, “Perhaps for the next season, I seem to have plenty of splendid dresses in my armada for the moment…”

Ciel retired to bed, soon after Elizabeth left to go back home. You sometimes forgot he was only 12 – his mannerisms far beyond his age. You walked out to the balcony. The garden was painted silver in the moonlight. Despite being quite clumsy, Finnian did a good job of maintaining it you thought to yourself.

“After all I did today to make sure you didn’t catch a cold, my lady, here you are inviting it yourself.” Sebastian’s voice came from behind, startling you. You turned your head to look as he emerged from the shadows draping a warm cloak over your shoulders. “Would you like to go for a walk my lady?” he asked. Once again, you thought you saw a flash of red in his eyes, but it was gone as soon as you took another glance. You nodded at him.

Sebastian took your hand and in one swift cat-like movement you found yourself in his arms flying through the air. You clung to his shoulders the night air whipping through your hair and biting at your cheeks. “Sebastian! Where are we going!” But the whistling of the wind drowned out your words.

When he finally landed, you looked around you, the garden was far, This was a denser shrubbery, almost like the maze Finnian so religiously took care to grow. “Should you be so far from the manor?” You asked him breathless, even though all you had done was be carried from one place to another. “Ciel might call for you or something.”

He shook his head. “You needn’t worry about that, my lady. The young master doesn’t wake till morning – when I wake him and I’m sure the manor will be fine without me for a bit.”

He smiles, reassuring you, and takes your hand, clasping it in his gloved ones. You begin to walk alongside him, his stride is shorter, making sure you can keep up, even in your bedroom slippers. Soon you come across a gazebo. The butler then invites you to sit and takes a seat beside you. “I do hope this isn’t too forward of me, my lady but I wish to continue where we had left off this morning.” You blush and avoid his gaze. You know that society would never approve of the relationship the two of you had. If anyone ever found out, it would bring shame to you and your family. You would be looked down upon for the longest time. “My lady?” Sebastian inquires after not hearing anything from you.

“Sebastian…” you start. But you don’t know how to form what you are feeling. “I- I-” you stutter. Then sigh. He puts his hand on your cheek and makes you look at him.

“My lady, if you want this to stop—” he begins but is cut off when you place your hand over his mouth.

“Believe me that is not what I want.” You say to him. “You are different Sebastian. I don’t get what you want. Your feelings are not of love. They aren’t for my money. And I feel you lust after me but that doesn’t come out too clearly either. I suppose, in a way, I am confused.” You get up, take a few steps forward and turn to look at him. “I have had men who have come to me for all the things I mentioned before. I have had those who might have actually loved me, those who merely wanted me as another trophy to claim, and even those who have come only to try and gain my hand in marriage but in reality who want to marry my father’s wealth. But you Sebastian, something about you is so different. I suppose it may be because you are the first man I have felt attracted to.” Your following chuckle is hesitant. “I am—afraid of you.”

Sebastian smirks. “Your way of seeing things is so intriguing my lady.” He says. “I can assure you my lady that I am not here for your money. I have no need for the material things that humans treasure so much.” He spits. “As for lusting after you; you have deduced almost correctly, but what I feel for you is more...” You don’t know when he got up, but turning to look you find Sebastian flush against your back. His eyes are red, the same red you tried to convince yourself you hadn't seen, but it was unmistakable. Your eyes widen and you try to take a step back, away from his imposing figure, only to find yourself trapped between him and the gazebo.

“You see my lady,” he continues, nose nuzzling against your neck, “Demons and humans have very little in common, but there is one thing we do share; the feeling of lust is very strong in us both. Humans can feel love. All demons can feel though; is lust. But you, you make me feel something different from just lust. Something more—burning. Is it love? I don’t know... I’ve never known that feeling.”

You don’t know what to say anymore. You should be frozen in fear, What did Sebastian mean, saying he was a demon? A murderer? Or a biblical fantasy? His lips were now on your skin, inhaling your scent, and you felt a pool of warmth in your lower belly. “D- demon? What does that even mean?” you falter.

“What I mean, my lady, is that the only reason I am here is because of a contract I have made with your dear young cousin. You should thank him for our very meeting.” He tells you.

“You mean you’re a demon. Like – from legends and stories?”

“I can assure you. I am no story” he says, planting a searing kiss on your neck. That was all it took to set you on fire. It made sense. The inhuman capabilities. The absolute perfection of his being. He was a demon! “You aren’t running from me my lady?” he asked as you melted under his touch.

“Surely, you jest Sebastian!” You say. Your voice quavers but you stand your ground.

“About what my lady?”

“About this demon nonsense!”

“I never lie to my lady.” He says. “You said yourself, there is something you find different about me.” He kisses you. “I am simply a demon, and a butler.”

***

Since you were tired from being out for so long, Sebastian swiftly carried you back to the mansion and took you to your room where there was a cup of hot chamomile tea waiting for you. He really took everything into account. There is no doubt about it in your mind now. Sebastian had to be a demon. His speed is inhuman. His eyes are reptilian, gleaming in the darkness. And then those teeth that scraped against your neck. Whatever he is, he definitely isn’t human.

As he helps you get ready for bed you realised that you didn’t mind. Sebastian may not have been a human, and he may have been a butler, but the way he made you feel surpassed all of that. “Sebastian…” You turn to him as he undresses you. You take off his coat. “I don’t care what you are.” You take off his vest. His eyes widen, and he stares at you. He can smell your arousal. Here you are half naked before him, taking off his clothes. Telling him you don’t care what he is. You want him. You feel things for him. Your scent drives him wild and he doesn’t even register you undoing his necktie and then his shirt buttons. When you try to take his shirt off and he doesn’t move to allow you to slip it off him, you suddenly think that perhaps he doesn’t want this. “I’m so sorry!” You say. “I thought you wanted this.” Sebastian finally wakes from his stupor and looks at you.

“I do want this. I just can’t believe that someone as beautiful and lovely as you truly wants something as vile and cruel as me.” He says and softly kisses your head. Then without warning he pushes you onto the bed and says, “But, my lady, who gave you the permission to take my clothes off?” He growls. The change in demeanour startles you.

“Sebas—” you start, but he does not let you finish. In a moment, his lips are upon yours. He swiftly and rips off your underclothes, while still kissing your mouth. His hands glide along the curves of your body and he holds you closer while plunging his tongue into your mouth.

He has never tasted anything like you before. He cannot fathom how in all the years he has lived he has never tasted anything like you. “I guess it’s something Phantomhives have in common eh? A taste like no other. I could feast on you all day.” He mutters half to himself.

“What–?” you ask breathlessly.

“You taste, sinful.”

He winks at you and pulls his glove off his left hand with his sharp teeth. His nails are black and on the back of his hand is a pentagram inside two circles. The outer, made of pointy diamond shapes. “My contract seal— nothing for you to worry your pretty little head about, my lady.” he says, seeing you looking at it.

Sebastian trails his hand down your stomach. His black tipped fingers enter your folds which are already moist with your arousal. Lowering his head, he nibbles on your neck. You breathe in deeply and wish he would take off his clothes to allow you to see him but he had made it pretty clear who was in charge of the taking off of the clothing. His hand playing around with you down under barely ghosted over your skin. You involuntarily bucked your hips trying to get him to touch you. The move immediately made the demon smirk and say, “Look at you, so eager to be fucked.”

You feel your cheeks heat much like your core. His words are so unexpectedly crude. “Please,” you moan, “please touch me…”

To be continued…

A/N: hahah don't hurt me. Likes and reblogs are appreciated. Comments get you kissies.

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fairy-writes · 5 months

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Would it be too much to ask for a William James Moriarty x Holmes sister reader? Like she's a travelling archaeologist/anthropologist who's a genius in the field and has found many artifacts and lost cities and can be a bit of an eccentric looney like her older brother Sherly but she's also incredibly kind to those in need and often donates her treasures to the less fortunate and even helps Sherly from time to time which is how he meets her and is impressed by her smarts and sarcastic wits. Also, a bit of a parkour junky likes to wear mens clothes tailored for her measurements and often wears her hair in loose buns or ponytails and loves riding horseback much to Mycroft's displeasure🤭

A BUSINESS PROPOSAL

Reblogs and Comments are greatly appreciated!!

__________________________________________________________________________

Fandom(s): Moriarty the Patriot

Pairing(s): William James Moriarty x Reader

Word Count: 3k

Genre(s)/Tag(s): Female!Reader, Holmes!Reader, Mildly sexist behavior from Mycroft? It is the 1800s after all.

Notes: So this was super fun to write!

Fun fact! I took an archaeology class for my associate’s degree in criminal justice and highly recommend taking one to anyone in college!

I actually took several anthropology classes (intro to anthro, bio anthro, and archaeology). I even considered switching my major to anthropology at some point! (I switched it to English lol)

PART TWO HERE

__________________________________________________________________________

Otis whinnies, and you reach forward from your place in the saddle to pat his neck.

“Easy, Otie, almost there.” You whisper to him and gently nudge him to turn down the familiar road of Baker Street. You could spot your brother’s flat from where you were at, an unfamiliar carriage parked in front. You frown briefly and then shrug. Sherlock could have whoever he liked over.

But… he did promise to take you out on the town in celebration of your latest discovery. Did he forget?

No… He wasn’t the type to forget something like that. You had been exchanging letters for weeks about your coming home.

A tall man was at the front of the carriage, tending to the horses. He had spiked black hair and a glove on one hand. He looks at you with skeptical eyes as you draw near and dismount your horse. The Cleveland Bay snorts, ruffling your hair as you smooth your hand up his snout and between his eyes. Then, you promptly tied his reins to the post outside 221B Baker Street and went up to the front door.

The door knocker was more worn than you last remembered, with the shiny brass turning a glimmering gold color from all the hands touching it. You rap the door once, twice, then a third time, and wait, stuffing your hands in your trouser pockets.

A young man opens the door, sandy blond hair combed neatly and brown eyes alight with curiosity. A grin breaks your face, and you step forward into his arms as he realizes just who is at the door.

“My dear John!” You shriek, and he chuckles, lifting you off your feet and spinning once in a circle before setting you down.

“I thought you weren’t due back for another two weeks!” He replies excitedly, and you laugh gleefully.

“We finished early! Anyhow, how’s Mary? Sherlock said you two were expecting!” You say and slap his shoulder good-naturedly. He ducks his head, a pink flush on his cheeks as he nods.

“She’s home at the mo. But yes, we’re expecting. The midwife thinks it’ll be a girl based on how she’s carrying.” He said, and before you could say any more, there was a noise at the top of the stairs.

You turn, and your grin widens even more until your cheeks hurt.

“Sherly!” You crow, and he bounds down the stairs to sweep you up in a bear hug. His boisterous laugh made your heart sing, and you buried your nose in his hair. He smelled like cigarette smoke and whiskey. He must have been on a case. He squeezes you tight and sets you down.

“I thought you were coming back in two weeks!” He exclaims, and you roll your eyes,

“So John said, I told you we finished early!” You tease, and it is then that you notice that there is someone else in the flat.

He was tall, probably around your brother’s height. He had blond hair and deep scarlet eyes that studied you with interest. He was dressed in a brown suit with a crimson tie. A lord. That much is obvious.

Sherlock notices that you notice his friend and gestures to the man at the top of the stairs.

“This is Liam! A mathematics professor at Durham University and a friend of mine who helps me on my cases.” He says proudly as “Liam” descends the stairs and approaches you.

You stick out a hand and introduce yourself. His hand is smooth like you expected, as opposed to your calloused one. You had bandages littering your fingertips from blisters from shovels and tools.

“William James Moriarty. I’ve heard stories about you.” His British lilt is proper and endearing. You feel your heart flutter and your ears burn. But you smile warmly nonetheless and give his hand a firm shake.

“As much as I’d like to say the same, Sherly has yet to tell me about you in his letters.” You direct the last sentence to your older brother in the same teasing tone as before.

Sherlock rolls his eyes and punches your shoulder lightly while William watches on in amusement.

“I got distracted!” Sherlock complains, and you break out into giggles.

“I would love to hear some stories if you’re up to it.” William cut in gently before you, and Sherlock could start bickering. You brighten. A chance to tell stories of your work and not have someone get bored? It sounded like heaven!

That was how you got to where you were at the current moment.

You were seated next to Sherlock at the Moriarty dining table, regaling them with a story of the most current dig you had been on.

“—and Egypt was absolutely smashing! It was so beautiful!” You say, waving your hands excitedly as you describe the tomb that had been uncovered. It had taken weeks to uncover everything, almost months. But oh so worth it.

“Might I ask what you did with all the artifacts you found?” William inquires, and you hum as you sip at your wine.

“Donated it all back to the locals. It’s the least I can do. Plenty of archaeologists steal their finds and bring them back to England to show in museums. I try and do the opposite.” You say and were pleased to see William nod in approval.

At least someone shared your sentiment.

You got a letter to your very old and very dusty flat a week after your return to England, summoning you to your eldest brother’s estate. You had been dusting and cleaning your furniture when the postman knocked on your door. You frown, brushing your pants on the seat of your trousers, and answer the door.

The letter was short.

Dearest sister,

I have received news of your return to Egypt. I would like to have your company at the family estate for dinner to discuss business and your adventures.

With best regards,

Mycroft Holmes

A summons to the Holmes family estate that your oldest brother had inherited after your parents retired to the country. You look at the ceiling and groan, eliciting a funny look from the postman.

This was going to be fun.

As soon as Otis realizes where you are, he tosses his head and tries to turn around. You tug the reins so he faces the right direction and nudge him into a walk down the road.

“Otie, I don’t want to do this either. But I’d rather not have Mikey send special forces after us or something.” You say to Otis, and when you reach the stables, Mycroft’s hired stable hand takes your beloved horse’s reins. “Take good care of him!” You nearly reprimand the stable hand who agrees and welcomes you back with ease.

The maids welcome you in excitedly when you rap on the massive double doors, and you are ushered upstairs into the dining room.

Mycroft was seated at the head of the table, where your father would be if he were here, and he stood to greet you. He offers a handshake, but you simply smile warmly and hug him tightly. He may have grated on your nerves, but he was still your brother. Mycroft stiffens and pats your shoulders awkwardly when you step back.

“As awkward as always, I see Mikey.” You said and took a seat at the table next to him like you did when you were kids. He clears his throat and calls for the kitchen staff to bring in the food.

It wasn’t much, considering there were only two of you. But it was as extravagant as Mycroft always demanded it to be.

“Would you like to change into dinner attire before we eat, sister dearest?” Mycroft says suddenly, just as you are about to dig into the delicious roast prepared by the staff of the household. You put your fork down and scowl.

“Don’t start with this, Mikey. You know I hate dresses.” You snap, and he raises an eyebrow but doesn’t push the issue.

At least… he doesn’t until you are done with your meal and in his study, talking about your travels to Egypt.

You down the rest of your whiskey and set the glass whiskey tumbler on the table between you two.

“More whiskey?” He offers, and you shake your head.

“I want to be able to ride home after this.” You say and hold in a yawn. The excellent food combined with the fireplace blazing with a crackling fire is lulling you to sleep.

Suddenly, Mycroft stands and walks in front of the fire, setting his own glass down on the mantle and turning to face you.

“Might we talk some business?” He inquires, and immediately, your mood sours.

So this was his end goal? Get you sleepy and drunk so you couldn’t ride home and were subject to his pleadings?

“I don’t want to hear it, Mikey.” You say and stand, holding onto the back of the wingback chair for a moment as the dizziness sets in.

He scowls,

“You are of perfect age. The season is just starting. You could still join in and find a potential suitor!” He tries, and you scrub at your face.

“I already told you I wasn’t interested in courting! I’m interested in—”

“Your work, I know. But what happens when the digs dry up and there’s nothing else for you to do? What will you do when you get too old for this?!” He snaps, and you whirl, steadying yourself with the chair as your anger flares.

“It won’t dry up! There are thousands of years of history still to be discovered! Hundreds of thousands of cities and archaeological finds!” Your voice rises to a shout, and you hear distant footsteps as maids scurry away from you and your brother’s anger.

This goes on for several minutes until Mycroft a bomb on you.

“Mother and Father have decided. If you don’t find someone to court, they will no longer fund your excavations, and you’ll be stuck here with me.”

You freeze, hands wound tightly in your hair, and argument dying on your tongue.

“B—But that would mean—” Mycroft cuts you off gently and approaches, putting his hands on your shoulders.

“You’d be stuck here until you find a husband—no more digs. No more artifacts. Not until you do as they and I ask.” Tears well up in your eyes, and you shrug off his hands violently and flee.

Your boots pound against the hardwood floors, and you run outside where it has started pouring rain. Instantly, your clothes are soaked as you make it to the stables, dress Otis in his saddle and bridle, and swiftly mount his back. He tears out of the stables at a thundering gallop, and the stable hand barely dives out of the way to save himself from being trampled.

Otis’s hooves dash against the cobblestone roads. You cling to his reins and hunch over his back as tears stream down your face and sobs wrack your body.

Stupid, stupid, stupid!

Taking away your funding?

No one wanted to fund a woman on an archaeological dig!

Much less one as young as yourself!

You were screwed! Doomed to live as a housewife because that was society’s and your parent’s expectations of you!

Otis eventually comes to a halt, and you dismount, collapsing onto a bench, breathing hard as rain pours down your body. Your shirt sticks to your skin, and your trousers swim in water as you sit in a puddle on the bench. But you can’t bring it in you to care.

A carriage rumbles to a stop before you, and you look up as the door opens.

“Might I interest you in some shelter?” Comes a proper and endearing accent that you recognize.

“William?” You sniffle, and he smiles, extending a hand.

“If you’ll let him, Fred will handle your horse. How about you step inside the carriage, and we’ll take you back to the Moriarty estate.” He says over the rain. A young man with a blue scarf wrapped around his head gets off the front of the carriage and approaches. You hiccup and nod, handing Otis’s reins to the young man and accepting William’s hand into the carriage. He sheds his overcoat and offers it.

It’s warm and heavy as you wrap it around your shoulders and sit down. Your boots squelch against the floor, and William knocks twice against the carriage's wall, and it starts moving once again.

The Morairty estate is even grander than you remember, looming over you as the carriage stops by the front doors. You nearly slip in your haste to get inside and are taken up the stairs to one of the many bedrooms.

“Draw a bath and get warm. I’ll have some clothes brought by. We can have a talk after you’ve collected yourself.” William says gently, and you nod, taking off his overcoat so he can have it back. He excuses himself, and you are left alone in the suite.

The bath is nice and hot, and you let out a sigh as you shed your clothes into a pile on the floor and sink into the warm water. Your tears are drying, but your emotions are still raging like a rabid dog inside you.

How could they?

Didn’t your family know archaeology was your passion? Your dream?! Of course, they did! You never shut up about it when you were but a little girl learning to play the piano! You babbled on and on about fossils and artifacts in between lessons until you were blue in the face!

It wasn’t long until you were done in the bath and dried off. As William had promised, some clothes were left on the bed. A button-down that looked like it might fit you, a pair of trousers that might be a bit too long, and a pair of undergarments. You tugged on the underwear and then the trousers, having to cuff them at the bottom so you didn’t trip. The shirt fit better than you thought so you pinned your hair out of your face and left the bedroom and down the hall. Hadn’t there been a sitting room just down the stairs?

William was inside, stoking a fire with a poker, his back to you. He stood and turned when you rapped lightly on the entryway. His lips curled in a welcoming smile, and he gestured for you to take a seat.

“Would you like some tea? I had Louis put the kettle on.” He said, and you nodded, sitting on the couch beside the fire.

“Thank you. For the clothes and… everything else.” You mumble, and he shakes his head,

“Don’t mention it. Sherlock mentioned you hated dresses.” He says and pours you a cup of tea.

It’s delicious. It warms you from the tips of your ears to the ends of your bare toes. You scuff them on the plush carpet as William sits across from you. His scarlet eyes are illuminated like glittering rubies in the oranges and yellows of the fire. They’re alive like a torch resides inside.

“Now, might I ask why you were out in the rain?” William asks as soon as you’ve settled into your spot. You bite your lip and wonder if you can trust him with your problems.

Sherlock trusted him well enough…

Perhaps…

“I got into an argument with Mycroft. He said my parents will cut off my funding for excavations if I don’t find a proper husband.” You blurt, and he hums as he takes a sip from his cup.

“I assume they’ve been funding your past archaeological escapades?” He says, and you nod.

“Correct. But that is going to change unless I get married.” You grumble, and he cocks his head to the side, setting his cup down on the tea table next to him and seemingly mulling something over.

“This may be a bit forward, but I have a proposal. A business proposal, if you will.” He starts, and you narrow your eyes. A business proposal? You set your own cup down and cross one leg over the other.

“Go on…” You say hesitantly, and he clasps his hands together as if working out a problem in his head. Sherlock did say he was a mathematics professor.

“I could marry you.” You inhale sharply and proceed to choke on your saliva. William half gets out of his chair to come to your aid when you finally get your coughing under control.

“Why?!” You demand, and he shrugs,

“I’ve done some research into you. You are spearheading the way in new archaeological techniques. You donate your finds back to the locals in need. And frankly, I find you fascinating. If we go ahead with this, you’ll have access to my brother Albert’s influence as well as the Moriarty name and fortune.” He says, and you sit back, stunned.

“I could continue my work?” You say skeptically, and he nods.

“Indeed. There’s no reason to stop you. I might ask for a lecture or two from you at Durham University. But that’s it. So…” He extends a hand for you to shake. “Have we reached an accord?”

You are speechless as possibilities run rampant through your brain. You’d be free from your parent’s influence as well as pleasing them. Though pleasing them was the last thing on your mind. Yes, you’d be married. But like William said… it was more of a business proposal…

You reach forward and shake his hand. His smile widens marginally as you speak,

“I accept your proposal.”

#william james moriarty x reader #william james moriarty x you #william james moriarty x y/n #moriarty x reader #mtp william #mtp william x reader #ynm william #ynm x reader #mtp x reader #moriarty the patriot x reader #yuukoku no moriarty x reader #fairy writes

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marinakd · 1 month

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Ugh okay I know I'm putting a target on my back, but since I nabbed this url I might as well put it to good use. I am completely turning asks off, because I have better things to do than waste my time on this nonsense. This is also my alt account so I don't check it that often anyway.

And I'm putting this post into the tags to spread word around. This post is 100% okay to reblog.

If you're someone who got any of these asks, or anything similar:

BLOCK AND IGNORE

This is our dear friend Marina from The Witcher fandom who started harassing a mutual of mine over two years ago. Yes, this nonsense has been going on for two years. Then, she started spreading these sorts of asks to other people. She threw in some homophobia and ableism for good measure. And it seems like it's been going on for even longer, because she made a name for herself in the Russian part of the fandom even earlier according to other Russian fans.

If you want more in-depth information about this bizarre situation and want to see what kind of clownery this grown-ass woman has done, then check @marinamd29-stopharassingpeople and @she-sends-these-asks-to-anyone

I'm only making this post to not to engage with her and delete every ask she sends. It looks like she's using a VPN to go around blocks, but I think at this point, her asks are nothing but white noise. But if you're someone outside of The Witcher fandom this might seem alarming, but don't worry. It's not your fault, you didn't do anything, I know a lot of people get anxious from these kind of asks. She seems to be going after anyone who interacted with people on her shitlist who are presumably from The Witcher fandom.

Anyway: block, ignore and don't worry, it's not your fault. You didn't do anything, you just happened to get caught up in her drama that she made up herself.

#the witcher #cirilla fiona elen riannon #cirilla of cintra #vernon roche

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st1llwthyou · 6 months

Text

fandom ꕀ zb1

pairing ꕀ sung hanbin x afab!reader

applicable aus & genre ꕀ friends with benefits, smut

synopsis ꕀ drastic situations call for drastic measures — like babytrapping you, so you don’t leave him.

warnings & tags ꕀ language, toxic!hanbin, he’s possessive AND jealous, dom/sub dynamics, unprotected sex, rough sex, dirty talk, dumbification, dacryphilia, breeding kink, mentions of babytrapping, creampie — RATED E for explicit content.

word count ꕀ 703

notes ꕀ don’t read if it’s not your cup of tea :] see the warnings before proceeding. hello, btw~ it’s my first time around here 😳! enjoy ♡

thinking about fwb!hanbin who’s gotten a bit obsessed with you. so much so that he wants to babytrap you into staying with him…

He actually doesn’t remember how you guys got into this whole “friends with benefits” thing. Maybe because why or how he got here didn’t really matter to him. On the other hand, Hanbin can vividly recall being the happiest bitch on the planet while fucking you for the first time. It’s etched into his memory – the way you cried because it felt too good, your sweet pussy squeezing his cock, milking him dry.

And since then, Hanbin has found himself falling deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole of you. How the fuck could he not? When he’s seen you in the rawest, swollen lips crying about how big he is, glossy eyes looking at him like he’s your whole world.

Maybe that’s why Hanbin saw red while you laughed and put your hand on Euijoo’s shoulder. He noticed the way your glinting eyes travelled across his friend’s figure. All that did was make his chest feel uncomfortably tight, sirens going off in his head.

Mine, all mine.

Hanbin is in a frenzy, his hair sticking to his forehead, lips parted as he pounds into you. You’re babbling incoherent words, brain empty as he fucks you to oblivion. Your gummy walls are snug around his rock hard cock, pussy leaking copious amounts of your sweet juice. The wet sounds of your bodies meeting increase with each passing second.

Oh, the way he loves to see you like this.

“Tsk, can’t even utter a goddamn word properly. Am I fucking my baby dumb, hm?” His voice is gruff, lips quirking up in a satisfied smirk. “You know that I’m the only one who can do this to you, right? Fuck you so good with my cock that you forget how to talk?”

The way you nod your head while making the cutest noises makes him feel delirious. Tears have wet your temples, lips wet with drool. Fuck, he could literally knock you up right now and you’d just lay there, overstimulated and unaware.

The fleeting thought hits him like a ton of bricks. Hanbin can get you pregnant. Oh so conveniently, he’s doing you raw today because he was too impatient and forgot a condom. His cock twitches at the thought, his thrusts getting rougher.

He looks at you with his newfound goal in mind, eyes falling upon your beautiful breasts that jiggle and bounce around with each movement of his hips. Hanbin leans down to catch your left nipple in his mouth, earning a whiny cry from you. Your tits would be full of milk for his baby, he thinks, feeling his lower stomach tighten.

His gaze falls upon your belly bulge next, the outline of his cock pumping into you looking as pretty as ever. When you get all round with a baby inside your tummy, he won’t be able to see this anymore. Hanbin gently puts his left hand on your belly bulge, groaning curses as he feels the continuous movement of his cock inside you.

“Look at your cute, little pussy greedily devouring my cock. I bet it’s so hungry, if I give it my cum, will it be satisfied?” His words make you clench, legs tightening around his waist. Hanbin swears that’s his last straw. “Fuck, you’d love that, huh?”

He knows you’re probably not in your right mind — overstimulated and buzzing with pleasure, maybe thinking that he doesn’t mean it literally.

Except that he does. If he puts a baby inside you, you’ll have to stay with him, right?

He reaches for your swollen clit, eager to feel your walls clamping down onto him. You cry out his name, trembling as he rubs your sensitive bundle of nerves. Your over-sensitive body doesn’t take too long to convulse into waves of ecstasy again — triggering his own release.

Hanbin moans, pushing himself as deep as possible with one last thrust. He shakes and twitches, emptying his balls and painting your inner walls white. A deep satisfaction warms him up as he leans down to rest on top of you.

His arms wrap you up in a hug. He’s going to hold you like this for a long time, making sure that not a single drop of his seed is wasted.

˗ˏˋ ★ extended notes ˎˊ˗

i need him biblically 🫠

thanks so much for reading ❤️‍🔥! hope you enjoyed it >.< (pls ignore typos or other mistakes, english is not my 1st language) ; i’d love to hear your thoughts about this! please reblog, comment, or even send me asks, feedback is very much appreciated!

psssst, my inbox is open for suggestions and hard hours 👀! please check this and feel free to drop by 🩷!

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vvatchword · 1 year

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In Defense of BioShock Infinite

Although I had preordered BioShock Infinite with all its bells and whistles, I did not actually play it until January 2023. And lordy, I had me another Experience with a capital E. How the hell a bunch of urban Yanks could capture my experience as a queer democratic-socialist atheist struggling with her roots as a rural evangelical-cum-fascist is kinda magical, honestly. As to the game itself, it didn’t hurt how good it looked—the kickass skyhook gun battles—that novel setting—the complex characters—that delicious historical setting—that bloodthirsty critique of America—and to top it all off, they had pulled yet another Cassandra. Hell, speaking of which—not only was the game fun, it was fucking smart. It was intelligent, memorable, and meaningful in a way I hadn’t experienced in video games for years.

Now, back in 2013, when I had realized that I would be spoiled for Infinite, I left the BioShock fandom. After completing the game, I headed to Tumblr to re-engage, wagging my whole body like an excitable golden retriever, only to discover that BioShock Infinite was remarkably absent, and when mentioned, brutally derided.

“I hate BioShock Infinite and all my friends do, too,” someone said in the tags under a post.

I was utterly befuddled and deeply sad. I wanted to talk about BioShock Infinite! I wanted to dig into it, uncover unexpected ideas, learn new things, talk shit, make new friends—the full fandom experience. And instead I kept stumbling into hateful diatribes and super-charged disgust.

Obviously, I first looked at myself and my own judgment. Had I missed some obvious problem or misread some theme or dialogue? This wouldn’t be the first time I’d snapped down on a hook. But the more I thought about it, the angrier I got.

There are two parts of BioShock Infinite that are unquestionably terrible: the fridging of Daisy Fitzroy and the false equivalence of violence between haves and have-nots (lol what are the have-nots supposed to do, ask nicely?). Additionally, one could look at the use of real Native American tragedies as tasteless. Personally, I do not—in the same way that I don’t find it tasteless that real war victims were used as inspiration for Splicer deformities. This is what really happened; this is commentary on events that really happened to real people.

At this point, I’m sure I don’t have to explain why two of these themes are Unequivocally Bad.

Anyway, I thought that perhaps these were the reasons BSI had been condemned to Super Hell.

I was wrong.

How Criitcsim Werk

This wasn’t the fandom I’d made friends in over 2010. Hell, this wasn’t the fandom of 2013. This was a fandom made up of Babies. They were making their first coltish stumblings into media criticism and with it, dredging up the same brain-dead bullshit from Tumblr circa 2008.

Suddenly I was brought face to face with people who seemed to think that if a character couldn’t be likable or good that the story itself couldn’t be likable or good; that one bad element means the story is unsalvageable (lol u pussies); the implication that one is bad for liking it; the destructive juvenile insistence that media accurately measures its fans’ moral qualities en masse like an astrological sign. This goes far beyond simple like or dislike and plunges head-first into Puritanism: praying loudly on street-corners instead of quietly in a dark corner where God might hear you.

At one point I had a kid go off about how they wouldn’t take time to understand Booker DeWitt’s perspective because he had (fictionally) taken part in a genocide. (That same person said the Native American element had been employed for shock value, a thought that sometimes keeps me up at night, because it is legitimately one of the dumbest criticisms the game has ever received.) At another point I saw someone acting personally offended that (fictional person) Dr. Suchong’s (fictional) data was being stolen (in a fiction) by a (fictional) racist who would (fictionally) take credit for (fictional person) Suchong’s (fictional) inventions “while calling him slurs”. Sure, a better question would have been, “Why would the creative team opt to do this” rather than assume intentional racism from a Jewish creative director with an in-office multi-ethnic team in the year of our lord 2013, but why not handwave the choice with prurient moral dismay so your audience won’t beat you to death with bats?

It was as though fans were treating these completely fictional characters as real people whose personal gods had opted to torment them, and that their tormentors merited the kind of censure that psychopaths should receive. As I hope all of you understand, this is fucking madness.

More than once I saw people posting about hating the studio or the creative director in ways that seemed intense, unreasoning, and excessive—notably an “I Hate [Irrational Games creative director] Ken Levine” stamp (rofl the more things change amirite). People get so performatively moralistic about it that I started wondering if I missed something big along the way. Was there some secret Voxophone I missed swearing fealty to baby Hitler or some shit?

Double Standards

At the same time, I was utterly confused. BioShocks 1 and 2 both featured some absolutely ghastly bullshit based on real-life horrors and a thick mix of complicated human beings—many of them victims who have become monsters. The fact they are grounded in historical tragedies is a huge part of their appeal. Hell, I don’t think those games would have had half their meaning without World Wars I and II and the threat of a third.

A gay man who feels so cursed by his orientation that he is incapable of intimacy and systematically destroys his ex-lovers—including the man he loves the most. A Korean who survived Japanese occupation and a Jewish Holocaust survivor repeat the violence and traumas exacted upon them and their people, subjecting a new generation to agonies unthinkable. Chasing the shadows of Bolsheviks, a Russian citizen becomes the brutal tyrant that he loathed. A rich lawyer with an easygoing drawl designs a concentration camp and systematically harvests hundreds, if not thousands of political prisoners, selling them out to medical testing for a quick buck.

But a Native man who destroys his own people and class to ensure his own survival and social acceptability is too far? This character is where people drew the line, so much so that the entire game is disavowed? Hell, if you’re just talking about Booker (rather than Comstock), he doesn’t have anywhere near the largest bodycount. If we were to judge on the metric of human misery alone, Booker wouldn’t even hit the top ten.

Keep in mind that the most-discussed BioShock game on Tumblr is BioShock 2, and that one of the biggest fandom favorites is Augustus Sinclair—the easy-talkin’ Georgia lawyer who sells your character into horrors past all human comprehension, as he sold hundreds before and after you. Sinclair is a motherfucker so vile that BioShock 2 gives you no choice but to murder him. But Sinclair is also pleasant; good-looking to some; spends the whole game making sweet love to your ear; is one of the only true positive experiences you experience in a horror story. Unlike DeWitt, a man who is brutal and awful from step one, Sinclair is smooth and sweet. Unlike DeWitt, Sinclair’s victims are faceless, completely fictional, and carry no political or social baggage.

People fuckin’ ship this guy with Subject Delta, his explicit victim. He’s usually described as a squishy cinnamon roll. In most fanfiction, he often gets to escape to the surface and fuck Delta while helping raise Eleanor as Dad 2. It is rare that I find fanfiction that acknowledges his monsterhood in all its glory. In fact, I can only think of two.

Literacy Comes in Levels

My problem with the over-the-top hatred of BioShock Infinite is along the same lines as my confusion at Twilight and Harry Potter hate: there is so much worse out there (how much do the haters actually engage with media if they think this is that bad—yes, even considering the shitty creators themselves!), the hatred far outweighs the sin committed (in BioShock’s case, the truly bad bits are not central enough to derail the larger narrative), people don’t seem to hate it so much as they want to be seen hating it, fans want to enforce an unspoken rule hating it (bitches this is poison. Stop this), and there’s something about the hate that stinks of poor reading comprehension.

A great metric for general literacy is the newspaper. In journalism, you’re writing for the lowest-common denominator, which for years here in the USA has been about a fifth-grade reading level (about 10-11 years old, for my non-American readers). The AP posted an article a couple years back about how the general reading comprehension of Americans needs to be dropped to a third-grade one (8-9 years), and baby, I’m here to say it’s true.

Most of the problem is that the American education system is shitty as fuck. The rest of it is from an extremely American disdain of intellectualism and the arts. People are not taught how to interpret art or literature—a difficult and subtle skill which involves accepting such truths as “multiple contradictory readings can exist and yet be simultaneously correct”, “the author can be a complete tool and still be right about things”, “the author can be a great person and still write horrifyingly incorrect bullshit”, and “worthwhile works can be ridiculously long and it really is your fault for not having an attention span”.

Media criticism must be learned through trial, error, asking questions, confidently swaggering into a public space to announce your brilliant insight only to have your ass handed to you (usually by your older self ten years later), being willing to admit you swaggered confidently into a public space to state bullshit and then amending your bullshit only to produce more bullshit, and otherwise making a complete and utter cock of yourself. We are taught to fear and flee pain and failure, despite the fact this is how we learn and improve. Because we judge our value by whether or not we are “smart,” we are afraid of displaying that we don’t know something or might be mistaken–better not to try at all than to reveal ourselves to be fools. And yet the best way to learn is to crash up against someone else and be proven wrong!

American parents are terrified of hurting their children to the point that they spare them cognitive dissonance of any kind, disavowing difficult art—without any appreciation for the fact that art is how we provide safe spaces to explore key human experiences, better preparing us to face those difficult subjects when there are real-world consequences (sex, gender and social expression, grief, violence, predation, illness, interacting with people of different ideologies, whatever new issue is pissing off some smooth-brained old motherfucker somewhere).

If parents and teachers aren’t teaching us how to interpret art, we’re probably never going to develop the skill at all, or crash unsubtly into it in a piecemeal fashion (hello it me). Another unfortunate side effect is that these readers tend to be blitheringly superficial: they are literally intellectually incapable of reading deeper than the uppermost layer of a text. The curtains are always blue.

And let’s not forget the role moral performatism plays in media criticism, which although faaar from new, has reached hilarious levels in the age of social media. What’s important isn’t understanding something, it’s finding something to symbolically burn at the stake so everyone knows God loves us: please keep loving me, please don’t hurt me, please don’t throw me on the fire—for performatism is not for outsiders. We long for human connection so fucking much that it’s more important to destroy what might point out our fallibilities than it is to let ourselves stand in the furnace and burn out the dross.

What do you think the point of BioShock Infinite was?

Emotional Machines

Let’s face it. Human beings give a lot more credence to how something makes them feel than they do its complex invisible reality. We are not logical creatures; we are emotional ones. Our logic is too new a biological mechanism to override something as powerfully stupid as our primal lizard brains.

Knowing this, let’s take BioShock’s most popular characters. The first two are Subject Delta and Jack Wynand, the protagonists of BioShocks 2 and 1, respectively; and why not? They’re the characters we play. In the first two BioShocks, whether or not you kill Little Sisters determines the ending you receive. In other words, Delta and Jack can only be as “wicked” as the players are.

How do people want to see themselves? As good. What do people want to see around themselves? Good. (What is “good”? Uh, well,,,,,,) What do they want? Simple moral questions with simple moral answers. And in the first two BioShocks, what is moral is obvious: don’t kill little girls. It’s actually kind of insulting once you say it out loud.

In-fandom, Jack and Subject Delta are almost never painted as murderers or monsters, but as victims and heroes; I saw someone musing about putting Subject Delta on a “gentle giants” poll and I nearly choked on my own tongue. I only saw that musing because someone put Subject Delta and Jack in a “Best Fathers” poll. Nobody in-fandom really considers the “evil” or “complicated” endings as canon choices, despite those versions being fully understandable alternate readings, with a story that doesn’t make sense without them. (I don’t believe Burial at Sea is necessarily canon; in fact, I would bet good money that it is a huge middle finger lol, mostly because a number of brain-dead motherfuckers won’t take unhappiness for an answer.)

Most fandom art and writing is gentle, sweet, good: the symbolic healing of the damaged, the salvation of innocents, the turning of new leaves. These things are not just saccharine sweet—they tend to be unrealistically sweet. Now, far be it from me to demand these works cease. There’s a reason they exist. People write them because they need hope and happiness; I have enjoyed them greatly myself and intend to enjoy them in the future. But if y’all get to have your dessert, I demand the right to have my dinner.

The Colours Out of Earth

Let there be media where the opposite can also be true: where everything is unbelievably complicated and unforgivably fucked-up. Let there be characters who slide slurs into their speech without thinking. Let there be characters who destroy themselves in a thousand different ways, not all of them obvious, some of them horrifying. Let there be well-meaning people struggling with all their mights to do what is right only to destroy everyone around them and then completely miss the fact it’s all their faults. Let there be wickedness painted as goodness, superficial appearances accepted over essential and inherent values, denial of change and transformation, failure to accept that what is old must die and what is new must live, human stupidity and short-sightedness and cruelty in all their flavors. Let’s smash it all together and see how it plays out.

Oh, badly? No shit! But “badly” isn’t the point. How does it play out?

Let there be a world of gradients—a place I can float from color to color, hue to hue, value to value, while attempting to figure out where, why, how, and by whom they transform—to taste concepts in a hundred different ways, test their textures by a hundred different mediums, insert them into a hundred different contexts. I need to understand why I feel the way I do; I need to understand morality in all its hideous, fragmentary glory. For I have been sold to a ideology of blacks and whites, and let me tell you: it prepares you for nothing, and it will always destroy what is most precious about human life.

I can no longer believe in a world where what is lost always returns, because that world does not exist. I have a reflexive need to come to terms with Finality: what I have lost, what I have destroyed, what will never return, what will never be better. I have a reflexive need to understand Transformation: what I am now, what is as of the present, what has risen shambling from the ashes, what turns to gaze upon me in the darkness. I need to understand what is wretched about me as much as I need to heal myself. How can I heal if I can’t understand how I have hurt and been hurt?

I need to shine a light in the dark. Not to remodel it, not to destroy it—because I also can’t believe in a world where the wicked is destroyed forever—but to behold it, to learn from it, to view my own impact upon it, to accept how it has become a part of me, to learn how to do my best (because that’s all one can do). I must learn to love people more than causes, I must learn to love people rather than the act of winning, I must learn to love people rather than battle. I need to stand in that endless black with the lamp off and my eyes closed, letting the agony roll over me, burning with a fire that throws no light, rolling back and forth from an intense self-loathing to a fury at a society that destroys what is most valuable because it didn’t make them feel the way they wanted.

The Unforgivable

I believe that there are only two differences between Booker DeWitt and his equally cursed cohorts.

In the Hall of Whores: The Unmarked Slate

First, unlike the previous two games, where you enter the world as a tabula rasa and might roleplay as what you perceive as a good person, you are explicitly put into the shoes of a monster, and nothing you do can save you.

With other shitty BioShock characters, you are passively watching other people, and you are able to hold yourself apart. Sure, everyone else is crazy as fuck from using biological Kryptonite, but you’re too smart to end up a crazy fucking asshole like them! Sure, you are now technically a mass murderer, but those fuckers deserved it, damn it!

“Look at this crazy bastard!” you say, rolling your eyes at the Steinmans and Cohens and Ryans and Fontaines. “It sure is a great thing I’m not a crazy bastard!”

You are able to escape acknowledging that you, too, in certain circumstances, might be the crazy bastard. You are being challenged to stand in the body of a person who has committed unforgivable sins. Imagine if you yourself committed those sins. Imagine what sins you have already committed. Imagine what brutalities you cannot take back. Imagine what horrors you have wreaked just by breathing.

“Ahhhh!” said players, probably. “What do you mean I’m not allowed to be good?”

Because that’s what the game was designed to do. Because “good” is a fucking cop-out and if it’s how you live with yourself wait until you find out you’ve been doing horrifying bullshit all your life without question. You can be evil by association through no fault of your own.

Original Sin

Second, the plight of Native Americans is a sin that non-Natives will always carry, and the socially conscious are aware of this even if they don’t know how to put it into words. The state of affairs being what it is, it is unlikely that First Peoples will ever be treated humanely, much less have their land returned. They must struggle for scraps of what is rightfully theirs while we lounge on their corpses. We cannot help but benefit from their destruction; we are made unwitting partners with our forebears; we steal the fruits of their lands and make mockeries of their faiths and identities. We have destroyed part of what made this world fascinating and unique and most of it can never be returned. Even if everything were to be made right tomorrow, their genocide is a sin that we will carry until we die, because the only reason we could be here at all is because they were killed.

The obvious solution stands before us, but the powers that be are so much greater than we that we are effectively powerless, and achieving anything less than total restoration smacks of anticlimax.

This is unbearable.

How can one think of oneself as a good person if one sees the good that must be done, but cannot achieve it? If one’s actions are meaningless? Goodness without action is pretension.

We are all Booker DeWitt. We have all set fire to the tipi. We swept the ashes away, we ignored the sizes of the bones, we built a CVS on their graves, and then we made statues and holidays commemorating Native Americans like the world’s cheapest “Thinking of You” card. We have de-fanged them, transformed them into cardboard cutouts, and set them up as cute little side characters in our sweeping American dream.

Booker is not a man. Booker is America and Americans—and America and Americans are monstrous: one part hypocrisy, two parts incessant violence, three parts constant peacocking, and four parts dumb as a stump.

The Monsters We Make

Outside of the message about “choice,” an enormous part of BioShock’s thematic ensemble is the creation of monsters. How are monsters created? Who or what is responsible for creating them? What do the monsters think made them the ways they are? Can a monster be saved? How? Is it enough to acknowledge you did wrong and want to be a better person?

Maybe most people are aware on some instinctive level of what facing one’s own monsterhood means. No one wants it. It’s not fun. It hurts. It’s embarrassing. It’s destructive. It’s admitting you don’t have it all together and might never, ever—that despite your best actions, you can have it horribly wrong at any point. In an age where we demand moral perfection, it demands vulnerability: you must admit that sometimes you’re the racist, the transphobe, the sexist, the nationalist, the classist, the homophobe, the violent, the wrong, the dumbfuck.

Human beings are not built to be moral; human beings are built to survive. We so rapidly learn how to deal with our contexts at such young ages that we don’t have the time or capabilities to question why those contexts are the ways they are or why it is demanded we perform the ways we do.

In a very real way, BioShock Infinite demands vulnerability of us. It demands you look in the mirror and see what is monstrous in you—how you have been created—manufactured—a tool, a machine, a trained animal. It asks you to recognize that you can be a monster simply by association. And if we can’t look into the mirror and truly acknowledge that monsterhood, we run very real risks of becoming or enabling those monsters in one way or another.

Worst of all: perhaps monsterhood isn’t optional. Perhaps the monster was inside of us from the very beginning. It’s not a matter of if you become a monster, but when, under what circumstances, by whose hand. What is more, believing the “right” moral stances will not save you. Monsterhood can afflict anyone, in any ideology, any political stance, in any social movement, in any faith. The only element that can save you is to truly love other people, and even then, you can fail, for there can be states where there is no winner and ways to misread how best to treat another person.

Environment and Society: Context Will Not Be Denied

BioShock 1’s original ending is Jack-as-monster, regardless of how many children he saves, regardless of your feelings as player. He passes through the gauntlet of Rapture, but he has supped of its poison. And he wasn’t poisoned when he entered Rapture the second time—he was poisoned the minute he was conceived. He was born of it. He had no hope of ever escaping it—he never could have—he’d never had a choice to begin with.

No matter what choices you make in BioShock Infinite, Elizabeth will always kill you. Why? Because she has seen every world—every context—every limitation—every boon. And there is no way to stop what has been; there is no way to undo what has been done. The minute you have committed to a decision, you have split the universe; there is no telling what kind of person it will make you. In fact, there’s no telling which of your decisions will matter at all. Only Elizabeth can see because she is the unlimited future: your offspring stands before you, judge and jury, and you will have no choice but to accept her verdict, for despite your name, you are incapable of controlling how you are interpreted.

Elizabeth sits across from you in the boat and stares without blinking. She sees a million million similar Bookers. Some are a little bit taller, some a little bit shorter, some a little heavier or lighter. Some more-resemble one grandparent or another. They have different colored ties. This one blinks when rain hits him in the eyeball. That one took a brutal beating back on the airship and one eye is swollen shut. That one can’t stop shaking; this one is unable to speak at all; one hasn’t yet lost hope, although even he doesn’t realize it.

They all lowered the torch to the tipi.

The baptism determined Comstock; what determined Booker?

Why Booker Is

In BioShock 1, characters are often stand-ins for larger concepts. Thus Ryan stands in as Ayn Rand’s Objectivist Ubermensch; Bill McDonagh as Andrew Ryan’s conscience; Diane McClintock as the citizenry of Rapture; Captain Sullivan as law and order; Frank Fontaine as the truest expression of Objectivism in its distilled form.

Who is Booker? Most importantly: why is he?

Booker is a fictional character with a brutal background based on historical events, alternative and true. Booker might be Lakota; Booker might have undergone forced Anglicization; Booker might have been ripped from his parents; Booker is a product of violence, perhaps literally. Booker is American exceptionalism distilled. Booker is the past in constant judgment of itself, unable to live with itself and unable to die. Booker destroys what is best in him and around him in exchange for belonging. Booker has sold the future to absolve his sins. Booker has sold his daughter because he is a fictional character in a work of fiction who needs to be propelled.

Booker is a shell, a sluice, an environment. Booker is the broken shape you are meant to fill, horrified. His internal shape should torture you as it has tortured him: the messy slaggy soul of a shitty tin soldier.

Does Booker take the baptism and become Comstock? If so, it might be his second one. His last name literally means “the white.” His first name can mean “author.” It is most likely his second name: an attempt to rewrite himself. And when he was unable to rewrite himself the first time, when the cognitive dissonance boiled at the edges of his skull, he found there was only one way to cleanse himself the second: to remake the world entirely. To force transformation on everyone else. To take vengeance on a world that could never love him, never want him—to create a world that has no choice but to love him. If he can’t change the world’s mind, he’ll change the world.

Note what he opts to do: to take the fight to the environment–to the unyielding universe.

Context Is Everything

It is no mistake that BioShock Infinite occurs in 1912: the sinking of the Titanic is often credited with ending an unfettered optimism, a period when the Western world believed technology had brought the human race into a golden age. With World War I—which would follow a mere two years later—came modern warfare and all the horrors thereof, not the least of which was the realization that humans had created a kind of war that could destroy the entire world. World War I also seeded the rise of the United States: much of the wealth of warring Europe—itself fat on the blood of subjugated peoples and stolen lands—would rattle into America’s coffers.

It is also no mistake that BioShock 1 directly follows World War II. With WWII came a heightened terror—that this war is not the last war, that there will never be an end to war, that war will go on expanding and expanding until it has consumed us all. World War III would not be denied: prettily packaged in the ideals of its children, it simply followed the utopians down to their underwater tombs. According to BioShock 1’s original ending, World War III is not a matter of if—it’s a matter of when.

But even more important than the history in the BioShock games are their settings. Mute leviathans, Rapture and Columbia determine all of your behaviors: from where you can exist in space to all of your desires and goals to how you choose to present yourself to how you opt to behave. Isolated in extremism—whether that extremism is the crushing depths of the ocean or the unbearable lightness of the air—most of their power is that they simply cannot be escaped. You can’t outrun them. They are everywhere. They are everything.

Like Lovecraft before it, BioShock acknowledges the greatest horror of all: you cannot escape your context. Your context does not only involve your immediate surroundings. It is also historical; contains zeitgeists from various cultures and subcultures; is filled with pressures both personal and impersonal, human and nonhuman. Many of these forces can hurt you. Many more can destroy you. What you do to survive depends very much on where, when, and with whom you must live.

Human beings are not built to be moral.

The Death of the Future

In the film Operation, Burma!, a soldier asks Errol Flynn: “Who were you before the war?”

“An architect,” says Flynn.

Who were you? Because that “you” doesn’t matter now. That “you” is irrelevant. So you’re an architect. What the war does to you; what these deaths mean to you; your past, your education, your loves and desires and forward motivation, the you that could have been outside war, the you that slogs alone into the brutal future—all completely irrelevant. Your forebears don’t care so long as you can bleed.

Children are the manufactured tools of their creators—helpless before the enormous strength of their elders and the zeitgeists that enclose them, poisoned by their parents’ insecurities and flaws, utilized like weapons regardless of the cost—often with great love.

Consider something more than the traumatized culture: consider the society filled with traumatized children; consider the traumatized society. Consider channeling children through that trauma over and over and over again, if you can. Poisoned—poisoned—poisoned—all of us poisoned. Poisoned by those who loved us most. Poisoned by the people we trusted. Poisoned by the people who meant to make a better world.

I believe it is notable that creative director Ken Levine is Jewish; I have read from multiple accounts that the European Jewish diaspora was uniquely traumatized from the Holocaust and passed that trauma down upon their own families. I sometimes wonder if he saw that firsthand.

The fathers eat sour grapes; their children’s teeth are set on edge.

Choice: Player Expectations and Entitlement

For players who experienced BioShocks 1 and 2 with their multiple endings (Good, Bad, and “ok bye then I guess” respectively), it must have been jarring to suddenly reckon with being a monster. How often I see players grousing that nothing they do will change their wicked pasts! These players completely miss that the only meaningful choice had already been made, that it had nothing to do with the player at all, and even if they had been there, DeWitt was still unforgivable. The only way to go on was to bow out and allow the future to redefine herself.

Nobody was ready for that shit.

Like it or not, BioShock 1 had set a precedent. Not everyone’s going to read up on creator intentions. If any keyword came blaring through the noise, it would have been “choice.” Most players only recognize choice by the ability to make it, not the absence of it, and most of them weren’t equipped to recognize that its lack was the point. The meaningless choices were commentary, and they were as much about the player as they were about DeWitt himself. Not every choice will be meaningful, will it? And there will be choices you make that will be momentous, but they will seem very small when you make them.

Because most players had experienced what they thought was a basic moralistic tale in the first two games, and would see Infinite not as reflection upon America’s destructive personality, its obsession with a meaningless Good/Bad duocracy, and the infinite, cyclical nature of violence, they saw Booker’s death as corrupted artsy claptrap.

“I did the good schuut,” they say. “I want the good schuut end. Where happy end??? Where treat :(”

Bitch the future is here.

Time to die.

It’s Not Me, It’s You

Generally I despise essays that end with, “But the real fault lay with the clueless motherfuckers who played the game!” Often, if enough people complain, there’s something to it; the message has been obscured somehow. Details or explanations weren’t clear or intuitive enough, some mechanism isn’t working somewhere, some character needs to talk more or less, some setting needs to be transformed. O artist: stop whining and get cracking. If everywhere you go smells like shit, it’s time to look under your shoe.

But sometimes it’s true that a piece of media is on a level folks aren’t equipped for. Think of every literature and art class you’ve ever had, if you’ve been fortunate enough to have one. There’s always someone scoffing in a back row, like here are all these jokers making more of something than they should. Similarly, some of you have been arguing with me this entire time, saying: “I just wanted a video game. I just wanted to shoot something and feel better and instead I get this bullshit ending that makes no sense.”

First of all, smart bullshit (and even fucked-up attempts at smart bullshit! Hi BioShock 2) gets to exist on this Earth along with Gmod and Roblox or Schuut Big Tits 84 (there are 84 tits and you must shoot them all. They explode into smaller tits) or whatever-the-fuck-else you think is a worthwhile gaming experience. Second of all, miserable bullshit also gets to exist, and what did you fucking expect if you played through either BioShocks 1 or 2? When you hear a football player quavering out in the darkness for his mom to pick him up, how’d that make you feel? What did you think was going to happen to Jack after pounding back the entire Plasmid library, the cancer cocktail that explicitly destroys the fuck out of its users? Third of all, if you missed the smart bullshit going on in BioShock 1 and didn’t think BioShock Infinite might be larger in scope in more ways than one, that’s on you. Fourthly, if you were simply satisfied with saving like, 15 kids from a violently-perishing city of thousands and call it good, I mean… is that really where your thoughts end? Are you really that fucking small?

It’s Not You, It’s Me

You ever meet those motherfuckers who talk shit about Shakespeare or modern art? And you’re just left there staring with dead eyes at this poseur who mistakes playing devil’s advocate for intelligence, cheek resting on your fist, thinking about the fanfic you’re writing, wondering who it’s for, remembering that all your smut-writing friends get ten times the viewers, and considering throwing yourself in front of a bus.

Yeah, there’s a personal element to this: the fact that BioShock Infinite is the kind of art I like and long for and want to make myself, the fact that the game was successful and yet the studio was closed, the way its DLC was so rushed that the story plopped out like half-baked mystery meat—realizing that the same forced rush was at 2K’s behest for BioShock 2, as well, and wondering how good art can ever be made in this unforgiving capitalist hellscape. The game was weirdly niche and I’m not 100% sure I’ll ever experience anything quite like it again. And with the whiners in this fandom, the loud ones controlling the narrative, some fresh brain-dead exec in some brain-dead publisher might be like: “We must keep it safer and simpler for these fuckin babby adult!”

Nah bitch nah. Naaaah. Cry some more while I enjoy me my fucking dinner. I’ll eat it while making loud smacking noises and keeping unbroken eye contact. Come here. Let’s look at each other. It’ll be like Lady and the Tramp but we want to punch each other. What truer form of love can there be here in the modern world?

I keep having to remind myself that this response isn’t new. I keep having to remind myself of my place. I keep having to remind myself why I write, why I read, why I like to experience art to begin with. It’s not for the reasons other people do it. Oh, I want the same emotional release as everyone else, I want the same rollicking plots, I adore the same tropes. I seek out everything and anything for a good time; I’ll read Moby Dick today and a smutty 5,000-word abortion with the world’s most suspect grammar tomorrow. I don’t give a shit if it’s low- or high-brow; there are all kinds of ways to have fun and there are all kinds of ways to engage with art, and lord knows I’ve done my share of smooth-brain criticism. The problem is that I’ve always wandered off by myself, sunk into an all-consuming reverie, on tracks that no one else ever seems to be on, and then looked up to talk excitedly about something only to realize I’m alone. And whose fault is that?

By the same token, maybe I haven’t talked enough. Maybe I spend too much time with my mouth shut. Maybe I haven’t stood up enough for things that are worth our time, worth talking up, worth setting on pedestals.

I tell you, BioShock Infinite will stand the test of time. It’s too good for this. It’s too good for you, warts and all. Some of you will grow to understand that; some of you won’t; many of you will shrug and go on with your lives (and this is fine; it is only a video game). But I’ve truly not seen anything like it. I can’t believe a mainstream video game was allowed to be so fucking brutal about the American juggernaut, and what’s more, that it sold like hotcakes. Plus, I can’t think of any works in recent memory that have struck me so close to my own heart. No creative work has made me start beating a monster’s face into a washbasin for ten hours only to lift her by the scalp and see my own eyes looking back.

Look into those eyes. See your own stupid impulses pouring out. Your own stupid excuses, your violences, your sins—your claws, your teeth, your costumes, your hilarious attempts at interpretive dance. The beast doth protest too much.

O, monster—behold thyself—and tremble.

#bioshock #bioshock 2 #bioshock infinite #bioshock infinite burial at sea #booker dewitt #subject delta #jack wynand #augustus sinclair #essays #video games #spoilers #vvatchword #vvbsreceipts

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soleminisanction · 3 months

Text

I got a bee in my bonnet and spent last night crunching these numbers to confirm a long-held suspicion of mine, and now I'm going to do something with them even if it's only interesting to me. So.

I went through and tallied up all of the fics AO3 currently (as of 3/27/24) has under the tags "Trans Tim Drake," "Nonbinary Tim Drake," "Genderfluid Tim Drake" and "Genderqueer Tim Drake," since I figured that cast a wide enough net without committing myself to reading every fic vaguely tagged Trans Character to figure out which character they were talking about.

I then did the same for Dick, Jason, Damian and Bruce and, after comparing those numbers against each other and against the total number of fics each character has under their general tag, followed up with Duke, Babs, Cass, Steph and Kate, and then Kon, Cassie, and Bart for good measure.

The results confirm the suspicions I was going into check and are really interesting, to me at least:

Despite having far fewer stories overall than Jason, Bruce or Dick, Tim has by far the most stories tagging him under the trans umbrella (653 out of 58,395) and is the only member of the Bats for whom at least one full percent of his stories fall under that category (1.12% to be exact.) He actually has more total trans stories than Jason and Damian combined (308 out of 71,120 and 255 out of 42,607, equaling 0.43% and 0.59%, respectively) and outstretches the 2nd place ranker, Dick, by over a hundred (who clocks in at 438 out of 79,057 -- 0.55%). Bruce amusingly has by far the most stories overall (90,305) but the fewest trans stories (185) for the lowest percentage among the boys (0.2%).

The only one who comes anywhere close to matching Tim percentage-wise is Bart, who has far fewer stories to his name but a ratio of 62 out of 5,717 for 1.08%. I was thinking maybe Young Justice might have a higher percentage than the Bats due to their strong queer fandom but that only really proved true for Bart, with both Cassie and Kon coming in at only 0.2% and 0.28% trans umbrella percentage respectively (actual count 6 out of 2,874 and 39 out of 13,746).

Cassie's numbers correspond with the fact that women just, do not get a lot of these stories, at all, even compared to the general lack of attention they're paid by fanfiction spheres in general. Steph and Kate both clocked in at falling 0.17% under the trans umbrella (29 out of 16,638 for Steph, 5 out of 2,897 for Kate); Cass got 0.13% (21 out of 15,769) and Babs only 0.07%, the lowest percentage out of anyone I calculated for (11 out of 15,785). Duke's showing was a respectable 0.55% (34 out of 6,166) which puts him about even with the rest of the boys.

All of which I just went through to confirm a gut instinct I've had for a while: even in light of the noticeable trend in fandom towards increased visibility for trans and other queer-gendered people over the last decade and a half or so, it's a notable Thing for the DC comics fandom to explore with Tim Drake in specific.

And that doesn't even take into account things like the over 200 "Tim Drake is Catlad | Stray" fics, which almost always have some element of queered gender or at least femme'd sexuality to them, far outstripping any of the other Robin boys' spins in that AU (those counts stand at, respectively: Damian - 11, Dick - 33, Jason - 79, Tim - 242). Or the 11 fics logged under the "Tim Drake is Batgirl" tag, a category that doesn't even exist for any of the other male Robins.

(What makes that last one extra hilarious to me that most people don't know one canonical version of Tim has been a member of the Batgirls.) Part of me wants to use that parenthetic detail as a segway to ramble about the various canon snippets I think probably contributed to this, from Tim being presented as "the pretty one" who most often gets the "looks like his mother" comments to the fact that he is the only male Robin who's ever cross-dressed for an undercover mission and even though it only happened once the Internet will never forget Caroline Hill.

But this post is long enough as it is and I don't really have a point beyond I think this is interesting and cool so I'm going to leave off here for now and put my numbers under a cut so people have the raw data to look at if they'd like to.

TL;DR - Based on the numbers, the internet believes Tim Drake is more likely to be trans than any other member of the Bat-family or Young Justice, and I think that has interesting implications about his character and fandom. It's neat.

Data Taken: 3/27/24

Tim Drake: 58,395 Trans Tim Drake: 513 Nonbinary Tim Drake: 46 Genderfluid Tim Drake: 89 Genderqueer Tim Drake: 5

Dick Grayson: 79,057 Trans Dick Grayson: 399 Nonbinary Dick Grayson: 15 Genderfluid Dick Grayson: 23 Genderqueer Dick Grayson: 1

Jason Todd: 71,120 Trans Jason Todd: 286 Nonbinary Jason Todd: 17 Genderqueer/Genderfluid Jason Todd: 5 (4 have both tags and are the only ones tagged Genderqueer Jason Todd)

Damian Wayne: 42,607 Trans Damian Wayne: 215 Nonbinary Damian Wayne: 37 Genderfluid Damian Wayne: 3 Genderqueer Damian Wayne: 0

Bruce Wayne: 90,305 Trans Bruce Wayne: 180 Nonbinary Bruce Wayne: 5 (2 also tagged Trans Bruce Wayne) Genderfluid Bruce Wayne: 1 Genderqueer Bruce Wayne: 1

Total Trans Umbrella Tim Drake: 653 Total Trans Umbrella Dick Grayson: 438 Total Trans Umbrella Jason Todd: 308 (313 if you count the GQ tag separately) Total Trans Umbrella Damian Wayne: 255 Total Trans Umbrella Bruce Wayne: 185 (187)

Percentage Trans Umbrella Tim Drake: 1.12% (1.11825) Percentage Trans Umbrella Dick Grayson: 0.55% (0.55403) Percentage Trans Umbrella Jason Todd: 0.43% (0.43307 or 0.44010) Percentage Trans Umbrella Damian Wayne: 0.59% (0.59849) Percentage Trans Umbrella Bruce Wayne: 0.2% (0.20466)

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Duke Thomas: 6,166 Trans Duke Thomas: 20 Nonbinary Duke Thomas: 14 Genderfluid Duke Thomas: 0 Genderqueer Duke Thomas: 0

Barbara Gordon: 15,785 Trans Barbara Gordon: 11 Nonbinary Barbara Gordon: 0 Genderfluid Barbara Gordon: 0 Genderqueer Barbara Gordon: 0

Cassandra Cain: 15,769 Trans Cassandra Cain: 15 Nonbinary Cassandra Cain: 6 Genderfluid Cassandra Cain: 0 Genderqueer Cassandra Cain: 0

Stephanie Brown: 16,638 Trans Stephanie Brown: 27 Nonbinary Stephanie Brown: 2 Genderfluid Stephanie Brown: 0 Genderqueer Stephanie Brown: 0

Kate Kane (DCU): 2,897 Trans Kate Kane: 4 Nonbinary Kate Kane: 0 Genderfluid Kate Kane: 1 Genderqueer Kate Kane: 0

Total Trans Umbrella Duke Thomas: 34 Total Trans Umbrella Barbara Gordon: 11 Total Trans Umbrella Cassandra Cain: 21 Total Trans Umbrella Stephanie Brown: 29 Total Trans Umbrella Kate Kane: 5

Percentage Trans Umbrella Duke Thomas: 0.55% (0.55141) Percentage Trans Umbrella Barbara Gordon: 0.07% (0.06968) Percentage Trans Umbrella Cassandra Cain: 0.13% (0.13317) Percentage Trans Umbrella Stephanie Brown: 0.17% (0.17429) Percentage Trans Umbrella Kate Kane: 0.17% (0.17259)

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Bart Allen: 5,717 Trans Bart Allen: 40 Nonbinary Bart Allen: 20 Genderfluid Bart Allen: 1 Genderqueer Bart Allen: 1

Cassie Sandsmark: 2,874 Trans Cassie Sandsmark: 4 Nonbinary Cassie Sandsmark: 2 Genderfluid Cassie Sandsmark: 0 Genderqueer Cassie Sandsmark: 0

Total Trans Umbrella Kon-El: 39 Total Trans Umbrella Bart Allen: 62 Total Trans Umbrella Cassie Sandsmark: 6

Percentage Trans Umbrella Kon-El: 0.28% (0.28371) Percentage Trans Umbrella Bart Allen: 1.08% (1.08448) Percentage Trans Umbrella Cassie Sandsmark: 0.2% (0.20876)

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