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namazunomegami · 3 months

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Into the Void

Pairing: Geto Suguru x gn!reader

Synopsis: Geto is so succumbed to his ideals that you have no choice but to run. But the hunt for you is more than a simple chase. It's resurrection. It's repentance. Just like in the parable of the lost sheep.

CW: canon compliant, established relationship, predator/prey, injuries, blood, toxic dynamics, heavy religious symbolism, emotional distress, dissociation, tiny bit of hurt/comfort, yandere behavior, Geto is a manipulative ass how surprising

WC: 5.2k whoops

Credits: my dear @notveryrussian for proofreading but tbh I should start calling you my editor from now on lmao. I'm glad you enjoyed my sneak peeks so much 💕

Song rec: since I can't control myself, I picked 3 songs by Nine Inch Nails that gives the perfect vibes to the story. For the exposition, I recommend Heresy, mostly because the lyrics resonates with the reader's thoughts about Geto. For the escape/chase part, I picked Eraser for the creepy vibes and reader's slowly deterioriating sanity. For the closing part, I picked A warm place because it's a comforting yet a bit gloomy track

A/N: Saying that this idea possessed me is an understatement. Initially I only wanted to put effort into the whole chase scene but obviously I started to add lore into the whole thing. And since they grew on me and I simply love their dynamic, a part 2 is on the way yaaay.

Minors shall not interact unless they wanna get punched.

And a usual warning for dark content. I wanted to keep it mild but I couldn't. Maybe I'm a lil bit too skilled when it comes to writing about fear.

It’s all too painful to think that maybe running away with Geto wasn’t the best idea.

Of course you loved him, you loved the twins too and the makeshift family you created, it really healed some of the wounds you received in the past. But you wished it would’ve stayed that way. Living together, somewhere far away, isolated, in peace. Have a fresh start, build a nest for the four of you and fill it up with love.

But he had other plans.

There were a lot of improvements in the initial phase of your plans. Building community, uniting the herd. You enjoyed some reverence from the followers too. Eventually the initial number of breakthroughs began to stagnate, despite all the effort. It became routine, like you were being dragged through the same day for years and years without end. When you were faced with even more setbacks, you started to realize that you basically never left the temple and it soon began to feel like a cage. Golden and holy. It was draining to see people lose their sense of individuality and how he became their only source of validation. It was torment. Living life as an idol of worship tucked into a forgotten corner of a church. Praised like a twisted Gothic Madonna with a blue cloth over your head, but in reality you weep, you’re their Mater Dolorosa, with swords piercing your sorrowful heart.

The most devastating thing about realizing you’re not fit to run a cult, is the fact that you lack the most understated yet important aspect of it: believing in the agenda you want to spread. How could you guide all those helpless, simple-minded sheep while questioning whether your destination is real or not? Maybe that Canaan has nothing to do with milk and honey, instead it’s just a pile of rubble.

You soon got tired of it all. His drive, his goal, all too impossible to achieve. Maybe he knew he could never make it happen, but it consumed him regardless. You’ve lost the most cherished parts of him to his hatred, his deeply repressed rage against any injustices he had to deal with after the infamous Star Plasma incident.

You weren’t sure about your feelings towards Geto anymore. Were you afraid of him? Angry at him? Bitter? Disappointed? Worried? It all turned into mush, a grotesque, black liquid as the thin walls of the temple slowly made you feel like they were closing in on you. You had no idea how much time you had, until your unresolved feelings will taint the whole place.

You always circled back to the worst possible action to protect your soft, aching heart… When you thought that nothing will change for the better, you wanted to run away. You wanted to hide. The ambivalence of your feelings towards him weighed on your heart and conscience, like a thousand stones. You loved him, yet you loathed what has become of him. Despite that you trusted him with the map of your soul, made it through all the highs and lows of your relationship so far, all the deep abysses of pain and suffering.

Maybe you should run, just for the sake of it. To test how it will make you feel. Will it make you feel freed? At ease? Will it lift the weights on your chest? Will this sense of incoming doom vanish?

Maybe you should find Gojo. He wouldn’t condemn you, but he would be disappointed. If you set your judgement and resentment to aside, he’s the only one who can talk with the higher ups to scratch your name off the list of curse users who are on death row.

How much time did you need to forge your plan? Not even a single minute. It was only natural for you to memorize everybody’s routine, how to distinguish the sound of their steps, to pick a timeframe when nobody is lurking around the halls. The first (and probably last) time you were glad those who have hurt you gave you a skill, besides the ability to harness cursed energy of course. They made you stealthy, alert, observant.

And when Geto left you to cater to his followers, you decided to put your plan into action.

Your body is strung tight with the tension of waiting, agitation making you feel as if you were unraveling at the seams - but something deep inside of your mind pleaded for you to stay. Agony and anxiety were plaguing you until you’ve found enough courage to get up and sneak out. Now, you had the chance to show off everything you’ve learned: sliding the doors shut so slowly that they don’t make a noise, walking down the corridors with socked feet, carefully putting the middle parts of your feet on the floor, instead of your heels, easily avoiding those parts that creak.

Sometimes, when he was immersed in his thoughts, he was amused by how faint your steps sounded.

An involuntary instinct warns you. It’s trying to convince you that he can see you through the eyes of bodhisattvas residing in the thangka paintings decorating the walls. You almost give up your quest as you glance at the depiction of Vajrabhairava. In all its anger, with its six faces and twelve limbs. A dreadful beast that defies death itself.

You don’t want to do this to him, do you?

You look away from the painting, focusing on getting your shoes on and climbing out through the window. As you’re squatting on the windowpane, you can see all of Tokyo stretched out beneath you. You’re a little bit annoyed that all temples are built on a mountain. A long way to go, but you can never know when this place will turn into a funeral pyre.

It’s a little bit too easy. There’s no sign of surveillance curses nearby, you only need to slide down on the wet tiles, jump up high, land in the mud and let yourself be swallowed by the darkness of the forest. You specifically picked your least conspicuous clothes to blend into your surroundings perfectly. And the cold and murky night will let you go safely. The leaves will conceal your tracks.

So many things are working in your favor tonight.

You know there’s no need to rush. You can only draw attention to yourself if you are running around, creating noise and disturbing the wildlife. You don’t even use a flashlight, you have to get used to the darkness, the full Moon will guide you with all her dazzling light. And after that, Tokyo will do the same, with its crowded streets and all its places to hide.

There’s a weird kind of tranquility in your heart. How the cold prickles your skin, the moisture in the air, the faint noise of the creatures dwelling under the leaves, up in the trees, singing, chirping, crawling. The scent of wet soil, the gentle caress of the wind…

Now, you feel free.

As you walk deeper and deeper into the woods, you feel lighter, you feel like you could fly away, like you could dance all the way towards your destination. You’re thinking about actually doing that, as if you got possessed by a strange spirit…

But the uneven, slippery ground makes you fall right into the mud. You squirmed a little, trying to get hold of a tree trunk and then…

Silence, dead silence.

Your heart sinks deep in your chest.

You know what it means. When nature falls silent. There’s…

There’s a threat nearby.

A primal instinct tells you to run.

There’s no way, there’s no fucking way that he already noticed you were gone.

Twigs whip at your skin as you’re running mindlessly. Wherever you end up, it will be fine, as long as you can enter the outskirts of the city. The cold night air stings your throat, your heaving breath leaves your mouth in puffy clouds. You feel the urge to cough, deep from your bone-dry lungs.

The ground beneath you turns soft and steep. You lose your poise, stumbling and rolling all the way down until you fall from a high clod of rain-washed soil. Your body collides with a cold, wet, yet incredibly hard and flat surface, fraying the skin on your palm and face. Your back and shoulders will be bruised by tomorrow, painting your body with black and blue spots. The pain ripples through your entire being, paralyzing you for a couple of moments.

As you slowly gathered your battered self from the ground with a grunt, you realize you landed on a road. It’s a good sign, you’re not so far from civilization. But instead of following the road, cutting through the forest is the wiser decision.

Your relief is short-lived, just like a may fly.

A sinister feeling takes hold on you. It makes you freeze, squeezing your insides. Like you’re sitting in the jaw of an eldritch beast. You slowly turn back to the direction of your fall.

The lights are flickering.

You grab on the guardrail for dear life. You try to fill your lungs with shaky breaths, your heart desperately beating against your ribcage. Your trembling knees barely keep you upright, yet nothing can make you move. You have been found, you’re defeated, there’s no point in running away from him. The injuries, the already forming bruises will only deplete your strength.

How could you fight him? You’re aware that if he wanted to, he could break your bones and twist your body at the joints with an arm behind his back.

How could you outrun him? He’s capable of summonning a swarm of curses before you even take a step.

How could you make war with him?

Three of the lamp lights were already out, you stared into the darkness, the boundless abyss right before your eyes. You can’t even force yourself to blink.

And when the lights came back on, he was just standing there. Without breaking a sweat. Your pulse feels non-existent.

What infuriated you even more was that he wasn’t wearing his gojo-kesa. The motherfucker even gave you a head start by changing into something comfortable before he came to fetch you. Or simply he noticed your absence later than you expected.

Whatever, both is bad news for you.

He doesn’t utter a single word, he merely walks towards you. Slowly cornering you. Feasting on the terror on your face. Meanwhile you can’t unravel what could possibly be going on in his mind. The only thing you notice is that those violet sparks in his eyes are so sharp they could cut yours out of their sockets.

Should you give up? Should you beg for forgiveness?

But then, an idea blooms inside your mind.

You don’t hide your fear, you let your body tremble freely, fingers desperately clinging onto the metal, with your shoulders hunched to protect your neck and your wide, frightened eyes stare back at him. Letting him believe that you won’t fight back. That he can take you back to the temple and throw you back into your cage.

And when his foot hits the bisector, you jump. Right into the nothingness behind your back.

You fall on leaves and broken twigs again. You roll and roll with such speed you can’t comprehend the growing distance. Not even having an idea of how far you’re from him. Small rocks, branches, hardened roots of trees, bones all cut, scratch and pierce you. But you endure it, you’ll undergo any torture if it meant you’ll be freed. Your only hope is that the adrenaline will deal with the pain.

Suddenly, you violently crash into a tree, the ridged texture imprints deeply into your stomach. Acid bursts from your throat. Your diaphragm didn’t avoid the hit either, breathing is not unlike Sisyphean task as you try to get your shaking limbs to stand. Your mind is disturbed by the lack of air and your desperate attempts at getting yourself together. You’re wheezing like a dog. You must look pathetic, you think.

It takes almost all of your mental strength to calm down and slowly breathe through your nose, your lungs finally opening. But Geto won’t let you recover, you hear the fallen leaves getting crushed under his feet. You take a few sharp, ragged breaths, like it’s the last drag of a cigarette before the train comes and then, you move.

You hide behind a thick pine tree, palms covering your mouth and nose. The lack of oxygen is just another frustrating hindrance to your successful escape plan. Dizziness fills your head like a thick fog and sucks the strength out of your shins, needing to lean against the trunk to keep yourself standing. You try to conceal your cursed energy with all your might. A tracker who’s untraceable is a useful pawn in the hands of the higher ups, this skill made you a cherished student back in the day. Back when everything was so… no, it’s only the nostalgia making you wistful, it wasn’t any better.

The rustling gets quieter, you wait until the sound eventually dies. An almost muted sigh of relief leaves your lips in a thick cloud, dancing in the cold air.

From the corner of your eye, a floating form cuts through the pale moonlight.

Looking closely at its shape, you realize what kind of curse it is. The beetle looking one that attacks instantly once it senses movement. You can’t believe it, you’re going to -

The curse drags itself into your aura, scanning your form that is fused with the pine. Every muscle is tensed, you’re stiff as a board, you suppress every reflex in your eye and empty chest. You’re just like a statue, a corpse, showing no signs of life. Only an agonizing scream echoes inside your skull. A scream that puts mental breakdowns to shame.

It’s like an eternity until the curse finally disappears from your sight.

You definitely look exhausted, your body is limp and heavy like lead. But you must keep going at all costs, even if you have no idea how many curses are sent after you. You walk around the mountain instead of going down like he’d expect it.

Slowly yet surely, you calm yourself down. You know that you’re still in his grasp, but you still have a chance to outsmart him. You go deeper and deeper, you’re near the heart of the forest now. The moonlight barely crawls through the leaves, it’s easier to navigate according to what you hear rather than to what you see. The surroundings are growing eerie, you ache for light and warmth. And the longing sucks a bit of spirit out of you.

Before you can start questioning yourself, the sound of running water fills your ears.

A narrow, yet fast running stream plowed through the forest. Though you were unsure of staying close to the stream, going through it and getting to the other side sounds like a smart idea. As you take a reluctant step, you realize the water is ice cold. And when you dive into it further, enduring the strong current, it’s not as shallow as you believed. You’re submerged all the way up to your thighs. At its deepest point, the stream hugs your waist. The cold makes your movements slow and rigid, your teeth clang together in a frenzy. The bottom is filled with smooth, flat pebbles, they make it easy to -

You slip on the rounded, polished stones and fall into the stream. The freezing temperature makes your skin shrink, it prickles you like a thousand needles. Scared, you crawl around the bottom, trying to get a hold of something and emerge back to the surface. A sharp, burning pain wakes in your palm, tears streaming down your cheeks. You try to swallow your scream, but it wants to burst from your lungs, you grunt and whimper until you can bite down on your sweatshirt, letting the material muffle your shout. Your gaze fixates on your hand and even in the darkness of the night, you see blood oozing from the deep cut, from your own torn flesh. The urge to retch is strong.

You palm is plunged back into the cool water, in hope of easing the pain.

He calls out your name right behind you.

You crawl out of the water, running from him, just as before. It doesn't matter how many times you trip, fall, stumble. It doesn’t matter how your fresh wounds end up in the mud, you don’t have it in you care about the pain or the looming threat of an infection. You hear him trying to reason with you. You must come back home, you’re injured, you’re bleeding. He must take care of you.

Why are you running? Where could you go? Who’s going to help you recover?

No, you mustn’t let your determination crumble. But oh… it sounds so easy. Giving in to your hopelessness.

An evergreen bush becomes your shelter to collect yourself and check on your wound, which is aching from all the dirt and is still bleeding. Water is dripping from your hair, your clothes are soaked, makes it easier for the cold night air to bite into you, to shake the whole length of your body. Your fingers are hardly moving and have no strength in them. The adrenaline is starting to wear off. You feel alone, small, and vulnerable. You’re freezing, scarred and aching. All the things you see in the dark twist into creepy, threatening forms. Everything that surrounds you is suddenly dangerous. As a lonely spider crawls within your field of vision, you flinch. The world around you is evil and everything is after your flesh.

And the only person who can save you is the one you’re running away from.

What are you going to do now? Fight, flight, or freeze? Which instinct is going to win this time? Because comprehensible thoughts won’t work on you. Every little layer of a fully-fledged human with a conscience has been stripped from you. You left them scattered everywhere in the woods. You’re nothing more than a primordial shell of a being.

Ceremonial horns wake in the distance, soon followed by howling. They let the dogs out to hunt you down. Poor, little hare. Your own stupidity has woken up the beast.

Who is like unto the beast?

You defeat the paralyzing dread and decide on flight. You dash out from the bushes, but - Oh… your eye. Your soft doe eye. There’s something in it. And your tears have an oddly metallic taste on your tongue.

And power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.

You wish you could see yourself from the outside, but you’re probably nowhere near as majestic as you think you are. Right now you feel like you’re the fastest, stealthiest creature who’s ever lived, even if your muscles are almost torn, weak, and tensed. This is the last crumb of your strength, this is your all.

And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him.

You don’t dare to look back. You know he’s there. He’s so close, he’s orbiting around you like a moon does with its planet. As if all of this is a dance. A hunt is a dance with a coital rhythm. And mother nature is the audience to your deadly waltz.

And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men.

He takes your hand in his. Gentle and kind. To not scare you any further. You snap like an electric current under his touch, but you break free and zigzag between the trees.

He grabs your waist. Forcefully. It scares you this time. You escape from his embrace before he can swallow you whole. But he might have bit your throat during the process, you feel something trailing down your collarbones. You hear your bones crack.

It was all a mistake. You are a mistake. But mistakes can be forgiven, right? He has forgiven you so many times, you can’t even think of a number.

You slide down on a slope, leaves stick to your clothes, and you drop onto a thick trunk of a fallen oak. Tensive pain ripples in your side. You should stand up and run, but you can’t move. You won’t move. What’s wrong with you? What kind of prey gives the fight up before its last breath? But you think about your frozen limbs, the pain in your palm, your back, your shoulder blades, everywhere. You think about home… you want to go home or be left here to die. But the thought of dying here, alone, makes your heart palpitate rapidly, like there’s not enough air to fill your lungs. Your breathing becomes desperate, panicked even. Your chest hurts, your ribcage is ready to break apart by your racing heartbeat. You press your palms against your head, clawing into your hair. Every little morsel of you is bursting into a tremor. The connection between your mind, your body and the world cease to exist. And that lovely, unlimited stretch of space inside your consciousness is shaken, it’s in utter chaos. Breaking into tiny little pieces, like glass, like porcelain. Tears and plucks like paper and fabric. Shrieks and wails, rejecting the only thing that makes all creatures on this plane of existence agitated over their own mortality.

You’re doomed.

Unconsciously, your limbs curl into the very same position you took when you saw the world for the first time, protecting your belly and face, making you seem small. Geto knows you only do that when you fear what might happen to you, despite being unaware of the kind of terror your brain had subjected you to. That’s why he approaches you slowly, making no sudden movements as he picks you up gently, like one would lift a porcelain figure from the ground. When you open your eyes, he had already settled you into his lap as the manta ray curse lifts the two of you up to mount the skies.

You have no idea if he hunted you down or saved you from your own demise.

What a defiant, ungrateful creature you are, you think. You tried so viciously to run away from your burden, and now you feel safe with him again, you dare clinging to him, you dare seek his warmth. The contradicting thoughts and desires torture you on the way back. There’s only one faint voice inside your head that’s capable of calming you down, able to keep your sanity intact…

You’re the lost sheep, and he’s the shepherd who searched all over the world to find you. And he’ll bring you back to the flock, and he’ll love you more than the rest of them.

Your false god. Your fallacious savior. Will he forgive you if you repent on your knees? Until they get bloody and bruised?

Back at the temple, he refuses to let you take even a step on your own. You weren’t born to run, to soil your soles with the ground that filthy monkeys walk on. You’re meant to be worshipped, to claim the whole world as yours beneath dainty, soft feet.

The warm lamplight and the comfort of your shared room helps you unwind. To shift back into a much more civilized, humanlike state. And as you practically glue yourself to the heater, you notice more dirt, more cuts, more blood marring your flesh than you expected.

When you take off your grimy sweatshirt, shoes, and socks, Geto is towering over you. There’s nothing imposing about him, he looks rather troubled as he sighs.

“What do I do with you?”

You roll your eyes. Oh, the good old rhetorical question. He has no idea if he should treat your wounds first, bathe you or break your leg just like the Gospel says.

“Come, let me take a look at your hand.”

You see your reflection in the mirror, and you’re horrified. Your right eye is bloodshot, a deep cut is splitting through your lower lip. You’re drenched in mud, already dried on your face along with some patches of wine dark blood. Together they seal the scraped skin on your cheek, makes your hair stick together into thick strands, accessorized with pine leaves and other remains from your little hike. You’re blistered and torn, you can barely recognize yourself.

It's pleasant to rinse your hands with warm water at the sink, but the sight makes your stomach twist. That nasty wound is too deep, it has to be sewn shut. A shiver races down on your spine when you see the first aid kit. He soaks a fresh gauze pad with wound solution and guides it towards the gaping cut with a pair of tweezers. The sting is horrible, the burning sensation rivals acid being poured straight into your flesh, it makes you grunt and hiss. He gives you a moment to breathe and collect yourself then he continues, despite your whimpers and twitching, tensed fingers. But the pain pales in comparison to when he swipes a new, clean pad inside your wound, cleaning it of all the filth. A pathetic cry erupts from your throat.

“Stop.” you sob, pulling your hand away to hug it close to your chest. You’re too distressed to realize that the temporary discomfort is necessary. But maybe this whole act is nothing but another one of his silly little games.

He places a finger under your eye, close to your lashes and collects your tears. The sight of you crying is somehow not worth of savoring to him. Before any little drop of your sorrow and regret can roll down your cheek like diamonds, he smears them, as if they could make your misery vanish. Well, they can’t. It frustrates you that you can’t let your feelings manifest because he’s ready to devour them just like his curses.

He doesn’t care that your face is caked in dirt, blood and tears, he lifts your chin up to kiss you. Deeply. You’re not reprimanded for not kissing him back.

You were right, he’s definitely toying with you. He makes it hurt before he soothes the ache. He creates a connection in your mind. Like you’re the dog of Pavlov, slowly conditioned to associate him with anything that makes the human heart fill with delight.

The tiles attract your attention much more than watching how the curved needle dives into your skin, how the thread closes the wound proficiently. Your features soften for a moment. Shoko would be so proud of him... Not for the reason he got so good at it though. He learnt to treat his wounds for the sole purpose of not letting a non-sorcerer doctor ever touch him.

He’s crazy. Vile. Petty. And delusional. It drives you crazy too.

But when your stitched hand is wrapped up in bandages, you seriously think about thanking him for putting up with you. For not being angry at you.

“Maybe this will make you reconsider your actions next time.” he remarks in a flat tone, concealing what’s going on in his mind.

You keep your gratitude to yourself.

But it’s not an easy task when he continues spoiling you, with so much care that it rivals motherly love. How he rinses all the grime out of your hair, how he gives you a moment of peace in a tub filled with plain, warm water, no bubbles or scented oils to irritate your scarred, sensitive skin. He dries you, brushes your hair and fills the whole bedroom with the calming notes of lavender and cedarwood coming from the incense burners. But he’s just so fixated on your injuries… every scratch, every surface level cut is thoroughly sanitized. It’s still humiliating, even when you’re the one sitting comfortably on the bed and he’s kneeling on the floor.

You’re afraid the extra pampering will twist your reasoning and resolve. That’s all part of the mind games he plays. You know he’ll go out on his way to prove that the world outside is cruel, that this is the only place where you’re safe, loved. In his proximity, under his hand.

And somewhere, deep down, you admit that he’s close to convincing you.

It makes you mad, you want to tear him to shreds, you want to weep for him just like Mary did under the cross. There’s still care, there’s still love under all those layers of burning hatred. What remains is twisted though, but it is there.

After you’re patched up, he glances up at you, thumb brushing your lip right next to that nasty cut. His other hand is resting where your thigh and knee meet. It’s a sign, a warning.

“Was it worth it, little lamb?” his tone is soothing and playful. So close to being outright mockery.

You reflect in silence, averting your gaze from him. All those scars and discolored skin, your disturbed mind, and the ache in your bones - you realize that your stupid little plan was futile. Totally unnecessary, it’s no achievement you can be proud of. At least if you’re not as masochistic as to pride yourself on your injuries. But the fact that he can recognize the parallels coats your answer with bile.

“No.”

Because you know that you can be so much more… There’re unlimited possibilities to a repented non-believer. And now you know that being his doubting Thomas has no benefits.

Maybe you did lose your faith in him, like the lamb in that story, to eventually realize how much you need him and vice versa. But you’re not satisfied with being a lost sheep. You just haven’t decided on your role in his Gospel yet. This is your call, you don’t know exactly which part of him calls out to you, but you’re satisfied with either of them. Whether it’s a prophet, a messiah, a beast, or the devil itself. The fallen Morningstar who used to be the favorite.

This can be your true Genesis.

“Go on, break my leg if you want to. There’s meaning in that, at least.” you dare echo his last words to Gojo, clean and low.

And your bones remain whole.

You’re relieved. Though you’re sick of his maneuvers with your mind, you’re aware their purpose is not to hurt you or punish you. These aching limbs of yours go limp as he crawls into bed next to you. The arm you were scared of coils around your waist. Viciously tight, much like a snake. The snake that corrupted Eve in the garden. The one that made her sin, got her cast out of paradise, the one that turned her whole world upside down. And maybe Eve did fall in love with the serpent, the worst creature that God had ever created. But even though he caused the fall of mankind, the serpent freed you from the clutches of a jealous, ungrateful god who denied knowledge from his own creations. Now you have the passion to rebel, to prove your creator wrong, to avenge his mistreatment. Give in to the temptation of your snake, believe his honeyed words, accept the fruit for a second time. Because you still remember the taste, oh so sweet and luscious. And with all the power he wields, you can win back your lost Eden or re-build it on earth, the home you’re both yearning for. It’s a promise between the two of you, silent, because words are not needed, only closure.

Something warm blooms inside your chest. Yes, that’s it! You can finally feel it now…

The very first ounce of belief.

#jujutsu kaisen x reader #getou suguru x reader #jjk x reader #suguru geto x reader #idk why but geto is very downward spiral coded to me #fun fact the title is another song by nin lmao #and i dont delibaretely write him as a yandere but somehow i finish a fic and reread an then... whoops he's yandere #geto suguru x reader #meesa writes

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presiding · 5 months

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a doctor turned serial killer turned doctor again, an actor who paints, a gang leader, a mining baron, and a vice overseer walk into the room.

oh yeah and they lead karnaca now.

dishonored 2 is my fav game but i think it's mid, story-wise. here's why dh1 works and why dh2's overarching story sorta misses

tl;dr: story integration is critical for gameplay that offers audience payoff, but emily's personal arc from dishonor to honor is inconsistently demonstrated in the story, and is not an interactive part of the gameplay.

essay/long version under cut >

recap: what's dishonored's deal

[skip if you want] dh1 is an underdog story: corvo is an honorable man swept up in the machinations of a callous city, so his canonical ending being 'this child will rule over an empire' isn't about the child's rule but rather about corvo's reputation being restored in a more hopeful city, due to his & the player's rejection of the violent connotations of the tagline 'revenge solves everything.'

similarly, in dh1 DLCs, daud's story arc is that of an anti-hero: a dishonorable man who realises too late he has done irreparable harm. he sees the error of his ways after a single monumental death, and eventually a single life redeems him when he/the player stepped in to circumvent a terrible fate for a child, enabling her to rule unfettered.

daud & corvo come to a satisfying conclusion within the extent of their narrative arcs. it doesn't matter that a child on a throne isn't really a fix for a decaying empire - the player's actions throughout the city of dunwall was what mattered - and these stories could be framed as parables. in that sense, young emily as a ruler is a metaphor for a hopeful future for the city & empire.

dishonored 1 & its DLCs are also great examples of storytelling with perfectly integrated gameplay - you, the player, worked towards the outcome that redeemed the protagonists.

in your efforts to save young emily, you either achieved a good outcome (corvo) or prevented a worse outcome (daud).

bringing us to dh2 -

what's emily's arc

emily's arc is a coming of age: we're introduced to a reigning empress who questions her role & skillset ("am i the empress my mother wanted me to be?"), then her titular fall from grace occurs. from there, she learns to reject the violent, selfish connotations in 'take back whats yours' tagline (a la daud & corvo!) while rediscovering why her rule is critical to the empire.

emily's rule is no longer metaphorical, but:

a literal thing for audience assessment (is emily a good ruler?) AND

the crux of her storyline.

at the beginning of dh2, emily is introduced as a disengaged leader ("i wish i could just run away from all this;" "i dont know if whether i should sail to the opposite side of the world, or have everyone around me executed"). the antihero has a precedent for the dishonored series in daud, so it's not at first glance an issue*, however, the fact that emily has ruled poorly reframes corvo & daud's endings as being less than ideal (a moralistic retcon) *we could talk here about how ready an audience was in 2016 for a flawed women as a protagonist, hell, even in 2023,,,

throwback to the beginning of this essay when i said:

'this child will rule over an empire' isn't about the child's rule but rather about corvo's reputation

emily's story arc, unlike for daud & corvo, is literally about the quality of her rule. we're no longer in metaphor territory (ironic phrase): a parable-style ending doesn't work.

does emily become a good ruler

we know she becomes a good ruler because the game says so. it is narrated to the audience via a (literal) word of god in the space of 30 seconds, after the final boss. the outsider tells us that emily becomes known as Just & Clever.

drawing a distinction here - this narration is not the same as the player actively being involved.

the player does not throughout the game become aware that emily has made political allies. during the game, she doesn't talk to these characters about saving karnaca or being a better ruler to the empire (there's a few lines might imply it, but you need to be actively looking and being careful to wait for every voice line. it's a far cry from daud & corvo's fight to save emily being unmissable - even though daud doesn't know at the beginning that's the goal).

how does the game show it

you can coincidentally not kill most of your subjects and never be aware that emily is looking to restore karnaca by means of instating a council - it's never brought up. it *couldn't* be brought up, because that council serves under the fake duke (armando), who is the last person she speaks to before she leaves for dunwall. its her suggestion that he rules karnaca, but armando's condition is that he will rule as he sees fit.

to back up a bit, emily's canonical method of restoring karnaca is by banding together key allies - hypatia, stilton, [byrne &or paolo], pastor, under a council beneath the duke's body double. they are passionate people who would each individually make worthwhile advisors, but if you think about those characters sitting at a table trying to reach an agreement, it feels like an assortment of people that emily didn't kill along the way and doesn't feel organic (up to interpretation). it's not stated if emily herself banded this council together, but logically she must have (worth a mention these are mostly characters that you as the player had reasonable rationale to kill during a high chaos run, except pastor). the underlying concept may be that karnaca's power is returned to its people - which is interesting given that the monarchy remains and armando's decision is final.

this overarching solution could also be taken as a critique to dh1's 'put your kid on the throne,' which is another reason its worthwhile looking at how emily was shown to be a better leader. obviously my point isn't that her solution was bad given the circumstance, but i mean she has very little agency here in all. if emily was shown to be more controlling as a leader, this could be interpreted as character growth, but that's not the case.

coming of age

how do you learn & grow when you can't specify your failings? emily doesn't really touch on her shortcomings as an empress. she non-specifically worries delilah makes a better empress than her. it's hard to argue her worries are meaningful when someone good at their job will still worry when lives are in the balance.

emily's best 'aha' moments (eg. crack in the slab comment about gaining perspective) are consistently undercut by a conversation with sokolov or meagan afterwards in which she demonstrates she hasn't learned anything (before the grand palace, emily condemns 'toadies sucking up to me' and is reminded by meagan that she's part of the problem). the story is confused about what it's trying to say about emily's progress, and when she's meant to show progress, if she was meant to show any progress at all. it could be argued that emily was never even a bad ruler, she had just been fed misinformation about the problems in karnaca and been the victim of slander by her political enemies. the game doesn't make this clear - it's easier to argue that the opposite is true given that her allies only have criticism.

worth a mention here that the heart quotes about armando - a fake ruler - interestingly mirror emily's character concerns. "see how he sighs? his life is a gilded cage." but this essay is already long.

while corvo & daud spend their games (and through the gameplay) 'earning' their redemption, emily is being led by the NPCs around her to a conclusion and a fix for the political mess in karnaca: meagan & sokolov guide emily to her missions, and there's no recurring quest for emily to investigate possible allies. she is able to gather the people she hasn't killed to herself by manner of... post-game narration. during the game, she's primarily concerned with getting her throne back.

an easy fix: if there had been less dialogue & narrative focus on emily's failings perhaps the ending would have felt more satisfying. it has the feel of cut content, but i don't know what was cut to be able to comment on it.

so what went wrong?

i can't help but wonder if arkane were worried they would lose a certain demographic if corvo wasn't playable (may have been deemed too much of a risk - 2013 was a different time), and so they had to take out story elements that were unique to emily's growth as a character/empress, because the usual storyline/gameplay integration had to work for both characters - in other words, gameplay that made sense for both corvo & emily was prioritised before emily's story & character development. which is a silly problem to have in a game that added character voices for the sake of improving characterisation - maybe emily's tale would have felt more akin to a parable if she had less lines that betrayed her ignorance (to the disdain of those around her).

i wish more care had been taken with emily's story. most players will never really notice the large variety of different endings - they're not particularly satisfying in and of themselves.

it's ironic that one of Emily's complaints is about her father/protector being overbearing, when his (parallel universe) presence in the gameplay may be one of the reasons her own narrative arc falls flat.

what are the upsides here

changing tune from what didn't work - don't you think the concept is fantastic? it's a great idea overall - can you imagine if the coming of age storyline was better integrated into the game?

it's valuable to talk about the integration of story and gameplay and characterisation from a craft perspective. dh2 genuinely is my favourite game - it's beautiful, the imm-sim design philosophy makes the world a delight to explore, the combat gives endless creative options for tackling any fight, there is a far greater diversity of cast in an in-text canonical way. there's loads to love!

i love emily as a dodgy leader, to me it adds interesting dimensionality to the outsider's narrations - of course in dunwall there's never a neat happily ever after! emily, like the outsider, both work well as characters who hold ultimate power but aren't necessarily worthy of it - and this makes perfect sense for the dishonored universe's morality & critiques of power. however, within this grey area there's still plenty of room for a satisfying ending, which isn't what we ended up with, whatever the true reason for that was. and also, damn, emily's a marked assassin empress, if she can't lead well then who can?

while dh1 was criticised for its narrative simplicity, dh2 in contrast and in hindsight shows us that simplicity isn't so bad - there's satisfaction in gameplay achieves a clear, simple narrative goal.

#are you a dh1 enjoyer but less so a dh2 enjoyer?#have you ever wondered why you don't love dh2 as much?#here's 1.8k words that might articulate some of that.#light reading.i guess #this essay wasn't meant to cover everything - just the core of the plot and why its important to integrate story & gameplay #and to compare dh1 & 2 #dishonored #dishonored 2 #dishonored 2 spoilers #emily kaldwin #daud #corvo attano #this week i'm cracking things out of my drafts!#<333 don't get me started on doto.#some of this might be contentious. idk i try to live in a bubble #the meme version was easier to read i know i know #this essay would have been a lot longer had i integrated more references from the game #i know a few others have said this but imagine if they went a different way with emily #like she realises shes not fit for the job and maybe no one is and says fuck the system cause shes got a rebellious streak #and does a kickflip on the monarchy and institutes something else. i dont even care what. make it funny #and then for the sake of continuing the trend we spend dishonored 3 undoing the horrible leadership emily instates <3 #i think they really loved emily as a character. i FEEL the love i believe its there.but didn't think enough bout how she would be perceived #there's a good couple comments from baldur's gate 3 devs about how much work goes into writing women to account for sexism #there's more that i could have added to this essay but for brevity's (ha.ha) sake i'll leave it there #other textposts about this game that i see around tend to romanticise dishonoreds story a little more

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shinakazami1 · 7 months

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I’ve received notice that there was a callout on me in the Stanley Parable Creator’s Club server and I would like to address it as I am a bit tired of people talking behind my back. I wasn't contacted by anyone from the server directly about the issue.

The specific accusations were that I openly discussed a fic with NSFW themes to a minor, shared NSFW fic online without properly warning it for minors, and encouraged a self insert ship of one of my Narrator designs with a minor.

These accusations are false, or blown entirely out of proportion. I have never intended to hurt people nor endanger minors and based on screenshots I've received, people have been spreading even more extreme misinformations, like me being a groomer. I want to tell the story with the mentioned earlier things, in hopes to clear up this matter and stop the harassment me and people received.

1) Sharing NSFW Fic Online

I have been informed that I posted a link to my fic, "A broken promise", without a proper warning.

I did put appropriate warning in the tags, however I did forget about archive warnings options and I misjudged that the T rating would suffice. I also had only mentioned the rape in tags and not in the ao3 warning. I will be more careful when publishing work in the future.

I've deleted the links on my posts and privated the work, as I do not want anyone else to get possibly harmed.

2) Filk

I was informed my never written fic was discussed in the discord as well with a completely incorrect premise and I would like to mention the idea to give people more insight into what it actually is supposed to be, despite the fact that it was never actually written.

Filk (Fernator's milk) is based on a joke someone made from another fic of mine, "Bon appetit 1.5 - Chicken soup is served " where Stanley buys milk and pickles, and we called it pilk. Somebody made a joke that this is like a pregnancy craving and I decided that that would make a funny CRACK fic premise. Again, I never have written this fic, and the only place it ever existed was in a series of messages in a private discord.

The whole point of crack fics is that it has a stupid premise. In here, it was one of my Narrator's, Fernator, telling Stanley he would make him pregnant. I know that this sounds like the problem, but that was just a premise.

What really happens in the fic is that Fernator tells Stanley about human reproduction but after that, the majority of the fic is a sfw adventure on how viruses, bacteria, and plants reproduce.

With bacteria, Stanley just gets copied, with viruses, Fernator creates a computer virus and it doesn't work so they move on, and with plant, the title filk comes in which is milk with fern spores in it. It ends up just in Stanley's foot. The end goal was for them to just get the cutout Baby as their child and then, the main fic that I talked about would end. After a while, they would realise they didn't really succeed and would try to make something, pouring filk onto Fernator and creating Pickle Rick.

The accusations of this being a non con confuse me as Stanley is happy to be brought onto this journey and there are no actual sexual activities involved in this not written project.

3) Art with minor

One person was very supportive of one of my Narrators, Jester (they drew him a bit), and even started to call him their husband. Since they're my friend, I wanted to make them happy, so I drew something I deemed wholesome and platonic. They also took my drawing this way.

In my eyes at the time, when I made the art, I never thought of this 'ship' as anything other than admiration for a design.

However, that context got lost when they reposted my art on that server with my permission.

I now see how people could think otherwise and I will be far more wary about this topic in the future.

However, while the announcement didn't use the exact word 'groomer', it highly implied it. I feel wronged for that as I received a lot of harassment in my direct messages.

I would like a statement and an apology from the announcers because their words caused a lot of harm.

4) Conclusion

I want to finish this off with being honest about the mistakes I've made of not properly checking sfw spaces - which started all this - and talking about suggestive matters within them. The fanfiction link was certainly a slip up but I will be more careful in the future of what I post.

However - I also want to say that it's not okay to harass people who got involved in this.

I myself have received false accusations already and seen my work be misinterpreted. I only learnt about this through buds giving me a notice and I do ask, if a similar situation would ever occur, which I don't plan on, to message me directly first about my mistake.

In the future, I will remember to double check where I discuss my fic ideas and I'll do everything in my power for this situation not to repeat.

Thank you for reading.

#I don't know how to tag this post #Tspcc #The Stanley Parable creators club

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an-theduckin · 1 month

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PPL IN THE STANLEY PARABLE FANDOM. PPL WHO ENJOY STANARRATOR . YALL NEED 2 READ THIS FIC

It's an enemies 2 lovers fanfic of Stanley and Narrator, and it's a humanised au! Curator is Narrator's older sister!! BUCKET IS STANLEY'S CAT!!!

It's literally PERFECT like the humour is just peak and the romance? I'm not fucking with you rn for the WHOLE fic which is 9970 words (for now) I was giggling n twirling my hair n kicking my feet like a school girl . It's literally the PERFECT tsp fanfic like it's my fav fanfic ever and I've read alot of fics!! I literally have trouble reading long fics cuz I get bored easily BUT I DONT HAVE THAT PROBLEM WITJ THAT ONE. FOR THE WHOLE TIME I WAS ENJOYING IT N IT WAS JUST SO FUCKING..ENTERTAINING? I FORGOR THE ENGLISH WORD 2 PROPERLY DESCRIBE IT RN BUT JUST KNOW THAT I *NEVER* FELT BORED WHILE READING THIS 9970 WORDS 5 CHAPTERS FANFIC (it's not only 5 chaps btw it's still like going on <- Forgor the actual word for that too lol)

I feel like even if you're not in the tsp fandom you should read this cuz. Like it's just such a good fanfic I can't recommend this enough . (Cough cough @machathecat you should read it cough /nf)

So yeah!! It's an amazing fanfic and I really really need yall 2 read it!!

(Tagging sum of my moots who like tsp : @socko-10 @doinadigitaldnazing uh idk anyone else tbh)

Oh and btw the author is on tumblr too! @honeysucklethornsandalligtrhorns

#AUTHOR IS SO NICE TOO BTW THEYRE VERY KOOL #cant believe were mutuals literally freaked out when they followed me loll /pos #an_theduckin #my text posts #fanfic rec #the stanley parable #tsp #stanarrator #ao3 fanfic #tsp fandom

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doctorbunny · 7 months

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Just a quick thing, but I saw it noted the other day how season 2 is going really ham on the cat imagery and it made me think of something

We know milgram is basing some of its symbols off the Bible story the "Parable of the sheep and the goats" but I think the cat imagery is supposed to serve as a modern reinterpretation of this

The parable tells the tale of two animal herds, a group of sheep and a group of goats The sheep get up to generally virtuous things: clothing the homeless, visiting prisoners, feeding the poor ect But the goats get into all sorts of trouble, knocking over people's pots, stealing things, generally being a nuisance Then at the end Jesus (or god, I can't remember) comes in like 'Wow, the sheep were Really Good! that means you guys get to go to Heaven, but you goats have been very naughty, you guys are going to hell. Today's lesson is be a sheep not a goat, goodnight folks.'

Now while real sheep can't donate to charity, this depiction isn't inaccurate to the real animals, sheep being more likely to follow along with where you're trying to herd them. Whilst goats have a reputation for mischief The bible really likes sheep, all the stuff about Jesus being the 'Lamb of God' and the story about the good shepherd ect The only other time I remember goats coming up (although they probably did a bunch) was when Abraham was told to kill his only son Isaac and the devil was like 'noo thats a bad idea maybe you shouldn't listen to god?' but Abraham went through with it and when he went to stab Isaac, god magically replaced the boy with a goat - this is where we get the term 'Scapegoat'

Anyway back to milgram, I think they have updated this concept of 'virtuous, loyal, sheep' and 'sinful goats' Into a metaphor of 'loyal dogs' and 'sinful, willful cats' Ever heard the expression "Like herding cats"? It's difficult to do Like goats, cats can't be forced into doing stuff, they're not aiming to please a master like a dog is, they'll knock stuff off the table, decimate local ecosystems and whilst I don't think Japan has a concept of a bad luck cat, in parts of Europe/North America, black cats are certainly seen as unlucky

#milgram #ミルグラム #tw religion

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gplusbfics · 8 months

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youtube

Anson Mount Talks About the Strike

Last weekend at Dragon Con I attened a couple of great panels with cast members of Discovery and Strange New Worlds. Due to the strike, discussion of the actual shows was off the table and so moderators and audience members had to limit their questions to other things. It worked nicely, IMO. Anyway, the one exception to the not-talking-about-the-thing was in a panel Saturday moderated by Garrett Wang (Harry Kim, Voyager) featuring Christina Chong, Celia Rose Gooding, Anson Mount, Ethan Peck.

Wang kicked things off by talking about the strike for a minute and then handed things over to Anson Mount. I don't know if he knew in advance, but Mount proceeded to deliver parable about the SAG strike that was just epic. I had to wait a few days to locate video but once I did, I transcribed it to share. I've cued the clip so it starts right as Mount begins to speak, but I'm including Garrett Wang's intro in the transcript.

Garret Wang: I'm going to start right now with a discussion on the strike. Let's talk about the strike. I think we should. So a lot of people have misconceptions about the strike. Just to give us some facts, just to lay it out there: Onl7 87% of SAG's membership make enough per year to have health insurance. That threshold is what-- is it $26,000? Something around there, something very low. And that's not per month, that's per year. So not every actor is Tom Cruise. This strike is really not about greedy actors, this is about being treated fairly, about being treated with respect, which is not happening right now."

Anson Mount: Imagine you're sitting in a bar in Los Angeles and outside this big, stretch limo pulls up. The limo is hauling behind it a mega-yacht and the mega-yacht has got one of those helicopter pads on it, with a gold-plated helicopter on it. And from the back of the limo steps a guy with a $7,000 Italian suit, he's got a 24-carat gold tie pin, slicked-back hair, little pencil-thin mustache. He's got an assistant, whose got an assistant, whose got an assistant.

And he walks in the bar and he sees you and he sidles up next to the bar and he says, "Have I got a deal for YOU!" And you say, "Okaaay, what's the deal?" And he says, "Well! I'm starting a business in this brand new field called entertainment-- and I think you'd make the perfect business partner." And you say, "Entertainment, huh? Is that a very lucrative business?" "Oh, no no no no no, we're not making ANY money."

And you say, "Well, OK, what's in it for me, then?" And he says "Well! I will pay you to come in to work for me for one half a day for minimum wage and in exchange you will grant to me permission to use the video of you performing your expertise, as well as your expertise, for the rest of time, in perpetuity, whenever I want, without paying you any more money or asking permission."

And you say, "I don't know… Have you thought about to include me in this? Like maybe a little small percentage of profit, just a little like 2 percent." And he says, "You're insane! We're standing in the breadlines as it is!" And you say "Wait, wait, wait. If you say you're not making any money, 2 percent of nothing is nothing. You wouldn't have to pay me anything." And he says "That's a wonderful idea! I'll pay you 2 percent always-- of nothing." And you say, "That's not what I'm saying. So: let me put it this way. You must have an independent adjudicator or somebody who counts your numbers and lets everybody, all your shareholders, all your workers, know how the business is doing." "Oh, no no no, our numbers are all proprietary information." And you say, "Well, how do I know how the business is doing?" "Well, you'll just have to trusts me, of course."

And you say, "You know what? I just… under these given circumstances I'm not sure I want to work with you." And he says, "How DARE you?! I am going to walk straight out of this bar and when I come back -- and it won't be for a very long time -- but when I do, you'd better be here here waiting and you had better be grateful for my very generous offer of 2 percent of nothing!" And he whips his cape around and he walks out of the bar, followed by his assistant and his assistant and his assistant, and they all pile into the back of the limousine, and the driver tells his assistant driver, "Peel out!" With the mega-yacht, with the helicopter.

I think at that point, any reasonable person would turn to the bartender and say, "I think that guy's out of his fucking mind!" Right? Is it just me?

Garrett Wang: Anson, I gotta say, I've been on many panels and we've had many conversations about the strike, but no one has done a staged reading!"

Meanwhile, after dwelling a bit more on the strike, the conversation moves on to (necessarily) non-Star Trek topics and is highly enjoyable.

P.S. Yes, I still exist. No longer active on Tumblr but not because I"m boycotting or anything. We just drifted apart. I do still read Garashir fic but mainly just the same 20 favorites I saved to Instapaper, over and over :)

#anson mount #dragon con 2023 #dragon con #sag strike #strange new worlds #labor rights #labor unions #garrett wang #Youtube

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timetravellingkitty · 3 months

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you don’t talk about your fav books here? on the book nerd webbed site? Okay, top 5 books of all times, let’s go. Be generous and copious with the reviews

HELP WHAT'S WITH THE CALLOUT 😭😭 you're not even that wrong tho like I had this sideblog (that's inactive now rip) that was like "ooh books ooh dark academia look at meeee" but uh yeah. I haven't been reading much these days (don't ask I will cry) but I sometimes do talk about some or the other book I've read, I'm just a loser for not doing it enough but anyways. Favourite books

We Are Okay by Nina LaCour: like I mentioned, sad, raw, etc etc I finished reading this an hour before the new year (2023) so I just spent the rest of it just thinking about it?? I think it came to me at the perfect time cause this was 2 months after my grandmother died even tho I had a complicated relationship with her it really did help a lot

The Hunger Games: yes. This one. When I first read it I identified with Katniss so much cause she was what I saw myself as (no not smart and resourceful I'm still none of that but aloof, unlikable, brash, blunt and would do quite literally anything for their younger sibling). Honestly I think it helped shaped the reader I am today, it really got pre-teen me thinking more so yeah. I quite literally owe this series my life I have nothing but love for it

The Earthsea Cycle: THIS ONE IS FANTASTIC. So simple, so magical, so wonderful to read. Ged is a great protagonist, literally THE OG wizarding school series. Poetic resolution if you ask me

A Thousand Splendid Suns: idk maybe reading this at the tender age of 12 did something to me but who am I to complain this one's literally heartwrenching it's so engrossing IT'S ABOUT HOPE IN THE MIDST OF DESPAIR, IT'S ABOUT RESILIENCE AFSJKLS. Mariam and Laila's relationship is one for the ages literal narrative foils idc idc I think about them all the time

Rebecca: I have no explanation for this one. It just makes me go feral okay the tension, the layers, the ominous and gothic atmosphere I'm a little in love the writing is nothing short of captivating

Honorable mentions go to the Riordanverse (This one was also pretty formational), Blackout (yes I rated this 4 stars. No I do not care this one called me single in 6 languages don't ask it's just. Very nice no rhyme or reason here chief), Pachinko, Parable of the Sower, The Kite Runner and Last Night at the Telegraph Club

#asks #kat!

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generallemarc · 6 days

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The Amazing Digital Circus analysis that none of you wanted, part 2

Jax is the best character so far. I was originally only here for Caine, since I watched Alex Rochon all the way back when he was the Autarch of Flame in the good ol' days of youtube Top 10 channels, but every line Jax has makes me grin.

You go Kinger. Never stop being you.

I feel like that croc doing poses is a reference to something, but if it is I don't get it

Ok, why tf did they have Jax's head stay in a static position while everything else was jostling around? Is he like a chicken?

Okay, the glitches are gonna be a thing. Neat.

This is the last comparison I ever expected to be making, but the vibe I'm getting from the "computerized creation seeing its own world for what it is" thing they seem to be doing with the croc reminds me of Tad Williams's Otherland. You probably know it as the MMO with zero players that Josh Strife Hayes played through, but it's a damn good read and surprisingly relevant to ADC given the potential similarity with emerging digital consciousnesses.

"I can't even remember her face. Did she ever have a face?" And now we're going straight into the one truly terrifying ending to the Stanley Parable. I actually like the fast pace here-there's obviously gonna be other adventures, and this is laying the groundwork for how the Amazing Digital World(name not final) works, but how it really works and not some facade that'd get shattered halfway through the season.

Damn, I care way more about this literal nameless npc than I expected to. The first thing he does when he realizes the scale of what's going on is demand the truth of who he is. With how horrifying the truth has been so far, that takes guts.

I now see where they're going with Jax. He treats everything like a game likely as a means of coping and staying mentally stable enough to avoid abstraction, so he's going to have an active interest in not believing Pomni when she tries to tell everyone that these are sentient beings and not just npcs. He'll need her to be wrong to avoid a massive amount of retroactive guilt, so that's what he'll believe.

Ok, but why teapots? Is that an Alice reference?

Yay, they killed the monster! They accomplished something actually beneficial instead of the pointless murder they were sent for!

...I should really wait to see whether characters are dead before thinking they are.

And there go all the "Caine is trying to help them escape" theories. He knows they're sentient-he just doesn't care. There is no way he's missed it with that kind of reaction.

Yeah, so that was...fuckin' dark. And with a disturbingly realistic reaction from Pomni too. Tl:dr-Caine is evil. Do not trust Caine. And also Zooble was there I think.

#the amazing digital circus #amazing digital circus #tadc

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delafiseaseses · 9 months

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Half Life 1 is an interestin' game (and the themes go to the entire series, so, uh, spoilers for all of it).

It's a game where there's a certain inevitability to things. Gordon will have to push that crystal into the anti-mass spectrometer. The second he got on the Black Mesa Transit System it became inevitable. Hence why the first time we see G-Man is on that journey.

But, even if it wasn't Gordon, it'd've been someone else. Breen was pushing for it, G-Man was involved in it and his "Employers" were counting on it and who knows what other forces were involved too.

Half Life 1, and Half Life overall, is a linear game series. Most linear games are, when you think about it, inevitable stories. Tram rides. Half Life subtly alludes to this fact. Even the final "choice", also done on a tram, isn't really a choice at all "Do as I say or die".

In Half Life 2 G-Man just outright says it, "Rather than offer you the illusion of free choice, I will take the liberty of choosing for you...", even that illusion was something he was no longer bothered with.

Even with G-Man's is partially impeded by the Vortigaunts, he finds the perfect moment to get to Freeman and to taunt Eli. Unforeseen consequences.

The Vortigaunts blocked G-Man from Freeman, so he went into the past and took Alyx. "A previous hire has been unable — or unwilling — to perform the tasks laid before him. We have struggled to find a suitable replacement. Until now." even linear time cannot stop G-Man from getting his way. Alyx may've been around in 2 and the episodes, but she was already doomed to be the next 'hire'.

The capture was also an 'illusion of choice'. He offered Alyx a "choice", asked her a question "What would you want nudged, Ms Vance?", but he already knew what he would do "What if I could offer you something you don't know you want?".

Though, there's another part right before that line that I cut out "Too large [a nudge], given the interests of my employers.", G-Man is the most powerful singular thing we ever get to see. He's still working under something else.

And, who knows, maybe they're working under something else too.

Gordon got on that tram before he was even playable. G-Man got on his tram offscreen. Whatever is beyond him... must've gotten on a tram too.

An isotope doesn't choose its half-life. The rules of reality dictate it. A half-life character doesn't choose its existence, either. It is dictated for them.

Hmm, a little off-topic conclusion aside: it's really no bloody wonder The Stanley Parable started as a Half-Life 2 mod, is it?

#half life #half life 1 #gordon freeman #g man #g-man #half life 2 #wait you can also spell 'half life' with a hyphen #I should do that too #half-life #half-life 1 #half-life 2 #half life alyx #half-life alyx #eli vance #alyx vance

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buzzkillers · 9 months

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Fables and Parables 2/5

Pairing: Namor x Black!Reader

Chapter Summary: you begin to feel the affects of the curse.

Warning: NON-CON, religious themes, non-consensual voyeurism, magical sex pollen, dream-walking, mentions of abortion, attempted forced pregnancy.

PART ONE

It rained the next day.

It's so bad that you're forced to braid your hair. The gel wasn't working and the frays of your edges curled underneath the humidity.

Lucky you, but that's not where your bad day ended, of course not.

The storm had forced you all inside, the rain battering against the very thin walls of the hostel. All plans for exploration were delayed. Quickly, your discomfort turned into irritation and then your period started. Of course it did. Thankfully, there was no blood yet but it was the beginning of it. You could feel it in the twist of your gut, the odd ache in your pelvis. It's so subtle that it could’ve passed a stomach ache

But you've never felt your stomach twist like this before. Like there was a needle in your guts that pulled and twisted.

So yeah, you were on your period and the weather was shit and you were starving. But you didn’t mind, you really didn't. Until then it rained the next day and the day after that and you never bled.

“It’s global warming,” your roommate whispered, her face still shoved into her book. 'Art and Society of Mayan culture ' it read, the bind of it worn and dirty.

You relaxed in your own bed. Your leg splayed off the edge.“-just think about it,”

“I'm thinking about it,” You lied. Because you’ve actually been reading the same ‘Wikipedia’ page for the last five minutes and you were afraid that if you moved a muscle, something just might burst.

The other didn’t know this though. How could she? So she rolled her eyes, lips pinched. “Im serious,”

“I mean it's May—May," she turned a page, "We're supposed to be touring temples but instead we're-" she looked over at you and then winced. "-I actually don't know what you're doing,"

"Waiting for this bootleg ibuprofen to kick in," you muttered, your phone now fallen asleep. You took a strangled breath.

"I don't think it's working,"

“Are you sure you don't want tea?” she asked cause she was nice and didn’t know that every word she spoke made you want to bite bricks. You shoved your head into the pillow and tried to suffocate yourself. “Nah, rather vomit,” Last night, you only had one cup and instantly spat it out. You’d rather stick to sink water.

“I think I'm just gonna die here,” you groaned, ‘cause it would just be your luck really. Then you curled into a ball, your arms wrapped around your knees. The position only made it worse. Tears pricked in the corner of your eyes.

The woman sucked her teeth, “Right, die in a run down hostel, in the middle of nowhere, that's not inconsiderate,”

“Kindly fuck off,”

“To get tea? Yeah I'm suddenly in the mood,” you shot the woman a glare, and suddenly it's her that's ignoring you. The look on her face smug as she jumped into some trousers and walked out the door.

You took the moment to look out the window. It faced the front streets, above all the pop shops and grocery bags. Below you, people ran to get away from the onslaught. No one wanted to drive today, clearly. People bustled in the streets, business men went home and school children ran with their bags over their heads. Anything to get out of the rain.

Except one, a lone figure at the edge of the sidewalk, who stood straight, unaffected. He did not wear an umbrella or a raincoat for that matter. Instead, his shelter was the leaves of the sidewalk trees. It flicked and fettered over him, it also did a shit poor job of actually keeping him dry. He looked at your Hostel. Unmoving. In your delusion, he was also blue, he looked very very blue.

Your face pinched and then the needle in your stomach twisted and your intestines curled and you forgot all about it. At least some people didn’t mind the rain.

—-

It never stopped raining. Not truly. It might've drizzled, or splashed or allowed a pause within the bulging of clouds and the clap of thunder but it never actually stopped. Not for more than a few minutes anyway.

Time only existed within the ratatat typing of rain. Between the moment where it splashed and melded into the streets.

You didn't know what was more irritating, the cramps or that sound. After a few moments, your roommate picked the sound and that was all you needed to hear before you popped another ibuprofen and migrated to the play rooms of the hostel.

Play room was stretching it though. It was simply a small living room with an ancient boxed tv and folding chairs. It's crowded when the two of you get down there. An odd mix of your classmates and other residents and they’re all watching the news on the weather.

‘Unexpected’ they said, ‘unlikely to stop anytime soon,' which in other words meant your earlier sentiment was right.

You were never leaving this hostel and you were all feeling it. You've never felt so bored, so hungry. And the daily work assignments and sandwiches in the fridge weren't cutting it. You guys were going to have to leave the hostel for food eventually. Maybe that's why you were feeling the way?

It was a good hypothesis as the pangs in your belly tightened. You've never felt a hunger like this before. Strong and potent.

So, a few hours later you're outside now. A few blocks away from the hostel and filled with enough ibuprofen that it might not be the storms that’ll kill you. There's only one grocery store on your street. It's an artificial beacon of fluorescent lights, the door rung when you opened it.

With wobbly knees, you walked inside and the weather followed. A man with a mop looked up and glared at you. You ducked into one of the aisles.

You needed something sweet, something heavy. Bread? No. Ice cream? You ran through each aisle. And then you walked and then your just sort of sludged your way around. Each movement made the world curl into itself, your floor tilted beneath your feet.

By the time you actually got to the front again nothing looked appealing. Tortilla bread suddenly looked too heavy and chorizo looked too much. You looked at your basket, lips downturned.

Maybe you should just get a drink instead. But even that made you want to curl into yourself. Soda was too much. A lemonade too sweet. What about water? At that your stomach twisted and turned, cold than hot. The cashier looked at you plainly.

“¿Eso es todo, señora?" you blinked.

He was an older man, with sunken eyes and gray hair that was long but tied into a tight ponytail. He gave off a scent of artificial pine tree, his fingers battered with callouses. He had a gold tooth and his shirt, although clean, was translucent due to the rain that battered through the window every time a customer came in.

You licked your lips, warmth in your belly overflowed. You wondered if he’d let you get on your knees. If all it would take was a look and sweet words before you led yourself behind the counter-

“señora?” the man's voice boomed you out of your thoughts, you flinched back. “Sorry, I-” you shook your head, “¿Tienes uh agua?”

His eye twitched. “pasillo 10,”

Your mouth went dry. You looked to the back aisle, at the long tiled floors that seemed to drag on forever. On a back shelf the water sat pretty. You licked your lips again. Something in you bloomed. It was exactly what you needed. Water.

With a fevered glance back, you battered your fingers against the counter. One gallon would be just as much as the food. It looked more appetizing too, like it would belly over the thirst that ran in your tummy.

Like a great way to wash the taste of the man off your tongue.

You shook your head, “Actually-”

“-¿Te importaría conseguirlo para mí?” the man just looked at you, their mouth downturned. He looked ready to stay no.

The aisle wasn’t that far away. And anyone with working legs would be able to make it to the back. But something in your face made the man's face relaxed, the corner of his lips pinched. “fine,” then with a glance, “Pero no vomites en mi suelo,”

Unlikely. In fact vomiting was a very real possibility. You felt it in your throat, in the overtone and queasiness that slobbed in your tummy.

You looked at him as he left. Watched the skin on his back, the sweat that twinkled down his spine. Your stomach flipped and turned. Suddenly, your hands were clammy and your lips dry. What kind of hunger was this?

What kind, made you want this? Claws in your back, and kisses on your chest. You wanted it bad, like a bird wanted murder and a plant water, it was a need, a cancer that furloughed in your deepest cavities and bloomed. Ricocheting like a bullet before you fell to your knees and vomited it all out.

—

You don't go out much after that.

#namor x reader #namor x fem!reader #namor x black reader #namor x y/n #namor x you #namor smut #namor x black!reader #namor x f!reader #black panther smut #namor fics #black panther fic #namor lemon #tw: noncon #tw: dark content

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wrenhavenriver · 1 year

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Okay I’m not done talking about this actually. Re: the Dishonored series’ attempts to reconcile its critical views of imperialism with keeping the characters who sit at the very top of the Empire likable, I think DH1 is considerably less obvious/glaring about this internal conflict than DH2 because: 1) it’s, duh, the first in the series, and suspension of disbelief comes a lot more naturally the first time you’re told “things will be better now, for real” than the second; and 2) Jessamine’s rule sees so little screentime it’s much easier to portray the miseries of the game as entirely attributable to Burrows’ rule (and the actions of other assorted Bad People™) without directly confronting the imperial system that put them all in a position to seize and promptly abuse power in the first place. Under a read more because I can't shut up, sorry.

Like, say you play DH1 for the first time on low chaos: you get the happy ending epilogue speech, and even if it seems to smooth everything over a little too optimistically for a game that otherwise shows a collapsing society and the corruption that brought it to that state in grim, unflinching detail, well, that’s mostly okay—you maintained low chaos, after all, in essence proving the Outsider’s “Perhaps that’s just the nature of man” theory wrong, and the good effects just rippled outward to a much a larger scale, which was pretty much the point of the chaos system in the first place. If it all sounds a little bit like the happy ending to a parable not particularly grounded in the realities of systems of power that the rest of the game was critiquing, maybe that’s just what happens when an entity as long-lived and far-sighted as the Outsider summarizes a period that is little more than a miniscule blip in time to him. Stand far enough back from something and all the rough edges blur out to nothing.

(Plus it’s a video game after all, so maybe you can suspend your disbelief/any personal political beliefs about real world empires you may have brought with you. Maybe it's nice to imagine that things can change meaningfully for the better for Dunwall and the other Isles simply by plopping a Kaldwin back onto the throne.)

The existence of DH2 makes it clear, though, that the ending monologue to DH1 really is more fairytale than reality (or, you know, what happens when a game gets greenlit for a sequel the devs of three years ago didn't know they'd get). A Kaldwin takes the throne—under the watchful eye and protection of her witchcraft-using Serkonan father, at that, a man with viscerally personal history with the Abbey, the City Watch, and the deeply xenophobic nobility—and despite all those very real family connections and personal reasons to want to reform things for the better, we step into Emily’s rule to see the people of Serkonos being trampled on and worked to death in the silver mines, the Abbey still freely hunting down and torturing or otherwise “disappearing” people suspected of witchcraft, and the Guard casually beating and murdering citizens—in one notable case, by throwing one directly into the same brutal Wall of Light technology mobilized to great effect by Burrows’ corrupt regime and that is still in wide use around Emily’s Empire fifteen years later.

Some of this chaos was instigated by Delilah and her inner circle (especially the Duke) leading up to the coup, but much of it is preexisting corruption that can’t be blamed on her—she and the coven certainly had no reason to prop up the Abbey, for one, and she didn’t have to create the aristocratic bitterness motivating turncoats like Ramsey, only give them an outlet for what was already simmering. Meagan, Sokolov, and Lucia Pastor all make it abundantly clear that this was not a momentary slip-up—Dunwall Tower had been looking the other way while violence and unrest grew for some time, because the human cost of keeping silver flowing was out of sight and out of mind, a function basically built into the system of Imperial rule. Not a bug, but a feature. A tendency toward retaining corrupt institutions, an erosion of empathy, because that’s what keeps the wheels turning and wealth being funneled upward.

So when low chaos Emily professes in mission nine that she’s learned her lesson and that from now on she’ll Pay Attention, really! to the four nation Empire she’s the head of, and the happy epilogue plays and we get another Outsider monologue about the golden age ahead, it just seems…vaguely absurd? Like, we already saw this! Burrows, Campbell, and the Bastard Trio™ of the loyalists were deposed or otherwise gotten rid of, making room for Good People™ with Good Intentions™ to take their place in charge and fix things—you’ve got Emily on the throne with Corvo to guide her; Yul Khulan, a “kind” man and eventual close personal ally of Emily’s, becomes High Overseer; Curnow, widely reputed as a Reasonable Authority Figure and rare man of principle in the Guard, has survived (and presumably still has some years of service as a Captain before the retirement mentioned in The Corroded Man).

And then we fast forward fifteen years and all these groups...still suck? The Empress hates her job and is eating off plates made of silver mined by Karnacan laborers dying hideously of terrible respiratory ailments, the Overseers we see in Karnaca are ransacking homes and torturing Outsider worshippers (a group including such dangerous people as *checks notes* newspaper artists), half the City Guard is on the payroll of the shitty aristocrats supporting Delilah’s coup, and the Grand Guard is passing the time by throwing people into Walls of Light. Emily’s reign began with a veritable A-team of Certified Good People and fifteen years later it's barely made a dent, because the system of imperial rule is built from the ground up to shelter corruption and complacency, to resist change, no matter who’s in charge and whether that person is “paying attention” or not. It’s beyond the power of one sufficiently motivated Empress and a team of well-intentioned people in positions of authority below her.

It’s tempting to say “no, it really was just an issue of Emily not taking her duties seriously, look at Jessamine’s rule, or Euhorn’s before her!” but the thing is Obvious Disasters like Violent Coups Aside we really don’t have much evidence that their rules were all that much better, or at the very least any less prone to corruption? DH1 again has the advantage over DH2 here, mostly by way of omission. We don’t get to actually see what life in the Empire is like under Jessamine, just that tiny sliver of time in the Prologue returning as Corvo to Dunwall Tower, where despite the player being told there’s a deadly plague about to bring the city to a “breaking point,” the scenery is beautiful and calm and the staff are polite and affable. It makes for very compelling contrast when the game fast forwards six months to the dank misery of Coldridge Prison, and then later the grim state of the streets filling up with corpses and weepers.

Mission six completes the comparison with a return to Dunwall Tower, where the courtyard is now brimming with hostile guards and surveillance towers and tallboys, and one lone maid who openly laments Jessamine’s passing. Life under the authoritarian despot who purposely instigated a plague for the purpose of wiping out the lower classes is, obviously, much worse than life under the benevolent Empress who is introduced to us passionately advocating for saving the lives of all of her citizens. But, in the same way Emily and her inner circle of Well-Intentioned People weren’t enough to dislodge the entrenched corruption and brutality—or prevent a new wave of it—Jessamine’s kindness can’t paint over the miseries of the imperial system she presides over. We the players see Coldridge Prison for the first time in the six-months-later flashback of Burrows’ rule, but it existed during Jessamine’s time—guards state explicitly in the DLC that she and Corvo used to come inspect it, in fact. Jessamine wholly loves Corvo, a native of Serkonos, but anti-Serkonan prejudice runs rampant in her court and city. Corvo and Emily wholly love Jessamine too, but the people of Dunwall are somewhat divided on the matter (“Long live the Empress!” “She was a WENCH!” / “Not everyone did, but I really liked the Empress…”). Burrows deceived Jessamine and took advantage of her trusting nature, but he only had the resources to do so in the first place because of the system that promoted him to Royal Spymaster, a position of incredible power and very little accountability.

Euhorn we know the least about, but we are told he enjoyed a “prosperous age”—a sentiment that falls somewhat flat when we learn that he had an affair with a chamber maid (the power differential of which is highly questionable at best), strung along the resulting illegitimate daughter with promises of elevating her to a princess that he never intended to keep, then took his chance when said daughter was blamed for breaking a vase to throw her and her mother out onto the streets, where the mother is brutalized by a prison guard and eventually dies in agony in debtor’s prison, leaving the daughter to fend for herself alone in the world. All of which shows us that the Empire is, in this age of “prosperity,” still a place of extreme power imbalances where the Emperor takes advantage of women in his employ, debtor’s prisons exist, guards can cause fatal injuries to civilians on a whim and face no consequences, and children are thrown with disdain onto the streets to die. Which, on many levels, is not all that different from the ages of other rulers who follow.

tl;dr these games show us over and over again that the Empire is built on a fundamentally broken system that perpetuates corruption and then try to append “but it’s okay so long as the people in charge are good people who are paying attention to their jobs” to the end of them for the sake of keeping those characters likable, and while the first game can get away with this by virtue of being the first game and using Jessamine’s rule primarily as a way to showcase how bad Burrows’ rule sucks by comparison, this falls flat when the very existence of the second game provides ample evidence that the Good Intentions of Generally Good People are not enough to counteract the entrenched cruelties of the institutions that keep imperialism afloat. Okay I'm going to go get another hobby now bye.

#kathryn plays video games

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