#this is monumental i had to do something | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thqtoneweirdo · 2 years

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ive been meaning to do this for a while

Octane: Yo, crafting over here.

Lifeline: What level is it?

Octane: ¿Qué?

Wattson: Oui, I too would like to know the level of the crafting.

Octane: ...

Octane: Wait a second, I know-

Lifeline: Ţ̶̱̤͓̼̦͎̫̝͔̰́̕E̷̢̨̨̮͖͇͚͎͕̍͋͌̀̚̕͘͡ͅͅL͉͉̥͇͍ͥ̃ͮͮ͆̉̊̚͢͝͡͞L͚̫̠͚͉̱̖̇̄ͧ͑͌ͩͣͥ ̘̦̹͇̪̍҉U͍͕̣̩͔̙̯͖̱̦̔͌̋̉ͪS̷̠͎͓͈͎̭̜̹̉͘͢͟͡͡͞ ̸̡̻̳͍̣͇͚͉̬͎̦̈̽͗͘҉̨̨́́T̸̮̯̮̞̩̪̪̙̀ͦͤͤ́̊̑Ḧ̥̣̊ͦͦ̃ͫ̌ͤ͛��̶̢͍̕͟͠͏̧E̡̟͉͋ͤ̉̅̅̊͒ͧ͑͘ͅ҉҉̵̧̛̕̕ ̟̞̺̟͖̺̥̫ͦ͒͏͘͠L̴̵̛̰̭̬̹͊͂͝Ȩ̸̡̲̦͔̯̗̼̩̹̖̊̌́̉ͪͨ̕͜͢͝͏V̧̼͓̳̝̖̔́͞ͅE̗̣̖͂ͥ͊͆͐͡͡҉̵̧̡̨̛͝L̴͗̎͌͂͗̃̑̓ ͇̥̪͕͍͇̖̭̫̦͛͂̓ͯ͗͆̐ͫͪS̸̮̆̆̒ͧ̔̾̅ͤ͛́͏̵̡̨͢͟͠Ị̴̷̷̵ͫͧ̈ͤ͘͏Ļ̷̧̺̘́͢͟͏̴̨V͖̟̹̮̾ͤͥ̾҉͞Ä̴̴̶͈͇͇̤̟̲̤̲̠́͢͝.̶̨̩͚̝̣̞̙̞̄͟͞ͅͅ ͙̺̻̞̣̮̙͙̪̒ͫ͆͌ͨ́̕̕ͅ͏̶̧

Wattson: W͔̪̩̮̥̬̞̻͔ͯ̂͋҉̷̡̀͟͜͝͡É̵̥̩͓̥̠҉̷ ̵̸͖̤̭̹̝̫̖̕͘͜͝ͅ͏̴͝M͘͟͝҉̸̕U̎̑̓̇́̕S̨̧̮̠̻̱̘̄ͩ̅ͨͮ͌̊͒ͬ҉T͓ͤͣ̎̈́ͪ̃҉̛҉͝͏̧̀ ̘͇̥̪̞̌͏̷̵̢̧̡͘͝͞Ķ͌͜͏́͘͘͟͢͞Ņ̴̛̰ͯ̑̐̆ͪͥ͆ͦO͉̙͍̞͗̀͠ͅW̫̼̱̒̽ͨ͏͝ ̷̡̼̜̪̖͂͌ͥ̋ͩ̍̀̕̕̕͘͜T̷͇͕͍̘̩͈̰̂͌̿̓̌Ȟ̴̡̡̢̤͙̠̖͓̗͖̺̐ͬ͜͏Ḙ̸̴̸̡̡͓͉͔͔͙ͯͫ͒͒̽̐ͨ́͘͡ ̢̢͔̦͚̮̂̽̍̃̕͜͝͡L̪͚͚̯̹̖͖̬͌ͧͯ̿̊̏͌̔̅͜͟͏̶́͝Ẽ̔̀ͣ̀ͣV̵̧̡̻̋̍̏ͯ̚É̢̨̡̟̳͟͜L̶̢̨̛̲͉͇͚͖͍ͪ̌̎̉̓ͧ̊̈́́̕͜͡͡ ̸̞͕͎̥̹̋͆ͦͮ̇̃́͝ͅO̵͓͈͙̖̮̮͋́̾̆̂̚͞C̫̗͙̘̲̭̺̿̑̀͝͡͏̵̶̀Ť̡̨͉͎̜̙͔̬̫̃̾̔ͮ̍̕Ą̨̣̹̺̒̓ͮ̊ͤ͆̆ͭͭ͘͏͜͏̷́V̩̬̮̗̭̗͐̐̑̾̄ͣͧ͆͏͘̕͘̕͜͟͡I̦̙̗̤O̗̬̲̪͔ͮ͌ͤ̔̄̌͡.̓̈́ ̴̷̵̨̲͚̼̻̘͎͉̒̕͞͏

#and then they steal the lvl 4 backpack he crafted #THE SEQUEL #AJAY GETS HER REVENGE #been thinking about this since season 9 #it was only a matter of time until i brought my plan into fruition #that octane voice line sounds like hes pinging something #i had to do it #i couldnt give up such a monumental chance #also HOW #does bangalore still not realize #her only family isnt on gridiron!!!!#bangalore i love you but istg #okay im done now #see you guys in the next video #where my stuffed nessie holds my hostage #until someone sends a $19 apex card #apex legends #incorrect apex legends quotes #incorrect apex quotes #apex incorrect quotes #apex legends incorrect quotes #apex octane #apex wattson #apex lifeline #octane apex legends #wattson apex legends #lifeline apex legends #i meant me hostage not my hostage 🤦‍♀️#bro lvl 3 backpack not lvl 4 #what kind of super replicator-

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non-un-topo · 1 year

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There are so many lectures and panels I want to attend in the next few weeks, but god am I just completely sapped of energy. I’m falling asleep on my feet.

#got probably dozens of fluid ounces of caffeine in my body and still...#thinking about napping before class lol. at least i'm not feeling too stressed yet. but i think that's because i'm sort of dazed.#my oldest friend had a medical emergency and i've been taking care of her. had to come home eventually though #and i didn't want to leave her... but i'll see her again soon #this year has just been relentless on everyone i know so far. seems like every single week something monumental happens.#i'm genuinely surprised i'm not super stressed. just tired. wanting to cook again for my friend though. i like doing that.#maybe i'll bake her some kind of casserole. something she can heat up again or just eat cold.

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ulforcev-dramon · 2 years

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Now we just have to wait for the Primal video game to fix this bullshit like we did with Samurai Jack.

i actually had no idea they retconned the samjack ending with the game, so I just watched it and have pretty mixed feelings about it

don’t get me wrong, it’s nice the samjack end was fixed regarding Ashi! absolutely better than what we got at the end of s5

buuuuut wrt Primal specifically, I think I’d rather he just leave it alone, personally. he had the chance for a satisfying ending and he blew it. i don’t think a retcon can undo the special form of bizarre disappointment S2 Ep10 gave, there’s no element of surprise or shock left even for the story elements that could have been done well. i’ll be going into it with bitterness, basically, so a retcon will only have everything going against it from the getgo.

#idk might be an unpopular response but the game looks. Bad. so having the better end walled off behind it just feels like #somehow even worse/more bitter on some level #u know?#like primal’s ending was bungled bad enough—unless the game looks and plays monumentally better than samjack’s then i think i’d rather #he just Not #neologisms #(THAT SAID if the game looked felt and played well? hell yea! but if we are talking samjack game quality for a fixed ending I’m Out)#(i do feel like he’d have to also completely change the ending… make it something New (if even possible by now) in order to surprise again)#primal #primal spoilers #who knows tho maybe in 6 months or a year i’ll feel different #what i really wish had happened was ep 5 was nixed and all the current eps were brought forward by 1 #break the final ep into 2 parts: first part spear’s flashback and his integration into Mira’s home #part 2 great big episode-long fight that’s more climactic than the Mad Sauropod ep #i won’t say one way or another what spear’s fate should or shouldn’t be because i feel that alone wasn’t the damning part of ep10 #just… (gestures vaguely to the whole episode) everything else #actually what i had totally expected was at least 3 seasons ill be totally real with you #the fact i didnt expect a series finale also threw me off and compounded all the bizarre pacing issues and story choices #im just baffled that every single other fight in the series felt higher-stakes and more cinematic than the Series’ Final Fight.

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suguann · 1 month

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He has a feeling that the new girl running the front desk at the gym is going to be a problem—a distraction disguised in a gym uniform polo and khaki pants.

It starts with you smiling too brightly as he walks in one morning, all teeth and that little twinkle in your eye that feels like trouble when you scan his membership card.

“Good morning, Mr. Riley.”

“It’s just Simon,” he tells you as he takes his card off the counter.

The following day, it’s the same, except Johnny is there to make it worse.

He nudges Simon with his elbow. “She’s kinda pretty, huh?”

“Say it any louder, and she’ll hear you, mate,” he grumbles.

Simon’s not blind; of course, he knows you’re pretty, but he doesn’t have time to commit to anything outside of work—even if you smile at him like you’re happy to see him and how he’ll think about it later: on missions, at his desk, during morning runs. His head is nothing short of woven webs with thoughts of you stuck in the middle.

Honestly, it’s that you—

(You try to make small talk with him every morning, and Simon is starting to think it’s just for him because on the days he doesn’t come alone, you merely scan his card and go back to reading the open paperback book on the desk.)

It’s weird because it’s almost like you—

(He bumps into you at the supermarket and makes a dumb joke about carrots that makes you laugh. It makes him a little tongue-tied and awkward afterward because he realizes he hasn’t talked to a woman outside of only wanting a quick fuck in a really long time, but more importantly, he wants to hear it again.

Instead, he tosses potatoes in his cart and walks away.)

He tells himself it means nothing, or not how Simon wants it to.

You’re just…he’s not even sure; acquaintances? Maybe more than that, but less than friends. Somewhere in that odd in-between phase where he only knows bits and pieces but not the whole picture.

Sometimes, he wishes—

(Simon doesn’t know what he’s doing the first time he invites you to meet the guys from work on a night out. He’s dated around a few times and had his fair share of hook-ups, but this isn’t like that. His palms are sweaty, more than usual, and no amount of wiping them on the thighs of his jeans keeps them dry.

Then you walk into the bar in a dress that’s probably too light for early spring in London—even though he stares appreciatively at the long expanse of your legs as you walk up to the table—and he wishes he wasn’t introducing you as his friend.)

But you—

(A new development happens after you slip him your phone number on one of the gym’s business cards—it’s weird that we don’t have each other’s numbers, so message me sometime or whatever—and he messages you ‘hey’ right before he leaves for a mission a few days later.

It slowly shifts and changes over time.

You start sending him texts in the morning. Never an actual good morning text, but of the dogs you take on walks, the sunrise, the new flower box in your window. Somehow, it’s better.)

You really are—

(His house feels too hot, and he’s distracted from the movie by how close you are, how your leg drapes over his under the blanket, fingers fisting into his sweater at his stomach that clenches. An ache that grows, throbbing, spreading from his abdomen to his groin.

It feels monumental—something more than the gentle touch to the elbow to squeeze by each other in his entryway earlier or giving you his jacket that night at the bar—a tilt of the axis that makes the messy pieces fall neatly into place.

He must be staring because you glance up at him, smiling, and the sound from the TV turns into white noise in the background.

“Can I…would you—fucking hell,” Simon runs a hand through his hair. “Can I kiss you?”

When your lips press against his, and his hands are pulling you onto his lap, where you settle hotly against his dick tenting in his jeans, he wonders why neither of you has done this before. Just kissing—him licking the seam of your mouth, and you panting his name.

“I’ve wanted to do that for a while,” you mumble, lips brushing his.

“Me too,” and he fists his hand into the hair at your nape and pulls you back to his mouth.)

“I knew you’d be trouble,” he tells you one day, glaring at the bloke further down the bar who tried making a swipe at your ass before Simon showed up, towering over his shoulder with your fruity cocktail in hand.

“Oh, yeah?” you giggle, leaning into his side.

“Yeah,” the corners of his mouth quirk, though he hides it when he presses a kiss against your temple. “A real pain in my ass, love.”

“But yours.”

This time, he does smile. “Yes, but mine.”

Masterlist

#simon riley imagine #simon ghost riley x reader #simon ghost x reader #simon riley x reader #ghost x reader #ghost x you #ghost imagine #simon riley fluff #cod imagine #cod x reader #cod fic #mw2 x reader #mw2 imagine #.things i write

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waffled0g · 11 months

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Everyone gets “The 90s” look wrong and I hate it

Couple years ago I saw these two board games at the store back to back. Well, not saw them per se, but ya know. Spied them out of the corner of my eye. And for a moment without reading the text, I couldn’t tell you which was which decade at first. Funny. Either they were in a rush to get these out the door or they wanted their throwback trivia game boxes to look uniform. I didn’t think too much of it.

Only, from then on I started seeing it MORE. Every time someone markets a 90s or 80s throwback...

Goddammit they’re identical! What??! How did we let this happen? As a 90s survivor and a designer, this drives me up a wall.

Look, I know I’m late to the party to complain about “the 90s look” when we’re just starting to get sick of the Y2K nostalgia train. But c’mon, the 90s were not The 80s: Part Two™

Trust me when I say that we weren’t all wearing neon trapezoids up until the year 2000. The 90s look being peddled is so specific to the tail end of the 80s and an early early part of the 90s - a part of the 90s when it wouldn’t stop being the 80s. This is Memphis design being conflated with the wrong decade.

Keep reading for a long ass graphic design history lesson and pictures of old soda and fast food.

Specifically, the look is Memphis Milano, self-named by the Italian design house Memphis Group. Starting in the early to mid 80s, they made all sorts of furniture, fabrics and sculptures that were like a Piet Mondrian grid painting under heavy radiation. Their whole deal was defying the standards of existing industrial design up to that point on purpose. Chairs had weird arches, bookcases would be in strange alien colors, unusual materials like plastic or elastic were used in place of metal or wood, that sorta thing.

Memphis quickly became the signature look for the decade. You can tell something’s influenced by Memphis design from it’s telltale trademarks:

Clashing, neon colors.

Use of diametric shapes.

Contrasting patterns like zebra print stripes, confetti squiggles and checkerboards.

It wasn’t long before Memphis Milano-inspired design was everywhere in 80s pop culture:

It was a special time, yes.

I was a kindergartener at the tail end of the 80s, so I knew Memphis mostly through the lens of kids media. Toys, clothes, games, tv shows used it like candy colored catnip. Cable channel Nickelodeon more or less adopted the Memphis aesthetic as their signature in-house style and practically built a monument to it at a Florida theme park:

I think this is why folks mistake what decade Memphis is representative of - 90s staples like Nick, Saved By The Bell, Fresh Prince - they all stayed around much longer than the design trend’s expiration date.

Couple that notion with the fact that companies are slow followers to design trends. Something gets popular and they want to get on the bandwagon? Gotta wait for the ink to dry, gotta wait for the production molds to be made. It would take a few years for them to completely work Memphis outta their system.

Now, this is not to say Memphis is bad! Personally I’m a fan of the aesthetic, if my neon-drenched artwork wasn’t a tip-off already. But it is a trend, and trends never last forever.

So what took the Memphis Milano look down for good? This part’s up for debate, but I personally think it had something to do with this dude:

It’s that grunge music from Seattle that’s so popular with the kids these days dontchaknow.

Once Smells Like Teen Spirit hit in 1991, the Nirvana tone drove the rest of the decade. Clean geometry became weathered, grainy and organic. Bright neon pastels became more bold. Bubblegum pop music sounded fake and manufactured. Attitude and apathy was authentic. Whatever.

Things got grungy. Things got grimy. Olestra was invented.

I think the best way to visualize this transition is how Cherry Coke entered the decade and how it left it:

1992 Memphis on the left, 1998 grunge junkie on the right. Fitting that the 90s would end with a design that looked like Darth Maul’s lungs.

Okay, so what should 90s retro design look like?

Continue on to PART TWO! Spoilers: No VHS filters or vaporwave needed, but maybe bring an antacid.

#90s #1990s #memphis milano #grunge #everything you know is wrong #y2k

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thebibliosphere · 1 year

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Speaking of therapy, I say, as though we're old friends, and you're not a stranger trapped in this metaphorical elevator with me and you can hear the suspension wires starting to fray.

I've been doing a lot of work recently that's focused on imposter syndrome and the feeling that no matter how well or how much I do, I'm not good enough. That I'm somehow tricking everyone into thinking my work is actually good.

Some days it's a minor niggle in my head that I can gentle and soothe with logic and affirmations. Or smother, depending on the mood. Other times it's loud and all-consuming and the mental anguish it causes me is so real I can feel it twitching in my muscles. This desperate fight-or-flight instinct with nowhere to go and nothing to fight but myself.

Anyway, because I'm several types of Mentally Unwell™, I was switching between workshop sheets ahead of next week. Filling in different forms. (Trying to get a good grade in therapy) And I got my "recognize your harmful ADHD coping mechanisms" worksheet mixed in with the "you're not actually lying to people, you just feel like you are because your brain is full of weasels" worksheet, and seeing them side by side made something go topsy turvy in my head, and I just had to sit and breathe for a couple of minutes until the urge to scream passed. Because it clicked, it all suddenly clicked.

The reason the imposter syndrome workshops and therapy sessions aren't sticking was because I do routinely trick people into thinking I'm someone I'm not.

Because I'm masking my ADHD for their convenience.

I've always known there was something wrong with me. My neurotypical peers made it abundantly clear I didn't fit in or was failing in some way I couldn't see nor remedy, no matter how hard I tried.

So I compressed myself into a workaholic box of hyper-competence in the hopes they'd stop noticing the flaws and exploit like me instead. And then subsequently lived with the daily fear that if they looked too close, they'd realize I'm a monumental fuck up with enough personal baggage to block the Suez Canal.

If you ever need someone to burn themselves to ashes for your comfort and convenience, I'm your gal.

Or I used to. Until I had a bit of a breakdown, and the rubber band holding my brain together snapped and pinged off into the stratosphere, never to be seen again.

Unfortunately, the trauma of living like that didn't also fuck off and instead left a gaping maw where my personality ought to be, so now I get to deal with that aftermath.

And it's that aftermath that's affecting the imposter syndrome shit. Because yes, I am hyper-competent and good at what I do-- but it doesn't feel real because that is how I mask.

And the truly frustrating thing is I am good at what I do. I am not pretending. I worked hard to be good at this. It just feels like I'm dicking around because 90% of my personality turns out to be trauma masquerading as humor in a trenchcoat, and having people genuinely like something weird I'm doing is so foreign my brain has decided it's just another form of masking.

I'm pretending to be a good author so people will think I'm a good author, and my brain thinks we are in Danger of being found out. We are in Danger, and writing is Dangerous because then people will know I'm Weird and not whatever palatable version I've presented myself as for their NT sensibilities.

Like the neurotic vampire with a raging praise kink wasn't an obvious giveaway.

Anyway. I got nothing else. Thanks for listening.

I'm going to go be very normal in another room and not stare into the abyss of my own soul for a bit.

#adhd #mental health #mental illness #trauma #imposter syndrome #sorry for the wall of eratic text #feeling jittery af #possibly hypomanic tbh #either way #aaaaaaaaah

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vanillabat99 · 11 months

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Thinking about what life might be like if I had a text-to-speech device in my everyday living... I think I would be too anxious to use it in public, which is the main setting that I don't talk in, but I'm not sure how it would impact my private conversations. Usually, when I talk at home, it's about my video games or just occasional commentary on whatever conversation is happening. I don't know if having a nonverbal option would have any impact on those conversations. I don't really talk outside of the house, so I really don't know if I would have conversations at all if given the opportunity.

I don't really know if I'd be "allowed" to use a text-to-speech device, since I'm physically capable of talking and I do talk, so I don't know if I'd really need one. I like the idea of having the option available, but I'm not sure if it would change anything for me.

#i do think i talk more than i used to now that ive had hrt and therapy but like.#i feel like not talking has such a monumentally negative impact on my already tiny social life ._.#idk it just feels weird when people point out how little i talk. like. it feels like they want me to do something about it.#this isnt about anything in particular btw. just thinkin about stuff.#batty blogging #text

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wifelinkmtg · 8 months

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TUMBLR POST EDITOR WON'T LET ME TITLE THIS POST ANYMORE SO I GUESS THIS IS THE TITLE NOW. WEBBED SITE INNIT

So let's say you grew up in the nineties and that The Lion King was an important movie to you. Let's say that the character of Scar - snarling, ambitious, condescending, effeminate Scar - stirred feelings in you which you had no words for as a child. And then let's say, many years later, you're talking about it with a college friend, and you say something like, "oh man, I think Scar was some sort of gay awakening for me," and she fixes you with this level stare and says, "Scar was a fascist. What's the matter with you?"

The immediate feeling is not unlike missing a step: hang on, what's happening, what did I miss? You knew there were goose-stepping hyenas in "Be Prepared," but you didn't think it mattered that much. He's the bad guy, after all, and the movie's just pointing it out. Your friend says it's more than that: the visuals of the song are directly referencing the Nuremberg rallies. They're practically an homage to Riefenstahl. This was your sexual awakening? Is this why you're so into peaked caps and leather, then? Subliminal nazi kink, perhaps?

And then one of your other friends cuts in. "Hold up," he says, "let's think about what Scar actually did in the movie. He organized a group of racialized outcasts and led them against a predatory monarchy. Why are you so keen to defend their hereditary rule? Scar's the good guy here." The conversation immediately descends into a verbal slap fight about who the real bad guy is, whether Scar's regime was actually responsible for the ecological devastation of the Pride Lands, whether the hyenas actually count as "racialized" because James Earl Jones voiced Mufasa after all. Your Catholic friend starts saying some strange and frankly concerning shit about Natural Law. Someone brings The Lion King 2 into it. You leave the conversation feeling a little bit lost and a little bit anxious. What were we even talking about?

INTRODUCING: THE DITCH

There is a way of reading texts which I'm afraid is pervasive, which has as its most classical expression the smug obsession with trivia and minutiae you find in a certain vein of comic book fan. "Who was the first Green Lantern? What was his weakness? Do you even know the Green Lantern Oath?" It eschews the subjective in favor of definitively knowable fact. You can't argue with this guy that, say, Alan Scott shouldn't really count as the first Green Lantern because his whole deal is so radically different from the Hal Jordan/John Stewart/Guy Gardner Corps-era Lanterns, because this guy will simply say "but he's called Green Lantern. Says so right on the cover. Checkmate." This approach to reading a text is fundamentally 1) emotionally detached (there's a reason the joke goes, oh you like X band? name three of their songs - and not, which of their songs means the most to you? which of them came into your life at exactly the right moment to tell you exactly what you needed to hear just then?) and 2) defensive. It's a stance that is designed not to lose arguments. It says so right on the cover. Checkmate.

And then you get the guys who are like "well obviously Bruce Wayne could do far more as a billionaire to solve societal problems by using his tremendous wealth to address systemic issues instead of dressing up as a bat and punching mental patients in the head," and these guys have half a point but they're basically in the same ditch butting heads with the "well, actually" guys, and can we not simply extricate ourselves from the ditch entirely?

So, okay, let's return to our initial example. Scar is portrayed using Nazi iconography - the goose-stepping, the monumentality, the Nuremberg Lichtdom. He is also flamboyant and effete. He unifies and leads a group of downtrodden exiles to overthrow an absolute monarch. He's also a self-serving despot on whose rule Heaven Itself turns its back. You can't reconcile these things from within the ditch - or if you can, the attempt is likely to be ad-hoc supposition and duct tape.

Instead, let's ask ourselves what perspective The Lion King is coming from. What does it say is true about the world? What are its precepts, its axioms?

There is a natural hierarchical order to the world. This is just and righteous and the way of things, and attempts to overthrow this order will be punished severely by the world itself.

Fascism is what happens when evil men attempt to usurp this natural order with the aid of a group or groups of people who refuse to accept their place in the order.

There exists an alternative to defending and adhering to one's place in the natural order - it consists only of selfish spineless apathy.

Manliness is an essential quality of a just ruler. Unmanliness renders a person unfit for rule, and often resentful and dangerous as well.

And isn't that interesting, laid out like that? It renders the entire argument about the movie irrelevant (except for whatever your Catholic friend was on about, since his understanding of the world seems to line up with the above precepts weirdly well.) It's meaningless to argue about whether Scar was a secret hero or a fascist, when the movie doesn't understand fascism and has a damn-near alien view of what good and evil are.

There's always gonna be someone who, having read this far, wants to reply, "so, what? The Lion King is a bad movie and the people who made it were homophobes and also American monarchists, somehow? And anyone who likes it is also some sort of gay-bashing crypto-authoritarian?" To which I have to reply, man, c'mon, get out of the ditch. You're no good to anyone in there. Take my hand. I'm going to pull on three. One... two...

SO PHYREXIA [PAUSE FOR APPLAUSE, GROANS]

We're talking about everyone's favorite ichor-drooling surgery monsters again because there was a bit in my ~*~seminal~*~ essay Transformation, Horror, Eros, Phyrexia which seemed to give a number of readers quite a bit of trouble: namely, the idea that while Phyrexia is textually fascist, their aesthetic is incompatible with real-world fascism, and further, that this aesthetic incompatibility in some way outweighs the ways in which they act like a fascist nation in terms of how we think of them. I'll take responsibility here: I don't think that point is at all clear or well-argued in that essay. What I was trying to articulate was that the text of Magic: the Gathering very much wants Phyrexia to be supremely evil and dangerous fascists, because that makes for effective antagonists, but in the process of constructing that, it's accidentally encoded a whole bunch of fascinating presuppositions that end up working at cross-purposes with its apparent aim. That's... not that much clearer, is it? Hmm. Why don't I just show you what I mean?

Atraxa, Grand Unifier (art by Marta Nael)

In "Beneath Eyes Unblinking," one of the March of the Machine stories by K. Arsenault Rivera, there's a fascinating and I think revealing passage in which Atraxa (big-deal Phyrexianized angel and Elesh Norn's lieutenant) has a run-in with an art museum in New Capenna. The first thing I want to talk about is that, in this passage, Atraxa has no understanding of the concept of "beauty". A great deal of space in such a rushed storyline is devoted to her trying to puzzle out what beauty means and interrogating the minds of her recently-compleated Capennan aesthetes to try and understand it. In the end, she is unable to conceive of beauty except as "wrongness," as anathema.

So my first question is, why doesn't Atraxa have any idea of beauty? This is nonsense, right? We could point to a previous story, "A Garden of Flesh," by Lora Gray, in which Elesh Norn explicitly thinks in terms of beauty, but that's a little bit ditchbound, isn't it? The better argument is to simply look at Phyrexian bodies, at the Phyrexian landscape, all of which looks the way it does on purpose, all of which has been shaped in accordance with the very real aesthetic preferences of Phyrexians. How you could look at the Fair Basilica and not understand that Phyrexians most definitely have an idea of beauty, even if you personally disagree with it, is baffling. This is a lot like the canonical assertion that Phyrexians lack souls, which is both contradicted elsewhere in canon and essentially meaningless, given Magic's unwillingness or inability to articulate what a soul is in its setting, and as with this, it seems the goal is simply to dehumanize Phyrexians, to render them alien, even at the cost of incoherence or internal contradiction.

Atraxa's progress through the museum is fascinating. It evokes the 1937 Nazi exhibit on "degenerate art" in Munich, but not at all cleanly. The first exhibit, which is of representational art, she angrily destroys for being too individualistic (a point of dissonance with the European fascist movements of the 20th century, which formed in direct antagonism to communism.) The second exhibit, filled with abstract paintings and sculptures, she destroys even more angrily for having no conceivable use (this is much more in line with the Nazi idea of "degenerate art", so well done there.) The third exhibit is filled with war trophies and reconstructions from a failed Phyrexian invasion of Capenna many years prior, which she is angriest of all with (and fair enough, I suppose.) But then, after she's done completely trashing the place, she spots a number of angel statues on the cathedral across the plaza, and she goes apeshit. In a fugue of white-hot rage, she pulverizes the angel heads, and here is where I have to ask my second question:

Why angels? If you are trying to invoke fascist attitudes toward art, big statues of angels are precisely the wrong thing for your fascist analogues to hate. Fascists love monumental, heroic representations of superhuman perfection. It's practically their whole aesthetic deal. I understand that we're foreshadowing the imminent defeat of Phyrexia at the hands of legions of angels and a multiversal proliferation of angel juice, but that just leads to the exact same question: why angels? To the best of my knowledge, the Phyrexian weakness to New Capennan angel juice is something invented for this storyline. They have, after all, been happily compleating angels since 1997. We could talk about the in-universe justification for why Halo specifically is so potent, but I don't remember what that justification is, and also don't care. Let's not jump back in the ditch, please. The point is, someone decided that this time, Phyrexia would be defeated by an angelic host, and what does that mean? What is the text trying to say? What are its precepts and axioms?

Let me ask you a question: how many physically disabled angels are there in Magic: the Gathering? How about transsexual angels? How many angels are there, on all of the cards that have ever been printed for Magic: the Gathering, that are even just a bit ugly? Do you get it yet? Or do you need me to spell it out for you?

SPELLING IT OUT FOR YOU

There is a kind of body which is bad. It is bad because it has been significantly altered from its natural state, and it is bad because it is repellent to our aesthetic sensibilities.

The bad kind of body is contagious. It spreads through contact. Sometimes people we love are infected, and then they become the bad kind of body too.

There is a kind of body which is good. It is good because it is pleasing to our aesthetic sensibilities, and it is good because it is unaltered from its (super)natural state.

A happy ending is when all the good bodies destroy or drive into hiding all of the bad bodies. A happy ending is when the bad bodies of the people we love are forcibly returned to being the good kind of body.

Do you get it now?

ENDNOTES

It's worth noting that the ditch is very similar to the white American Evangelical hermeneutics of "the Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it," the defensive chapter-and-verse-or-it-didn't-happen approach to reading a text, what Fred Clark of slacktivist calls "concordance-ism". I don't think that's accidental. We stand underneath centuries of people reading the Bible very poorly - how could that not affect how we read things today? We are participants in history whether we like it or not.

I sincerely hope I haven't come across as condescending in this essay. Close reading is legitimately difficult! They teach college courses on this stuff! And while it is frustrating to have my close readings interrogated by people who... aren't doing that, like. I do get it. I find myself back in the ditch all the time. This stuff is hard. It is also, sorry, crucial if you intend to say something about a text that's worth saying.

I also hope I've communicated clearly here. Magic story is sufficiently incoherent that trying to develop a thesis about it often feels like trying to nail jello to the wall. If anyone has questions, please ask them! And thank you for reading. Next time, we'll probably do the new Eldraine set.

#phyrexia #not defining the ditch except by implication #thanks to all the very smart vorthoi on the flavor text discord server for helping me work through my thoughts on fascism and phyrexia #this is technically the march of the machine review also #or as much of one as i care to do

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narumi-gens · 4 months

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boundaries gojo satoru x f!reader

post-breakup!gojo who can't quite follow through on the breaking up. he's as present in your life after he ended things as he was when you were still dating.

he still blows up your phone at all hours with nothing important. he insists on holding your hand when you walk side-by-side. he still uses your apartment key, which you never had the heart to ask for him to return. you've ended up in more than one heated makeout session with him, although you have managed to keep them from progressing past him feeling up your tits over your bra.

and when you end up in the hospital after a mission, he shows up before even shoko can get there. you sigh when his towering form appears in the doorway of the room you've been given.

"looks worse than it is," you say and despite the way you slur your words due to the painkillers, it's true.

your concussion, while serious, isn't something that wouldn't heal on its own. your broken ribs managed to avoid puncturing any organs. even the burst blood vessel in your left eye that's colored the white of your eye a ghastly red is only really a surface-level injury.

but for once, the man who never shuts up stays silent as he pulls a chair close and sits at your bedside. he reaches for your hand but pauses when you wince at the pressure on the two fingers that are fractured and wrapped in a splint. instead, he settles for loosely holding onto your wrist.

"shoko's gonna fix it all anyways," you tell him through a yawn, your eyelids feeling heavy. "'sides, you shouldn't even be here. boundaries, satoru. 'member?"

it's a word that you've tossed in his face so many times since the breakup that it's lost all meaning. and it doesn't help that you've never managed to say it with any sort of real weight. instead, it usually comes out on the end of a resigned sigh.

you can feel his gaze on you even through his dumb sunglasses. normally, even post-breakup, you would reach out and pull them down his nose to meet those cursed eyes of his and make some joke. but with your brain working at a diminished capacity and your arm hooked up to an IV full of the best painkillers japan's doctors have to offer, all you can do is slowly blink at him in return.

"it's always boundaries this, boundaries that with you," he finally retorts with a shake of his head, but offers nothing else.

"'f you didn't want boundaries then you shouldn't've ended things, y'big dummy," you mumble, and no longer able to keep your eyes open, you finally let them close.

"I told you. I don't have room in my life for anyone else – i.e., you," he replies bluntly and you can feel the fit of giggles that you want to burst into, but all you can manage is a soft huff of laughter.

"liar," you say with a sleepy smile stretching across your lips. "can't even be honest when I'm strung out on painkillers. psh. lame."

it takes monumental effort, but you manage to crack open an eye so that you can see him sporting his own cheeky grin.

silence settles over you both and you feel yourself slowly beginning to fall into the blackness as your breathing slows. the soothing sensation of gojo's thumb rubbing circles on the skin of your wrist only aids in pushing you closer and closer to sleep.

"you were considered a suitable match." even on the edge of consciousness, the disgust in his tone at those two words reaches you. "I couldn't let them get what they wanted."

you let out a quiet hum in acknowledgment and wish you had enough strength to open your eyes, curious to see if he's surprised you weren't fully asleep yet.

"still letting 'em control you, hm? s'good we broke up. want someone who's only tied down by me," you mumble.

"baby, if you want to tie me down, all you had to do was say so," he jokingly responds, unsurprisingly choosing to sidestep the gravity of your words, no matter how slurred they were.

"boundaries, 'toru..." you trail off as you finally succumb to sleep.

#gojo satoru x reader #gojo satoru #gojo x reader #jjk x reader #jujutsu kaisen x reader #gojo angst #jujutsu kaisen angst #jjk angst #gojo satoru angst #it’s more angst-adjacent #mel writes #boundaries

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irndad · 2 months

Text

won't you be my sunshine-a.h.

a/n: runner!hotch x sunshine!reader !! sooooo fluffy, first hotch fic of mine so be gentle with me! lots of pining and happy end <3 happy to continue with these two in an au!

Aaron Hotchner is not a particularly emotive man.

This is a skill he has honed, a cherished quality that was not born of luck or of natural ability, but a skill that he has honed down to a fine tip point. He needs to be, in this job. It’s cost him things, of course, but for the most part, Aaron is happy with his choices. He takes a firm line with people he works with, and does not always let up in his personal life.

The only time this sometimes causes a hitch, is in his romantic life.

Which isn’t to say that he has one.

There is a woman who reads in the park every morning. Aaron affectionately thinks of this bench as her bench, as it is marked by wisterias and hyacinths on either end of it. It’s something of a ritual, after his runs, that they talk.

It’s fun. He doesn’t have a lot of space for fun. He’d collapsed on the bench one day after siphoning his anger at a particular case into a difficult run. He’d crashed onto the bench, sweaty and exhausted and hadn’t even seen her there. Which is a bit impressive, as she’s hard to miss the sight of. It is also in equal measure embarrassing. It’s not every day you collapse in front of a gorgeous woman, disturbing her from what is likely a lovely afternoon in the park.

That’s how it started, anyway. She doesn’t run, so each break is punctuated by her company. He’s actually not sure if they’re flirting. He’s not very good at that- the last time he has to he was 17 and so full of unearned confidence, he lucked into a partnership.

Now, he’s a bit older and a lot more scarred. She’s younger than him, not by much. She laughs with her whole chest at his dry, glib humor- and this is something Aaron had forgotten. The joy of a beautiful, wonderful woman’s company beside you.

He feels a little out of place next to her. Romance is not something he does. Ever thought he’d do again, really. That’s not to say that this is romance. Their romance is almost entirely hypothetical. He thinks of her at work, which is a monumental development in and of itself.

“So, how was the paperwork? I know you’ve been taking a little more on since your colleague had a baby. It’s so kind of you to do it.” She asks him on a beautiful August morning.

He fights off a blush that she remembers what he’s done for JJ. He’s not big on mentioning his own good deeds. Aaron believes that this would cancel it out. Still, her praise is a warm balm to the exhaustion that plagues him. It’s hedonistic, the way he wants her to say more about him. He wonders absentmindedly if she knew everything about him that’s hard to love, she’d still paint him with such a light and warm glance. She’s bright enough, he’s tempted to tell her everything about him just because she asks.

“It was…alright. My team is excellent. I’m lucky to work with people like them, it makes the process better. I couldn’t ask for more.”

She giggles a little at this, and there’s that roar of affection.

He feels a sense of ease around her, one that is suspicious for him. He tries not to romanticize, but this connection is hard not to. She’s beautiful- this is obvious to anyone who meets her, a simple truth of her. But Aaron is trained to notice things little factors that show the truth of someone.

He likes to watch her- it’s a pleasant thing, getting to be in her presence. It’s a little addicting, the way she looks at him. It makes him feel like all of the things he knows to be true of himself- his relative failures, the closed-off nature of his demeanor- are things that not only can be overlooked, but don’t seem to be in her line of sight at all. It’s an honor, to have her doe eyes rake over the sight of him, to meet him with gentle conversation.

He tries not to notice that she is gorgeous. Aaron has been around beautiful women, of course- this is not something that should surprise him. But there’s something effervescent about her, something that his him wondering if it’s possible that she might feel the same way about him. He knows that he used to be a more attractive man, but now. Well, he’s a bit bruised, both metaphorically and physically.

It feels odd to even think of this happening. She’s just got a warm, sweet tone and he replays what it’s like when she greets him. She smiles her brilliant grin and sometimes hugs him. It’s embarrassing how much he likes the feeling of it- soft curves against hard muscle and scarred skin. She always smells wonderful, and he wonders how nice it would be to have more of this.

“I like your new shirt, by the way.” She smiles at him, and his heart jumps. It feels juvenile, but- she’s wearing a new lipstick, it seems. Her beautiful pout looks awfully tempting.

“I like the lip color,” he tries to compliment back amenably, but that doesn’t stick. Instead, it comes out too earnest. He’s hyper aware of the fact that she’s right by him. She flushes, and Aaron feels a surge of pride.

“Thank you,” she says, voice softer and flattered, and isn’t that a pretty sound? He’d love to do that for her, make her feel seen, make her feel like she’s as beautiful as she is, “I thought you might like it.”

It’s her directiveness that breaks the seal, he supposes looking back. Because she wore the lipstick for him. That’s just about the only thing it can mean, and he is struck with a particularly sensory fantasy of what it would be like to slot his mouth against hers- he gets the feeling it might be worth it even if he gets the color on his mouth.

He’s a gentleman, though, he decides after a decidedly ungentlemanly amount of time spend staring at the gorgeous curve of her lips.

“Would you want to get dinner with me?” He hears himself say it before he’s processed it, and then it’s out into the world. His heart is hammering and he’s blaming on the run, when god, it’s absolutely about how breathtaking she looks, the sunlight reflecting off her hair like a halo. When she beams back at him, she looks particularly angelic.

It’s then, she leans over and kisses him on the cheek.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

(Months later, when she is sitting on his kitchen counter and he is standing between her legs, gazing down at her with unabated fondness because he is entitled to that, he reflects on this moment and thinks god, how lucky am I, that I ran past that bench?)

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yawnderu · 5 months

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your loser somno konig has given me so much brainroott

i have a proposition however: what if reader knew?

or completely different route, what if the reader drugged him often to do the same, with the intent of having his baby, a permanent piece of him 😇

ANON. ANON WHEN I CATCH YOU. WHEN I CATCH YOU ANON.

cw: somnophilia, drugging, noncon, femdom, breeding.

It had started out innocently— a small crush on your colonel, his tough image like a monument of what a man should be, slowly building up to an obsession that had you crushing sleeping pills, mixing them into a nice tea made specifically for your lovely colonel. It's wrong— could end your career and could even get you killed, but the chances were worth it.

You waited patiently, only slipping out of bed when you heard his snores. Your body hovered above his with the same quietness you use in the enemy backlines, one hand carefully trying to move his body just to make sure he was fully asleep. His breathing pattern didn't change at all, neither did his loud snores, so you quickly got into action knowing he'd be out for at least a few hours.

You've seen his bulge before— how can you not? It's always poking out of his pants even when he's soft, yet this is the first time you see the entire thing once you lower his pants, hooking his boxers underneath his balls.

''Jesus Christ.'' You mutter under your breath, eyes slightly ajar when you notice how massive he is even when soft. You begin to stroke his soft dick with your hand, feeling him up and taking your time to experiment with him, doing what feels right until his cock starts to respond to your touch, getting harder in your hand. You take your time to admire him once he's fully hard— all 8 inches of pure thickness, the bulging veins running down his entire length only making the heat in your stomach pool up.

Your warm tongue runs up his entire shaft, his snores reassuring you that he's not going to wake up no matter what you do. You latch onto the tip, the taste of salty precum invading your tongue, running circles on his tip before letting go with a loud ''pop'', only getting up to take off your pants, straddling him and holding the tip of his hard cock over your sopping cunt. You don't take his mask off— the least you can do is respect his privacy even when you're doing something so sinful and forbidden.

You lower yourself down on his cock slowly, taking your time to enjoy every single inch stretching open your insides. It takes a hot minute before your cunt is able to take all of him, a hand over your mouth to muffle your whines. It almost hurts, but the ache is overcome by the pure need of feeling more of him.

You slowly bounce on his cock, getting more and more used to having all of him all the way inside before you're freely bouncing on his cock, your free hand going down to massage his heavy balls while you impale yourself down on him. It feels too good to stop despite how wrong it is, mind filled of images of a possible future together if you manage to get pregnant tonight— if not, you can always keep trying.

Your eyes drift down to his masked face, a small smile on your lips when you think about what he may look like underneath the balaclava and sniper hood; how pretty your babies will be. It's only motivation to keep fucking yourself down on his cock, feeling it throb inside you while you only bounce down on him faster, feeling your orgasm build up. It doesn't take long before you're cumming around his cock, getting even tighter around him and milking him dry, his unconscious body responding to your stimulation by shooting ropes inside you.

You wait a few minutes before hesitantly moving away from him, getting on your knees in bed and licking him dry, getting rid of the evidence of your sinful act, taking one last look at his softening cock before you pull his pants back on, fully unaware that König would be returning the treatment the next night— and the one after that, up until you come to him with a positive pregnancy test, hopefully seeking for his help.

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