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nachohypno · 3 years

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Pine’s Football Jocks (Rewritten!) - Ch. 3

Past Pine’s POV

I could barely sleep that night. Not because of nightmares or stress, or anything bad at all-

It was because Garrett- (Wait, I can call him Gary now!) Gary sent me a two minutes-long video playing with his body, cock included. It wouldn’t be a big deal normally, except that this is like the first nude I’ve ever gotten and I feel like it’s a big deal.

Sure, I ‘ordered’ him to make it and send it, but it’s still really exciting!

I was replaying it for like the millionth time, I wasn’t keeping track of how many times I’ve seen this video but it never got old.

The video showed Gary posing shirtless, flexing his arms and torso for the camera, before laying down on his bed and playing with his hard cock. It’s quite impressive how he managed to achieve that body size and definition, but it seemed proper since I think a linebacker needs to be big and strong?

Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t forgotten about all the shit he did to me and I’d like to have some payback time soon. But for now, this was enough to calm my ‘rage’.

Gary is silent for most of the video, except for when he softly moans whenever he’ll grab his own cock. I should change that for future videos, maybe some naughty talk can make it even better. But sadly, he was off to bed already. So it was just me, Gary’s video and…

[Hey, bro???]

Mike’s message from hours ago. He must be off to bed by now already, but let me see…

[Wanna chat?? U wont believe this match I just won-] I stopped reading, went out of the chat and focused again on Gary’s video. So nice looking pecs, great abs, that hard cock. Ooooof, it was making me hard all over again.

Putting a lot of will power though, I decided to put the phone down for the night (Finally, because it was almost 1 am) and went over to my bed.

‘Tomorrow will be even better. I know it’ I told myself, smiling as I closed my eyes while imagining myself playing with Gary’s body in person again.

----

Present Pine’s POV

I decided to start reading this thing before reading them out loud to Mikey, to make sure there’s nothing that’ll make him feel bad. Senior year was just a bitch, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

I don’t plan on rewriting what happened to make a ‘Mike-friendly’ version because these are my memories, twisting them around would miss the complete point of writing them down in the first place. I just wanted to be able to remember how we got here without missing any details, and he wanted to hear the full story. Maybe I can just skip some of the rougher scenes when he appears?

Like, I’m not an angel either. I guess I was just a bit too rough back before the ‘golden rule’ was a thing, so up until then, the wiser thing to do would be review this thing and separate the unnecessary parts from the important ones, that way I’m telling a good story and I’m leaving the unimportant stuff out.

I gave a huge sigh of relief. This was going to be much easier than what I thought. Looking up, I noticed the big guy finished his shower and was trying to untie the bag around his cast while he walked on a towel around his waist.

I was kind of surprised it didn’t fall off, since he was having a bit of trouble with the bag. “Need any help, big boy?”

Mike looked at me, a little smile appearing on his face. “Oh, uh… Sure thing!” It’s been quite a while and he still had a rough time getting used to the cast. Luckily, it was supposedly going to be taken off in a few weeks, if everything goes right.

Leaving my laptop aside again, I got up and walked over to him. Mike extended his injured arm and I began to untie the bag. “What’cha doin over there?” He asked, looking at the laptop with a bit of confusion in his face. “Is it story time already?”

It was funny. I thought about this as a little way to distract him from… reality and stuff, you know, and he ended up taking it as a new part of his schedule. Even calling it ‘story time’ now, apparently.

“I mean,” I mumbled, almost finishing with the bag. “We can have story time now if you’d like. I was just checking the stuff to come, to decide how I should divide the chapters and that kind of thing.” The bag came off his arm, and he extended it a bit.

The jock leaned in and smooched me on the lips, before mumbling a little “Thanks, bro”. It made me smile, and feel all warm and nice. “And sure, I’d love to have story time now! Been a few days already, but didn’t wanna push you to read without you bringin’ it up first…” He scratched the back of his head, looking away with a nervous smile.

“Don’t worry,” I said, putting the bag aside before looking back at him. “Today was a pretty tame day, so we can definitely do some good story time. Wat’cha think, big boy?”

“That’s a new one. The ‘Big boy’ I mean. I like it. I like you…” He leaned in for another kiss, but I grabbed him by the hand before he could reach me, thinking about dragging him to the couch. That seemed to become the perfect place for story time. Well, that and our bed, but we have used the couch more and it was closer at the moment.

What? I can be lazy too!

But first… “Aww. Well, time to drop deep, big boy.” I told him, examining his face as I watched his eyes become glassy, and his mouth turn into a dumb smile.

“Yussss, bruh…” He managed to answer, completely under already.

I looked at him, his hunk body at full display, except for the part beneath the towel. I would normally tell him to dress up first, but I knew the guy wasn’t getting much action lately. Or, barely any action at all.

The cast on his arm apparently got into his way of flirting, and it doesn’t seem like girls around campus want to have fun with ‘the broken quarterback’. That’s the cruel nickname he got, and I plan on giving him a triumphant return once his arm gets better.

I have a hunch his arm will be ready to play football again soon, but I prefer to be 100% and ask a real doctor. I don’t want my best friend to end up with a worse injury because I forced him to play or something.

“Drop that towel, too” I ordered him, and he slowly moved his hand to the towel, undoing it as the gravity took effect. Soon, Mikey stood in front of me in all of his naked glory. Cock semi hard on display, I started dragging him with me towards the couch.

I sat down, and I told him to do the same. After grabbing the laptop and opening the story file again, I looked over at Mike and mumbled a nice “Wake up now, sleepy boy”.

His expression returned to his face, but quickly replaced by confusion as he was now in a different spot. “What…?”

“It’s okay, just lay down and enjoy the story time. Got it, big boy?” I leaned in and gave him a good kiss. He kissed back, sloppy tongue and all, but of course I had the lead on the make out session.

If we didn’t have the story time about to start, I would have thrown the laptop off my lap and jumped on top of the muscular jock.

But… gotta do what I gotta do. I stopped the kiss, caressed his face, and then turned my gaze to the screen as he laid down next to me.

“So… Where were we…”

-----

Past Pine’s POV

I’ve had an amazing day.

Still not used to the whole ‘powers’ thing, I missed the opportunity to make Garrett drive me to school. However, that was on my plans. I wanted to make the most out of my new-found mind control power!

Sadly, now that I wanted to encounter a jock so badly, it seemed like they were the ones hiding from me now. The few ones I saw (That I share classes with, at least) seemed to ignore me or not notice me at all. Which is nice but… I kind of wanted to try this thing out, okay?

Noticing Gary walking over with a few of his teammates behind him, I took a deep breath and remained in place. I don’t know if they saw me either, but there was a surprising and greatly appreciated lack of shoving today! My arm was grateful.

Mike was the last guy to leave the classroom, because he was a slow writer sometimes, so he needed to stay a few minutes more and get his stuff down to paper. Otherwise, the teachers would get very mad at him for ‘not paying attention’.

“Oh. Hey bro,” Mike said, giving me a warm smile before stopping at my side. I was staring at the passing-by jocks in front of us, and the big guy took some time to greet them as they passed by. “Huh, they looked pretty friendly today. Towards you, I mean…”

“I think so, yeah.” I wasn’t sure if I should tell him about Gary being my friend now. Of course, the slave part was off the question, no-one could know about this nor anything related to my newfound superpower. That raised the question if I could erase memories by commanding that…

Lots of experimenting will give me the answer, I hope!

“Phew, glad to hear that” My former best friend patted my back. “I was getting kinda worried yesterday when I didn't get a reply. Y’know I can see when you’re online, right?”

I rolled my eyes. It was kind of annoying how he would pretend everything was fine and nothing ever happened. Even after a month or so of barely talking.

“But hey. I have the evening free after football practice, in case you want to come over and… y’know, play some smash or something” I got to admit that watching him act all nervous just because he was talking to me was a bit funny. It made me let out an internal ‘Aww’.

“Uhm… Sorry, got a study session prepared after football practice. So-”

“Wait, what?” Mike opened his eyes wide in surprise. “Are you tutoring someone from the team? Who is it? Huh, that was a quick solution to the… uh… thing”

Ignoring that last dumb comment, I answered with a “Garrett practically begged me to help him with his homework and a few more things. We made a deal, no more bullying in exchange for passing his classes”

I made up the story at the moment, and I surprised myself with how quickly I came up with that.

The jock placed a hand on my shoulder, a look of concern on his face. “If he tries something bad…”

“He’s pretty nice, actually” Now I was just being an asshole. “He dropped the ‘faggot’ nickname and treated me nicely yesterday. I was kind of scared, but he really surprised me.” I shrugged, trying to look like I didn’t care at all.

Of course, I was making it up. I can’t just tell Mike that I randomly managed to control Garrett’s mind and apparently turned him into a slave. I had proof that it hadn’t been a dream, since Gary sent me a video playing with his body and I checked it out again this morning.

“I don’t think we’re talking about the same Garrett…” Mike started. It was nice of him to get worried, but everything was under control. Besides, I was still mad at him even though the problem was now solved, but it wouldn’t hurt to teach him that actions have consequences.

‘I’m an awful friend’ I thought, but the thought was shrugged off quickly when Gary approached us.

The mean jock punched my shoulder in a rough but friendly way, which caused Mike to shoot a glare at him, but still not move. It hit different now, not hurting as much as before and being kind of… Glad that he didn’t jump on Garrett’s jugular now.

I mean, it’s just like when you get a new toy and you don’t want anyone to break it.

“Hey bros. Wat’chu talking bout?”

Mike and Gary weren’t really fond of each other. The tension could be felt as I was trapped between them, Mike still glaring at Gary and the latter trying to ignore him by staring down at me. It was funny how Gary is supposed to be bigger than Mike, due to him being the linebacker.

Truth is, they are almost the same size, Gary surpassing my childhood friend by a bit more of muscular definition. Mike doesn’t look bad, but I know he’s fully natural. Meanwhile, I still suspect Garrett is on steroids.

“Uh… I was about to ask Pine here if he wanted to come over and play some smash,” I could practically feel how Mikey was hoping for Garrett to not jump in the wagon and ask to join. “So… What do you think, bro?”

I was going to answer him that I was busy. That was my usual excuse when Mike wanted to hang out. I was still not ready to hang out with him again, I needed a bit more time to calm down, now that Garrett wasn’t a problem anymore. There were still the other football guys, so that was a thing to take care of.

“Can’t do, bro. Lil’ Pine here and I got a study session, gotta take all those maths and shit in.” Garrett answered for me, grabbing me by the shoulders and shaking me a bit. It sounded a bit rougher than what I intended, but it did the dirty work for me, I guess.

“Well, how about after your study session? We barely hang out anymore…”

I gotta give it to the guy, he was actually pushing for it this time. I appreciated that.

“Sure, if we finish the studying thing quickly, I’ll head over to your place.” I patted Mike’s back, and he smiled faintly.

“Yeah, that’d be great. Gonna be practicing my fighting skills!” My jock friend seemed excited, all of a sudden. “Gonna get going now, but hey, see you later!”

Gary and I watched as he turned around and started walking away. He seemed happier now, but Gary had a look of disgust on his face. “He’s kind of annoying, bro. I don’t know how you put up with him”

“Hey, don’t talk about him like that. Just because we discussed doesn’t mean you can trash talk my best friend, got it? Besides, it’s your fault we even discussed in the first place” No, it wasn’t. Mike went around telling my business to his teammates. But Garrett played a part in me being really mad at Mikey, so he did have a bit -lots- of guilt.

The glassy eyes returned, as he mumbled a quick ‘Yeees, bro…” before his face returned to normal. “Uhm, sorry. Didn’t mean to offend you, bro”

“It’s… okay. Should we get going? That ‘study session’ won’t get done by itself.” I took a deep breath, trying to keep myself cool.

“Yeeaaaah… So… About the studying thing…” The big jock scratched the back of his head, a somewhat childish grin on his face. “I invited a friend over”

“You did what?” I was, of course, going to scold him! How could he be so… Irresponsible! I tried to keep my cool as best as I could, because I couldn’t show that I was Gary’s ‘master’ at school.

“Please don’t be mad, but he’s coming right up to leave with us…”

“This is the tutor dude, right?” A guy said behind me. I recognized that voice…

Slowly turning around, I took a moment to observe my classmate. Brent had short hair, almost a military cut. He used to keep it long but according to Mikey, his dad made him cut it and he’s kept it like this ever since.

A bit smaller than Gary, but still displaying a good physique, Brent was wearing a green shirt and jeans. His varsity jacket was tied to his bag, which I couldn’t understand. Those things are GREAT! They look really good, they are warm and cozy, AND they make the wearer 10 times hotter, like some kind of rpg armor with special stats.

I know what I’m talking about, when Mike got his varsity jacket I would ask him to let me wear it just because it’s cozy and keeps me warm in winter. The big guy was happy to do so, but he really adores his varsity jacket so I couldn’t keep it away from him for too long.

Back to the ‘extra student’ situation, though!

I was unsure if I should take Brent in. He was… okay. I mean, personality wise. I don’t keep tabs on which jocks go after me and how much they do, it’s usually peer pressure and if I go into that, I’ll have more revenge to do than the Green Arrow.

‘You’ve failed this nerd’ and then I enslave them. Hehe.

And if we go by appearance wise, the guy is hot. Most of the football guys will be hot for me, because I like big guys and they go through some rough training. Even the shortest guy has a nice build, it was surprising.

“Pine. My name is Pine” I stated, not really annoyed at being called ‘tutor dude’ but if I was going to help him, then I expected some degree of respect.

“Cool. Brent.” He extended his hand, and I shook it. I kind of expected him to be all rough about it and crush my hand, but he was quite gentle. That earned him some points.

“Uhm… What do you need help with…? I got to know what I’m going to help you with before we actually get on it.” It was logic, I’m not going to wait until we’re at Gary’s house. Not that it would matter much but… Hey, maybe I can do some good with my powers.

Y’know, proving I’m better than these guys by helping them, alongside having my little payback?

It’s also a good testing ground for my powers, to see if I can make them somehow smarter. Huh, it just sounds better and better.

“Math. My bro told me you were helping him with it yesterday and I really, really need some help before the exams. I ain’t really on edge with my grades, but I don’t wanna risk it.” Glad to hear Gary has been using the excuse I told him to use.

“Hmm. All right then, let’s get going and I’ll do my best to help you with that” I tried to sound cold, but again it fell flat. And Brent just didn’t seem to care.

He looked at Gary and said “Huh, you were right, bro. This guy’s a life-saver!”

“See? Told ya. We kinda made a deal and I’m leaving him intact as long as he helps me, so maybe he’ll extend that deal to you and you won’t need to pay!” I kind of wanted to kick Gary’s nuts right about now, but kept it to myself.

I don’t know if I could make Brent my slave as easily as I did with the first one, so I was really hoping Gary would shut up until I figured things out.

We set on our way after that, walking towards the exit and then towards Gary’s car. I sat on the back seat this time, since I figured the new jock would like to sit with his teammate on the front.

But then, it struck me.

“Hey Brent. Sit on the back with me, will you?” I said, in a commanding voice. If this didn’t work, I would have earned myself a beat up.

“Sure, why not” was his answer. I didn’t see his face, but I don’t that was just him being nice at the tutor dude. He totally glazed out when I ordered him!

There was a bit of a gap between us, as we sat on the opposite sides of the seat. Gary didn’t seem to care about the situation at all, he sat on the driver’s seat and just waited for us to be ready. Once we were done, he turned on the car and drove off.

I looked at Brent, trying to figure out what to do now that I… ‘made’ him sit on the back seat with me.

Moving closer to him, I tried something out. “Uh… Brent,” I figured it would be important to state his name, this way Gary wouldn’t get confused and get the command as his own. “Don’t mind at all what I’m about to do; It’s totally normal and you’re okay with it.”

This time, I did look at his face. Eyes glazed over, and he slurred a “Yeeaah…”.

Awesome.

I moved my hand and lifted his shirt up. His body was pretty nice, and I didn’t hesitate to feel him up. I was getting the hold of this ‘controlling guys’ thing!

My hand went down, until it rested on top of the jock’s crotch. Brent just stared through the window, not caring about what was I doing. This. Is. The. Best.

I kind of wanted to undo his pants and grab his package, but I think it would be better if I left that for later. I had a little idea, and I wanted to see it play out instead of just rushing things.

I did have a little idea, in the meantime. “Wrap an arm around my shoulders” And Brent did so, while still not paying attention, apparently. It was warm and it felt good, so that was enough to satiate my hunger for control, heh.

I noticed Garrett looked at us through the driving mirror and asked “Huh, getting comfortable back there, aren’t ya?”

That’s when Brent looked down at me, noticing he was hugging me. I thought he was going to pull back, but he didn’t. “Yeah, I guess so. You don’t mind, right dude?”

I shrugged. “It’s kinda nice. Pull me closer and hug me tight.”

“Okay.” It felt even warmer now, and I loved it. The fact that he’s totally oblivious or doesn’t care about it makes it kind of hotter, but I’d prefer to have him like Gary was just yesterday. Waiting for orders with a big smile on his face.

“You don’t think this is weird?”

“I would, normally. But I want to do this, otherwise I’d tell you to go fuck yourself” Quite straightforward, but I didn’t mind. It helped me think that whenever I order something to these guys, it appears to them that it’s actually their own idea.

Garrett chuckled on the front. “Don’t get too comfortable. We’re about to arrive” That’s the thing when you live in a small town, everything is right around the corner, or it feels like it.

I managed to enjoy a few more minutes with Brent hugging me like this, before Garrett parked in front of his garage. That was our cue to get down. Brent didn’t seem to mind at all what just happened, which was… okay.

On a little side note, It was weird how Garrett’s parents never seemed to be at home. I guess it fits the guy’s style well, got the whole place to himself in case he wants to bring a ‘friend’ over, or something. I wouldn’t mind having a mansion to myself either, so that’s good for him. I guess.

Once we all got out of the car (Brent wasn’t being so… ‘close’ to me anymore, but rather came back to barely interact with me), we entered Gary’s place and I took a moment to take in the big place.

“So, up to my room again? Or do you guys prefer the dining room for studying n’ shit?” Garrett asked, tilting his head a bit.

I looked at the two guys, and decided to take the lead from this point onwards. If I was going to be the ‘teacher’, then I had the choice!

“Your room would probably be a bit cozier, and your desk has enough space for you two. Just imagine we’re at the school’s desks, if anything.” I answered, my voice sounding a bit more nervous than before, but I tried to reassure myself that I could do it.

Brent didn’t complain, he just shrugged and went “No problem by me” He wasn’t being mind controlled to agree, I could tell. But my plan was going smoothly, so I didn’t mind.

That being said, I was growing impatient as we walked to Gary’s room. Once we entered, both jocks sat in front of the desk, grabbed their bags to get their school stuff, then waited for me.

I didn’t want to just be like ‘You will now obey me completely! Nyehehehe!’ because that sounded a bit lame, and I don’t know if they can break out of it if I don’t put special care or something. So, let’s give it my best!

Both guys had problems on long operations, so I grabbed my own notes and gave them a few of the exercises we’ve seen in our classes. I did my best to explain it to them, and tried to say something like ‘Remember this well’, to make sure they learn to solve it or at least keep my explanation in their heads and work their way around it.

Garrett got around the first exercise eventually, a few minutes after we started. He was a good boy!

Brent wasn’t being so lucky, sadly. “Need help with that?” I asked him, placing my hand on his shoulder before taking it away quickly.

He looked at me a bit confused, before realizing what just happened. “It’s… alright. Just can’t get how you get the two last results…”

I leaned over to see his sheet. Huh, he was barely making any progress. I see that this guy really needed the help.

Luckily, I can help him. I shouldn’t, because I remember Brent being one of the football guys that bullied me, but I’ll get to the payback later. Now, I can do some good actions, right?

“See, you missed the point of these numbers here… This one replaces B, this one goes where A is –both As- and this one replaces C. Got it so far?”

“I guess so…” Brent traced little arrows to which numbers replaced which letters in the operation. I looked over at Gary and he was silent, still doing his own exercises.

“Good. Now, just do as I say. It only gets easier from here.” I mumbled, but quickly got silent.

I noticed Brent’s face relaxed after I said that. “Do as you say…” He repeated, eyes glazed over again. Gary lifted his head and looked at Brent. A little smile appeared on his face, as he gave me a quick thumb up.

Not going to lie, it was a bit getting on my nerves how this thing worked at random. Must be something on how I phrase my words, or the way I say them? I have no idea, fuck.

Was he happy I just did something to his teammate? I mean, it was nice but… weird.

Anyway, I guess that should do the trick? I still wanted to do something else because that didn’t erase my fear of him overcoming the mind control. Gary apparently already accepted it, and he seemed happy.

I shrugged off my thoughts and kept explaining the rest of the operation. It went nicely, as Brent only focused on what I had to say. That seemed to make everything really easy for me!

After he got his results, the big jock patted my back softly. “Thanks, man. I dunno how you got this stuff in, but it just seems so easy now!”

“Hey, it’s… okay, I guess.” I answered, my voice stuttering a bit due to the nervousness.

I’m not used to being praised by the jocks, much less having them chat normally to me. And the fact that he was trying to avoid most contact before made me think that he does remember the stuff his team did, including himself.

Garrett looked up again and punched his friend’s shoulder. It seemed rough, but Brent apparently didn’t mind. He just coughed a bit and looked down to the floor. “And, uh… Sorry for… Y’know, all the stuff that happened to you. Not gonna happen again… Not by me, at least.”

A little smile formed on my face. I wondered if Gary had talked to him about apologizing, and if he did it with anybody else. It felt nice, didn’t erase all the stuff that happened, but still felt nice.

“Actually,” I started speaking, catching both jocks’ attention. They stared at me, not muttering a single word or seeming to interrupt. It was like I was a superior, which in a way, I was for Gary but not for Brent. Not yet. “I have an idea that I know you both will like.”

“Huh, what is it?” Garrett asked, leaving his pencil on the desk and turning his chair around to face me.

“Got me all curious now, hahah” Brent told his teammate, before facing me too.

“Lil’ bird told me you come from a military family, right?” I asked Brent, ever so casually. He didn’t take it as funny, though. His smile quickly turned into a frown. ‘Such a way to go, Piney!’ I told myself, wanting to bump my head on the wall.

“Uh… What’s it to ya?” I figured he wouldn’t be as open when I brought up his family. As I mentioned, I knew he came from a military family, and Mike had told me a few stories about the guy getting mad because his teammates mock him about it.

“N-Nothing, I just… uhm… thought it would be… Forget about what I said, I know the answer already.” I tried to shrug it off, trying to slip back into the ‘I’m in charge here’ mentality. “Both guys, strip down to your underwear. You won’t think this is weird, it’s actually a fun game that I’m totally not making up”

I got to see their faces blanking out, as they got up and started lazily getting undressed. Shirts went off first, which revealed some nice pecs and abs, always nice to see those.

Brent was actually a bit smaller than Gary, like, in a muscular way. He was still nice, but barely near Gary’s level. Points for Gary, I think? Brent still had a nice hunk-ish build, and I didn’t notice this before but he had a pair of blank dog tags hanging from his neck. That was a cute detail!

The shoes went off second, then the pants. They struggled a bit with those because they tried to take their clothes off as quickly as possible, but they also made weird robotic/lazy movements, which I assumed was because of the mind control. Other than that, I was very satisfied with the results.

Two semi-naked jocks in front of me, what to do now?

“The game I had in mind is called ‘The jock and the soldier’, ever heard of it?” I asked, and the guys shook their heads in denial. “Well, it’s a very fun game played by three persons. There’s the jock, that’ll be you, Gary. There’s the soldier, which will be played by Brent. And then there’s me, the game master!”

They were visibly confused. Brent was the one not enslaved yet, so he said “Wait, why are we playing a game? I thought we were studying…?”

I found it funny that he didn’t think it was weird that he just stripped to his underwear because I said so.

“The game is actually very important! Will teach you a valuable… very valuable life lesson, okay?”

“Ooookay… How do we play?”

“It’s simple enough! First, we gotta decide who’ll be the superior one between you two, or the ‘top’. Whatever you want to call it.” It was actually quite hard to come up with this stuff. “Let’s settle it with…” I blanked out. Like, not in trance/mind control way, but in a ‘I’ve run out of ideas way’. I had to get a notepad and write my ideas now to avoid this from happening!

‘C’mon, Piney. Think!’ I told myself. What would a jock do to solve a dispute between ‘bros’? Hmm… “A wrestling match. This is a very good idea and you’re both eager to participate!” I didn’t know what I was saying, but if I was correct, a wrestling match was the one where they tried to out-strength the other guy and not the one where they blow their teeth out with punches.

“Hell yeah!” Gary shouted, not blanking out this time. It didn’t bother me; I knew he already was pretty much enslaved already. “Prepare to lose, bro!”

Brent didn’t turn down the offer, so that meant it worked on him too! “Gonna make you bite the dust, Basch!” The soldier-guy replied at Gary, as they started getting in position a few meters away from each other.

At first, I thought a wrestling match wouldn’t be a good thing because this is Gary’s bedroom, but I think the space is wide enough for them to wrestle between the bed and the desk. I just pushed the chair and the stool into the desk so they wouldn’t get in the middle.

“Ready?” Grunts of approval were heard from both sides. I walked to my safe area: Garrett’s bed, and got comfortable. “Start!”

Gary had the upper hand at the start, lunging at Brent and pushing him back to his own starting line. Brent wasn’t too far behind though; he was putting up a good fight to not go down so easily. It was pretty entertaining to watch, especially with both participants being in their underwear.

“So, uh… I forgot to tell you guys what the game master does, so I’ll just explain it while you two wrestle. Is that okay?” They were too busy trying to win to talk, but they grunted again in approval. “Well, as the game master, I’m the one to tells you what to do, and you’re the ones that do it without a question. It’s totally normal, just doing what I say without a second thought”

The wrestling slowed down for a second, from both sides. Brent seemed to be gaining the upper hand now, but Gary being a bit bigger than him didn’t make that easy, at all.

“And for my first order, I want you both to get hard. You both find this game incredibly arousing.” Gosh, I hope I didn’t sound too weird.

“Yes, master!” Gary managed to say, while he pushed Brent off.

“What the… heck?!” Brent said, and I figured he didn’t like the ‘master’ thing.

“It’s okay, Brent! I’m Gary’s master, so it’s okay for him to call me that. And actually, I’m your master too, understood?” It was a lame ‘easy fix’, but it should put him to work quite fast.

“Yes… master!” I don’t know if they can resist my orders, but two guys in a row couldn’t do it so… I had my hopes up! But actually ‘master’ didn’t sound so well coming from Brent. And he is the soldier player…

“You don’t get to call me ‘Master’ though, Brent. You’re the soldier, remember? You got to try and fit your role!”

“Sir, yes Sir!” He shouted, trying to keep the composure against his rival.

“C’mon, dude… Just… lose… already!” Gary was struggling to keep the smaller guy off him. And his words only seemed to make Brent stronger.

Soon, Gary was the one losing. Two taps on the floor later and… “Yes! I did it, Sir!”

Brent had won. I didn’t want that, honestly. I would have preferred the jock to win. But… I am the game master, right?

I noticed that both guys had their rods up and going too, they seemed constrained in their underwear, and the thought of them just wrestling while having hard-ons made everything way better.

“Great work, you two!” I congratulated them, as I watched them get up again with big smiles on their faces. Seems like they had fun too! “Looks like the soldier came off as the superior one, you know what that means?”

“Nuh-uh” They replied, almost at unison.

“Well, let’s see… You guys face each other for a moment, okay?” The jocks complied, facing each other as ordered. They seemed excited to continue with the game, which made me really happy! “Brent, since you’ve won, you proved to be the superior one. And… As the superior one, you have to be good with your inferior mate and make sure he feels well, don’t you?”

“Uh… Not sure how would I do that… Do you need something, bro?” He asked Gary, who shook his head. “Nope, I’m fine. Should I need something, Master?”

“Make out, guys. I’ll take care of your underwear in the meantime” I ordered, looking expectantly at them.

“Sir, yes Sir!” “Yes, Master!” They said, before getting down to business. Garrett pulled his teammate in for a good, sloppy kiss. Needless to say, I was already rock hard.

After watching for a few seconds, I turned my view down towards the underwear. Slowly pulling Gary’s down to release his cock, then tapping his feet for him to lift it and finally throw it away. Same deal with Brent, and soon they were fully naked in front of me.

“Now, stop kissing.” They stopped. It felt weird, but funny. Like, having them do what I say. It felt nice, really nice. “Brent, kneel and face Gary’s cock.”

“Sir, yes Sir…” He mumbled, before dropping down and staring at his teammate’s dick.

“Take it in your mouth, nice and slowly… Have you ever gotten a blowjob?” I asked, and Brent nodded. Huh, never really put thought into it but I guess jocks really have better luck in their sexual lives. “Well, I want you to give Gary a blowjob to get his cock lubed up. And you’re going to enjoy every second of it!”

“Sir, yes Sir!” He started licking Gary’s shaft, nice and slowly as ordered. I don’t know if he was an expert, because I’ve only seen these things in porn. But Gary started moaning and blowing some air, while Brent took it to the next step and swallowed the tip. He started getting more and more inches in as he did so, and I LOVED it!

“How does it feel, Gary?” I asked the other guy, a big smile on my face. I was really enjoying this, and I still couldn’t believe that I was capable of doing this!

“Awesome, master! Thanks for givin’ me a slave-bro!” Huh, didn’t think of it that way, but kind of glad to see he’s happy too!

I let them keep going for a few more minutes, before I ordered to move to Gary’s bed. They sat on the edge and waited for more orders. “Now that Gary’s cock is all lubed up, thanks to Brent’s good soldier service…” Brent gave me a quick military salute after those words, which made me smile a bit more. “We’re going to take things to the next level. Brent, lay on your back and lift your legs up.”

“Sir, yes Sir!” The naked ‘soldier’ obeyed perfectly, and I had a feeling Gary knew what was coming, because he has this big smile on his face too. This ended up being a wonderful tutoring session, and it wasn’t even over yet!

“Now Gary, get behind him and place his legs over your shoulders. I want you both to fully enjoy this and… uh… embrace your status as my slaves the more you obey, understood?”

“Sir, yes Sir!” “Yes, master!”

“Great! Now… Gary, I want you to fuck Brent.” It was pretty straightforward, and I thought I would have to explain him something about it, but he got his cock aligned with Brent’s ass and started pushing in. I pushed my glasses back, grabbed a seat and enjoyed the action.

Brent’s blank dog tags started doing that ‘cling cling’ sound metal does when hitting against more metal, but it was kind of silenced by the pair’s moans. They barely trying to hide it, they loved it. And I loved it even more!

I was playing with my bulge as I admired my handy work.

“You like that, Brent? Is Garrett doing a good job?”

“Hnng… Yes, Sir! I love it! I’m fully enjoying it!” That was a weird response, but I guess that’s what I ordered him before. Eh, it was alright.

“What about you, Gary? Like that ass?”

“Uh… Yes, master! Fuck… I love this. Ugh… you’re the best master, eveerrrrr…” He groaned as he picked up the pace.

“Woah, not so fast buddy! Let’s do something. When you both cum, you will accept that you are my obedient jock slaves. No questions asked, and you are totally happy with that.”

“Yeaaaah…” was their answer, and I was delighted.

“Great. Now, feel free to cum whenever you’d like. I’ll just sit here, and enjoy the view…”

-----

“You call me if you want a ride home, okay master?” Gary said, shaking my shoulder a bit before giving me a sort of worried look. I was just going to my old best friend’s house, so I didn’t know where that was coming from.

“Will do. I can just walk though. Would be pretty pointless to make you drive all the way over just to take me some streets”

“Hey, I don’t care. You call, I’ll be there” That’ll never seem normal. I’m used to seeing Garrett as a threat to my very being, and him acting so… friendly. It’s weird, however you look at it.

I nodded, deciding to drop the conversation, but Gary leaned in and pulled me in for a kiss. I didn’t resist, it was a nice surprise. After that, he mumbled a “Anything for you, master…”, while still looking intently at me.

“Thanks for that… I’ll be going now; I think…” I answered, before opening the door and stepping out of the car.

So… yeah. I had arrived at Mike’s house. It’s been a good while, a month or so and I already felt like I was in a strange place, for some reason.

I guess it’s because I’m not a very outgoing guy? I’m used to being in my house all the time besides school, so when I stopped coming it kind of… vanished from my mind.

Saying goodbye to Gary, then leaving his car, I started walking over to the door and ringing the bell.

“MOOOOOOM, I’M GOING!” I heard a deep voice yelled. Heavy steps later, Mike was standing in front of me after opening the door. “Hey there, bro!”

The big guy held his open hand out, waiting for me to ‘bro slap’ it. He (And probably his teammates too, I don’t think he’s the only one with this thing) have this weird thing of adding ‘bro’ before some actions and that supposedly makes them better/more fraternal.

I grabbed his hand and gave it a shake. That didn’t bother him though, he just moved aside and let me in.

“How are you doing?” I asked him. I didn’t intend to sound cold, at all. I’m just not good at making chit chat. It wasn’t a problem when we didn’t have a fight in between, but just like before, it felt pretty different now.

“Doing great! Was just heating up in my room, preparing the cartridges and etc. How was your studying?” Mike gave a step closer, and started examining me. Probably looking for bruises? It was the only thing I could think of, since he didn’t trust Gary at all.

He has his reasons though; he knows how much damage he can do. Still, kind of pointless to seem to worry without having ever stepped in to help.

“It was nice. Lots of maths and stuff” I shrugged. I wasn’t in a chatty mood, especially with him. I wasn’t going to break the ‘we’re not talking’ punishment because we were going to play. “Shall we… uh…” I started pointing up, waiting for him to catch that I wanted to be upstairs. I didn’t want to greet Mike’s parents; I don’t know if they’d be happy to see me after I cut ties with their son.

“Uh… yeah, sure! Dinner won’t be ready until an hour or so later, so we have lotsa time to play!” Mike was clearly excited, and I felt a bit bad to act like a party pooper around him.

He moved aside and closed the door once I was in. Then we made our way up to his room, while I silently hoped his parents wouldn’t pop up randomly from a corner or something.

“I think dad is making ravioli. I know you liked those, so you can stay over if you’d like and I can walk you home afterwards…” No sleeping over, I guess he had a part of his feet down to earth.

“I don’t know, mom’s also expecting me for dinner, so I may have to call first to check”

“Good ol’ Piney, always playing by the rules, right?” He chuckled, giving me a rough pat on the back. The chuckle quickly vanished as he mumbled a ‘Sorry’. Ignoring that, we made our way to his room and he closed the door there too.

Just a little head up: Mike LOVES football.

His room had a good amount of his favorite team’s posters. A football helmet was on the floor, next to its ball. The jock’s varsity jacket was neatly held on the desk chair’s back. No trophies though, because he plays mostly high school football or with the nicer teammates at the park, so no trophies for the big guy, yet.

But it wasn’t just filled with jock stuff, because Mikey here has a little secret side. He’s a big nerd too.

His desk had all his Switch games stacked up in random angles, which did make me a bit nervous. His console was settled next to his bed, while the dock was connected to a small flat screen hanging from the wall. Little action figures were displayed on a shelf, and unlike some would think, he never hid them.

He actually had a nice system that he liked to geek about too, like it was the smartest thing in the world. Most jocks (I assume) would hide those kinds of things if they had visits or something. That’s not the case for Mikey. He didn’t need to hide anything because he ‘wasn’t having anyone over’.

That way, he can keep a healthy sexual life while not having to worry about his nerdy side being discovered, and mocked by his teammates.

Oh hey, I could show his teammates that Mike’s a big nerd! Oh wait no, that would be really mean. The idea’s tempting, though.

Grabbing a controller, and passing me the other one, the game was on. He sat on his bed and patted a spot beside him, but I sat on the desk chair. It was actually pretty uncomfortable because it didn’t have any pillow or anything like that, so my ass was on the wood. That’s what I get for being a meanie.

“Gonna pick Link, don’t try to cheese it with the pink puffball, a’ight?” He said, chuckling at his own comment. I remained with a stoic face at all times, which he didn’t find as funny.

“Let’s just get on with it…” I had chosen the random character, because each minute here made me rethink why I actually accepted coming to Mike’s place. I didn’t want to mind control him, he was like a big brother to me! A big, asshole-ish big brother that tells all the stuff you tell him to everyone else!

Okay, being serious for a moment, it would have been really weird. I did enjoy looking at his body the few times he got shirtless in front of me, but I would never lust after him.

[Present|Pine: Oooh, that didn’t age well…]

We played for some good twenty minutes. It was pretty fought over, sometimes he would win, sometimes I would win. I was focusing on the game mostly to ignore his chit chat. Because Mikey was trying to make chatter with me and I would just answer a ‘Hmm…’ or a ‘Wow, yup’ or the always nice ‘Sure thing’.

He, of course, wasn’t happy with my vague answers. And the evening was turning even more silent the more I tried to ignore him.

“Okay, we gotta take a pause. I actually invited you for something else, bro.” ‘Let it be snacks, let it be snacks, let it be snacks…’ “Look, I’m… I’m really sorry about what I did. Outing you with my teammates, I mean. It really wasn’t intentional”

I would have really hoped if he brought out a can of potato chips, because that would have led to a prettier conversation than this one.

“I never wanted for them to bully you like that… or like, in any way. You’re my best friend, and I know that I should have stood up for you a lot sooner and I’m really sorry for that too…” He continued apologizing, like hoping that it would make me more at ease, or something.

I let out a sigh, and tried to remain as calm as possible. “I still don’t get why you had to tell them about my secret, when I told you specifically to not say anything about it to anyone else. And you agreed to that. So, what was crossing your mind when you said ‘Fuck it! I’m going to tell everyone!’?”

It may have come off a bit more aggressive than what I intended.

But he didn’t have an answer. And if Mikey himself doesn’t have an answer, then who should I ask?

“Look, bro. I don’t know what you want me to do. I-I already said I’m sorry! I don’t fucking know what to do! I just want my best friend back!” Now he was being sort of aggressive too, which was good! It basically gave me permission to be aggressive too!

“You know how I stopped using the school’s bathroom, just in case I got cornered in there?! I got shoved to lockers almost every freaking day!”

“What the hell do you want me to do?! Stand up for you? I will! I will beat the crap out of anyone who tries to touch you from now on! Is that what you’d like?!”

“Well, you could have just shut your mouth and I wouldn’t have been in that situation to begin with, dumbass!” I didn’t want him to stand up for me now, I could defend myself very well now!

“What did you call me?!”

“Oh, nonono. You don’t get to feel offended! In fact, you are really a dumbass for outing me right after I told you about my stuff. You really are just a dumb jock, like the others are!” I shouted at him, and I felt like I might have fucked up a little.

By shouting like that I may have alerted his parents or something, so I started grabbing my stuff, determined to leave the room.

I noticed Michael didn’t have an answer, but I just couldn’t bear to look at him. This guy wasn’t my best friend. He’s like those persons you grow up with and end up drifting away due to stupid stuff.

But I didn’t think this was one of those ‘stupid stuff’. He outed me to his teammates, the very same day I told him about it. How bad can you be at keeping a secret?!

I went for the door and left the room, quickly making my way downstairs and through the front door. Mike apparently just noticed what happened, because before I crossed the street to start making my way home, I heard a very loud “Bro?!” coming from the upper floor of the house. It sounded… deep, and kind of weird, but I didn’t give it much thought at the time.

I just wanted to get home and be done with it. It didn’t even cross my mind at the time that my mind control might have done something to him, but I did go over our argument a couple times during that night.

My words could very well have come off as orders, which caused a series of side effects that I would see the consequences of later. But for now, I remember feeling very sad, and just wishing for that pseudo-awful day to be over.

-------

Present Pine’s POV

I slowly closed the laptop, and put it away again. I felt like I could tear up, and I had almost forgotten about that one bit. I was rethinking the whole ‘I should write down my memories’ thing. My memories aren’t that happy and I would have preferred to forget about that one fight with Mike.

“Hey, you okay?” The big guy noticed something was wrong, but I did my best to shrug it off.

“Just… got caught in the story’s mood. Like a ‘feels bad, man’ moment, or something” I didn’t want to worry him. Mike tends to get emotional with… ‘the past’, and I’m okay with letting things go, especially if they happened years ago.

You can’t get mad for a long time when you’re a mind controller, it might cloud your judgement and do something you regret. And I just revived a prime example…

“Sorry… I didn’t want you to feel bad… We can resume any other time,” Mikey stated, moving closer to me and kissing my cheek a lot of times. “And hey, my arm is feeling way better lately. Once I get this stupid cast off, I’ll carry you to our bed ASAP” He finished, with a nice smile.

“Well, I’ll make sure of that in a few weeks. Already made a to-do list for you once you get the cast off.” I appreciated his attempt to cheer me up. I wasn’t really mad, just felt like a cold water bucket fell on me. It wasn’t serious though, it’s just like when you randomly get a bad thought. You just try your best and hope it goes away.

“Really? Like what?” He asked, looking more excited now. I noticed his cock was getting harder by the minute.

“Y’know, move a few things around the place. Clean around. Work out like crazy…”

“I’m only happy to hear one of three things in that list. I was hoping for something… uh… together?” He gave his big bud a thug, without taking his eyes off me. It was clear who was the romantic guy of the pair, of course.

I leaned in and whispered, putting some power in my words (God, reading how I wasn’t able to do that before is kind of painful, too!). “Take care of that big guy. I’ll go finish a few things around here.”

Mike’s eyes glazed over, as a big dumb smile took over his face. “Yeah… master…” He looked straight ahead now, slowly stroking his cock but quickly picking up the pace.

Hey, I don’t plan on letting him cum without my help. Going to rush the cleaning around and check my emails to go back with my big jock!

------

Author’s note:

Looooooooong chapter!

I like Brent. Military guys are another of my favorite stereotypes, but the jocks usually get more love! The dog tags look awesome, the obedience they display, the camo clothes are quite neat. And the few ones I’ve met so far are really nice!

I was thinking about splitting this chapter in two parts. I did so with chapter 5 in Patreon, to improve the reading quality and avoid having it like a wall of text (I feel like I got carried away with this and the next chapter, and they’re both over 9K words).

But ultimately decided to leave it like this. May be a wall of text, but it’s probably better than having you guys searching for the second part.

Okay, that’s all I had in mind for this chapter. Hope you enjoyed it, and thanks for reading <3.

#PinesJocks #PinesCollegeJocks #brainwashing #brainwash #brainwashed #mind control #straight to gay #gay hypnosis #hypnotized

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star-six7 · 3 years

Text

I Never Thought They’d Get Me Here

Ray Toro x Gender Neutral!Reader (ending 3 of 4 for Here In This House of Wolves)

Word Count: 1481

A/N: Yeah, I suck. I’m really sorry for the wait with this one, but I hope it was worth it :)

Disclaimer: This is entirely a work of fiction. No part of this story is meant to be libel, slander, or in any way derogatory towards any character’s real life counterpart. I’m not delusional; I know that these characters are simply based off of a public persona and may not actually resemble the people behind those personas. Any additional characters that you do not recognize are entirely fictional, unless otherwise stated. And finally, if you got here by Googling yourself, whatever happens next is 100% on you.

“Okay,” Brian said, turning around and stopping before entering the building. “I’m thinking we should split into pairs, just in case?”

“The buddy system, really?” Frank snorted. “This isn’t kindergarten, Brian.”

“I, for one, am in favor of this plan,” Gerard said, sounding nervous. Mikey moved to stand next to him without either of them saying anything.

“I’ll go with Ray. I feel like being paired up with the tallest one here is a good idea,” you stated boldly, smiling up at him. You had made up your mind on the way over. Today was the day you told Ray how you felt about him.

“Well,” Brian said glumly. “I guess someone needs to babysit Frank. Let’s go.”

Frank grinned, seemingly unoffended.

After the guides explained the rules and offered you the last chance to turn back, they brought you to the door that would lead you to what they claimed was “your worst nightmare.” You swallowed and moved next to Ray.

“Nervous?” he smiled at you.

“Yeah,” you nodded. You weren’t about to tell him it had less to do with the haunted house and more to do with the fact that you planned to tell him about your long-standing crush. Not yet, at least.

The last thing you saw before you were ushered into pitch blackness was an unreadable look on Ray’s face.

---

A few minutes later, you were shuffling down the path behind Gerard and Mikey with Ray by your side.

“This goddamn hallway,” Frank muttered up in the front, with Brian. “I have no idea if we’re even heading in the right direction.”

“It does feel like we’re going in circles,” Ray agreed. “Maybe we should split up and try and find the way to the next area.”

You heard Mikey and Gerard move off to your left while Frank and Brian pushed on to your right.

“Guess it’s just us now,” Ray said, somehow finding your hand in the dark. You were glad he couldn’t see you blushing.

“Yeah,” you whispered as your nerves skyrocketed. You cleared your throat. “Let’s try and beat them to the exit!”

Unfortunately, fifteen minutes later, you were no closer than any of the others. Speaking of which-

“Ray, do you know where the others are? I haven’t heard them in a while.”

“Me either,” he sighed. “Oh, shit!”

“What’d you find?” You were ready to get out of the dark hallway.

“I think I found a crack in the wall,” he said, sounding like he was concentrating. “Hold on-”

The section of the wall he was pushing on gave way, and you stepped out into what seemed to be an indoor maze. You took in the fake ivy-covered walls while Ray closed the door behind him.

“Wouldn’t want the others to figure out our secret,” he said sheepishly when he noticed your questioning look. “Shall we?”

And for the second time that day, you were holding hands with Ray Toro.

---

As you wandered up and down the paths with Ray, you let yourself get lost in thought. You remembered the tall, shy (and cute!), guy that Gerard had practically dragged down the basement steps for the first time, barely a week after the band went from being an idea Gerard would call you about at two in the morning to something real. You shook your head at yourself when you thought about how nervous you had been about adding a new member. You had been worried that Ray wouldn’t fit in with the long-standing, easy-going friendship you had with Mikey and Gerard. But, Gerard was right. The band needed someone who could play live. And Ray was certainly one hell of a guitarist.

In hindsight, it should have been no surprise that you and Ray became fast friends. Not only were you both dedicated, passionate, and talented musicians, but you genuinely clicked on many other levels as well. You couldn’t even count the hours spent in the Way brothers’ basement, arguing the odds of surviving your favorite horror movie scenes or building your absolute dream bands consisting of your favorite musicians. It only made more sense that you began to fall for him around the time My Chem went into the studio for the first time. You remembered staying into the early hours of the morning, hanging out on Geoff’s couch together as you pored over the previous day’s takes, eventually falling asleep on each other until Gerard woke you up to complain about his tooth.

“I hope you’re not laughing at me, or you might not be able to find your duffle bag tonight.”

You hadn’t even realized the small smile forming on your face until Ray interrupted your thoughts. You glanced up at him and saw a grin on his face that told you he was only joking.

“Wait, why would I be laughing at you?”

“Because,” he said, sounding glum. “I think we’ve been going in circles for the past twenty minutes.”

“We’ll figure it- wait, did you say twenty minutes? There’s no way this place is that big. How long have we been in here?”

Ray glanced at his watch. “25 minutes, actually.”

You swore as you sat down. “You don’t think the others got out already, do you? I mean, they would come back for us, right?”

Ray laughed as he sat down next to you, leaning against the wall of the maze. “Frankie might try it, just for shits and giggles, but Brian wouldn’t let him.”

“Thank god for Schechter,” you agreed. The conversation lapsed into silence, and you decided now was as good a time as any to test the waters. “Hey, at least we’re stuck together, right?”

Ray shifted to face you, smiling. “That’s true, Gerard would be hyperventilating by now.”

“And Brian would smack us upside the heads for getting lost in the first place.” You laughed and then took a second to regain your composure. “But, if I’m being honest… there’s really another reason why I’m glad I’m with you. Even if we might die in this maze.”

You paused, studying Ray’s face for a reaction. You thought you saw a flicker of emotion, but you couldn’t be sure. Apparently, Ray’s poker face could rival Mikey’s.

When you could tell that he wasn’t going to say anything, you continued. “I think it’s kinda obvious but… you’re my best friend. And as much as I don’t want to change everything for the worse, I feel like I can’t really hide it anymore. Ray… I think I’m in love with you.”

What you were going to say next died in your throat when Ray surged forward to kiss you. Your perception of the world around you slowly melted away as all of your senses began to hyperfocus on Ray. You couldn’t help the faint sigh that escaped you as he shifted closer, wrapping one arm around your waist and resting his other hand on the side of your face. Almost involuntarily, you scooted backwards until your back was resting against the corner you had sat down in, trying to get him as close to you as possible.

It was at about that point that you heard a familiar (and at the moment, grating) voice yelling at you from several feet away.

“Holy shit! Brian, you can call off the search party! I found them, and they’re making out, ew!”

Ray pulled away from you the second Frank had made his presence known. Though he rolled his eyes, clearly annoyed, you could see a blush creeping up his cheeks. If the heat in your face was any indication, you were sure you looked similar.

“Shut up, Frank,” Brian said as he rounded the corner, rolling his eyes. He turned to you and Ray and sighed, smiling. “I can’t say I’m not surprised.”

“Oh, Brian, are you gonna give them the ‘safe sex’ lecture? Scratch that, are you sure they know about the birds and the bees?” Frank said, and then laughed like that was the funniest thing in the world.

“Hey,” Ray said, scowling as he stood up. He offered you a hand and pulled you to your feet. “You better quiet down or I’ll make sure you never get shotgun again.”

“Okay, cut it out, assholes,” Brian cut in, though there was no real anger behind it. “We need to go find the others before Gerard goes into a catatonic state of shock.”

You half-listened to Ray and Frank bicker some more as you trailed behind them, unable to keep the smile off your face. It almost felt easier to breathe with your confession off your chest.

You had almost forgotten that you were still holding hands with Ray until he stopped suddenly, waiting to get a little distance from Frank and Brian.

“Hey,” he said, smiling down at you.

“Hey?”

“I forgot to tell you. I think I love you too.”

A/N: Thank you for reading! Feel free to tell me what you liked and send in requests!

#ray toro imagine #ray toro x reader #mcr imagine #mcr x reader #ray toro #my chemical romance #mcr #my chem #my chemical romance x reader #my chemical romance imagine #bandom #bandom imagine #gerard way #frank iero #mikey way #x reader #reader insert

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halfbisexual · 3 years

Text

Men Cause 100% of Unwanted Pregnancies

Our conversation about abortion places the burden of responsibility on women. I argue men are the root cause.

Gabrielle Blair

Sep 24, 2018·

As a mother of six and a Mormon, I have a good understanding of arguments surrounding abortion, religious and otherwise. When I hear men discussing women’s reproductive rights, I’m often left with the thought that they have zero interest in stopping abortion.

If you want to prevent abortion, you need to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Men seem unable (or unwilling) to admit that they cause 100% of them.

I realize that’s a bold statement. You’re likely thinking, “Wait. It takes two to tango!” While I fully agree with you in the case of intentional pregnancies, I argue that all unwanted pregnancies are caused by the irresponsible ejaculations of men. All of them.

Don’t believe me?

Let’s start with this: A woman’s egg is only fertile for about two days each month. Yes, there are exceptions, because nature. But one egg which is fertile two days each month is the baseline. And those fertile eggs are produced for a limited number of years. This means, on average, women are fertile for about 24 days per year.

But men are fertile 365 days a year. In fact, if you’re a man who ejaculates multiple times a day, you could cause multiple pregnancies daily. In theory, a man could cause 1000+ unwanted pregnancies in just one year. While it’s true that sperm gets crappier as men age, it doesn’t have a fertility expiration date; men can cause unwanted pregnancies from puberty until death. So, starting with basic fertility stats and the calendar, it’s easy to see that men are the issue here.

As a society, we really don’t mind if women suffer, physically or mentally, as long as it makes things easier for men.

“But what about birth control?” you might ask. “ If a woman can manage to figure out how to get an abortion, surely she can use birth control to avoid unwanted pregnancy, right?”

Great question. Modern birth control for women is possibly the most important invention of the last century, and I’m very grateful for it. It’s also brutal. The side effects for many women include migraines, mood swings, decreased libido, depression, severe cramps, heavy bleeding, aneurysm — and that’s just a small fraction of them.

Discouragingly, a promising study on a new male contraceptive was canceled in large part due to… (wait for it)… side effects. To be clear, this list of side effects was about one-third as long as the known side effects for commonly used women’s contraception. There’s a lot to unpack in that story alone. I’ll simply point out that, as a society, we really don’t mind if women suffer, physically or mentally, as long as it makes things easier for men.

But, men, I’ve got good news. Even with the horrible side effects, women are (amazingly!) very willing to use birth control. Unfortunately, it’s harder to get than it should be, but that doesn’t keep women from trying. Birth control options for women require a doctor’s appointment — sometimes multiple doctor’s appointments — and a prescription. They’re not always free, and often not cheap. Some are actually trying to make female birth control options more expensive by allowing insurance companies to refuse to cover them. In addition, contraceptive options for women can’t be easily acquired at the last minute. In most cases, they don’t work instantly.

The pill requires consistent daily use and doesn’t leave much room for mistakes, forgetfulness, or unexpected disruptions to daily schedules. Again, the side effects can be brutal — and not just in rare cases. Despite the hassle and side effects, I’m still grateful for birth control. (Please don’t take it away.) But it’s critical to understand that women’s birth control isn’t simple or easy.

In contrast, let’s look at birth control for men — i.e., condoms. They’re readily available at all hours, inexpensive, convenient, and don’t require a prescription. They’re effective and work on demand, instantly. They don’t cause aneurysms, mood swings, or debilitating cramps. Men can keep them stocked up just in case, so they’re always prepared. They can be easily used at the last minute. I mean, condoms are magic! So much easier than birth control options for women.

As a bonus, most women are totally on board with condoms. They keep us from getting STDs. They don’t lessen our pleasure during sex or prevent us from climaxing. The best part? Cleanup is so much easier — no waddling to the toilet as jizz drips down our legs.

So why would there ever be unwanted pregnancies? Why don’t men just use condoms every time they have sex? Seems so simple, right?

Oh. I remember. Men don’t love condoms. In fact, it’s very, very common for men to pressure women to have sex without a condom. It’s also not unheard of for men to remove the condom during sex without the women’s permission or knowledge. (Pro tip: That’s assault.)

Why would men want to have sex without a condom? Because, for the precious minutes when they’re penetrating their partner, not wearing a condom gives them more pleasure. So… that would mean some men are willing to risk getting a woman pregnant — which means literally risking her life, her health, her social status, her relationships, and her career — so they can experience a few minutes of slightly increased pleasure. Is this for real?

Yes. Yes, it is.

Pregnancies happen when men have an orgasm. Unwanted pregnancies happen when men orgasm irresponsibly.

Imagine a pleasure scale, with pain beginning at zero and going down into the negatives. A good back-scratch falls at 5, and an orgasm without a condom is a 10. Where would sex with a condom fall? A 7 or 8? So, it’s not that sex with a condom is not pleasurable, it’s just not as pleasurable. An 8 instead of a 10.

Let me emphasize that again: Men regularly choose to put women at massive risk in order to experience a few minutes of slightly increased pleasure.

For the truly condom-averse, men also have a non-condom, always-ready birth control option built right in: the pull-out. It doesn’t protect against STDs, it’s an easy joke, and it’s far from perfect. However, it’s 96% effective if done correctly, and 78% effective in practice (because it’s often not done correctly).

Still, many men who resist wearing condoms never learn how to pull out correctly. Apparently, it’s slightly more pleasurable to climax inside a vagina than, say, on their partner’s stomach. Once again, men are willing to risk the life, health, and well-being of women in order to experience a tiny bit more pleasure for roughly five seconds during orgasm.

Think of the choice men are making here. Honestly, I’m not as mad as I should be about this, because we’ve trained men from birth to disassociate sex and pregnancy. We’ve taught them that their pleasure is of utmost importance.

As a general rule, men get women pregnant by having an orgasm. Yes, there are exceptions — it’s possible for sperm to show up in pre-ejaculate — but in most cases, getting a woman pregnant is a pleasurable act for men. But men can get a woman pregnant without her feeling any pleasure at all. It’s even possible for a man to impregnate a woman while causing her excruciating pain, trauma, or horror.

In contrast, a woman can have nonstop orgasms with or without a partner and never once get herself pregnant. A woman’s orgasm has literally nothing to do with pregnancy or fertility — her clitoris exists simply for pleasure, not for creating new humans. No matter how many orgasms she has, they won’t make her pregnant.

Pregnancies happen when men have an orgasm. Unwanted pregnancies happen when men orgasm irresponsibly.

A woman can be the sluttiest slut in the entire world, she can love having orgasms all day and all night long, and she will never find herself with an unwanted pregnancy unless a man shows up and ejaculates irresponsibly. Though our society tends to villainize female pleasure, women’s enjoyment of sex does not equal unwanted pregnancy and abortion. Men’s enjoyment of sex and irresponsible ejaculations do.

Let’s move to the topic of responsibility. Often, men don’t know, don’t ask, and don’t think to ask if they’ve caused a pregnancy. There are often zero consequences for men who cause unwanted pregnancies.

If the woman decides to have an abortion, the man may never even know he caused an unwanted pregnancy with his irresponsible ejaculation. If the woman decides to have the baby, or put the baby up for adoption, the man may never know he caused an unwanted pregnancy with his irresponsible ejaculation either. He may never know there’s now a child walking around with 50% of his DNA.

If the woman does tell him he caused an unwanted pregnancy and that she’s having the baby, the closest thing to a consequence for him is child support. Our current child support system is a well-known joke. Only about 61 percent of required payments by men are actually made, and there are little to no repercussions for skipping out. In some states, failing to pay child support doesn’t even affect your credit.

If a man does pay child support, it doesn’t come close to what is required by a woman in the case of an unwanted pregnancy.

Let’s talk about abortion. When the topic comes up, men might think: Abortion is horrible; women should not have abortions. Never once do they consider the man who caused the unwanted pregnancy.

If you actually care about reducing or eliminating the number of abortions in our country, simply hold men accountable for their actions.

If we’re discussing abortion law — and not how to hold men accountable for irresponsible ejaculations, and the unwanted pregnancies caused by them — we’re wasting our time. Shift the conversation. Stop protesting at clinics. Stop shaming women. Stop debating whether or not to overturn abortion laws. If you actually care about reducing or eliminating the number of abortions in our country, simply hold men accountable for their actions.

What would that look like? A real and immediate consequence for men who cause an unwanted pregnancy. What kind of consequence would make sense? Should it be as harsh, painful, nauseating, scarring, expensive, risky, and life-altering…

… as forcing a woman to go through a nine-month unwanted pregnancy?

If you consider abortion to be murder, consider this thought experiment: Would you be on board with having a handful of men castrated to prevent 600,000 murders each year? If this argument sounds too provocative, could it be that many of us have a hard time wrapping our heads around a physical punishment for men? We seem to be more than fine with physical punishments for women. Perhaps we care more about policing women’s bodies, morality, and sexuality than we do about reducing or eliminating abortions.

Here’s another prevention idea: All males in the U.S. could get a vasectomy when they are ready to be sexually active. Vasectomies are very safe, highly reversible, and about as invasive as a woman getting an IUD implanted. In most cases, there’s some soreness afterwards for about 24 hours, but that’s pretty much it for side effects. (Take a moment to remember that female contraception options, used by millions of women in our country and billions across the world, have well-known side effects which can be brutal and severe — and yes, also include soreness.) If and when a man becomes a responsible adult, finds a mate, and wants to have a baby, the vasectomy can be reversed and then redone once the childbearing stage is over. Each man can bank their sperm before the vasectomy, just in case.

Don’t like my ideas? That’s fine. I’m sure there are better ideas, and I challenge you to suggest your own. My point is we need to stop focusing on women if we’re trying to get rid of abortions. Think of abortion as the “cure” for an unwanted pregnancy. To stop abortions, we need to prevent the “disease” — meaning, the unwanted pregnancy itself. And the only way to do that is by focusing on men, because irresponsible ejaculations by men cause 100% of unwanted pregnancy.

Ask yourselves: What would it take for you to value the life of your sexual partner more than your own temporary pleasure or convenience?

If you’re a man, what would it take for you to never again ejaculate irresponsibly? A loss of money, rights, or freedoms? Physical pain? Ask yourselves: What would it take for you to value the life of your sexual partner more than your own temporary pleasure or convenience?

Men mostly run our government, and men mostly make our laws. In theory, men could eliminate — or drastically reduce — abortions within months without ever touching an abortion law or even mentioning women. They’d simply need to hold men accountable for irresponsible ejaculations, and legislate accordingly.

To reduce or eliminate abortions, stop attempting to control women’s bodies and sexuality. Because unwanted pregnancies are caused by men.

#abortion #pregnant #pregnancy

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unproduciblesmackdown · 3 years

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I just want to say I am absolutely obsessed w all your sincerely me posts. You do such a good job breaking them down and identifying all the little details that go into that scene as well as analyzing what they mean about Jared and Evan separately and ofc their relationship as a whole. Wonderful stuff! Also the compilation of Will doing The Laugh added 10 years to my life so thank u

oh thank you lmao i always enjoy people enjoying those posts, and there’s always so much to dig into with that scene, but i think plenty of times i think people can just sort of let the scene wash over as a “oh, the point of this is just that it’s fun” sort of surface level, very straightforward element of the show, and part of the point surely is that it Is fun, but everything about this song is about evan and jared’s interaction / dynamic / relationship here, and the levity and humor doesn’t mean there’s nothing here to Take Seriously, which is certainly true re: jared in general, rather than him being Jokes Boy with no real feelings or anything (i know i’m already preaching to the choir here with all this “here’s what sincerely me is Really About / what deserves more appreciation re: jared” lmao but the ted talks just Occur)

like, here’s the high point of the whole show for jared, and this moment with evan which is so enjoyable and satisfying that he’s going to keep hanging on to evan’s runaway train in the hopes of getting more of this, particularly in act 2 where that’s truly like 100% of his motivation (vs that in act 1 he’s at least also having some degree of an earnest response to the idea behind tcp along with evan and alana, even if it’s still plenty about doing this With Evan) and like, it’s especially a tragedy re: the album where you Only get jared’s vocals, & have less of his dialogue, so it’s easier to forget he’s there or what his part in this is and that, you know, this wouldn’t be a song if it wasn’t about His And Evan’s relationship, and it’s like 98% the case that “connor” in this song just Is jared

and that yeah like we’ve been recently posting lol how there’s actually really just these endless Layers to this material, a mille feuille of Relationship Analysis that’s getting folded over again and again, where it’s jared and evan for real, but pretending to be other people, and making things up, but trying to make it seem Real, and both taking the other’s feedback into their own writing / working off of the other’s contributions, and evan could be seeing “connor” through the lens of what little he knows about actual connor, or projecting himself onto someone he realizes was similar to him in ways, or being informed about Friendship via his own relationship with / perception of jared, who’s in a similar position here re: what’s behind his Inspiration or Interpretation, which roles are Him, or Evan, or ostensibly connor, and what all projection or wish fulfillment or Interpreting is going on around here, not to mention that these two Real People’s Real Dynamic is unfolding right in front of us and is very directly what’s going Into these created emails (which do, apparently, seem like the record of an amazing friendship according to cynthia and then like, a bunch of other people) because this whole writing session is this collaborative back and forth which wouldn’t be happening in the first place if evan didn’t turn to jared for input/help with anything and if jared didn’t want to be involved in evan’s life and be someone evan Wants to seek out like this and you know, how delighted jared is to have evan’s attention, even if as he starts giving evan what he’s actually after here, evan’s attention seemingly shifts over to “connor,” even though that’s jared.....still not a direct Win for jared there, see: him in the reprise, trying to put a “jared” into the story as well, since evan’s invented relationship with jared!connor isn’t actually translating into evan being closer / more interested in actual jared....what about jared!jared......now i’m even thinking about jared getting that highest note harmony at the end of sincerely me.....pay attention to Him

thinking allllllways about how jared completely invents the chorus himself, expecting evan to approve, and with no input from evan, just that Approval, and it comes on the heels of also-approved writing for connor about Trying To Be More....Nice.....i’ll turn it around, wait and see...........just about to lie down about the fact that this, on top of what evan’s already made up in for forever, is about trying to make this Hopeful story, because that’s what evan wants for himself, and what he thinks cynthia would find comforting re: connor, and here’s jared like, okay, so your Supposed relationship didn’t look that warm & amazing from the outside, but how about if it just had a lot of Potential, like, HMM!!! lots to consider there!! but then Oof at the fact inevitably the story falls apart and so does jared’s hopes for his relationship with evan, even though like, connor died & never had that friendship with evan, & jared is probably still alive & Did have a connection with him & is presumably still out there, able to be talked to, maybe try reinventing and giving things attention, you know

just that Yeah lmao the tl;dr here is people mostly going like wow lol what a fun song, &/or a gay song, & it’s like, well sure but for one thing, all of that is completely due to Jared & his and evan’s dynamic & relationship, but that once you realize that that’s what the song is actually about, there’s just so much to consider and analyze in what might otherwise be overlooked as a song that has nothing to to say besides what’s most straightforwardly there, even though, you know, these are characters who have so much trouble saying what they mean or feel or want, but who are able to Reveal more about themselves in that way through this pretense/artifice which is sort of displacing their usual defense mechanisms. been Thinking About It many times and i’m still pondering aspects of it afresh / having new Insights, and anyone else can be too lmao, lots going on here & lots to say based on what anyone’s experienced / taken note of.....wtaw is of course v different as a song, more outright dramatic & desperate, whereas sincerely me is presented as more comedic & light, and it Is these two friends having some fun here rather than the protagonist having this crisis before homeroom at the start of the show, but here sincerely me is as another song about Trying and Wanting and some hopefulness that has to remain ultimately inconclusive, because connor still died.....lots going on, of course the tone is different b/c jared is a part of it, but people also completely overlook Other moments as jared you know, not having as genuine or deep or real Feelings as evan b/c jared’s front involves acting unbothered and being clever and funny, but obviously that doesn’t mean his feelings aren’t there and there aren’t stakes to them, and just because this song involving jared just seems lighthearted and unserious doesn’t mean that again, things aren’t Real and Important for jared.....augh

and yes lmfao the laugh is very good, i’m glad to compile it for our health

#bemoresochill #deh #kleinsen

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sirloozelite · 3 years

Text

Oh no! I’ve been tagged with a series of questions by @minniethemoocherda! Thanks for asking friend! XD

Why did you choose your url?

Long story short, it’s a variation of a nickname I used to use back in the day for family game nights. We used to play things like Cluedo and Risk. Good times.

Any side blogs? If you have them, name them and why do you have them?

Nah. No side blogs. Just this rubbish one. XD

How long have you been of Tumblr?

According to my archive of posts, July 2019 is when I started.

Do you have a queue tag?

I don’t no. I just post/reblog on a whim when I see something I like.

Why did you start your blog?

Mainly as a way to interact with anyone who wanted to know stuff about my fanfics in an easier fashion than replies on AO3 and Fanfic.net. Thought it’s evolved since then.

Why did you choose your icon/pep?

Previously it was Harbinger from Mass Effect... because I liked to destroy planets and harvest organic life whilst taunting them. XD I recently changed it to a ‘surprised face’ Thel Vadam though... cause I fancied a change and he’s my fav character of all time.

Why did you choose your header?

I’m not even sure I have a header! XD

What’s your post with the most notes?

I honestly don’t know... and to be fair the vast majority of my notes are usually me bantering back and forth with some mutuals, so the don’t really count.

How much mutuals do you have?

I have a few I interact with regularly. Though 9 times out of 10 they end up giving me a headache and winding me up... and I’m almost certain they enjoying doing it. (you know who you are! XD) No bad blood though. It’s all good fun... mostly. :)

How many Followers do you have?

100 apparently. Not sure how many of those are genuine but hey. Thanks anyways I guess. :)

How many people do you follow?

Um... 18. -_- I generally only follow people back if they chat with me a bit or are good friends. Otherwise my timeline gets a bit messy. XD

Have you ever make a shitpost?

Oh yeah! Anything Galaxy-8 related is not to be taken seriously and is pretty much the dictionary definition of ‘shitpost’. As are the meme wars... mostly.

How often do you use tumblr each day?

Pretty much. I have no life and no real friends after all. XD

Did you ever have a fight/argument with another blog once? Who won?

Yes... and again they know who they are and I’m still sorry and ashamed about it. No one won that day.

How do you feel about “you need to reblog this” post?

You mean the ‘reblog this and you’ll get good luck’ or the ‘reblog this or you’ll die’ posts? I like to tempt fate and see what happens for the lolz. So no... I don’t generally reblog them. I do read them though. XD

Do you like tag games?

Sure! As long as they aren’t too personal.

Do you like ask me games?

Again, yeah, as long as they don’t invade my privacy. Can’t let you lot know about my plans for world domination after all. ... oops!

Which of mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?

I’ve no clue myself. I try not to think about that, lest I be worried about their ‘famous status’ going to their head.

Do you have a crush on a mutual?

I mean... I’ve not even met any of them in real life (does such a thing even exist?)! For all I know they could be a Dalek in disguise... or a mass murderer... or something else! XD

Anyways, before this gets any more awkward... thanks again for the tag @minniethemoocherda. Appreciate it. :) I won’t tag anyone directly, as this is a rather personal set of asks, but I’ll open the floor to anyone who sees it and wants to partake as well. :)

#ask sirloozelite #tag game

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djgamek1ng · 3 years

Text

My thoughts about the Endwalker/6.0 announcement stream

I had originally posted this on Twitter in a TwitLonger tweet, but I’ll also put it here. This also contains the follow up “thread” about the pure healer/barrier healer balancing (which is at the end, so if you are only interested in that, skip to where it starts with “So... I was”). OKAY, SO I'M REALLY DAMNED HYPED ABOUT THIS EXPANSION. I'm going to go point by point for things they talked about, in as much of the order they talked about things. - The trailer is really freaking cool! Personally, it is arguably my favorite trailer now and we haven't gotten the full version, though depending on the full version the Shadowbringers trailer might still win it out. The music is great, bit less rocking than the Shadowbringers one, but still fantastic. The WoL as a PLD is everything I've ever wanted from this game. It is also a FF4 reference with Cecil going from a Dark Knight to a Paladin. Seeing the twins in CG finally is also amazing. Endwalker, great freaking name ruined by its unfortunate abbreviation: EW. - Okay, so the new jobs. One is a melee DPS. Honestly, didn't expect that. Was expecting a caster, but this does silence the whole "they are going to balance the choices to be 4 each and then we might no longer get any jooooobs!!!!11!" discussion that I've seen happen, so honestly I'm okay with this. The other is our new healer, Sage. Alphinaud also job changed to it, so that is nice. - Specifically, about Sage, they made it a barrier/shield healer and will be shifting over AST to be a "pure" (regen) healer. The actions they showed look cool enough, but it is hard to judge. It is also very very very interesting that they are looking to make the raid finder actually distinguish between barrier healers (so Sage and SCH) and pure healers (WHM and AST). I will get to this point in another post, since I think it is very interesting that they are doing this. - 6.0 being the end of the major Hydaelyn vs Zodiark arc. VERY interesting that it is specifically 6.0 that is going to be the end of that and not 6.3, makes me think that 6.0 is going to be a slightly bigger patch than normal expansion launch patches in terms of story. - Higher level cap! ...I'm only mentioning it because they did. Okay, to be fair, we do see some of the new AFs and DRK's looks great, WHM's looks good, SAM's is awesome and BLM's is nice. - Finally going to Thavnair and Garlemald. Bit of a shame we are only going to Garlemald when it has been entirely destroyed, but it was to be expected I guess lol. Oh, also, new beast tribe. Matanga, the big elephant people. They look pretty cool and I'm honestly intimidated by them as a Lalafell ^-^" - Anima confirmed! Is it going to be a Terminus beast similar to the enemies we saw in the Amaurot dungeon, just as a trial instead? If so, that is really really cool. Regardless, a long overdue enemy to see arrive here! - "Challenging" new dungeons. I'm... sorry to be skeptical, but I'm guessing these are not going to be that challenging. I really hope I'm wrong and that they will provide a decent challenge, but I just doubt it. The art does look pretty though! - New 8 man raids, the Pandaemonium raids. Ascian inspired with Lahabrea of all of them being the one we supposedly see in the art. Very very interesting and I'm glad that they are moving to more FFXIV original stuff, though Pandaemonium isn't a new thing in the FF series for sure. - New 24 man raid series. Not title said, just said that it will be FFXIV original. All I gotta say: thank GOD. Sorry to all Nier fans, but I just could not care about Yorha: Dark Apocalypse. It very much feels like it is the continuation of NieR: Automata in FFXIV with little to no relevance for the FFXIV side of things (such as world building as such). Hoping the 5.5 one can make me feel different though. - New small scale PvP mode. Apparently going to be approachable by casuals? Seems like a good direction for FFXIV's PvP at the moment, since you currently need too many people to have a PvP match. - Role quests are returning. Also, ranged is now split up into physical ranged and casters. I'm... divided on this. If it means again only 1 job quest at the level cap, that is going to be disappointing tbh. If it doesn't, then I will be very glad. Also gatherer and crafting quests... uh... *stares at him only having one of each unlocked and neither are even at level 50*. Also, WAR, MNK and RDM AF art. WAR looks pretty good, MNK looks nice and RDM looks pretty neat! - Estinien in the trust system. Yup, that makes perfect sense since Estinien is basically a honorary member of the Scions at this point. Also since we have no more melee DPS in that spot, since Ryne isn't with us anymore. I will miss Ryne in the MSQ. Hopefully they have more quests for us on the First that involve her :( - Island Sanctuary. Stardew Valley FFXIV edition? I mean, I'm down for it. Especially if we can customize the place. If I'm able to get a training dummy there and teleport to that place, it will basically just be my new house and I might actually consider getting my current house demolished. - As literally everyone expected, Ishgard housing. Makes perfect sense after the Ishgard Restoration. Not personally jumping on it, as I remember the bloodbath that was Shirogane housing *shudders* - Stat squish. I'm perfectly fine with this, since smaller numbers feel more impactful for me. I'm 100% a person that sees a 61389 damage Confiteor crit and just feels nothing towards the 3 numbers on the right. They mean nothing. Smaller numbers makes smaller increases more substantial - Removing belts. Nomura's worst nightmare... Honestly, I'm just glad about the extra inventory space for main weapons arms and rings. That is the good stuff! :) - Data center travel. UH. How in the heck is this going to work? Is it only in the regions or can I go from Chaos to Primal, for example? If the latter, that is amazing and removes the need to have alts for friends in other datacenters by quite a bit! - PS5 version. Yeah, that makes sense. - Digital Fan Fest 15th and 16th of May (14th and 15th for the NA folks). Looking forward to it and to seeing the new melee DPS job being revealed! Plus a live concert by the Primals is sick! So... I was gonna make a post about the whole barrier healer/pure healer thing and how that is weird compared to what they did with tanks in ShB and how it might impact tanks in End (I don't like EW as acronym), but an interview happened and they have already confirmed tanks are not getting balanced for main tank/off tank. So I'll just sum up what I had about healers: it is a very interesting direction that I honestly think is more healthy for the game. It diversifies and focuses the healers into their type of healing, a problem AST had since it came out, where the only pieces of identity it had were its cards and the fact it could be a WHM-lite or a SCH-lite, where the second part isn't really an identity. It also confirmed that the healers aren't getting split in 2 categories in the game (like the DPS are split between melee, physical ranged and magical ranged). Just for balancing, which is good since queues would otherwise be a pain for no real reason. Also, he confirmed that content will be easier with one pure healer and barrier healer, not required.

TL;DR: I think this is a change for the better. AST will (hopefully) get a real identity outside of “it can be either like WHM or like SCH!” and their cards.

#FFXIV #ffxiv endwalker #ffxiv 6.0 #just my thoughts

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the-overgrowth · 4 years

Text

Retrospective: “Faybane” #1

This is where it all started, on July 8th, 2016. Although probably a bit earlier than that, but this is the earliest thing I can find that’s actually written down, so that’s what counts. And back in the day I didn’t let ideas marinate the way I do now, I just started writing pretty much as soon as I got the idea.

Anyway, the document was created at this point in time according to Google Docs, and was last modified in October 3rd, 2016. It’s only 3 chapters long, plus one incomplete fourth chapter, and the whole thing is about 17k words.

Which is a lot for 3 chapters. I would say something about how I’m less wordy now, but the latest draft is like 107k words long, so, like, I will always struggle with shutting the fuck up, methinks.

Also, the reason this is called “Faybane” is because that was the working title I used, and the name of this document. I thought it’d be the proper title but like. It’s bad lmao.

Anywhomst, let’s get into it!

Some background info for those who are new or need a refresher: this WIP became a thing after I read and was disappointed by A Court of Thorns and Roses by SJM, as well as The Iron King by Julie Kagawa and some book by Holly Black, was it Tithe?

ACOTAR was the biggest culprit. I feel that this is important to keep in mind as we go through this mess.

We open on Sidra in the forest with a bunch of men she calls a hunting party. It’s clear she doesn’t want to be there, but since she’s the only decent hunter among them and it’s her sister’s wedding today, she has to make the kill to feed the people attending said wedding.

This is, as the kids say, big stupid, and seems like a very ill-prepared celebration? I guess it makes some sense for them to want fresh meat, but this fresh? What if they didn’t find anything? What if they didn’t manage to kill anything? Is the whole thing cancelled? Stupid.

We find out they’ve been hunting a boar and that this dude named Liam, our Gaston replacement, previously wounded the animal but didn’t kill it, causing it to flee and force the hunting party to follow. It’s up to Sidra to make the killing blow, which she does with an arrow straight into its head. This was back when Sidra was still YA Heroine Extraordinaire and the time period was Vaguely Medieval, I guess.

They begin taking their quarry back home and Sidra thinks about how she normally doesn’t hunt this close to the “Faewilds” because animals closer to the border are said to be bigger and more violent. There isn’t an actual border, people just had to rely on intuition and not wander too far into the forest.

She also mentions a girl named Wilda, who disappeared fairly recently and everyone suspects it was the fae. This isn’t relevant now, but Wilda will return in later drafts, I think.

Everybody, especially my family, knew that I was one of the best archers in town, whether I used a bow or a crossbow.

Shut up, Not!Feyre. Nobody likes you.

I should mention that at this point I didn’t bother googling how big wild boars get and just assumed they were the size of like, a thick medium dog. Which is, if you know how big boars are, very incorrect. Four men pulling the animal seems realistic enough, but then Liam just lifts it up on his own? Not buying it.

Sidra laments how much she hates Liam and we find out that he apparently tried to assault her and she stabbed him? And apparently she’s not happy about his marriage to Sinéad but can’t do anything about it because “Father’s word is law” and Sinéad herself laughed it off when Sidra tried to warn her?

Yeah, gonna call bullshit on that one. No idea why this was here or what purpose it serves, the reason Liam doesn’t exist in the latest draft is because I never figured out what his purpose was so I axed him entirely.

Current!Sidra would just kill him the moment he showed an interest in Sinéad, and Current!Sinéad would 100% believe her sister about something like that.

Some bloke named Connor strikes up a conversation with Sidra, seemingly worried about being this far away from human civilization. Liam teases him about it and calls the fae “knife-ears”, because I still had brainrot back then and liked Dragon Age and had zero original ideas in my head.

The men make jokes about having sex with fae women and Sidra seems so disturbed by this that she nocks an arrow. This isn’t the first time she makes references to feeling unsafe around these men, I have no idea why I wrote it this way aside from being edgy, I guess.

My village was mostly populated by men, and even though I wasn’t one of the pretty girls there, I knew these men weren’t picky, even with all their talk about beautiful fae women. I’d heard that fae women would kill their men after sleeping with them. I had no way of know it was true, but a part of me hoped it was and that Liam would some day soon get “lucky” and encounter a female fae, so she could end his misery.

Edgy, dude.

They eventually arrive and Sidra goes inside her house, which is a simple cottage with three rooms. I think her family are all farmers? It’s kind of confusing. She goes into her and Sinéad’s bedroom, where Sinéad is preparing for her wedding. Also, she’s blonde.

“Sid! There you are!” she said cheerily. “Killed a boar, huh? Good on Liam for taking all the credit.”

If you know your man is trash, why are you marrying him?

Apparently Liam seduced Sinéad with sweets and baked goods. I mean ... fair enough. Considering how Sidra complains about being hungry and skinny and going without food if she doesn’t kill the boar because this year’s harvest was minimal, I’m assuming y’all are starving.

We find out Sinéad’s mother doesn’t let her do anything around the house or farm, to preserve her “soft and white” hands and pale complexion so she could be married off easily. This makes zero sense, you’d think these medieval men wouldn’t have the same beauty standards as Victorian England, plus having a mouth to feed that doesn’t even help feeding itself is just nuts.

But remember, this isn’t Sidra, this is Not!Feyre. She needs to be sad and put-upon and a victim. She explains how she was never pretty to begin with and thus nobody considered her to be worthy of marrying off, which then meant she was put to work and became even less attractive because now she was so cool and badass that all the men were intimidated by her.

Yeah, in a village that already doesn’t have a lot of young women? I’m not buying this, lmao. But go off, Not!Feyre.

I’d been the one helping around, instead. Hunting, mostly. Sometimes I’d chop wood or work the farm. Marrying out of the house seemed impossible. Marrying up was practically a dream you forgot upon waking. Had I been pretty from the start there would’ve been a foundation to work from, but I was a lost cause even before my skin became tan and my hands grew veined and calloused. I had freckles which people mistook for mud and dull brown eyes, a long nose that had been broken one time too many and a mouth that made it look like I constantly felt a bad smell no matter what facial expression I made. I’d always been of rather short stature and had brown hair and thick eyebrows, which in combination with everything else made my parents call me their “little goblin”. The scar on my face didn’t help me either: men didn’t like it when their women were more battle-hardened than they were.

Oh god please, don’t go off! We don’t care! Stop going off!

Also what fucking parents call their poor kid a goblin? Yikes.

Sinéad convinces Sidra to get prettied up and Sidra is all “oh I bet all the men will just fall over themselves for my favor now huh” which is just the most annoying fucking thing, prompting Sinéad to respond:

“Well, winter is coming and game is scarce. If they want to survive, marrying the best hunter in the village might be a good bet.”

Yeah! This is correct! I refuse to believe people wouldn’t be into Sidra! Not only does everyone apparently know she’s the best hunter in town, but Sidra herself confirmed the men here outnumber the women and aren’t very picky.

This is fucking stupid. I’m glad I axed it. In my defense, I was very much trying to emulate the YA shit I’d read so far.

Sidra’s grandmother enters the stage. She’s very old in this draft, but otherwise unchanged.

She was a short and wrinkled old lady with extremely bad vision and an even worse grasp on reality. Or maybe an extremely acute grasp on reality, depending on whether you believed her stories or not.

Sidra changes out of the dress again to go out and help her father prepare the boar, all while sulking.

I didn’t envy Sinead, nor any other bride. Despite what most people thought of me, I wasn’t some poor ugly girl longing for the love of a man and the security of marriage. Did I enjoy the idea of having somebody care for me? Sure. But it wasn’t on my list of priorities. I was still trying to figure out what actually was on that list. Not that it mattered. The prospects for a poor village girl were very finite.

Womp womp.

We get some confusing and barely related stuff about Sidra possibly becoming a royal hunter for the king and also about where the village is located in relation to the Faewilds. She speculates that maybe the fae aren’t real, but the way she and everyone else talks about them makes it pretty obvious that they are? This was supposed to build mystery, I guess.

We skip forward to the wedding and Sidra is moping again.

“How are you feeling?” Father asked and squeezed my shoulder.

I wasn’t sure why he was doing that. I assumed it had something to do with the wedding and the fact that despite there being fewer women than men here, I was still not asked to dance. Though this didn’t really bother me, so I just shrugged.

“It doesn’t bother me. Anyway I will continue to mope and feel bitter about this thing that doesn’t bother me.” Hunny ...

At least Current!Sidra has the self-awareness to admit she’s sad and lonely.

[Father’s] marriage to Sinead’s mother was never out of love, more out of necessity. It was easier when you had a big family.

Except for when this “big family” is 3 people who work and 2 people who are just being fed, right? See, I knew back then that having a big family helps when you have a farm, but I also needed to make Sidra Special so Sinéad had to sit on her ass to highlight how pretty and feminine she was or whatnot.

Bleh.

They talk a bit about Sidra’s mother, who passed away five years ago, and Sidra reminisces about how she used to tell amazing stories. It’s all very ... whatever, and serves only to make this point for the hundredth time:

I wasn’t like Mother. I wasn’t full of life and spirit like her. I wasn’t loved and respected by the entire village like her. I was just her disappointing child whose existence they’d rather forget except when they wanted something killed.

Right after this there’s a really abrupt scene transition. Nothing about the wedding coming to an end, nothing about her going to bed, it’s just ... some while later?

Sidra’s father comes back home from ??? and tells Sidra he saw a stag somewhere, but it was hours ago so she better get a move on.

I’m not sure what either of them thinks this will accomplish? Like ... what is she gonna do with it when she kills it ... Carry it home? On her little boney ass? Hmm? I guess I didn’t think of that because I had meta knowledge that she wouldn’t get it home either way, so who cares about logic, right?

Sidra kills two rabbits while stalking the deer, and despite telling us earlier that she doesn’t venture far away from human civilization and the boar hunting being the farthest she’d been and that she wouldn’t go this far alone, she has no issue dwelling very deep into the forest this time.

Like. Henlo? Can we have one logic please and thanks you? Granted, she keeps stopping every now and then to Feel Things Out, but this really goes against how careful she was before and at no point do we get an explanation to her sudden boldness. Plot reasons, I guess.

She nearly stumbles into fae territories and finally decides to head back, except when she starts returning, she sees the stag she’s been tracking. It’s abnormally huge and has a “dark brown” coat that she finds odd, but of course she’s too stupid to connect the dots.

She sneaks up on it and honestly? This chapter ending still slaps.

A scream of pain left the creature and I saw it topple. But though my arrow hit a deer, a man fell to the ground.

DUN DUN DUN.

And yeah, the ACOTAR roots rear their ugly heads again. I liked the idea of the protagonist shooting a fae disguised as an animal, but I decided to cut out the middleman and just have her obliterate Val right in chapter one. Don’t worry, he doesn’t die.

#retrospective #my writing

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afroggyfrog · 3 years

Text

SuperStraight

A brand new sexuality that is trending on twitter and being super popular.

Definition:

A superstraight person is someone attracted to members of the opposite gender who are not transexual.

This was created as a response to people who sometimes say things like this:

(source:BBC)

Let’s give a name to the people who insist that not being attracted to trans people makes you transphobic, since I’m not about to describe them every time i wanna bring them up, I’ll call them trans-incels because just like incels they resent people for not wanting to have sex with them.

It’s worth it to remember that trans-incels aren’t representative of all trans people. or even of a majority of them, if i were to bet, they are about as popular as actual incels.

In all the comment sections I checked the anti trans-incel side was a clear majority, and having searched for “superstraight” on youtube to see what people have to say, the first video on the list, from a trans man, is definetely anti trans-incel .

> If you don’t want to date a trans person that’s fine, and if somebody is trying to force you they’re just an asshole

-probably most trans people

From the perspective of a trans-incel (and how we’re all assuming too much)

Imagine a person.

Imagine the probability that they are racist.

Imagine that same person saying “i wouldn’t date a black person”

Has the probability increased at all? be honest, it hasn’t gone up to 100% (which would be the race-incel response) but it must have gone up by at least a little.

But why did it go up by a little? Because now the chance they’ll say something like “because blacks disgust me” has also gone up.

Now imagine being into internet drama (ew) and as a trans person, you’re especially interested in people being transphobic and you probably see transphobia every day because people like talking about it as much as anti-sjw(tm) people like to talk about the trans-incels.

If discussions about trans people only gets to you when it causes drama you’ll probably never see “i wouldn’t date trans men/women...” without having it be followed by “...because they’re not real men/women”.

And even though the whole point of being superstraight is to explain why people wouldn’t date trans men/women without calling them ‘not real men/women’ lets see what the original guy who started the whole superstraight meme has to say at second 15.

https://youtu.be/z8vQhkPnEE4

It’s like instead of throwing bait, they’re just throwing food.

The more you see “...because they’re not real men/women” the more likely you are to expect it, and as someone who subscribes to people posting drama 24/7 you’ll see that hundreds of times until you end up answering ...

the probability that the person who says ‘i wouldn’t date trans men/women’ to be transphobic is 100%

...and even if they don’t follow up with something transphobic it’s always easier to imagine they’re just hiding it rather than to change your whole worldview on the spot.

And if you think “why do they even predict transphobia before its spoken”, well, this might sound crazy to you, but everyone is assuming things all the time, our whole perception of reality is nothing but a hallucination that our brain comes up with using not only stimulus from the world but also assumptions.

There’s a blind spot on each 1 of your eyes, your brain simply fills it in without you knowing, it also adds color to the edge of your vision and makes the whole thing less blurry.

When someone says “i won’t date trans people” some people will simply fill in the blanks, they’ll assume every bit of info about who you are what you believe in what your personality is from just a sentence, because the brain is literally designed for it.

IQ tests are just patterns where a spot is blanked out and you’re supposed to fill it in, your intelligence is measured by your ability to fill in the blanks, and low intelligence people will just make mistakes more often, but everyone smart or dumb will constantly make assumptions about everything, and dumb people will be proven wrong about their assumptions more often.

And this happens all the time even when you’re not talking about politics or having a fight.

Someone talking about the earth being curved? well, every time I saw someone do that they called it a sphere so let me just fill in the blanks.

Someone saying they wouldn’t date trans women? well, every time I see screenshots of people saying that in my drama facebook group i see them being transphobic, so let me just fill in the blanks

That’s just how incels operate.

Building legitimacy

Have you ever noticed that every sexual preference eventually gets assigned a flag, on that note, why does every country have a flag?

If you ask a regular person to guess why their country has a flag you’ll get something related to aesthetics, our flags represent our country.

For example Romania and Hungary:

In school we are taught that each colour on our flag has a different meaning, I searched on google and everyone disagrees on what they mean but as an example.

Liberty (sky-blue), Justice (field yellow), Fraternity (blood red)

Outside of school I was taught by my grandma that the Hungarian flag, much like the Romanian flag, also has a meaning.

The green represents a wide field of green grass, the white represents a white dog playing on the field of grass, rolling around on his back, and the red represents his red dog cock.

Both of these meanings are pretty much just something that a Romanian randomly came up with so i don’t think most people know why countries have flags.

Flags originate from war, that way the armies know not to attack their own allies when they see they carry the same flag, having an army grants you true legitimacy because you can just beat people up into believing you’re legitimate, so countries with no armies probably still had flags because it would be really hard to pretend you have an army otherwise.

Nowadays every country has a flag even if war is illegal, simply because every country has been using one for so long that it became convention. If you don’t follow convention you will be seen as illegitimate. It’s an unwritten rule, but a rule nonetheless, that you need a flag, and much like not following written rules makes you illegitimate (and illegal) so does not following unwritten rules.

And sexualities having their own flags and names probably feels like an even stronger convention than countries having flags for some people.

It’s very often brought up that you have to feel “valid” (which more or less means “legitimate”)

I still don’t know why, but it’s apparent that people need to be reassured that their sexuality is “valid” and then there’s also this:

Why does a sexual preference have to be distinct from a sexuality? I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure the only difference between the two is legitimacy, to confirm to the conventions of flags and labels.

Q: So why do superstraights get a label and a flag and copy everything that LGBT people do, like tweets talking about how valid their followers are or using the word bigot etc

A: Because to get true legitimacy you need to copy the conventions.

The cargo cult

(wikipedia) Some primitive tribes of people would look at colonists from the civilised world and notice that after they’d built some plane lanes, the planes would come bringing cargo full of valuable stuff.

The tribesmen have made the observation that planes land if you build lanes for them to land on, they made the hypothesis that building the lanes causes the planes to come, and like scientists, they set out to test it.

They made lanes, they made fake planes, they tried to copy everything that the colonists did hoping it would be enough.

Superstraight is a lot like a cargo cult of sexualities, they have a flag, they have a label, they call everyone bigots all the time.

This is the first pic I sent before cropping it.

Because, like a cargo cultist who does not see the plane factories from the colonists homelands, the superstraight person does not see the LGBT community from outside his filter bubble, the filter bubble where only the most obnoxious people like the trans-incels can get through.

So when the superstraight person who thinks every LGBT person is just an obnoxious incel tries to “fit in” with the LGBT, they will act like an obnoxious incel, and when everyone is angry at him, he thinks to himself “they've all proven themselves hypocrites! i baited them so hard! i won!!!”

Even tho there’s a bunch of LGBT people from the comment sections I read who don’t even know the trans-incels even exist, because their filters simply don’t show them the same things you superstraight people are shown.

It gets worse

There’s some people who are so cocky and think they’re so much smarter than the LGBT community that they can just sneak in the nazi SS symbol into their flag and not just fuck up the bait completely.

hehe Schutzstaffel fla- wait! you cant call me a nazi! this is just another sexuality you hypocriteeeee

But this is also just a minority of the people who get superstraight trending, its so popular that I’m pretty sure most of the people getting it to trend are actual normies who wouldn’t even recognise the SS symbol and who have never been to 4chan.

Speaking of 4chan

Of course people don’t think superstraight is legitimate when you have 4chan taking credit for it.

They pick up on all the superficial customs like the flag the label the speech patterns and think “this is their, logic, im using it against them, and they’re all mad because of this alone and not just because a we’re comparing ourselves to the Schutzstaffel”

In a turing test a computer attempts to pass as a human.

In the ideological turing test a human tries to pass as someone of a different ideology.

Are people afraid of passing the ideological turing test? do they think if they can think like the enemy, then they’ll become the enemy? there was no need for people on 4chan to talk so openly about superstraight being a ruse, there was no need to make nazi memes with it, there is no need to post “we used their logic against them”, to constantly tell “yes this is all a lie”.

And yet people have to constantly break character and expose superstraight for being a fake sexuality, why? what’s even the point of it then?

What it could have been

Imagine a world in which instead of making a cargo cult sexuality and just delegitimizing it yourself with all the actual nazi symbolism, you were able to cancel trans-incels.

Imagine if they were able to say things like “the trans-incels are trying to create a new rape culture in which superstraight people are coerced into having sex with transexual people” with a straight face

Imagine if they even tried to coin the term “trans-incels”, since incels are hated by progressives for misogyny and are often associated with 4chan.

Imagine if they could get people banned for hate-speech against the superstraight

Imagine if they had the balls to denounce the people amongst them trying to delegitimise superstraight with their nazi SS and obvious parodying of the points that aren’t taken seriously by anyone who doesn’t call themselves anti-sjw.

Maybe then there’d be some divide between “pro-superstraight” and “anti-superstraight” instead of everyone who’s not anti-trans agreeing that superstraights aren’t legit.

Maybe they’d be able to get some people canceled, there’s been at least one actual celebrity (India Willoughby) who is a trans-incel, they could have canceled her! but nobody is even trying.

And oh how much “applying their own logic against them” would have been true if as a response to “but not all trans people are calling you transphobic for having a sexual preference!” you dusted off the “not all men are like that” memes that was popular with feminists.

If they would go on the offensive, cancelling people, spreading trans-incel screenshots to everyone who says they’ve never seen one, mocking people who stand up against them the way feminists used to and say “nOt aLl TrANs pEopLe aRE liKE THat” to anyone who says “not all trans people are like that”, to tell them that “silence is violence” and to make them cancel eachother.

Imagine how much more effective that would have been.

In the end this isn’t gonna make a difference, it will be forgotten, maybe in a couple months, or a year, or a week, some people are angry today because a counterculture hashtag is trending, but they’ll forget about it too, maybe a couple dozen people will permanently have superstraight on their twitter bios, but really, nothing interesting is gonna come out of it, and if someone tries to make something like whitesexual/blacksexual/asiansexual etc a thing the well will have already been poisoned by superstraight.

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badlydrawnmanic · 4 years

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time for episode 5 because i’m bored as heck

• just thoughts during the theme song but i wish we got to see more of aleena • the extras in this opening scene look passable for mobians which is a surprise • sleet explains something to dingo while looking directly into the camera

• WHAT IS THIS CATERPILLAR DOG THING UGH • it’s a legal requirement for thief children to have wack hair • kjsdgsd max snapped • i think i remember some people shipping manic with this kid • what animal are any of these characters supposed to be • that bungee jump thing makes no sense at all which is terrible • who gave sonic a drivers liscence • sonic your whole thing is to help people and then some poor kid comes in your van like “help me” and you’re like “why should i” what is the truth • shit dude that van turns on a dime • nobody in this show knows how to drive do they • this little goblin dude juggling is kinda cute, his design ain’t bad. weird colors but that’s a given • what sleet turns dingo into reminds me of the koopalings right down to the voice • is manic older than max or does he just say “little bro” because max looks even shorter than manic does • manic: stealing’s wrong max:

• max brings up a good point about like... how are they gonna survive without money from the shit they stole • i think i redesigned max at one point? i think i made him a xoloitzcuintli (those weird mexican hairless dogs)

• OH I DID, this was back when i mainly did lineless art (it was easier doing art like this rather than lined art with a mouse, i haven’t tried this style with my drawing tablet yet), i really like what i did here skjdgs small boy • there’s two background characters with names, there’s a girl named allegra with a huge nose and some pig looking gremlin critter named clifton, i think that’s interesting • is it like a cultural thing for all the thieves to have earrings or did the character designers just go “yeah only punks have piercings” • sonia’s being really mean about their music for no reason when it doesn’t sound awful, just let these kids play their accordions and violins in peace dude • manic is a gross boy and spits all over this girl to show off one of his little tricks, disgusting • the headcanons about dingo involved something about this episode i think, i’d have to go digging through dms to remember tho • there’s this bird character between allegra and clifton who looks depressed as shit • sleet looks ugly enough to be a passable spore creature and i might just try that if i have to look at his nasty face any longer • i understand what manic means when he’s like “haha this whole thing reminds me of when i was little and stole shit all the time” because i was a little kleptomaniac when i was a kid and like... getting away with it is fun as shit. of course i feel bad now but like... hey i get it • for once the siblings yelling out of surprise has some energy to it, though i wish it was less like “oh aah” and more like... y’know, actual startled sounds, it’s not super convincing • sleet is standing there with his gaping maw wide open pointing in one direction with no animation like a statue and it’s weird • swatbots are on the same level of aiming as storm troopers • what even are these lasers? are they lethal?? do they hurt??? i don’t think anyone’s gotten hit from what i remember so like what’s the danger • sonic just fucking... vaccums up all these children with wind from running, he’s gonna hurt someone, he’s so damn reckless • WHERE’D THEY GO • the little animation where manic takes out his drums doesn’t look half bad! it’s a pleasant surprise when bits of animation are higher quality than normal

• after saying that i realized his gloves disappeared in the shot i was just praising sndkgjds • how was the production of this show? did they color digitally or was this still in the time of hand-drawn animation cells? i wonder how rushed production was • is “amigas” proper spanish? [googling] yes it is nevermind spanish class as a required class was pointless apparently because i don’t remember jack shit from it • dingo you aren’t allowed to steal the “main man” title from manic (my nickname in our discord server was “my main man, manic” for the longest time sjkdgbs)

• it’s kinda neat seeing where all these pics my boyfriend gave me when i was looking for refs came from • i’ve thought that a song was gonna play tiwce now so now i’m wondering when it’ll come in and if it’ll be plot relevant • bummer majores • i get the point of “aw man i can’t believe you have to give all this money to robotnik because he’s evil and demands taxes” but hey either tax the rich or eat them dude • this old man’s outfit is horrendous • sonic and sonia just hid behind behind a thing hanging on the wall and that just wouldn’t work • manic and max both like drums... ;v; • why are manic and dingo just throwing glass bottles and shit back and forth at each other, is this a game • DINGO YOU HURT THE BOY • god what are these masks • SONG TIME • again, manic’s just talking in the middle of the song, and i get it’s for plot but the visuals are, again, sickeningly distracting, i can’t tell what’s happening • how does nobody notice the drummers changing place in the middle of the performance? how is there not a gap in the drum/cymbal beats? • these poor children, wow dingo • it’s really sweet that this old man helped the thief kids find parents and homes to go back to, that’s very nice • manic has one (1) coin and everyone takes that as evidence that he robbed the old man of all his money when that also doesn’t make sense, yes he took it from the vault thing but he didn’t take the whole thing? • why does manic just let the robot handcuff him, i know he feels guilty but like he isn’t an idiot, he knows what’ll happen if he does that so why does he??? • why do sonic and sonia immediately believe what sleet says about manic, shouldn’t they be on guard whenever this fuck’s around and have some suspension of belief here • this man went from 0 to 100 real quick huh • SONG TIME??? • i forgot that the song already happened because of my confusion during the sequence and now i feel like an idiot • anyway the song was like a 5.5/10, it has the energy i think they were going for and it doesn’t sound awful, it’s a little better than alright, though i wish the scene was more coherent and easy to follow • sonia’s classist as hell damn • sonic’s faith in manic being honest is nice to see • the thief children didn’t get their homes after this?? i’m upset • two bros laughing manically in the sewer in front of a very small crowd of children, as you do • manic talking to himself in jail kinda reminds me of movie!sonic but like... slower and less interesting, also why do they just throw him in jail? doesn’t robotnik roboticize everyone? • that one kid dares to look in max’s direction and he’s like ShShHhH like your hushing is gonna get you caught dude not that kid • MAX IS THROWING METAL THINGS IN THE BACKGROUND WHY??? YOU WERE SHUSHING THAT KID FOR SAYING NOTHING • max should be like... directly in sleet’s line of sight rn • of course they gotta very clearly explain the plot directly to the audience • everyone’s so shitty to these poor kids, damn • you’d think that huge laser blast would have injured manic in the process of blowing a hole in the wall • why’s sonia so concerned about the police chasing them? aren’t the police chasing them all the time? • manic nyooms again when he gets out of the van • these robots aren’t observant at all are they • for once, reusing animation makes sense • yay the poor kids get homes now • as nice as this ending is, it isn’t easy to kick bad habits like thievery, especially when it’s like... part of your nature at that point? it’s odd

• god the perspective • also, this is exactly why i give everyone on this blog extended muzzles and more clear divides between their eyes when they’re looking to the side, otherwise they look cursed • IT’S TIME TO JUICE AND JAM

#sonic underground #not an ask #ooc #sonic underground rewatch!

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intersectionalism · 5 years

Photo

By Gabrielle Blair

Today, I tried something new. I wrote a Twitter thread for the first time. It’s about abortion, and how I think we need to approach the topic differently. I thought I’d share it here, because I know many of you don’t use Twitter.

So here’s the thread, broken up into small Tweet-size pieces. : )

I’m a mother of six, and a Mormon. I have a good understanding of arguments surrounding abortion, religious and otherwise. I’ve been listening to men grandstand about women’s reproductive rights, and I’m convinced men actually have zero interest in stopping abortion. Here’s why…

If you want to stop abortion, you need to prevent unwanted pregnancies. And men are 100% responsible for unwanted pregnancies. No for real, they are. Perhaps you are thinking: IT TAKES TWO! And yes, it does take two for _intentional_ pregnancies.

But ALL unwanted pregnancies are caused by the irresponsible ejaculations of men. Period. Don’t believe me? Let me walk you through it. Let’s start with this: women can only get pregnant about 2 days each month. And that’s for a limited number of years.

That makes 24 days a year a women might get pregnant. But men can _cause_ pregnancy 365 days a year. In fact, if you’re a man who ejaculates multiple times a day, you could cause multiple pregnancies daily. In theory a man could cause 1000+ unwanted pregnancies in just one year.

And though their sperm gets crappier as they age, men can cause unwanted pregnancies from puberty till death. So just starting with basic biology + the calendar it’s easy to see men are the issue here.

But what about birth control? If a woman doesn’t want to risk an unwanted pregnancy, why wouldn’t she just use birth control? If a women can manage to figure out how to get an abortion, surely she can get birth control, right? Great questions.

Modern birth control is possibly the greatest invention of the last century, and I am very grateful for it. It’s also brutal. The side effects for many women are ridiculously harmful. So ridiculous, that when an oral contraception for men was created, it wasn’t approved…

… because of the side effects. And the list of side effects was about 1/3 as long as the known side effects for women’s oral contraception.

There’s a lot to be unpacked just in that story, but I’ll simply point out (in case you didn’t know) that as a society, we really don’t mind if women suffer, physically or mentally, as long as it makes things easier for men.

But good news, Men: Even with the horrible side effects, women are still very willing to use birth control. Unfortunately it’s harder to get than it should be. Birth control options for women require a doctor’s appointment and a prescription. It’s not free, and often not cheap.

In fact there are many people trying to make it more expensive by fighting to make sure insurance companies refuse to cover it. Oral contraceptives for women can’t be acquired easily, or at the last minute. And they don’t work instantly.

If we’re talking about the pill, it requires consistent daily use and doesn’t leave much room for mistakes, forgetfulness, or unexpected disruptions to daily schedules. And again, the side effects can be brutal. I’M STILL GRATEFUL FOR IT PLEASE DON’T TAKE IT AWAY.

I’m just saying women’s birth control isn’t simple or easy. In contrast, let’s look at birth control for men, meaning condoms. Condoms are readily available at all hours, inexpensive, convenient, and don’t require a prescription. They’re effective, and work on demand, instantly.

Men can keep them stocked up just in case, so they’re always prepared. Amazing! They are so much easier than birth control options for women. As a bonus, in general, women love when men use condoms. They keep us from getting STDs, they don’t lessen our pleasure during sex…

… or prevent us from climaxing. And the best part? Clean up is so much easier — no waddling to the toilet as your jizz drips down our legs. So why in the world are there ever unwanted pregnancies? Why don’t men just use condoms every time they have sex? Seems so simple, right?

Oh. I remember. Men _don’t_ love condoms. In fact, men frequently pressure women to have sex without a condom. And it’s not unheard of for men to remove the condom during sex, without the women’s permission or knowledge. (Pro-tip: That’s assault.)

Why would men want to have sex without a condom? Good question. Apparently it’s because for the minutes they are penetrating their partner, having no condom on gives the experience more pleasure.

So… there are men willing to risk getting a woman pregnant — which means literally risking her life, her health, her social status, her relationships, and her career, so that they can experience a few minutes of _slightly_ more pleasure? Is that for real? Yes. Yes it is.

What are we talking about here pleasure-wise? If there’s a pleasure scale, with pain beginning at zero and going down into the negatives, a back-scratch falling at 5, and an orgasm without a condom being a 10, where would sex _with_ a condom fall? Like a 7 or 8?

So it’s not like sex with a condom is _not_ pleasurable, it’s just not _as_ pleasurable. An 8 instead of a 10. Let me emphasize that again: Men regularly choose to put women at massive risk by having non-condom sex, in order to experience a few minutes of slightly more pleasure.

Now keep in mind, for the truly condom-averse, men also have a non-condom, always-ready birth control built right in, called the pull out. It’s not perfect, and it’s a favorite joke, but it is also 96% effective.

So surely, we can expect men who aren’t wearing a condom to at least pull out every time they have sex, right?

Nope.

And why not?

Well, again, apparently it’s _slightly_ more pleasurable to climax inside a vagina than, say, on their partner’s stomach. So men are willing to risk the life, health and well-being of women, in order to experience a tiny bit more pleasure for like 5 seconds during orgasm.

It’s mind-boggling and disturbing when you realize that’s the choice men are making. And honestly, I’m not as mad as I should be about this, because we’ve trained men from birth that their pleasure is of utmost importance in the world. (And to dis-associate sex and pregnancy.)

While we’re here, let’s talk a bit more about pleasure and biology. Did you know that a man CAN’T get a woman pregnant without having an orgasm? Which means that we can conclude getting a woman pregnant is a pleasurable act for men.

But did you further know that men CAN get a woman pregnant without HER feeling any pleasure at all? In fact, it’s totally possible for a man to impregnate a woman even while causing her excruciating pain, trauma or horror.

In contrast, a woman can have non-stop orgasms with or without a partner and never once get herself pregnant. A woman’s orgasm has literally nothing to do with pregnancy or fertility — her clitoris exists not for creating new babies, but simply for pleasure.

No matter how many orgasms she has, they won’t make her pregnant. Pregnancies can only happen when men have an orgasm. Unwanted pregnancies can only happen when men orgasm irresponsibly.

What this means is a women can be the sluttliest slut in the entire world who loves having orgasms all day long and all night long and she will never find herself with an unwanted pregnancy unless a man shows up and ejaculates irresponsibly.

Women enjoying sex does not equal unwanted pregnancy and abortion. Men enjoying sex and having irresponsible ejaculations is what causes unwanted pregnancies and abortion.

Let’s talk more about responsibility. Men often don’t know, and don’t ask, and don’t think to ask, if they’ve caused a pregnancy. They may never think of it, or associate sex with making babies at all. Why? Because there are 0 consequences for men who cause unwanted pregnancies.

If the woman decides to have an abortion, the man may never know he caused an unwanted pregnancy with his irresponsible ejaculation.

If the woman decides to have the baby, or put the baby up for adoption, the man may never know he caused an unwanted pregnancy with his irresponsible ejaculation, or that there’s now a child walking around with 50% of his DNA.

If the woman does tell him that he caused an unwanted pregnancy and that she’s having the baby, the closest thing to a consequence for him, is that he may need to pay child support. But our current child support system is well-known to be a joke.

61% of men (or women) who are legally required to pay it, simply don’t. With little or no repercussions. Their credit isn’t even affected. So, many men keep going as is, causing unwanted pregnancies with irresponsible ejaculations and never giving it thought.

When the topic of abortion comes up, men might think: Abortion is horrible; women should not have abortions. And never once consider the man who CAUSED the unwanted pregnancy. If you’re not holding men responsible for unwanted pregnancies, then you are wasting your time.

Stop protesting at clinics. Stop shaming women. Stop trying to overturn abortion laws. If you actually care about reducing or eliminating the number of abortions in our country, simply HOLD MEN RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS.

What would that look like? What if there was a real and immediate consequence for men who cause an unwanted pregnancy? What kind of consequence would make sense? Should it be as harsh, painful, nauseating, scarring, expensive, risky, and life-altering…

… as forcing a woman to go through a 9-month unwanted pregnancy?

In my experience, men really like their testicles. If irresponsible ejaculations were putting their balls at risk, they would stop being irresponsible. Does castration seem like a cruel and unusual punishment? Definitely.

But is it worse than forcing 500,000 women a year to puke daily for months, gain 40 pounds, and then rip their bodies apart in childbirth? Is a handful of castrations worse than women dying during forced pregnancy & childbirth?

Put a castration law on the books, implement the law, let the media tell the story, and in 3 months or less, tada! abortions will have virtually disappeared. Can you picture it? No more abortions in less than 3 months, without ever trying to outlaw them. Amazing.

For those of you who consider abortion to be murder, wouldn’t you be on board with having a handful of men castrated, if it prevented 500,000 murders each year?

And if not, is that because you actually care more about policing women’s bodies, morality, and sexuality, than you do about reducing or eliminating abortions? (That’s a rhetorical question.)

Hey, you can even have the men who will be castrated bank their sperm before it happens — just in case they want to responsibly have kids some day.

Can’t wrap your head around a physical punishment for men? Even though you seem to be more than fine with physical punishments for women? Okay. Then how about this prevention idea: At the onset of puberty, all males in the U.S. could be required by law to get a vasectomy.

Vasectomies are very safe, totally reversible, and about as invasive as an doctor’s exam for a woman getting a birth control prescription. There is some soreness afterwards for about 24 hours, but that’s pretty much it for side effects.

(So much better than The Pill, which is taken by millions of women in our country, the side effects of which are well known and can be brutal.)

If/when the male becomes a responsible adult, and perhaps finds a mate, if they want to have a baby, the vasectomy can be reversed, and then redone once the childbearing stage is over. And each male can bank their sperm before the vasectomy, just in case.

It’s not that wild of an idea. 80% of males in the U.S. are circumcised, most as babies. And that’s not reversible.

Don’t like my ideas? That’s fine. I’m sure there are better ones. Go ahead and suggest your own ideas. My point is that it’s nonsense to focus on women if you’re trying to get rid of abortions. Abortion is the “cure” for an unwanted pregnancy.

If you want to stop abortions, you need to prevent the “disease” – meaning, unwanted pregnancies. And the only way to do that, is by focusing on men, because: MEN CAUSE 100% OF UNWANTED PREGNANCIES. Or. IRRESPONSIBLE EJACULATIONS BY MEN CAUSE 100% OF UNWANTED PREGNANCIES.

If you’re a man, what would the consequence need to be for you to never again ejaculate irresponsibly? Would it be money related? Maybe a loss of rights or freedoms? Physical pain?

Ask yourselves: What would it take for you to value the life of your sexual partner more than your own temporary pleasure or convenience?

Are you someone who learns better with analogies? Let’s try this one: Think of another great pleasure in life, let’s say food. Think of your favorite meal, dessert, or drink.

What if you found out that every time you indulge in that favorite food you risked causing great physical and mental pain for someone you know intimately. You might not cause any pain, but it’s a real risk.

Well, you’d probably be sad, but never indulge in that food again, right? Not worth the risk!

And then, what if you further found out, there was a simple thing you could do before you ate that favorite food, and it would eliminate the risk of causing pain to someone else. Which is great news!

BUT the simple thing you need to do makes the experience of eating the food slightly less pleasurable. To be clear, it would still be VERY pleasurable, but slightly less so. Like maybe you have to eat the food with a fork or spoon that you don’t particularly like.

Would you be willing to do that simple thing, and eliminate the risk of causing pain to someone you know intimately, every single time you ate your favorite food?

OF COURSE YOU WOULD.

Condoms (or even pulling out) is that simple thing. Don’t put women at risk. Don’t choose to maximize your own pleasure if it risks causing women pain.

Men mostly run our government. Men mostly make the laws. And men could eliminate abortions in 3 months or less without ever touching an abortion law or evening mentioning women.

In summary: STOP TRYING TO CONTROL WOMEN’S BODIES AND SEXUALITY. UNWANTED PREGNANCIES ARE CAUSED BY MEN.

The end.

——

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Thread on Design Mom

#gabrielle blair #design mom #abortion #reproductive freedom #viral #intersectionalism

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icarialex · 4 years

Text

📱 Via Discord

Text Messages: Noelle & Chloe @chloevara

When: The night before their auction date

Topics: Just cuteness and Chloe talking about some changes she’d want between them for balance.

Chloe: Hey! It's me. Chloe. Unless you know another Chloe. How is my named saved in your phone, anyway? These are important questions!!

Noelle: You are so friendly and peppy even through text message. It’s impressive. I actually changed your name in my phone while I was in the hospital. Is the suspense of knowing to what eating away at you?

Chloe: 😦 😦 😦 😦 Impressive could mean something negative too. YES, the suspense is 100% eating away at me. Did you spell my name wrong at first?? There's no K anywhere in my name

Noelle: You should assume that I’m not saying something negative about you from here on out. If I point it out, I usually think it’s so you that it’s cute. That was an unnerving discovery for me. Who spells it with a k? No, I changed it from Chloe Vara to Chlo.

Chloe: As long as you like that you think I'm cute, right? ...Mostly the Kardashian lady spells it with a K. But I don't. Oh, so now we're in the nickname phase? I could change your phone name but maybe not to what you'd expect.

Noelle: I do like that I find you cute. It was just an adjustment for me to feel that way for someone else for so long. Usually it wears off after a week or two. That family is odd. I don’t get why they make so much money. I suppose? Your first and last name sounded too — distant. Oh? To what then?

Chloe: Now I'm really hoping that doesn't wear off, because I really do like you. Oh! I don't watch that show either. My dad says it's too real and fake at the same time. On second thought, maybe I'm not going to tell you what I changed it to?

Noelle: You like saying how much you like me now since seeing how I didn’t freak out about it at the hospital, don’t you? But since I like you too, I think it’s safe to say I’ll keep finding you cute. Thank God. If you tried to make me watch that, I’d have to hide. Wow, you’re rude. I told you when you asked. 😒😔

Chloe: Yes! It's so freeing to be able to tell you that you're great, and sweet, and careful, and, that I like all of that. :3 Fiiiine. You're Elle 🐘 . Emoji included! I was thinking of Elle-phant but that would make me laugh every time I opened the phone, so I didn't.

Noelle: I’m glad that it makes you happy. I’m not great at accepting praise or compliments, but I’ll work on it. I approve of that. The emoji is also adorable. You know, you’ll probably still say Elle-phant in your head and laugh right?

Chloe: Not enough people told you how great you are, clearly!! ...And yes. How did you know that was going to happen? You're the one who gave me nickname permission, after all.

Noelle: Clearly. If you ever get to meet my parents, you’ll get a full picture of that. I guess I’m starting to learn enough about you to figure out some things you’ll do. I did I did. Btw, how did it feel to have Noelle and Noel fighting for you at an auction?

Chloe: I'm still cross with your parents. Oh nooooo. Am I too predictable? Should i mix it up? Agh. It was a little confusing, but I just thought you forgot how to spell your name :/

Noelle: You don’t have to worry about them. I doubt they’d step foot on this island. You’d only meet them if you wanted to go to Hawaii. I mean, you could, but didn’t you want us to get closer so we knew more about each other? That would just be confusing. Nope, I was trying to make things easier for you. I never thought you’d bid on me though.

Chloe: I don't really want to go to Hawaii for a lot of reasons. I didn't want to see you have to date someone else. And it meant that you have to go on a date with me, which I wanted so much. Which is the first thing on my list of proposals. I want to be able to go outside with you sometimes and have it be a together activity.

Noelle: What are those reasons? Now I’m curious. I didn’t want to date anyone else, and I wouldn’t have. I would have gone for coffee or something. That’s simple enough. I am okay with that. Are you okay with part of our first date not being out and about? I just didn’t want to do dinner at a restaurant. It’s too cliche for a first, real date date. Plus, you’re kind of the first, official one for me.

Chloe: Colonialism, your family, I don't leave Icaria if I can help it. I don't mind it not being out and about always. But sometimes I want to show you off a little. Get a change of pace is most of it! You're going to do amazingly, I promise. It means a lot to me

Noelle: Those are all good reasons. I love Hawaii because it was home, but I never actually stay at my house. Show me off a little, huh? I can’t say I blame you. 😉 Plus, I would like the chance to brag about you too. Alright, dates outside of the house together is something I’m very comfortable with. It — it means something to me too.

Chloe: I'm not averse to going, but it isn't on my list of vacation spots. And yes! You're quite a catch. I do like a quiet night in more overall, but I don't want that to be the only option. Plus you can probably only handle me trying to cuddle you so many times

Noelle: I’ll make sure to send you lots of pictures next time I go then or video call you. I stay on an animal sanctuary when I visit, so I can send you cute animals too. I am not. I’m very difficult to be with. Try to cuddle me? I think you succeed, Chlo.

Chloe: That sounds so nice... You have the coolest job, you know? Maybe, but I'm not very good at stopping what I'm doing because it seems difficult. Like cuddling, apparently. It's nice, okay??

Noelle: Yeah, I’m a big fan of it too. Playing with animals all day is the best part of my job. I’m glad that you aren’t that good at giving up on things. I mean, it may take time, but depending on your patience this could end up being worth it. Hey, I’ve complained less about it lately, haven’t I? I don’t even tense up when you do it anymore.

Chloe: Oh, it's not dealing with the animals' parents?? Yeah 🙂 But let me know if you ever just... don't want me to touch you or anything. I don't want you to be anxious just because I think you're super snuggly.

Noelle: Well, flirting with parents of the animals was my go to activity when I wanted something easily accessible, but I’m not really looking right now which I remember thoroughly surprised you. Oh, you wouldn’t make me anxious. I’m just not used to being touched, but it can have it’s benefits. Kissing is one I think very highly of.

Chloe: I was wondering how you met folks... But yeah. It really did surprise me. I like the kissing. And being close in general. I think I like almost everything. Did you want me to run more of the suggestions I had in mind by you now or on the date, by the way?

Noelle: Either through the hospital or just around. I mean, I found you didn’t I? That’s good to keep in mind even though I think I picked up on that. Which would be more comfortable for you? Do you like being able to read things before you send or seeing my facial expressions?

Chloe: But I talk to everybody... Anyway, there are some things I would like to say in person but other stuff? I know I want to tell you one part in person, but otherwise, I'm all for good communication.

Chloe: Like I want to hold your hand sometimes. Not a lot. Just sometimes.

Chloe: To be able to tell my dad about you, and maybe work our way up to having you meet him. I think he'd like you a lot

Noelle: Okay, so I’ll wait until our date to hear that part. You just tell me when you’re ready.

Noelle: Holding hands? Okay I can do that. I mean, that’s simple enough. Will you get upset if it takes me a bit to initiate that? It’s just not something that usually crosses my mind, and that’s not because I don’t like you. It’s just new.

Noelle: Your dad is very important to you. You think — you want to tell him about me? I mean, you’re more than welcome to. As for meeting him, eventually, would this be virtually or in person?

Chloe: I appreciate that! I'm sorry to keep you in so much suspense. I don't expect you to initiate it if you don't want to. I just.... really want to sometimes and I was afraid to tell you.

Chloe: Yes? Eventually virtually. He just got a new phone, so he's probably too distracted by that anyway. Trust me, he's one of the easiest dads to meet ever. He hasn't liked all of my exes, but I never knew until afterward...

Chloe: THAT WAS THE WRONG THING TO SAY

Noelle: It’s okay. I mean, this is new territory for me. I’ve never gotten to a point where I’ve wanted to compromise with someone or cared so much about them being happy. It’s not that I’m selfish so much as I didn’t think I was the person that could be the one to make someone happy, If that makes sense?

Noelle: I’m sorry you were afraid to tell me, and thank you for telling me now. Reach for my hand when you want. Now that I know you will, I won’t pull back or anything out of surprise.

Noelle: Comforting, Chlo. 😉 If this will make you happy, then okay no problem. How are you going to introduce me though? Or is that what we’re waiting for the date to discuss?

Chloe: I don't relate to it, but I am making an effort to understand it. At this point, we really aren't on different pages. I think you would make me happy once we get everything to make a bit more sense. I know that I'm touchy. Like abnormally touchy. Being close as much as possible is the best????

Chloe: It would be fine to hold off on meeting him for a while, so we don't have to talk about that right now. I haven't talked to anybody about you, though, and it's kind of killing me.

Noelle: I guess that’s where you’ve surpassed my expectations of people. Instead of just writing me off as cold or unfeeling, you try to understand. So, I’m trying back. Okay touching. I can initiate kisses when I think you’re cute. I just didn’t know how you felt about PDA.

Noelle: Why haven’t you told anyone? That’s not fair. My brother knows about you. Well, Noah. Oh, yeah I have another one. But yes, and I’m sure more know after the auction or suspect.

Chloe: I love PDA. Hold my hand, kiss my cheek, use me as an armrest. Whatever you want besides pinching is probably great in my book.

Chloe: Because I don't really enjoy talking about how I really like someone who I thought just saw me as a booty call. But then I couldn't talk about what bothered me. Also everyone was busy with parents week or really stressed about the minotaur, so I didn't want to burden them

Noelle: Who in the world would pinch you to show affection? Really has this happened to you?

Noelle: To be honest, you started out as a booty call. Well, you can talk about me to people if you want to. I’m a part of your life, and I don’t like policing what you do. I want you to be you, and I’ll be me.

Chloe: I have really, really, really, really bad luck when it comes to relationships. Even the good ones had something weird or wrong. I didn't think you were a booty call at first.

Chloe: You were really pretty, and interesting, and you didn't tell me to go away or anything, and I thought you wanted the same things I did. It's embarrassing.

Chloe: I haven't talked about you, or that super messed up thing with my neighbor that I'm trying to avoid, and it's like I'm about to explode.

Chloe: But I'd like for you to be a part of my life. Very much. I look forward to what you have planned.

Noelle: It’s not embarrassing. I mean, it’s working out pretty well for you now, right? You mesh with me better than I thought you would. You’re not high maintenance to be around, and you’re calm.

Noelle: By the way, you’re gorgeous. I don’t say it nearly enough, but you should know that.

Noelle: Well, talk as much as you want about this, okay? I’m private but not controlling. I only care about what I share or who asks me questions because I can be prickly. I think you’ll love it. Just tell me when, but give me like a day notice.

Chloe: I don't want to be anything but really self-sufficient. But emotionally needy. I'm going to be that.

Chloe: Thanks!!! It drives me a bit crazy how beautiful you are sometimes? Like I just think about it, and then I forget how to be a person.

Chloe: Okay. I really, really, really want us to talk more. Another list item. Could that day be tomorrow or the next day? I don't know if I can wait too much longer.

Noelle: Chlo, thanks for telling me stuff. I don’t make it easy, but at least I understand more now.

Noelle: You’re very silly. Do we need to take pictures together for you to stare at? Or will that just worsen the problem?

Noelle: That’s easy. Talking I can do. It can be tomorrow. That gives me enough time. I’ll be ready by 7 to pick you up.

Chloe: : )

Chloe: Uhm. We should take pictures. That would be really nice. I'd like that lots. Yes please

Chloe: 7... PM right? I'll be awake either way, but I do have to check.

Noelle: We can do that. I have my Polaroid too, so you can even get hard copies.

Noelle: Yes PM. I mean, I will be too, but that’s prepping time. So tomorrow, 7 PM. Dress cute but comfortable.

Chloe: You have a Polaroid???? Why didn't I know this?

Chloe: I can do the thing. Have a good night, okay Elle? I can't stress how much I'm looking forward to seeing you

Noelle: Um — I don’t know? I have scrapbooks too of all the places I’ve visited.

Noelle: You too, Chlo. Me too. Sweet dreams.

#noelle ft. Chloe #chloe

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mllermanda · 4 years

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Tagged by @hopeless-zombie

I'm unsure of what this is but I got tagged by @hopeless-zombie and have decided to try this out since it's pretty harmless. I'll give in some depth on these questions the best way I can without rambling so much. Favorite colors: Red, Black, Gold, Army Green, White This is mainly due with how easy the colors are to work in within my art, along with some personal attachment towards these colors. Some connecting with my past while other is just due to the style it has on me. Last song I listened to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfiKpB3HHAk&list=RDMMzHBJjrPIfkQ&index=4 The most of these songs here are songs that I have listened too at some point and end up listening too a lot. The one that the playlist is on is based on the song that I was on when writing this down. Favorite musicians/songwriters: Gorillaz, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Asheru, Eminem, Atmosphere, My Chemical Romance, Big Reel Fish, DragonForce, Panic of the Disco and etc I don't really have a favorite musicians nor songwriters in mind, though the ones I just listed are people that I have listened to a lot over the years with various of songs and albums. Favorite songsMusic Videos: Like question above, I don't have a favorite song either. So instead, I'm going to just put in here 11 music videos that I loved throughout the years. It makes it a lot easier to talk about them and gives me an excuse to do so as well. Feel Good Inc- Gorillaz https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyHNuVaZJ-k It was the song that inspired me to get into animation in the first place and even though my style looks nothing like it and my love for the song has decresed over the years, I still love the video and love the atmosphere it has to it. Helena- My Chemcial Romance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCCyoocDxBA Apparently at this time, I believe they were just getting to get known during the 2000's and I thought this was a popluar band that just played a random tune. I liked the band a lot longer than I thought and every time I hear this song, I like it more and more. Along with the video that is produced as well. I Write Sins Not Tragedies- Panic of the Disco https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc6vs-l5dkc The music video holds up in my eyes, and I like the style the song took with the production. I think I started to have an interest in the dressing style after watching this video when I was younger but have not dressed like that. Breaking the Habit- Linkin Park https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2H4l9RpkwM The music video here is excellent with its animation, and I do love the style here too. I believe it was another part that wanted me to work within the animation. Good Morning- Kanye West https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CHs4x2uqcQ Kanye West has made some pretty good music videos like Gold Digger and Diamonds from Sierra Leone, but for me, I like the colors here and how the song semi matches up with the song. The characters that are there and the style in the video make it pop out. Feels like Summer- Childish Gambino https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1B9Fk_SgI0 I like the atmosphere that the song has here, and the character design in this video is pretty strong. The song is also pretty catchy and fits in theme with the video that is presented. Blue October- Hate Me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDxgSvJINlU I remembered when I first watched this video on how much expression I felt with the video. A lot of times, it's hard for songs to match the video, and it nailed his sadness in here. Though the weird part about this video is that the song sounds better in the music video than on the cd version (minus the part cutting out cussing words since that has always bothered me in any video) Burn-Usher https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5XNWFw5HVw For me, this video is funny to watch due to how overdramatic it is. Along with the fire that burns on Usher's bed has been entertaining to watch ever since I was young. Kix- The Real Tuesday Weld https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2NPfU5QARc The song holds up the video on the main character and how he deals with life. Now even though it is not the best-animated video out there, it does fit in theme with the song, and I like the art style that was used for the video too. Fear and Delight- The Correspondents https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABS-mlep5rY The video editing style fits my taste on how I like music videos to show, and even though I found this one more recently, it fits well within the song's lyrics. Bloom- Surfaces https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuLTl6UPdi4 I only found this a couple of days ago, but the art style fits so well with the song. The characters are appealing, the colors are used nicely here, and the animation is smooth. Along with the excellent storytelling, it was able to display the lyrics at hand. Last film watched: Hm, I'm not a movie person, so I don't 100% remember what I watched. Based on some help, though, the last movie I saw was Puppy Star Christmas from Air Bud series, and dang I hate those types of videos. Last TV show watched: America's Next Top Model The show is a lot more depressing than I remembered and I'm surprised that the show more than one season. The contestants are alright overall, but the judges are the ones that I have more of a problem with. Favorite OC: Sweet, Spicy, or Savoury: Savoury Anything that has meat on it, I will like 100% more than anything sweet or spicy. For me, it just adds more flavor to it and feels like a more massive meal; which I love to have. Pets: Used to own a hamster named Spikey in middle school but otherwise never had a pet since then. Tagging anyone that is interested in trying this out, go ahead

#personal

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freyjawriter24 · 4 years

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Advent Omens: Warmth

My response to Day 22 of @drawlight‘s excellent advent prompt list. Yes, I know it’s February. But I’ve been being surprisingly productive recently, and wanted to channel some of that into cutesy stuff outside of my focus on Someone New, and this seemed a good, shorter way to do that, so here we are. I hope you enjoy (even if it is a little out of season... It’s still winter, though, and I’m only two months and a day late for this one! There are more coming that will be even later...).

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Crowley had never been a fan of the cold. Probably something to do with his being a snake or something, he figured, but whatever the reason, he hated it. Why on Earth he’d ended up mostly settling in a climate where it was never particularly warm, he couldn’t quite work out (ignore the angel-shaped reason, that can’t be it), but the winters were at least the reason he didn’t stay in New York more regularly – if it got cold in London, it was far, far worse across the pond.

The Bentley, it seemed, had acquired some of its demonic owner’s characteristics, one of which was very firmly hating the cold. The car flatly refused to move the first couple of times Crowley had attempted to drive anywhere when it was cold enough for frost to have accumulated on the windscreen, even when the demon exasperatedly pointed out that moving around would actually make the damn thing warmer. After that he simply miracled it to always feel the temperature of a warm spring day, which had the added bonus of meaning the windows never frosted up again.

Not that Crowley drove much when it was really cold, anyway. He preferred to hide away inside on days like that, curled up in a pile of blankets in his flat or the bookshop, a hot drink or a hot water bottle nearby.

Today, though, was an exception. Because he’d promised to take Aziraphale out, as a treat.

“Ugh, why did it have to be today?” he muttered as he started the Bentley. “I take it you think you’re funny,” he said in the vague direction of the sky, and then swore under his breath.

At least the drive itself would be warm. Not that that would make getting out of the car at the other end any easier, but still.

He rang Aziraphale from the kerb when he got to the bookshop. “Angel, I’m outside. Hurry up, or we’re going to be late.”

“Coming, my dear!”

The happiness in his voice was palpable, and Crowley groaned as he hung up. Why had he agreed to this again? What on Her green Earth had he been thinking? Even without the miserably cold weather, this was going to be an experience comparable to Hell.

The passenger door of the Bentley opened, and an angel appeared, wrapped up warm in a thick coat and matching tartan scarf and mittens. Crowley rolled his eyes behind his sunglasses, but couldn’t help feeling a little flutter of affection all the same.

“Ooh, it’s lovely and warm in here,” Aziraphale said brightly.

“Mmm,” Crowley said, pulling away as soon as the door was shut. “Bentley doesn’t like the cold.”

The angel nodded sympathetically, and settled himself into the warmth of the car as they drove off into the gathering dusk.

It took them far less time to get there than it should have done, of course, what with Crowley’s tendency to go double the legal speed limit on most smaller roads and attempt to push the needle past 100 on motorways, but the drive was still a small, peaceful haven of heat in an otherwise freezing and unfriendly world.

They listened to Beethoven on the way, which gradually morphed into Queen’s ‘A Winter’s Tale’, followed by ‘Body Language’, presumably because it was part of the ‘Hot Space’ album, and the Bentley thought that would be funny. Crowley had to try very hard not to look at Aziraphale during some of the lyrics, and tried not to wonder whether the angel’s pink cheeks were anything to do with the song or just the temperature.

He was inordinately grateful when they finally found themselves on a series of tight back roads and he had an excuse to turn the music off. “Should be around here somewhere. Keep an eye out for signs, they said there should be some.”

Iced-over puddles crunched under the Bentley’s wheels as they drove down one particularly narrow country lane, and then there they were. They’d made it.

“Oh good, looks like they haven’t started yet,” Aziraphale said happily, motioning to a group of humans who were milling about in a dark field together.

The angel hurried out of the car and over to someone who looked like they knew what was going on to sort out being let in. Crowley groaned, then sighed, then eventually clambered out of the warmth of the car and into the cold night air.

“Come on, my dear,” Aziraphale said, gesturing for the demon to join him. Crowley pulled his jacket tighter round himself, pushed his hands into his pockets, and sloped over in a striking impression of a stroppy pre-teen.

“Remind me why I agreed to this again?”

“It was your idea, Crowley. Something about ‘taking the mickey out of all the inaccuracies’, I believe.”

“I wouldn’t have said ‘mickey’, I would’ve said ‘piss’,” the demon grumbled, accepting his fate as one of the in-charge humans glared at him.

“I’d like to remind you that this is a family event,” she said pointedly. “Also we don’t allow flash photography or filming of any kind.”

“Of course,” Aziraphale said, smiling.

“Sure,” the demon grunted.

“Right then,” the human said, smiling brightly. “Come on in!”

The two celestials thanked her and went through towards the group of gathered humans.

Everyone was dressed in warm clothes and gloves against the cold, some with bobble hats on or brightly-coloured scarves visible beneath their thick coats. About half the group were adults, apparently mostly parents or grandparents of the other half of the group, who were children of varying ages and irritability. The adults were talking in hushed tones to one another, the kids either messing about together or complaining about the cold or stood in sullen silence, waiting for the main event to start.

Then a voice came from out of the darkness.

“Two thousand years ago,” it said, with the clarity of hidden speakers and a good microphone, “a child was born that would change the world. He was the son of God, and he was called Jesus.”

Crowley was about to lean over and mutter something snarky in Aziraphale’s ear, when there was a sudden rush of bright light and the associated gasps of several of the people there. The demon froze.

God, he’s beautiful.

Aziraphale was gazing upward in wonder at whatever had been suddenly illuminated in a nearby tree. The light had lit him up, too, bouncing off his pink cheeks and spellbound smile, and Crowley couldn’t help but just stare for a moment.

Eventually, he realised he was meant to be paying attention to whatever it was Aziraphale was watching, so he turned to see a human stuck up in a tree, dressed in flowing white robes and apparently playing an angel. He’d missed most of the dialogue, but it soon became evident that this was supposed to be the moment where the shepherds were told about Jesus. A swell of singing sounded from the trees – a poor imitation of an angelic choir – and the spotlight on the ‘angel’ vanished as the crowd were ushered towards a nearby barn.

The humans filed politely – Britishly – into the barn and took seats on the rows of hay bales that had been arranged for the occasion. Crowley looked around, a little confused and intrigued by this arrangement. But it all became clear in a matter of moments.

The performance was, Crowley grudgingly admitted to himself, actually quite good. Not necessarily in terms of historical accuracy, mind, but for the drama of it – yes, that was all pretty solid.

He watched the angel’s face soften into love when Mary and Joseph came on stage, accompanied by an actual real baby playing Jesus – a real baby! He was impressed by the dedication to realism when the shepherds ushered in real-life sheep to meet the child – real sheep! And (not that he’d ever admit it) he actually gasped along with the rest of the crowd when King Herod and his men came in – which, to be fair, anyone would have done, if suddenly confronted with a galloping horse screeching to a halt amidst an indoors crowd – a real horse!

He also watched Aziraphale’s features harden as the King threatened the death of the Messiah and enacted the murder of all infants in the area. I know, angel, I know. At least you didn’t have to see it.

The three wise men were fairly dramatic just in their looks – again, a decent production value, regardless of any relation to actual fashion of the time. And all the main points of the story were there, all the important stuff that always got retold at this time of year. It was a solid show.

At one point, Crowley looked over to see the angel crying – making no sound, but tears glistening on his cheeks in the candlelight of the barn. He wanted to reach out, to comfort him – an arm around the shoulder, perhaps, or even a soft squeeze of the hand sat on the angel’s knee. But no, that would be too much – they’d barely known each other for six thousand years, after all, that date ticking past only a handful of years ago. And more to the point, the incident at the church was only sixty-four years ago, the exchange in the Bentley in Soho barely thirty-eight years ago. Don’t go too fast. Don’t make him uncomfortable. Let him come to you.

Which is why all the demon did was nudge Aziraphale’s arm gently with his own, and when the angel looked at him he mouthed ‘you okay?’. Aziraphale nodded, and reached a mittened hand up to wipe at the tears on his face. The other hand found Crowley’s and squeezed.

The demon didn’t pay much attention to the end of the performance after that. He was too focused on the angel’s hand on his – in his, as they gently rearranged their grip to be more mutually-entwined – and on imagining what that would feel like without layers of fabric in the way. Warm, he thought softly to himself.

All too soon, it was over, and Aziraphale carefully slipped his hand out of Crowley’s as he stood up to leave. The demon felt the loss of the contact keenly, like a kitten suddenly thrown out into the cold. But he said nothing, did nothing, just stood too and followed the angel out into the freezing, dark night.

But as they left the field and headed back to the car, thanking the in-charge humans as they passed them, Aziraphale caught his eye and gave a small smile. Thank you, that look said, and that alone would have been enough. But then the angel spoke.

“I was thinking,” he said slowly. “That perhaps we could... do more things like this, together. Perhaps, in the New Year, we could... ah, well... dine at the Ritz?”

Crowley recognised the offer for what it was instantly, and felt every atom of himself set alight at once. He struggled to maintain outward composure, but by the suddenly-increased pinkness of Aziraphale’s cheeks, he could tell he had reacted him some way. It was only when he tried to speak that he realised his jaw had dropped open.

“Uh, ngh, yeah,” he garbled, mouth moving like a goldfish with only the occasional sound escaping, none of it in any way sensical. “Of course, angel,” he finally managed. “Whatever you want. Sounds lovely.”

Ohshitohshitohshitohshit.

Is this actually happening?

Crap. Shit. Fuck.

“Good,” Aziraphale said, and even soft and subdued as it was, shy and uncertain, his smile was as blinding as a million suns.

They reached the Bentley and climbed into its haven of warmth. Neither mentioned what had just been said for the duration of the drive back to London, and Crowley kept the music firmly turned off for fear of what the car might decide to play. But the silence felt companionable, warm, relaxed, not at all strained or awkward, and it was all Crowley could do to stop himself from saying something wholly inappropriate in light of it, like I love you, or this is the best day of my life, just for that, or you are the most incredible being I have ever met and just to hold your hand for so short a time is an honour greater than any other and one I most definitely do not deserve, so please feel free to take your time, I can live off this feeling from tonight for as long as you need.

The demon dropped the angel off in Soho, and drove to his own flat in Mayfair, and left the Bentley in its usual parking spot. And he didn’t even notice the temperature change as he climbed out of the car and into the frozen air, because right now, every inch of him was warmed with pure and simple love.

#advent omens #31 days of ineffables #warmth #good omens #My writing #drawlight #Aziraphale #crowley #this is partly based on a nativity performance i went to see a couple of times as a kid #yes i know it's february but it was frosty the other day and i got this idea in my head and then i wrote it so now here you are

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