#everything has always been here and we're just one in billions

[caprisun-and-novocaine]

not having been born until the 2000′s, it’s so fascinating exploring other people’s nostalgia and what came before me, particularly millenials. i look at something as simple as the design of a nutritional facts label from 1998 compared to today, how it hasn’t changed, and how what’s “new” was never new at all. people were creating forum topics back then about things i didn’t even realize existed until 5-8 years ago. i see older adults talking about how the 90′s and 00′s felt like yesterday and even though i wasn’t alive to see the 90′s or old enough to fully appreciate the 00′s it does. it does feel like the 90′s were yesterday, the more i identify with a time before i was a concept, lol. i get why older adults have mid life crises, i would too if i was in my 30′s right now. it’s just interesting how so much has changed yet so much hasn’t. 

#tw derealization #tw existential #i'm younger than tamagotchi and pokemon #everything has always been here and we're just one in billions #i feel so young #but like i've lived longer than i actually have #2000s baby #1990s #2000s #nostalgia #childhood #early years #existence #existential crisis #human existence #90s #00s #the human experience

[majorblinks]

DOWNRIGHT ICONIC (aespa karina)

(smut, male reader, screenwriter you, stranger karina, public sex, rough sex [choking/slapping/biting/spanking/hair-pulling etc], oral, anal, facefucking, titfucking, facial, bondage, degradation, name-calling, other weird stuff, 26k words, it's been 1 million years..., BUT WE'RE SO BACK BABY <3)

Hey, turns out the critics really are onto something:

You’re going to win an Oscar for this.

You aren’t surprised when the nominations are announced. It’s all anyone’s been talking about. You’re this up-and-coming screenwriter, this newly-minted visionary, and - cue the applause - you’ve just made the movie of the year. Clips go viral everywhere; the reviews are calling it extraordinary. They all want to know how you - a relative nobody - managed to pull it off. What’s your secret? What’s your inspiration? Where’d you get this billion-dollar box office idea? 

And here’s one version of the truth:

“Well,” you’re quoted saying in every single interview: “honestly, it’s about a girl.”

Everyone eats this up, of course. It’s so fucking romantic.

You’ll tell an abridged version of this story for the rest of your life. A blip in time in early January - a certified slow-motion movie moment. You’ll say things like she was the most beautiful girl you’ve ever seen. You’ll say things like, I know it sounds lame, but that’s how it went. She took my breath away. She fascinated me. I saw her and I don’t think my life has ever been the same. 

You’ll never once say her name. 

“It’s weird, actually,” you’ll say in an interview after the news of the nominations drops. “Making this movie about her. She’ll last forever there, you know? She’ll always exist in this film, in this one moment in time. She’s in all of it, basically - every scene, every line. It’s all her.”

“You make it sound like she’s dead,” the interviewer will say, all open-mouthed melodrama.

You’ll laugh. “Oh, God, no,” you’ll say. “She’s alive and well.” As if it hasn’t been years since you last saw her face, watching you from down the corridor, looking lost and torn apart and very, very small. “She’s okay. I mean - I think - yeah, she’s okay.”

As if you’d know. 

Because here’s another version of the truth:

You’re going to win an Oscar for this. You’re going to stand up on that stage and thank your family and your friends. You’re going to stare at all those faces until they swim together into one golden, glittering blur, and then all you’ll see is her - her dark eyes, her glossy hair, her wrist in your grip, her throat between your fingers - her in your sheets, her smiling in your doorway, her shivering in your shower, her sobbing into her hands, her bleeding in your bed, her walking away. Her, her, her. Immortalized forever in this perfect thing you made, winning awards off the reconstruction of a memory. Art imitating life; reality warped into something magnificent, and beautiful, and better. 

And the only thing you’ll feel like doing is throwing up. 

Sure, you’ll bask for decades in the thrill of it: the fame, the fortune, the glory; the adoration, the worship, the attention; the eternal, endless love. You’ll be able to look back on your life when you’re decrepit on your deathbed and know that you - brilliant you, utterly superior you - were divinely blessed with earth-shattering success, and no one will ever be able to take that away from you. You made your mark. You meant something. You were the best, for fuck’s sake, and you have the accolades to prove it - you really, really were. 

So here’s the full truth - the final bottom line:

You’re going to win an Oscar for this. You’ll live the kind of life people beg God for. You’ll get everything you ever wanted. 

It won’t be worth it at all. 

-

First, though, there’s this. 

-

Disturbingly enough, you’re in the romance section of a bookstore when everything starts. 

This is really not your genre - that’s the funniest part. Historically, you’re bored to death by the cartoonish pastel covers; you don’t get your kicks from seeing the same delightfully quirky heroines fall for brooding bad boys, or whatever the fuck goes on in those books. You have your standards. You prefer your art a little gritty, a little fucked up, a little more interesting - the kind of thing that can leave you shellshocked in a movie theater, overcome with the sort of full-body, lightning-struck epiphany only truly good work can manage. It’s not a judgment call - you’re not trying to be pretentious. It’s just that you prefer something with some fucking bite.

The second funniest part is this: 

You’re pressed against the shelves, surrounded by the cutest, chastest love stories ever told-

“Are you serious?” 

-and Karina’s on her knees, about to take your cock down her throat. 

Maybe this is what your contemporaries call cinematic irony.

That’s gotta be the only phrase for it, really. The scene itself dripping with classless, crude, erotic filth - the way she ducks her chin to spit on her hand, the slow pump of her fist around you, the rough hum in her mouth at how achingly hard you are - nasty and irredeemable, too fast and too loud. The gross lack of subtlety in her sex appeal: all pale thighs and porn-star tits, the wet pink flash of tongue. Seductive in a way that screams at you. It’d be so easy to write this off as some deliberately controversial opening scene, gory shock value, horror-film suspense - starring you and the slut you’re about to ravage and ruin and potentially leave for dead. 

“Baby - are you sure?” 

It’d be so easy, if Karina didn’t look like an angel incarnate.

“I mean, you-” You’re stammering. You’ve got both hands in her hair, fingers sliding through the glossy black in petting, soothing motions - your clumsy attempt at reassurance. “You don’t have to, if you don’t - we’re in public - I’m not expecting you to - I don’t need it-” 

Karina’s fine, sculpted eyebrows twitch upwards. Her lips are a twist of scarlet, distinct and amused. She doesn’t quite smirk, doesn’t give a voice to the sarcasm, but the sentiment is the same - yeah, right. 

And then she lowers her mouth to lick. 

“Jesus fucking Christ-” 

Scratch that, then. This is the funniest part. The most inhumanly beautiful girl you’ve ever seen, debasing herself in public like some sort of desperate common whore - come on, bring in the laugh track. 

Not that anyone’s laughing now. 

You’re no poet - they’re a few sections over, Plath and Yeats and Dickinson - but Karina’s the kind of thing that makes you understand the motivation completely: only capable of being captured in metaphor, without context, painstakingly interpreted hundreds of years from now by people who will never get this right. All carved-out cheekbones, fluttering lashes; tight fuckable body clad in a little low-cut dress, feet tucked neatly behind her like she’s simulating worship. Dirty and religiously devoted in how she stretches her full glossed lips around your cock and lets your grip tangle in her hair and- 

“Karina,” you get out, but her only response is to blink sweetly up at you and suck. 

Well, who gives a shit about the poets, anyway? You doubt any of them ever got to fuck a mouth like this. 

There’s an unfamiliar caution to the rut of your hips, a wincing fascination every time she gags - and she gags loud, choking and heaving, saliva dripping slick around you and down her chin - that seems to both entertain and confuse Karina. A skeptical crease in her forehead, saying everything she can’t: you don’t wanna fuck me up? Ruin me? Cloudy spit falling in strands to her tits, seeping into the crimson fabric of her dress; she’s wearing a worn black sweatshirt that’s slipping off one shoulder, exposing the clean line of her collarbone. The hollow of her cheeks, the obscene painful sound of your cock clogging her throat - it’s subtext, explicit suggestion. A preternatural understanding. I know what this is. I know what you want from me. 

Which - she couldn’t possibly. 

“Baby.” You sound so wretched that it’s humiliating. Karina’s sharply lined eyes seem to flash with humor, smug and lazily self-satisfied. “You’re gonna make me fucking cum.” 

The thick, sloppy, choked noise she makes is the closest she’s gonna get to a laugh. 

Oh, sure, whatever, it’s not like you’re not thinking about it: digging your fingertips into her scalp and really fucking her face, relishing in the way those eyes would go wide and glassy with unshed tears; refusing to let her have control, to let her lick and lap and breathe. You’re scripting it in your head already. You’d strip her bare and make her sob. You’d wreck her throat and cum all over her face and force her to walk out like that: coated in the sticky, filthy evidence of everything you’ve made her - look at this, you’d say, look at what I have. Look at what I did - all this, all me. 

“God.” Your thumb braces against Karina’s temple, like the gentle stroke of a brush, like you’re painting her right into existence. “You’re just-” A harsh gag; a fall of dirty, drooling spit. “You’re really enjoying this, huh? Getting on your knees in public for a fucking stranger?” 

That’s why the fantasy of fucking her into brutal submission is actually so understandable. You don’t know her. You don’t owe her shit. You could destroy her and it’s not like she could do anything to fight back - not when she’s already below you, looking up. When she asked for this. 

Except-

“Karina.” You can’t stop saying her name. “You’re - fucking perfect.” 

And it’s true.

So you cum. 

Karina swallows it all with the same amount of sultry grace she seems to do everything - how she laughs and walks and talks and takes your cock like a fucking professional - languishing in the practiced bob of her throat, the preening flicker of her eyelids, her face shiny and pale. It tugs the same feeling out of you as a flawless shot in a film, a well-timed bit of dialogue: watching an expert at work, pulling out all their stops. One hand through her hair. Her nails the same rich color as her mouth and her dress. Nasty, slutty, impressive attention to detail - Christ, get this girl in front of a camera, get the moon to be her limelight - you’re breathless, you’re enthralled, you’re so fucking far gone. 

Then: the sticky retreating glide of her pouty mouth, lipstick smeared badly down her chin, stark and arresting as blood. 

“In my experience,” Karina says, finally, “being perfect’s never gotten me anywhere good.” 

She pulls the sleeve of her sweatshirt up and wipes her face with her wrist. 

“You’re unbelievable,” you say, dizzy.

“Thank you,” Karina says, sweet like she means it, and sits back on her heels. 

You can’t help yourself; you’re petting back her hair again, cupping her face softly in your hand, caught on the dark glint of her irises. Angel was an understatement. She looks more than that - looks like something holy and all-powerful, something omniscient and blindingly beautiful, something who knows exactly what you need and knows exactly how to follow through. Something worthy of mythology. Something like a god.

And any sort of rough, ruthless, fucked-up fantasy - it’s never going to happen. 

You just can’t ruin a girl like her. 

“So?” Karina’s voice is a smoky bombshell lilt, like she’s just stepped out of some film noir from the 1950s. Hands folded primly in her lap, fingers interlocked like a lady. She could be a pop culture icon, an eternal sex symbol - a Marilyn, a Bond girl, a timeless universal beauty. “What now?” 

You think your brain actually short-circuits. “Sorry?” 

Head tilted, lids dropped low. Smirk still sharp and scarlet. “Are you gonna take me home?” 

You open your mouth to respond, but then a customer walks by the aisle. 

You’re a panicked flurry of motion - zipping up your pants, turning away, frantically patting down your clothes - but Karina just stays kneeling on the floor, little chin on an incline, utterly incriminating. It doesn’t matter. The customer passes you by. The world returns to the way it should be: just the two of you.

“Karina,” you say, flabbergasted by her composure. 

Karina’s lips quirk. “What?” 

You shake your head and offer your hand to help her up, but Karina laughs instead - actually laughs. It’s peculiar, beautiful: raspy like a chronic chainsmoker, as though there’s something foreign she’s trying to dislodge. The raw, gravelly aftermath of a skinned knee, a grisly scrape over skin. 

“Wow,” she says, and stands all on her own, tugs the sleeves of her sweatshirt over her fingers. “That’s a yes to taking me home, then?” 

“What are you doing?” You’re laughing too - you can’t help it - reaching for Karina’s tiny waist to pull her in. “What are you - what do you want?” 

When Karina smiles, it seems to set her eyes aflame. Bright and dancing, lashes like a shroud of smoke. “What do you mean?” 

“You just met me.” It sounds feeble, somehow: a thin, useless excuse. Nothing against the way her body slots between your hands, a smooth effortless fit; nothing compared to how she kisses you between sentences, so quick and easy it already feels like a habit. “You don’t - you don’t know me.” 

Karina’s mouth puckers, coy. “No?” 

“No,” you shoot back, grinning, but it doesn’t sound convincing at all. “Come on, baby, seriously. What do you want?” 

There’s gotta be some motive, you’re thinking. There’s gotta be a reason. Karina is so still, so soft and pliant under your hands, all the carved porcelain perfection of a marble sculpture but with none of the cold stiffness. Spine curving under your fingertips, jaw tilting into your touch. 

A complete stranger, maybe - but every part of her body is begging to be known. 

“Don’t you get it?” Karina says. “I want whatever you want.” 

It’s so simple and earnest it takes your breath away. 

“I - Jesus.” You’re biting on the inside of your cheek, drinking her in. “What if I told you I don’t know what I want?”

Another rasp of a laugh, sound like the serrated edge of a blade. “I’d say fine, okay.” Karina’s voice is low, conspiratorial. “But I’d think you’re lying.” 

And here’s the thing you know for sure:

The very second you saw Karina you swear you saw the next hundred pages of a manuscript unfurling in front of you, lines and themes and gorgeous dark-eyed heroines, tragically beautiful endings and stunning cinematography - infinite narratives in the glossy sweep of her hair, in the seductive stretch of her legs, in the way she looked at you in a crowded room and smiled a lovely, secret smile and told you she’d follow you anywhere. She’s worth making art about. She’s worth devoting lifetimes to. The most honest thing you could say to her right now is baby, I’m writing a movie about this one day, and I think you’re really gonna like it.

Karina couldn’t possibly know any of this, but it still feels like she does - impractical knowledge in how she loops one arm around your neck and kisses you again, no hesitation. Like she actually knows you. 

“I want to fuck you,” you murmur against her mouth, because it’s the next most honest thing. “Is that enough for you?”

You’re a screenwriter. You know your horror movies. A small part of you recognizes that this is precisely how they start: fanged vampires, wicked succubi, femme fatales out for blood. Karina’s so gorgeous she can’t be human - teeth so sharp there’s no way her intentions are pure.

“Sure,” Karina says, smirk glimmering like starlight. “Then I want that, too.” 

It’s a murder plot waiting to happen. 

You take her home anyway. 

-

(Oh, and about your Oscar-winning script-

In theory, this is how it begins.

It’s classic. There’s a stranger and there’s a beautiful girl and they’re both sitting at a bar, talking for the very first time. The girl has a rose tucked behind her ear; it matches the crimson color of her lipstick perfectly. The stranger had asked her what the deal with it was, but she’d said something vague and nonsensical about it being a gift, so now they’re talking about normal, average things. Jobs, names, flirtatious pickup lines. It’s obvious because it’s meant to be, like a set-up to some predictable porn - everyone watching knows they’re going to fuck. 

She keeps getting closer to him. At one point he thinks she’s going in for a kiss.

Instead, all she does is pluck the rose from behind her ear, and hand it to him. 

It’s okay, she says. No thorns. 

He stares at the rich furled petals and the whittled-down stem. 

Thanks, he says, amused, charmed. He thinks there’s something odd about her. He likes it, though; if she were as beautiful as she is - which is very beautiful, exquisitely fucking beautiful - and she behaved like most people do, he’d find her terribly boring. 

He takes it from her. Turns over the rose in his hands absentmindedly as she keeps talking. She’s got all this hair: wild and glossy black, pouring over her thin shoulders, her ribs, her tiny waist. After a moment he feels the sharp prick of a thorn against his fingertip and releases the rose in surprise. 

You said there weren’t thorns, he tells her, laughing. Ow. 

Whoops, she says. Then: Did it get me too? 

She turns her head, pulls her hair out of the way. There’s a scarlet bead of blood trickling down the side of her perfect pale neck. He can’t quite tell where the point of entry was, where the thorn had dug in and broken skin. It’s bleeding a bit too heavily. Covering its tracks. 

She swivels, slightly. She sees the look on his face. Is it bad? she asks.

No, he says, though he can’t really tell. But - couldn’t you feel it, though? The thorn? 

The girl presses her hand to the side of her throat. It comes back bloodstained, a neat smear of red along the lifeline of her palm. 

No, she echoes, though this can’t possibly be true. Hey, you wanna get out of here or something? 

Alright, he says, smiling. They both stand. They leave the rose where it is. Let’s go. 

He cups her cheek instead of her neck when he kisses her for the first time, so he doesn’t have her blood on his hands.

It starts simple like that.) 

-

Karina’s so out of place in your apartment that it’s almost laughable - or it would be, if you were capable of thinking about anything but her mouth and her hands and her tits crushed up against your chest as you pin her to the doorframe. She keeps making these little sounds into your mouth: low and throaty, almost agonized. You swallow all her moans off her lips - oh, baby, you’re okay - and you only kiss her harder. She doesn’t belong, among your carpet worn-down from pacing and your laptop still open and idling and the mess of incoherent colorful post-it notes pasted to your fridge. She doesn’t fit here. Here kissing your mouth, here in your arms, here on fucking earth with the rest of you heathens-

“You wanna fuck me so bad,” murmurs Karina, chin on an incline, staring up at you, “then do it already.” 

She doesn’t squirm or fidget; she doesn’t get needy or start begging. She stays pinned down by your body, lips parted, and stands completely still. 

It’s like she’s telling you to make your move. Waiting for something inevitable. 

“What happened to patience?” you say, anyway. 

Karina’s mouth curls. She palms your cock through your pants. “What the fuck is that?”

You try to laugh, breathless and turned on, but all she does is kiss you again.

You’re a creative - you’re ready to attribute meaning to every movement - but there’s nothing so profound about it when you get Karina on your bed, all that thick black hair fanned out on your sheets, her hands grasping to get your shirt off - off, she murmurs, off. Even that comes out measured. She never shakes. She’s so sure. You kiss her everywhere you can reach, her face and her neck and her collarbone and her tits, drunk on the soft, humming sounds she makes when you do. You’re so fucking gorgeous, you can’t stop saying, and Karina keeps laughing that same raspy laugh, like it’s the most hilarious thing she’s ever heard. 

“You told me you already know that, right?” You’ve got her face cupped in one of your hands and your other one at the neckline of her scarlet dress. “So what’s so funny?” 

“Everything.” Her teeth glint the way fangs would, a deliberate trick of the light. She’d be villainous if she weren’t so content to be trapped underneath you. “All of it.” She presses her palm to the side of your neck. “You’re too nice.” 

“Fuck.” Your thumb accidentally digs too hard into her cheek. She doesn’t wince, but you feel it - the stomach-turning thrill, the possibility of leaving a bruise. Your hand drops low - lower, down her throat and her tits and her flat midriff - and slips between her thighs, up her dress. It feels safer, somehow. “How do you manage to make the word nice sound like an insult?” 

“It’s not,” she says, simply, and spreads her legs. 

And it must not be - because Karina’s so wet. 

She makes another low velvety sound when you first touch her, seems to melt into the stretch of your finger in her cunt - just one finger, and her back arches faintly, prettily, hips lifting to take more. “Jesus,” you mutter, but Karina’s not looking at you: her eyes are shut tight, lashes fluttering black, tits heaving in her dress with each draw of breath. You’ve fucked girls who’ve seemed unsure of themselves - embarrassed by their own wantonness, how wet they are, how bad they want it - but all Karina does is wrap her hand around your wrist and tug, once: a clear soundless plea for more.

For a second you’re actually, positively certain that you’ve lost it. 

It’s abject fantasy. It can’t be real. You in your apartment with the dream girl - the personal Aphrodite - the muse; God, if anyone was ever made to be a fucking muse, it’s her - underneath you with her ridiculous tits and her tight little pussy, face like a Hollywood dream. Ludicrous. Impossible. Bucking as she tries to fuck herself deeper on your fingers, all the way to the knuckle - slowing down only to say you wanna fuck my cunt open with your big fat cock or what? 

“I,” you try to say, strangled - her mouth’s so fucking filthy. “I was - I mean - we could take it slow-”

“How romantic,” says Karina - and this, too, sounds like a heinous insult coming from her - but she drags your wrist to her lips and sucks her own slick off your hand anyway. 

You choke on your next breath. “Karina-” 

She looks up at you, unflinching, tits half out of her dress and cunt dripping down her thighs. Lipstick worn-down, kissed-off. All over your mouth, or your throat, or your shirt. Mouth chapped from the cold and stained marvelously pink. There’s something in the way her smile forms slight and crooked every time you say her name, as if there’s some private joke you’re not in on. 

“You’re such a gentleman,” Karina purrs, all syrupy-sweet condescension. Then: “You really don’t have to be.” 

She licks the pad of your finger. She’s so completely shameless. You feel monstrous on top of her, in this sick, superior way, like she’s just too small to be so sopping wet and slutty and fuckable - too beautiful to be anything but treated just right. 

“If you want me to fuck you like a whore, baby,” you tell her, half-joking, “then just say that.” 

It’s a mistake the moment it leaves your mouth - a line crossed. Because all Karina does is cock her head, your wrist gripped delicately in her hand, her legs parted underneath you, and stares. Almost droll, bemused. Like you’re so goddamn predictable.  

“Didn’t you hear me?” That perfect face sears right through you. You’d nearly fucked that face. Not quite. Not yet. “I want whatever you want.” 

She’s even tinier than you originally thought she was. You only realize this now, tracing her stomach under your fingertips, feeling the sharp relief of each rib straining beneath her skin. You don’t know it until you touch her, but you can span the width of her thigh under one hand. It sends a strange shiver through you: mapping every jut of bone, every startling edge. She’s tiny. Breakable, practically. Men meaner than you have probably thrown her around, fucked her up against walls, used her like a toy. 

“So,” says Karina. “What do you want?” 

Your fist clenches tight in her grasp, right in front of her face, knuckles going horrifically white.

Like you - like you’re going to-

An accident. A primal sort of gesture, like you’re less than human, turned under her touch into some feral hot-blooded animal who can’t control itself: carnivorous, predatory. You stare at your own hand and then the sharp scythelike curve of her mouth and feel revolted embarrassment crawl straight up your spine. 

It’s abhorrent. 

It also doesn’t even seem to matter.

Karina doesn’t go wide-eyed and nervous; she doesn’t look at your wound fist like she’s scared of what it could do to her. She clicks her tongue, once. Like this, too, is something she already saw coming.

“I thought so,” she says, anyway. Maybe this is it, what does it for her; looking the devil full in the face and begging to be burned. “Then do it.” 

“I can’t do that to you,” you mutter, but you tug her dress up, and you fuck her anyway. 

-

She’s a stranger. This is the point of fucking strangers. To do things to them that you’d never do to anyone else - to take out your worst impulses and tell your best lies and know that none of it matters, in the end. Because they’re nobody, and because you’ll never see them again. 

But you just can’t. 

She’s too indulgent and stunning and soft, with her low moans and the addicting drenched heat of her cunt, hand gentle and careful on the nape of your neck so she can keep pulling you into a kiss. She’s made up of curves, delicate edges - those hips and those tits you can’t keep your hands off of and her lips in a dreamy smile - and you find yourself stroking her hair back from her face so you can drink it all in: the blush in her cheeks, the almost serene way she lets her eyes slip shut and her mouth drop open, slack and enticingly wet. So good, baby, you keep telling her, because she is, her entire body warm and wanting and so easily fucked open, little pussy swallowing your cock right up. She doesn’t fidget or plead. She’s so sweet, such a perfect fit, humming into your mouth as your cock eases her open; so wet you can hear it, the sloppy squelch of her cunt when you bottom out. Your voice comes out coaxing. You like that? That feel good? Taking my cock so nicely, huh?

“Mmm,” Karina breathes, in an exhilarating moan, right into your mouth, against your tongue. “Mm, mm-”

She never quite manages full sentences. Never finds it in herself to make any more obscene demands. Just gets all small and soaking underneath you, licks messily at your bottom lip, and lets you do all the talking - lets you draw a careful hand through her hair and drop your other one between her thighs, clenches tight around your cock when you rub at her clit, keens low in her throat and listens. To the good girl, to the I got you, baby, to the that’s it, there you go, this is what you wanted - I know, honey, I know, you just needed to get this cunt fucked right, you just needed to cum real bad. I know what this is. I know what you need. 

“Fuck.” She’s flushed pink to her chest, delightfully ineloquent. “Yes-” 

Well - good thing you’re decent with your words, when it counts. Let Karina blush and drool and slick up your cock with every stroke. That’ll work just fine with you.

It’s the kind of juxtaposition you’d really lean into - the kind of thing you’d write just to get so self-indulgent with, a personalized note to the director, a wink and a nudge to every audience member. Look at that. Look at her eyes like something straight out of poetry. Look at her body like a pornographic fantasy. Look at how she gets so tamed and docile and compliant when she gets her tiny pussy stuffed full, creaming all over that cock, huge tits bouncing - look, that’s art, isn’t it? What else would you call it? What else could it be?

“You gonna cum, baby?” She’s so fragile underneath you. Color staining her cheeks apple-red; lips swollen and begging to be kissed. Fictive little fairy tale. “You gonna cum for me?”

“Yeah.” It’s breathy and barely-there. Her chin trembles, jerks in a weak nod. “I’m - I - fuck-” 

See: you just can’t rough her up. It’d be blasphemous. Sacrilege. Taking one single look at the stained-glass windows of a church and tearing it all to the ground.

Still, you’re mesmerized by how utterly vulnerable she looks: the glossy shine to her irises; the way she inhales all slow and shaky, body slipping from some sort of precipice. Not just like she’s near-tears, but like she’s stunned - struck dumb from a violent blow, mouth wide open in the aftermath. And it’s just sex - and, fuck, you’ve said it, you see things the way every obsessive artist does; sex is never just sex. Every one thing means something more. A metaphor. An allegory. You get nasty and debauched and dirty because you know exactly what you can spin it into. Put the entire scene in a silent film and everyone can swoon about the things you might be saying to her, this impossibly captivating stranger in your bed with her graceful name, her dizzying moans, her shuddering frame in her orgasm. Don’t you get it? you could be telling her, hand brushing gently over her sweat-damp hairline. Don’t you feel that? You’re a stranger to me, baby, but you don’t have to be. There’s a reason we met. There’s a meant-to-be here, somewhere. I’m not a believer, sweetheart, but you could make one out of me - I swear you could, I promise-

But that’s the reason why these things are best left to the imagination, anyway. 

A million scripted sweet nothings - and none of them manage to make it out of your mouth. 

“Karina.” Your hips jerk hard. You sound half-possessed. “So pretty, cumming all over my cock like that. Such a perfect little cunt, baby - so fucking good-”

Her eyes suddenly shut tight; her body arcs into your touch, lips parted in a silent gasp. And for a second it seems like such a snapshot of innocence, like she’s brand-new to getting fucked quick and rough and dirty - though you know this can’t possibly be the truth, not with the way she flirts and whines and drips for more like she’s made for it - but she’s trembling under your fingertips, and you can dream. She’s your beautiful stranger, your pristine muse; you can pretend she’s whatever the fuck you want. 

“God,” Karina murmurs, so soft and weak it makes your head spin. 

Before you know what you’re doing - before you can even think twice about it - you’re pulling out, and cumming all over her stomach. 

You can’t help it. You shouldn’t have had that thought about innocence. Jesus. This is what you mean, about you and your own painful humanity; you’ve got all the same vile desires. When you see a pure thing - all that porcelain skin, all that thick glossy black hair, all those gleaming white teeth in her open mouth - your very first instinct is to fuck it up bad.

You’d do worse, if you were worse - you’d make a real fucking disaster out of her. 

“Baby,” you say, breathlessly. “Are you…”

And Karina, then, does something truly evil: 

Sighs luxuriously, stretches her arms above her head, eases those gorgeous eyes open, and smiles. 

As if she’s reveling in it. The scent of sex - the defiled tautness of her tummy - the way you’re not sure where her little red dress or her shoes or her panties are, how her cunt’s dripping wet onto your sheets, her hair a glorious mess. Grinning in the face of utter filth. 

“You,” you exhale, running your palm down her side. “You’re so…” 

Karina’s mouth pulls up at a corner, like she’s daring you to finish the sentence, but you never do. 

You can’t stop staring at the stretch of cum-covered skin before you. Coating her belly, pooling into her navel. You realize with a start that there’s a new bruise blooming on her chest, a vicious sort of bite mark. You can’t remember when you did that. You’d been kissing her - of course you kissed her - her mouth and her neck and her tits, but you’d been so gentle, sucking light and soothing her skin with your tongue after-

“You didn’t want to cum inside me?” Karina asks, hoarsely. 

You blink so hard your vision blurs. “What?” 

“Right.” Her eyeshadow’s smudged dark underneath her eyes, making her look deliciously used up. “You did want to cum inside me.” 

“Karina,” you warn - or, at least, you mean to make it sound like a warning - but her name comes out too faint. It’s horrific. Your hand traces her hipbone so reverently. You’re no match for her. 

Karina arches a brow in unhurried challenge, ghosts her hand across her tummy. Takes two fingers and drags them through the cum you spilled, pulls back with it clinging thickly to her skin. Drifts down, down, down. 

“Karina,” you try to say again, even more pathetic than last time. “Jesus-” 

But you saying her name holds no weight here; she’s made that more than obvious. Nothing to stop her as she smears her cum-slick fingers across her glistening pussy, gaze locked amusedly on your face, tracking your reaction. She’s still so fucking wet - she rubs your cum in circles across her clit - tossing her head back a little, chest heaving and falling, fingertips just barely dipping inside her cunt-

“I can’t.” Karina lifts her hand to pop her fingers in her mouth, sucks them clean. Pointedly flashes her too-sharp nails at you like she’s unsheathing claws. “If you want it, you’re gonna have to do it yourself.”

“You,” you say, though your hand’s already pressing hard into her ribs, “are fucking cruel, baby.” 

“And you,” replies Karina, head tilting, “just want to see my cunt all filled up and leaking your cum.” 

Oh, she hasn’t been wrong about you all night. She certainly won’t start now. 

“What?” A sly, languid smirk tugs at her lips. “Afraid you’re gonna knock me up or something?” 

Your breath halts right in your lungs.

You’d been right about her too, it seems. Succubus. Vampire. She must be; she’s bloodthirsty. Tits gleaming with sweat, the scarlet stain of that bite mark you can’t remember leaving, cunt all dripping wet and desperately empty - body like a fatal fucking blow. 

Karina’s eyes glint. I want what you want, she’d said. 

With the way she spreads her legs, she’s gotta be ready to prove it.

So you never stood a chance. You give in and scoop up cum with one finger and sink it deep inside her aching cunt, feeling as she clenches down, as she takes it so well; like a good girl, you tell her, letting me do whatever I want with this needy little cunt; that’s my good girl. Karina lifts her hips - goes so still and so obedient - and lets you repeat it over and over again, fucking into her with your fingers until the plane of her stomach is bare and sticky and her cunt’s dribbling your cum onto your sheets. It’s completely nasty. It’s hot. It’s Karina craning her neck back and shutting her eyes as you bury three fingers inside of her and fill her with your cum, every part of her in utter surrender, entirely at your mercy, breathing out hard through her nose until your thumb rubs at her clit and she’s cumming again, all over your hand. She gets this look on her face, afterwards - exhausted, every line of her face gentle and lax - staring up at you like you’re the only person still left on this planet. Adoring, almost. As if you’re something out of another world. 

It’s an expression too sweet for a scene like this - and it’s exactly what men like you make art about. 

“There,” you say, soft and mesmerized, wiping your hand across her chest. “Satisfied?” 

Karina laughs her strange, gravelly, gorgeous laugh. 

“No,” she says, shamelessly. “But that’s not your fault.” 

Your fingers curl around the curve of her jaw. “No?”

She barely looks like she belongs in your bed - she must be something divine, lit from within, god-blessedly gorgeous. She’s a fucking fever dream: stunning eyes and the bob of her throat and her tits and her curves and all that hair. Stay, you think of telling her. Let me see what I can make of you. I don’t know you yet but I could, baby, I really could. 

“Nope.” Karina smiles, and somewhere, soliloquies are writing themselves. “I always want more.”

“Okay,” you say, mouth hovering over hers. “Then stay.” 

-

So she stays.

-

(An update on your script:

The stranger and the girl are back at his place. They’re sitting on his couch. Nobody has cleaned off her neck. He’s been too busy pawing at her: at her face, between her legs, at her tits in her tight dress. I need you, he’s been murmuring to her, and it feels like he really means it: like he’ll die if he doesn’t get her desperate and whining underneath him, his cock stretching her tight little cunt wide open. He doesn’t feel too bad about it. She’s a dirty slut. She’s said as much. She’s got her own needs, too. 

What happened to your window? she asks, suddenly.

He pulls back from her chest, his spit clinging shiny to her skin. 

She isn’t looking at him. He has the sudden, unnerving feeling that she hasn’t been looking at him the whole time. Not like she’s had her eyes closed in blinding, overwhelming pleasure - but like she’s deliberately been trying to look at anything else. 

But his hand falls between her thighs, and he realizes she’s already wet. 

A bird flew into it, probably, he says. That happens, sometimes. 

They’re talking about the stain on the once-clean glass of his window. The backdrop of the night sky behind means it’s barely visible, but the suggestion of it is enough. Implicit gore. Tiny little black feathers, caked in blood from the impact, dark and dried. It’ll be scrubbed off soon enough, he knows. It’ll be all gone eventually. 

Oh, she says. She doesn’t apologize for potentially killing the mood. She hasn’t, anyway, not really. She’s still wet and small underneath him, begging for it. Poor thing. 

Yeah, he says. 

She turns back to him. Her hair’s everywhere, all over the arm of his couch, wayward strands beneath his fingers. She’s clearly expecting something - to be kissed, to be fucked hard, to be called baby and angel and good girl. It doesn’t really matter either way. Those are the only things he can give her. 

He stares at the blood on her neck. 

Let me clean that off for you, actually, he says, and goes to the kitchen to get a washcloth.)

-

Much, much later:

“I admire you,” Karina says, all tucked up in your bed, underneath your sheets, half-buried into your side. Moonlight bleeds into the room. Her eyes gleam like galaxies. “For showing some self-control.” 

“What?” 

Karina’s hair pours over your pillowcase. She takes your hand and brings it close to her face, working your fingers into a tight fist. 

“Fucking bitch,” you mutter, and then regret it immediately. It lands too harshly, too strange and serious. “Sorry. I didn’t - that came out weird. I don’t think you’re a bitch.” 

Karina’s lips brush your knuckles. “Not the meanest thing I’ve been called.” Her voice twists with humor. She shouldn’t be so comfortable curled up with a man she doesn’t know in the middle of the night. You think of kissing her hard, of scraping her neck with your teeth, of warning her about self-preservation - sweetheart, you could tell her, this is how people end up dead. “Not the meanest thing I’ll be called, either.” 

You shift. Your fist, unconsciously, goes tense in her hand. “What’s your deal?” 

Her mouth tilts. “What’s yours?” 

You huff out a laugh. “You’re unbearable,” you say softly, which feels much kinder than calling her a bitch. “What are you - what do you mean?” 

I’m not hard to figure out, you want to tell her. I’ll let you in if you ask me to. But you - you, you imagine saying, cupping Karina’s face in your hands and saying her name like you’re praying to her, drafting scenes in your head with each whispered syllable - you. Look at you. I’d fill a thousand pages trying to find a way to understand you. 

“If you want to hurt me,” Karina says, “then hurt me.” 

Your throat dries up. Your fist falls open. “What?” 

“I wouldn’t blame you.” Her voice is matter-of-fact. You see her tongue dart over her bottom lip, the slick glimmer of spit. “If that’s what you wanted.” 

You stare at her, hard. 

It’s not difficult to make out her silhouette in the dark; she’s illuminated so distinctly by the moon, like it’s her own on-set spotlight, professionally arranged - she’s got the cosmos calling her shots. You think about how careful you’d been with her: doing what she wanted and making her cum and kissing her like you have history and maybe fucking her like you love her, just a little.

You think about that bruise you left on her chest, her skin between your teeth, the feeling of biting down. 

“It’s not,” you say, and the lie tastes acrid in your mouth. “It’s - it’s not, Karina.” 

“You fucked my face in public within like an hour of meeting me. And fucked me and came on my stomach. And fingered your cum inside of me.” It’s far past midnight. She sounds more alert than she should. “You’re gonna start being polite now?”

It sends an odd knot to your gut, the way she puts it. Equating all of that to hurting her. Laughing in the face of your clenched fist - not because she thinks you won’t do it, but because she knows how bad you want it. 

Hurt me. She says it like it’s so easy. Fuck me. Let me stay the night. Hurt me; you’ve earned it. 

“I’m not polite.” The truth doesn’t taste much better. “I just have, you know, common fucking decency.” 

“Hm,” Karina says, a nonchalant little noise, and nothing else.

You brush her hair off her neck and your fingertips graze the hollow of her throat. You feel her swallow under your touch. You open your mouth, though you’re not sure what you’re about to say - Karina, like a chant, like she’s consumed you in a matter of moments, Karina - but she shuts her eyes delicately, and curls close to you, and just like that the moment is over. 

I have common decency, you’d said. I won’t hurt you. I promise. I can control myself.

So maybe you weren’t right about everything. You’re not the devil. That’d be a delusion of grandeur - the idea that you’d ever have that kind of power over a girl like her. 

Not for long, she’d replied, in the knowing tilt of her smile. Not if I can help it.

-

In the morning, it’s a picture of crime-scene proportions. It takes a little work to piece it all together.

Karina’s not in bed when you wake up, but there are traces of her everywhere - telltale, incriminating bits of evidence. Strands of her hair on the pillow. Blood-red lipstick stains on the fabric. Her crimson dress crumpled on your bedroom floor, sporting a tiny tear in the hem that you don’t remember leaving; you can still smell her perfume all over your sheets, like a calling card. If this was a TV drama - a clichéd police procedural - she’d probably be dead in your living room right now, blank-eyed and beyond saving, rigor mortis deforming her perfect body into something grotesque. 

This is also probably not a thought you should ever relay to Karina, but you do anyway.

“Sorry to disappoint,” she replies. She’s perched on your kitchen counter, dressed in one of your t-shirts, bare legs swinging. “I’m very much alive.”

“I was being dramatic,” you try to say, gesturing with your hands to set the scene - the lighting, the fake blood and the special effects, the potential pallor of her face. “I’m - I’m a screenwriter. It’s in my nature. I didn’t mean I wanted to find your fucking corpse out here-”

“It’s okay if you did.”

You choke. “What?”

“I’m right with you, babe.” Karina leans forward conspiratorially. There’s a sharpness to the dark glint in her eyes that kind of makes you think she really does understand: that she has the same tendency to jump to the worst possible conclusions. A kindred, morbid spirit. “I get it. I’m pretty devastated that I’m still breathing, too.”

She says this all in a scratchy, sultry voice, hoarse as though she’s been sleeping for years instead of hours. Lashes fluttering like she’s just told you something very adorable and sweet.

“God,” you say, desperately charmed, and laugh until you feel light-headed. “You’re sick.”

Karina’s mouth curls. “Right.”

“I’m serious.” It’s surreal: her wearing your clothes and sitting on your counter like this is an everyday occurrence, indulging every fucked-up thing you say to her. Maybe you’re still caught somewhere in a dream, just waiting to wake up. “You’re, like - not normal.” 

“Hey.” A light, careless shrug; her palm rests over the back of her neck. “No arguments here.”

You rub a hand over your eyes, smiling like an idiot, and take a breath. 

It’s late January, and cool sunlight drips into the room, over your furniture and your floors and the angel right in the middle of your kitchen. It should wash her out, blur her at the edges; it doesn’t even come close. Turns her to a freeze frame instead, carefully color-graded, every hue just a bit too intense: skin ghost-pale, lips pouty and pink, hair jet-black and tangled to her waist. Your shirt hangs off of her slender frame like it aims to swallow her up. You thought you’d been stunned by Karina before, lulled by the late night, the electric rush of touching her - you’d assumed you could blame it on the alcohol, the slutty dress and the sultry makeup and the long-held habit of artistic romanticization-

But it’s nothing compared to seeing her now. 

Karina crosses one leg over the other, and waits as though expecting a rating: to be starred out of five like a film. 

Face scrubbed clean. Bone structure a study of faultless symmetry, delicate in a way that feels both inhuman and invulnerable. She’s so classically breathtaking - a miraculous second coming of a tragic, iconic movie star, a phenomenon back from the grave; jaw and nose and mouth all clean lines, aesthetically precise art - but God, those eyes. Enormous without the thick liner, suggestive only of impossible innocence. Like some darling baby animal, some long-lashed lamb to the slaughter - something pristine and completely untouched. 

The morning after, the direct light, the exposed behind-the-scenes - she’s still beyond beautiful. 

And somehow she’s still here with you. 

“That’s insane, by the way,” you say, unable to stop yourself. “That you stayed.” 

There’s a loud cracking sound. 

You squint, disoriented. “What-” 

Karina blinks at you, wide-eyed; her jaw shifts. The sound echoes again, startling and sudden. “What?” 

“Are-” You step closer. “Are you chewing on fucking glass or something?” 

“Or something,” Karina replies, smile’s tiny and closed-off. She gestures to the cup next to her. “It’s just ice.” 

She’s so calm watching you approach her. You’re waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the freakout, for the breakdown - or, at the very least, the scrambling excuses before the walk of shame. Here’s the truth: she doesn’t know you. Here’s an even worse truth: judging by her hickey that looks like you might’ve tried to rip her throat out earlier, she’d have every right to take one look at you and run. 

Karina doesn’t do any of it. Just raises her cup to her lips and tips it back, the arc of her neck so inviting. 

“That’s so fucking bad for your enamel.” You’re laughing again. You’re in front of her now, settled between her legs. “You’re gonna break a tooth.” 

Karina sets her glass down. Wipes the corner of her mouth with her wrist, eyes locked amusedly on yours - heavy-lidded enough to seem lazy, but pupils blown enough to be a siren call, a deliberate suggestion.

“Oh, no,” she says, all smoky sarcasm. “Who’d ever want me then?” 

She parts her thighs the second you touch them; her body’s so obedient under your fingertips, like a doll’s, something to be dressed up and posed and played with. Daring you to do everything you’re already thinking about doing. 

“You’re ridiculous,” you murmur, and give in completely.

So:

Look, you know exactly how the movies would frame this. Pandering to the wide-eyed teenagers and hopeless romantics; adding the swell of strings every time your eyes or hands or lips meet, each motion accompanied with unsubtle cues - there’s the meet-cute, there’s the moment, there’s the love-at-first-sight. It’s ridiculous to drag any of that into your real life, of course. It’d be like believing in God. Giving up logic to put your faith in something silly and mythic and implausible - to follow true love like a religion, expecting it to save your soul; to pray to the one like a healing property, a benevolent higher power. 

You can’t believe in that. You can’t. 

But-

Karina pulls back the barest amount, eyelids fluttering open like a new day dawning, and smiles when she sees the look on your face. So sweet and gorgeous; so struck and adoring. So comfortable wrapped up in your arms.

“Hi,” she murmurs. 

And - as though it’s some bone-deep instinct, saturating your bloodstream - you just have to kiss her again. 

Don’t you feel that? you think of telling her again, your hand slipping to cup her cheek - the sentiment always seems to come back around. You swear you can see scenes flashing behind your eyelids, the beginnings of a creative epiphany; it must be seeping through your fingers, staining her skin with ink, every possible action depicted neatly between brackets. A laugh, a look, a touch. A version of Karina projected across the silver screen to a wild, wanting audience. Don’t you see what you could do for me? What you’re capable of becoming? 

You can’t believe in any of this, but it’s gotta be something close. 

The feeling doesn’t end when the kiss does: only intensifies, made tangible somehow. Sculpted into the spit-slick curve of her lips, the flinty gleam in her eye. Like she feels it too. Like she knows. 

“And it’s not insane that I stayed,” Karina says, belatedly. “You asked me to.” 

For a moment you just stare at her, seconds from her mouth and speechless. 

It’s the truth without difficulty. It’s a confession with no strings attached. It’s the fucking dangerous way she says it - as if whatever you want extends to a lot more than sex. 

“And you don’t-” Your throat closes over a swallow; you find your eyes darting between hers, searching for anything but honesty. “You don’t think that’s insane? Doing whatever a stranger tells you to?”

Karina only laughs her strange laugh, gritty the way good music is, demanding to be heard.

“Nope,” she says, like this is all so simple. “That’s just what I do.”

It’s unbearably filthy in its implication - and it’s exactly what you need. 

The room seems to fill with potential, fantasies pouring in from the ceiling, enough to bloat any manuscript to its breaking point. You let out a breathless laugh, loud and unabashed. You think of pushing for even more, pressing your nails in and digging deeper - why me, why this, why now - but Karina leans in close before you can and slots her mouth to yours, and you’re no fool: there’s no line of questioning worth giving that up. 

Seems like you’ll have to come up with this character motivation all on your own. 

-

“Look at us,” she murmurs against your lips - meaning this very minute, the chemistry, how every glittering star must’ve conspired to get you here. “Kinda feels like this was meant to be, huh?” 

She’s clearly kidding, because it’s too soon and too fucking crazy, but-

Well, the way you kiss her then is absolutely your version of a yes. 

-

Here’s something people should probably know about artists like you:

You’re rather enamored with the idea of a magnum opus. 

It’s a natural thing to reach for, to visualize - the concept of your one great masterpiece. Something you can pour years and years into, water into roaring reckless oceans; time transforming the things you make into something worth remembering forever. Everyone you know - your sculptors, your songwriters - has their own version of this, somewhere. When I finally create this one perfect thing I’ll be - go on, fill in the blank. Fulfilled. Gratified. Happy. When I finally do this, I’ll feel whole. 

It’s strangely fantastical. A lifelong dream a kid would have - a childlike, storybook aspiration. 

Yours - as far as you’ve figured out - looks a little like this:

“It’s not as romantic as it should be,” you admit, now. “I’m not really into that as a theme. True love, I mean. Or optimism. Or hope. I want something more…” Something rougher, you mean. Something with pain. Something with blood and bruises. “Nuanced, you know? Complicated, messy.” 

“I get it,” replies Karina. She has her hands twisted in her lap, watching you very closely. You’re obsessed with the way she looks at you - like she’s drinking every word in with those smoldering dark eyes, greedy for more. For you. “All the best art is about pain, huh?” 

You snap your fingers, pleased to be understood. “Exactly.” 

Karina smiles, small and knowing, and gestures you on. 

In your vision, your magnum opus is always about a girl. Like you said, it’s the way it goes with all the best films ever made: not about love, but the futility of it lasting. Think of all the famed examples - think of the filmmakers and their obsessions, sneaking the great loves of their lives between each line: there’s something she said, there’s a dress she wore, there’s a conversation they had in the middle of the night, tangled up in sheets and whispering against skin. Your future muse will be just like that. A reincarnation of the infamous women who haunt all the greatest artists - an amalgamation of their bodies contorted into narratives and replicated in loving, graphic detail. Someone with skin like marble, a statue you could take a sledgehammer to. Someone who looks unfathomably pretty when she cries. 

Someone like-

“Uh-huh,” says Karina. She must’ve just gotten out of the shower before you found her, because her hair’s damp enough to have left wet patches on your t-shirt. She licks her bottom lip, once. “Sure.” 

Someone to be what you’ve always wanted: a flawless girl to fall from the sky into your lap. To fulfill your promise to yourself: when I meet her, I’ll know. I’ll be able to make this movie. When I meet her, everything will slip exactly into place. 

Karina cracks another ice cube between her teeth.

“So,” she says, low with insinuation. “When you told me last night that you found me inspiring…”

She doesn’t need to finish the question. She knows exactly what you want.

“You’re…” You shake your head. “You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. I saw you and I just - I felt like I knew. I knew. I wanted you.” You shrug helplessly, smiling. “Do you think I’m nuts?” 

She should, probably. You’re a total stranger, a practical lunatic, an artist talking of your visions like you’re possessed. You don’t know her - that’s the reality of the situation. You don’t know her. 

But then there’s everything else.

The unbelievable sex, the staying the night; the way she lets you touch her, blinking slow and subservient, like you already have a claim to her body. You think muse and you think in abstract concepts, glittering stars, guiding lights; you think of skin cut up and sewn together, of creators and their finest monsters, of the implicit poetry in the undoing. You think muse and you think of the way Karina smiles at you now, full lips and frail bones, a painter’s portrait reference. Unmoving, unafraid. Too otherworldly for your day-to-day but just right when she’s in your arms, like a trial-run demonstration: this is what we’re capable of. You could make it happen. You could make me fit.

You swear you’ve been dreaming of someone like her your whole fucking life. 

You think muse, and now you can only think of her. 

It’s a sign. It must be. And this, the next one:

“No,” Karina says, easily. “I think you’re just like everyone else.” But she raises an eyebrow, so you know it’s a joke. “I think you’re all the same.” 

You laugh, delighted; Karina’s smile widens, shows her teeth. “Shut up.” 

Karina acquiesces immediately - claps a hand over her mouth like it’ll keep any other words from escaping. It’s so adorable that you can’t keep yourself from pouncing, suddenly all over her like an animal: wrenching her thin wrist down, fingers threading through her hair, tugging her lips to yours as if you’ve been starved and she’s something to devour. She’s so cold, ice still melting on her tongue; even her body feels glacial, more porcelain than real. It drives you wild - the stunning impossibility of her. The desire to see it all reworked, unwound, shattered. 

“So,” you breathe over her mouth. “I can write about you?” 

“Babe.” Karina’s dark eyes sparkle, frozen-over streets in the mid-winter sun. “You can do anything you want with me.” 

That’s the whole point of having a muse, after all. Everything they are becomes yours. 

-

“But,” you can’t help saying right after: “you don’t have to be, like - concerned. About what I said. About art and pain. I mean…” You falter. You’re standing in between her spread legs now, thumbing the sharp curve of her jaw. “It’s fiction. I’m not that kind of guy in real life - I’m not going to hurt you.” 

Karina just stares at you, sentiment clear and unspoken. 

“Not like - not seriously.” You roll your eyes, laughing it off. “Not like that.” 

“Not like that,” Karina echoes. The hickey on her neck seems to flush redder every time you look at it - a photograph in a darkroom, developing. “But in other ways.”

Your mouth opens, but whatever defense you might’ve had gets traitorously stuck in your throat.

Karina laughs hoarsely, lets you trace her bottom lip with a finger. She seems to get the picture - that you’d love to see it bitten and bloody, but only ever in the name of art. There’s a kind of sick, sadistic beauty in destruction, battles waged and lost. She leans into your touch like she’s seen all the war films and knows precisely why they’re so well-loved. 

“For the record,” she tells you, arms looped loosely around your neck: “I look very pretty when I cry.” 

“Jesus Christ.” You’re smiling. She couldn’t be more perfect if you’d dreamt her up yourself. “Then I guess I’ll have to make it happen.” 

-

It’s like fate, probably. 

-

(Up next in your script:

The girl is standing in the stranger’s bathroom. She’s turning a little glass perfume bottle over in her hands when he stops in the doorway. He’s perfectly content to watch her; she’s the kind of beautiful that deserves to be observed, like some exotic wild animal caged between four walls in an elaborate exhibit, mildly unaware of all the attention. Her hair is messy; her head is tilted down. Unseeing. 

Oh, he says. That was my-

Except he doesn’t even get the rest of the sentence out before the girl whirls around, and the bottle slips from her hand and shatters on the floor. 

Jesus. The stranger jolts back. Jumpy. He’s not too concerned about the broken bottle; it’s not his, anyway. Why the fuck did you do that? 

Sorry, the girl says. She’s leaning rather casually against the counter, observing the glass covering the ground, the sickly-sweet smell of the perfume sticking to the tile. Honeysuckle and the sharp note of alcohol, rendered unrecognizable. You scared me. 

He looks down. A crystalline stretch of tiny little shards - if she tried to move she’d slice her foot open. 

No worries, he says. Hold on. 

He ducks into the kitchen to get a broom and when he comes back he stops in his tracks. There’s something slightly off about the picture in front of him. She’s small against the background counter, frozen, barely blinking. Everything about her looks suddenly frail, fair skin ghostly underneath shitty bathroom lighting, cheekbones gaunt and sunken-in, hair pouring ink-black in endless waves. A vengeful spirit. An incorporeal haunting. 

Did you…? he starts to say, thrown. 

She blinks, finally. Did I what? 

He pauses, reassesses. She’s gorgeous. She’s art. She’s vibrantly alive. 

Never mind, he says. 

It seems kind of like she’d moved, but he can’t tell. He forgets about it. She’s still beautiful and she seems okay and so he steps forward and clears the worst of the glass out of the way. 

It’s silly, she says, watching him. I used to know someone who wore that perfume. 

It was my ex-girlfriend’s, he says. She left it here a while back. I think it’s a common brand or whatever. Hey, let me help you. 

He’s very chivalrous about it, sweeping her off her feet, cradling her bridal-style across the possible remnants of glass. She laughs all the while, playing into it - a princess out of a fairy tale, being carried to safety by some gallant knight. But then he sets her down and cups her ass and says, You gonna pay me back for the property damage or what? and she laughs harder, because there’s nothing funnier than that: sweet moments turned filthy, a startling hairpin turn in intention. 

Or - conversely - a revelation of the absolute truth. Because what else could he ever want from her?

So she says, Yeah, sure, take everything, and leans in to kiss him.

It’s a normal kiss, mostly. It’s just that it begins pointedly erotic but seems to turn strange after a second, like he might be gripping her hair too hard, like she might be corpse-limp in his arms, like at any moment he could unhinge his jaw and sprout fangs and swallow her whole, cannibalistic, viperous. There’s too much spit and sound. There’s too much teeth and selfishness. It stretches on too long and lingers where it shouldn’t and overstays its welcome terribly - the score seems to fall off-beat, the lighting seems to shift dark and discolored-

But then the kiss breaks, and it’s over. 

When he pulls off of her she looks like the perfect picture of flushed contentment. Eyes half-lidded and lashes fluttering, her pouty lips swollen and rosy. Smiling like she wants more, like she wants it so, so bad. 

It didn’t get you? he asks finally, looking at her neck, thinking of thorns and pinprick pain and the rivulet of crimson that’d decorated her throat. The glass? 

No, she says. Don’t you wanna fuck me now? 

Oh, God, he says, grinning, and every other thought melts away into nothing. He likes how she doesn’t play coy. He likes how she’s smaller and has to tilt her chin up to look at him. He wants to fuck her, so he does. 

It’s excellent sex. The blood on the tile doesn’t really matter.)

-

Before you really start writing, there’s just one singular problem: you don’t know anything about her. 

“That’s not true,” Karina replies, right away. 

You open your mouth, then close it, because - okay, she’s not completely wrong. 

For about an hour now you just haven’t been able to stop talking to her. About anything, everything: your start into screenwriting, your favorite novels, your greatest inspirations, your neverending passion for eerie, erotic art. You can’t seem to shut up. And it would be bad - would be making you feel self-conscious right now, if it were anyone else - but it’s just not. Because it’s, well-

It’s you, you told her, thoughtfully, watching as the sun climbed higher into the sky, golden light grazing each scalpel-sharp edge of Karina’s body. You’re easy to talk to. Has anyone ever told you that?

Karina blinked at you. Tucked a strand of silky hair behind her ear and looked away, considering it. 

She has this way about her: this serene openness to her big eyes, her body language. Leaning back on her hands, humming and nodding and saying I get it, I feel that way too, I understand with such sweet sincerity that you can’t help but believe her. Like a Catholic confessional, a pristinely blank page - something you could pour hours and hours of words into that would never, ever complain. 

Yeah, Karina said, finally. She pulled one leg up to her chest; you could see the lacy black of her panties. I get that all the time. 

Just one of those people, huh? Her character was taking shape already. A vault for everyone else’s thoughts and ideas, cradling them between her fingers like something infinitely precious. A listener. Such a lovely trait; a perfect protagonist characteristic. An observer. 

Yeah. Her cheek rested gently against a knobby knee. Exactly. 

It’s something of an art study. You’ve been filing away these details about Karina since the moment you met her, unraveling her bit by bit.

She always seems to think deeply before she speaks, a sort of charming self-scripting, like she wants to make sure she gets every sentence just right. She makes silence seem like the most natural thing in the world. She doesn’t laugh nervously or blush or get embarrassed, ever. She’d mentioned offhand during one of your tangents about your most beloved movies that she tends to like films about gorgeous, dangerous, scarily self-possessed girls: Thirteen and Black Swan and Girl, Interrupted. She seems both intensely present and consistently lost in thought, there one moment and gone the next, her long-lashed gaze falling in and out of focus like a camera lens. A contradiction, you think to yourself. An enigma, even. Profoundly complicated. Not just a girl but something more. 

Art in and of itself, displayed deliberately on your kitchen counter, waiting to be understood. 

“No, you’re right.” Your fingers have strayed to your open laptop; you’re seconds from typing Karina’s name like a title, something you’ve created all on your own. “I know…”

You’re trying to think of something nonchalant to say and failing. I know you - the first instinct, somehow. I know you’re something brilliant and remarkable and new. I know I’ve never felt this way before about anyone. I know there’s something here, I know what I feel, I know what I want - you, you, you. 

Karina stares at the ice melting in her glass. 

Then she says, mouth tripping up at a corner: “You know I’m a world-class fuck.” 

“Jesus.” You laugh out loud, surprised. “Okay, yeah. That.” A pause. “And, obviously-” 

“Obviously,” Karina echoes, like she knows where this is going. 

“I know that you’re, like - outrageously fucking beautiful.” 

Karina hums once, letting the compliment wash over her, and turns to look out the window. 

You bite down on your lip - bite back all the other too-soon things you could say about her, threatening to claw their way out of your mouth - and go in on your script instead. 

It’s shockingly easy to write with her in the room. The details seem to stitch themselves together on-page, the restorative aftermath of an autopsy: sealing the slit chest cavity back up, prepping a corpse for an open casket, making something disconnected whole and beautiful again. You’d pulled these specifics from her like pulsing, throbbing organs - her tits, her tone, her tiny waist - and now all you’re doing is repurposing them. You know her body now. You turn stretches of pale, bruised-pink skin into prose, the curl of her little fingers around her thigh into dialogue. You imagine taking that perfect frame and picking it apart again, bit by bit; not just undressing her but peeling back layers of flesh, familiarizing yourself with the stark scarlet of her bloodstream. Until there’s nothing to hide and you can finally say it - I know you - and it’ll feel earned, and real, and honest. 

All very melodramatic, of course. It’s just the process: the natural consequence of being a writer. 

Your eyes trace the jutting protrusion of muscle in Karina’s throat, and you think about fucking her again. 

“Also,” you say, as though your earlier conversation isn’t long over. “I want to know-”

Karina makes a huffy, half-impatient noise.

You grin, gaze flicking back to her face. “What?” 

“You want to know more?” Her brows furrow in exaggerated confusion; her smile is absurdly self-deprecating. As if there’s anything she could possibly be insecure about. “You already got the two most interesting things about me, babe.” 

“Stop.” Your mouth twitches. “No way.” 

Karina’s smile stills in place, expectant. “No?”

“Come on.” Your hand slips from the keyboard to trace her knee. “I’m sure there’s all kinds of interesting things about you I haven’t learned yet.” 

The laugh she lets out is quiet and nearly secretive, legs parting to let you touch her. You’re already half in some faraway daydream, wondering if you can bottle the color of her eyes and turn it loose on the page.

“Okay,” Karina says, easily. She nudges your laptop away, scoots closer to you, her sharp chin pointed down at you. “Come and learn them, then.” 

“God.” As if that’s what you’re doing. Memorizing her body as some private education; taking her apart in a classroom dissection. “Can I - I’m trying to write, Karina. I’m being productive. I…” You’re shaking your head as though you’re not already giving in, fingers slipping up her thighs - she’s smirking at you like she knows it. “You’re fucking insatiable, you know that?”

“Then satiate me.” Karina’s head tilts, lids heavy. “Fuck me. Use me.” She leans down like she’s telling you a filthy, sordid secret. “Cum in me like I know you want to.” 

There’s something surreal about how certain she is: never tripping over her words or waffling over intentions, the most practiced actress you’ve ever seen. Every move - her tongue wetting her bottom lip, her hand sliding gracefully through her hair, her mouth forming a sweet little pout - all clean, choreographed precision. 

I know you, she says - like it’s earned, real, honest. Inexplicable, but there anyway. I know you want to. 

“Karina.” Her name comes out embarrassingly strangled. You’re pulling her thighs further apart, toying with the edge of her underwear. “You’re such a fucking - you’re so needy.” 

Her smirk sharpens even as you tug her panties roughly to the side. “I’m what?” 

“Needy.” 

“No.” She’s so wet - she’s probably seconds from dissolving into a whimpering breathless thing, begging to be underneath you, begging for more. That damn smirk is probably seconds from shattering completely. “What were you going to call me?” 

“Nothing.” You drag a finger down the slick drenched heat of her cunt.

“A slut.” Her voice is a purr, gravelly and sensual. “You think I’m just this fucking slut who needs your cock all the time, huh?” 

But it’s the kind of question that you already both know the answer to. Karina takes your finger-fucking so well, hips raised and rutting, hair cutting across her cheekbones - seems to give herself over to desire so fucking easily, with her whole body, back arching and neck craned and hot little cunt a sloppy mess. Never puts up a fight, never demures or acts shy; never says wait or don’t or stop. Only spreads her legs, and drips down your hand, and waits to be fucked good and hard.

And - hey, there’s one dirty word for a girl like that. 

“Well.” You raise your eyebrows at her: a challenge. “Are you?”

It’s dangerous. This is all dangerous. Stumbling down a treacherous path, asking a stranger something like this. Are you what I think you are? Do I know you? Do I really? 

Karina makes a low, luxurious noise at the stretch of your fingers in her cunt, buried to the knuckle. 

“Sure,” she says - and the gleam in her eye tells you she knows exactly what she’s getting herself into. “I’m whatever you want me to be.” 

-

So, it’s possible this is really the most interesting thing about her: she’s the kind of girl who never says no. 

-

That scene goes down how all scenes should:

“Fuck, fuck, fuck-” 

Karina’s choking out curses like she can’t recall any other words, head lolling back to expose the pretty bob of her throat. You thrust deep right then and she lets out a sound like an aching gasp, like you’ve doubled down with a fist to her gut, like you’re knocking the the air right out of her; you might as well be - oh, she moans, like she could be in shock or awe or pain - with the way you’ve got one of her thighs pulled up so you can fuck deep into her tight dripping cunt. It’s not nice, not really. Her back keeps hitting your counter. You keep staring at her neck and her hair and her face: the faint flush of her cheeks, the flawless construction of her bones underneath - there’s so much unmarked skin - God, she’s so clean, it’s like she’s never been fucking touched-

“You gonna cum for me?” you murmur, voice coming out thick and half-animalistic. 

She has one hand curled around the back of your neck. She’s got those ridiculous clawed nails on her but she never presses down. Her pussy can’t stop clenching around your cock but she takes it so well, lets you make room inside her little cunt, shuts her eyes and trips over her own breath as you force her spine hard against your counter over and over again. 

“Karina.” 

“Yeah,” she exhales, raspy and strained, as your cock stretches her out. “Fuck, yeah-” 

“Cum for me, honey. Cum all over my cock - oh, there you go, good girl-” 

It’s hypnotic. The tiny bitten-off sounds spilling from her ice-cold mouth - that small pristine face and all that hair tangled to her waist, just available to be knotted and tugged and fucked all the way up - Karina clings to you when she cums, and you feel so much bigger than her when she does, like you’ve got her sloppy and open around your cock and you could do anything to her, that’s what she told you, and even if she hadn’t, it’s not like she could stop you - she’s gorgeous but she doesn’t have it in her - she’s just too fucking delicate-

It happens too fast to process. 

One minute you’re buried inside her pussy and the next Karina’s on her knees, on the ground, and you’re jerking your cock until you’re cumming all over her. 

It’s obscene. It’s fucking inevitable. Thick ropes of creamy cum coating her forehead, her cheekbone, her nose and mouth and getting all in that hair-

Her hair. You don’t realize how hard you’re gripping her hair with one hand - balled in a brutal fist at the back of her head - until you disentangle your fingers from it and Karina sinks to the floor like she’s just been cut loose from marionette strings, breathing fast and hard. She doesn’t even say anything: doesn’t comment on the fact that you’d just shoved her straight to the ground or complain when the head of your cock smears cum across her jaw. Doesn’t even flinch when your cock slaps heavy across her cheek, at the indecent sound of the impact. 

You’re staring at her, open-mouthed. At her gorgeous, breathtaking, defiled face. 

Karina’s not looking at you. Instead, she’s preening in the most lewd, pornographic way possible: swiping her thumb through the cum streaking across her forehead, popping it into her mouth to suck. Halfway through she seems to remember you’re still in the room - seems to recall the value of a performance - and she redirects her gaze up at you, lids heavy, and smirks. 

“Did I…” you start, without knowing how the sentence will end. “Did I - was I-”

Karina lifts a cum-covered eyebrow. Her mouth’s an arresting pink, puckering around her thumb like it puckered around the cubes of ice, how her lips formed a ring around your cock back in the bookstore yesterday. She lets it slip free, shiny with spit. 

“No,” she says. “You’re good.” 

You can’t stop looking at the cum caught in her hairline. She’d been so fucking clean. 

You glance down and realize there are strands of black hair broken off in your clenched fist. 

Karina’s looking at her hair in your hand too, now, but with a sort of amused detachment. She stands shakily, using the counter for support. There’s cum all over her. Her knees are red from how hard she’d been pushed down.

“You’re so cute,” she tells you, grazing the side of your neck with her fingertips. “There’s no shame in being rough with me, babe.” 

“Right.” There’s an unnamed pressure coiling in your chest. “But - but you-” 

“Hey.” The word comes out in a rasp, and then Karina laughs, pushing the low hoarse lilt of her voice to its limits. She steps closer, angles her little cum-stained chin up at you. “Are you really gonna tell me you don’t like seeing me covered in your cum?” She’s tonguing the corner of her mouth. “Turning me into a-” her smirk pulls wicked; your next breath hitches so badly- “messy fucking whore for your cock?” 

“God,” you get out, because she’s winding an arm around your neck, and her pretty face is still sticky with your cum. “I-” 

“It’s what you wanted.” Karina blinks, in a show of such doe-eyed naïveté that saliva begins pooling hot in your mouth - like you’re feral, like you’re rabid. “Isn’t it?” 

You’re looking down again. Her knees are going to bruise. Black and blue, as if someone’s bullied her in the schoolyard, pulled her pigtails and knocked her to the asphalt. An echo of something teachers could’ve told her years ago: oh, look, he’s mean to you because he’s got a crush. It’s okay, really - he only hurts you because he likes you.  

“You like me like this,” Karina murmurs, dangerously low. “All sloppy and slutty for you.” Her gaze is trained on your mouth. “Marking me up.” Her hair slips from your hand. “Owning me.” 

Her name clogs your throat, cloying and candy-sweet. “Karina-”

Karina’s head tilts. “Yes or no?” 

She’s too close to you. She’s so filthily beautiful she seems somewhat alien, some kind of foreign invention. Her jaw is smeared with your cum and her flawless teeth shine like jewels and she’s like every creative vision you’ve ever had cut in clips and playing back in a movie theater, made to be scrutinized. 

“Yes,” you tell her, winded. “You’re fucking - you’re unreal, you know that?”

You’re smiling like it’s flattery, like it’s an exaggeration. Like she’s not living, breathing, visionary art. 

She smiles back, like she knows just how much you really mean it.

“So I’ve been told,” Karina says, and taps your neck, lightly. “Go make breakfast.” She shakes her hair out; some of it gets stuck to the cum on her cheekbone. “I’m taking another shower.” 

“Right.” You bite into your bottom lip, hand skimming down her side. “Go get clean.” 

“Clean?” She steps back and flashes a disbelieving grin, gestures pointedly at herself - her creamy thighs, her porn star tits in your t-shirt, her body like sex itself. Dirty by design. “Never happening.”

Some cynical part of you keeps waiting for a slip-up, some mistake in a masterfully crafted script - no one can be that gorgeous and still be here with you. But Karina moves and your eyes are hopelessly drawn to the disheveled curtain of her hair spiraling down her back, the sharp distinct lines of her calves, the flex of muscle in her thighs. Her hands, balled into little fists. She’s alluring as if manufactured that way: engineered to be perfectly bruisable, ruinable. It defies logic. It’s movie magic.

“Well.” You snort with laughter, swat at Karina’s ass as she turns to go. “At least you can try.”

You don’t even think she can help it - that’s the thing. It’s just what she was made for. 

-

“What would you have done if I said no, though?” you ask after a moment, as she wavers in the doorway. “Like - what if I told you I didn’t like you like this?” 

Karina shrugs.

“I would’ve been something else,” she says, and closes the bathroom door behind her. 

-

(Next:

The stranger and the girl fuck and afterwards he promises her breakfast and then he realizes his cabinets are bare, his fridge painfully unstocked. Sorry, he says, as she pokes around his kitchen. I don’t know how that happened. I usually have something to eat here, I swear. 

I don’t mind, she says. Her fingertips sweep his shelves. She seems fascinated by the emptiness, admiring the vacancy. Oh, wait, look. 

She finds a half-eaten jar of honey that she ends up scooping up crudely with her fingers, dripping sticky amber down her hand. He’d tell her that’s disgusting but she makes it - as she seems to make everything - into a pointed seduction, her tongue pink and wetly visible, her skin gleaming as she licks it off. It’s funny. He’d never thought it possible to turn eating into some sort of sexual performance but she manages it anyway: meets his eyes, sucks loud and lewd, smacks her lips and wipes her mouth with her thumb, ill-mannered and stunning. 

I can’t imagine that’s very filling, he says, delighted by her commitment. 

Yeah, well, she says. It’s a good thing I hate feeling full. 

But it seems like a moment of hilarious irony when ten minutes later he’s got her bent over his kitchen counter, tits pressed punishingly to the flat surface, honey stuck to her neck and collarbone as she’s fucked hard again and again, stuffed with his cock, his fingers everywhere, like her own body barely even belongs to her - all mine, he keeps saying, and means it; you’re all mine. All filled up. Overfed. Bursting. 

Sex is a manner of consuming, it seems. He might as well be eating her alive.)

-

“Do you do this a lot?”

Eventually, it turns into one of those lazy Saturdays. An afternoon of sitcom plot points. 

It’s just so easy to fill the time, the space, the page - you tell Karina some inane story from your college years and she reacts in all the right places like your own built-in studio audience; she says something off-handed and enticingly vague and suddenly you have a new thread of dialogue to explore. You’re both sprawled out over your couch, Karina’s got her thighs tucked over your legs, wearing another one of your t-shirts, a fresh hickey bruising over her throat. There’s something delightfully domestic about it - like you’ve been doing it for a lot longer than you have, or like you could do it eternally if given the chance, holding all the silken comfort of an old routine. When you’d mentioned it - I kind of feel like I could do this forever - she’d laughed her scratchy laugh and said forever’s nowhere near as long as you think it is, babe. A perfectly cinematic line. You stared at her, leaned over, and added it immediately to your draft. 

“This whole…” You’re trying to elaborate now, staring at the blinking cursor on your laptop screen. Your knuckles skim her bare, bony knees. “You know.” 

“Eloquent.” 

“Shut up.” 

“I thought you were a writer.” 

“Karina.” You’re charmed by the drawl of her voice, the raspy roll of sarcasm. “I’m just wondering.”

Karina shifts in your lap. You’ve got one hand sneaking up the hem of her shirt - your shirt - skating up her tummy, her ribs. You’re probably about five minutes from snapping your laptop shut and pulling her on top of you and saying something crass about her tits and passing it off as a character study. 

“What do you mean?” She’s as close to clean as she can be. You made sure of it - licked the hollow of her collarbone earlier after she got out of the shower, tasted nothing but soap and skin. “Do I have a lot of sex with strangers? Or do I stay the night a lot after I have sex with strangers?”

“Both.” You think of taking her hair down, sifting your hand through it, wrapping the strands around your fingers. “All of the above.” 

Karina shoots you a look, fluttered lashes, suggestive understanding. You hear it without her having to say it. You want me to tell you that you’re special. 

“I’ve kind of been going through a phase,” she says instead, nonchalantly. 

Your eyebrows fly up. “A phase?” 

“I’ve been, you know.” She gives an airy sigh. “Trying to find myself in the big city. Running wild. Terrified of monogamy but being very brave and quirky about it. Sordid past with love and romance and general human connection. Doing the whole manic pixie dream girl thing.” Her eyes flick to your open laptop, abruptly too wide and innocent. “That sound about right?” 

“Fuck off.” It’s a complete non-answer. You run a hand past her stomach, laughing. “You’re fucking with me.”

“What?” Karina inches closer. “Isn’t that what you wanted? Your textbook rom-com love interest?”

You make a rather disparaging sound in the back of your throat. “Ugh.” 

“Oh, my bad.” Her mouth curls, contradictory. There’s nothing apologetic about her. “I forgot. You don’t believe in art about love. You wanna see broken people and broken people only.” 

“See?” You’re obsessed with her tone; all flirtation, some distorted version of come-hither charm. Talking of suffering like it’s a seduction tactic. “You get it.” 

Karina rakes a hand through her hair; her fingers fall to the back of her neck and linger there. She pulls herself out of your lap and turns, hooks one bare long leg over you until she’s straddling you. Your hands find her hips. You’re disarmed by her strange weightlessness, like she’s seconds from either shattering or taking flight.  

Then she asks, “Is that what you’re doing with me?”

It’s gotta be a very roundabout request to fuck her stupid, because she follows it up torturously: ducks her chin, parts her lips, rocks her hips down until you groan. You watch her throat, the way muscle works over bone, picturing unspeakable things: taking her by that pretty neck and pinning her to the wall, ripping your shirt right off of her with your fingertips leaving bruises - bending her over to fuck her fast and cruel until her cunt’s raw and aching and leaking your cum - until she’s begging pathetically, saying please, God, please - and you’re triumphant, victorious. Telling her you asked for this, didn’t you? You said anything. You said anything I want. 

“Depends,” you reply, when you can breathe again. “Are you a broken person?” 

Karina stops, moments from your mouth. 

“Depends,” she echoes. “Is that what you want from me?”

It actually takes a beat for the question to sink in. Then two, then-

“No,” you say, loudly. “Obviously not, Karina, Jesus. Why would I…”

You falter. 

Karina only looks back at you, patient, tolerant. Like if right now you said that’s exactly it: I want you broken, I want you ruined, I want you decaying and dead and buried, she’d smile and say do your worst. Flashing those white, white teeth, perfect like pearls, ready to be knocked right out and strung together. 

You blink the bloody vision away. “Why would I ever want that?”

Karina studies you for a second longer, expression indecipherable. 

“Okay,” she agrees, breezily. “Then I’m not broken. I’m just going through a phase, like I said. I don’t like being tied down.” Her shirt rides tantalizingly high up her thighs; her hand slips down to palm your cock. There’s a twist to her lips, a dirty sort of smirk. “You understand that, right?”

You stare at her.

“Right?” Karina prods, again, low and sultry. 

“Right,” you say, unable to fight your sudden smile. 

The pout of her mouth’s an inevitability; her little body in your lap’s a seductive form of foreshadowing. You dig your fingers into her protruding ribs, playful, and you don’t quite get the squeal of laughter you were expecting - all Karina does is curl closer, expecting more, expecting harder. She knows what you’re capable of. You’re both just biding your time until you cross the same line you’ve been crossing and you fall back into bed again.

“A phase,” you add, considering. It intrigues you, anyway - the casualness, the connotation. “So - I’m not special, then. That’s the moral of this story.” 

Karina’s fingers sift gently through your hair. “You wanna be special?”

“I mean, yeah.” Your palm falls to her neck, presses down. She doesn’t seem to mind. “Doesn’t everyone?” 

Her eyebrows rise in vague, unconvinced amusement. It makes sense: she’s the most special of all, a cosmic glitch, an angelic fluke. Someone like Karina wouldn’t understand the aching, clawing, consuming desire to be extraordinary. She’s already there. 

Your hand on her throat looks even bigger now, tendons straining from underneath skin.

“I think we all want to feel important,” you mumble, thumb grazing gently across her jaw. “Don’t you?” 

You’re pretty sure the wry, glittering smile that sits at Karina’s mouth is an answer in itself. 

-

Alright, forget your television metaphors - you’re not sure there’s any sitcom out there that goes quite like this.

“By the way,” you say, grinning against her hair as you pull her to the bedroom. “Did you say you don’t like being tied down?” 

Karina turns in your arms and doesn’t even flinch when you force her too hard against the doorframe and its edge smacks into her shoulder blade, digging in hard. You should apologize but you don’t; the possibility of her in pain seems laughable, a distant fantasy. This is how it goes, fucking a girl who looks like a god - your brain is convinced she’s wholly immune to hurt. The universe wouldn’t actually let someone so pretty bleed. 

“Oh, sorry,” she says, voice raspy with insinuation. “Let me rephrase.” 

“Karina,” you say, not really like a warning - more like you’ve got something to prove. This is real. You’re really here. You’re really this perfect, gorgeous, greedy thing. You’re really made for me. 

Karina only lets her lips tilt in a smirk, devilish and knowing.

“I meant that I don’t like commitment,” she says. “I love being tied down.”

She’s still smiling when you shove her through the doorway, across the threshold - across that same old fucking line.

-

Not that it makes a difference now, but one of the reasons you and your most recent ex-girlfriend broke up was because of what you’d both referred to as sexual incompatibility. Actually, there were about fourteen other things, too - she was a trainwreck and a textbook attention whore; you spent all your time writing and she took offense to the fact that you found your scripts more interesting than her - but the crux of the sex problem between the two of you was that she thought you wanted too much power over her. She seemed to assume that was the point of potentially tying her up and shit like that: to exert power. To put you and only you in control. To make her into this helpless little toy - and I hate that, she’d said, working herself into a fit, I hate feeling helpless. 

You hadn’t pushed her. You’d also tried to justify it in a number of ways. It isn’t about that. It’s not about control. I’m not trying to make you feel bad. But it hadn’t made a difference and she hadn’t believed you and you’d come to the reluctant, inevitable conclusion that that particular dream would never actually get fulfilled. 

Until-

“Look at you, baby.” 

Until now, when you’ve got Karina stripped bare and tied to your bed, thighs parted as you kneel over her, pretty little cunt glistening wet and tits heaving with every breath as she waits, and waits, and waits. 

Eyes half-lidded. Utterly fuckable. A curated collection of every salacious desire you’ve ever had. 

“You’ve been looking at me forever,” murmurs Karina, her tone still humorous, like the reason her voice is run so ragged is because she’s holding back a fit of giggles. “You gonna fuck me anytime soon?” 

To Karina’s credit, the idea of tying her up didn’t seem to bother her one bit. She’d let you knot her wrists to your bedframe and only grinned sharply when you asked her if it was too much. She didn’t seem to care about feeling helpless or feeling bad. Actually - judging from the wetness that collects on your fingers as you rub two of them over her cunt - it all seemed to turn her on either way. 

“You’re so fucking mouthy.” You lift your hand only to ghost it over her stomach, leaving a lewd shiny streak across her skin. “It’s like you want to be punished.” 

“Well, you put in all this work.” Karina yanks at the ropes tethering her wrists to the bedframe until they bite so severely into her skin that it turns white. “I’d hate to see it go to waste.” 

“Not a waste.” 

“No?” She’s got that seductive little smirk on, legs spread shamelessly, head back and throat bared. 

“Nope.” Your eyes rove down her body. “It’s a great view, actually.”

You’re shocked by the sound Karina makes, then: harsh and derisive, scratchy and painful, like she’s choking badly around some injury in her throat. You’re half-expecting her to turn her face and spit blood onto your sheets - all murder-scene evidence, horrifically vibrant gore. Coughing up her own vocal chords. 

It’s so awful it actually takes you a minute to realize that she’s laughing. 

“Karina?” you say, perturbed.

“Oh, please.” Karina hacks out one more horrid laugh. “Cut the shit.” 

You draw your hand back uncertainly. “What are you-”

“Come on, man.” There’s a glint to Karina’s gaze as she looks up at you: bored, mocking, infuriating. Irises flashing like the darkest corners of haunted houses, set-ups for a summoning; lashes like cobwebs, self-spun and delicate. “Fuck me or leave me alone.”

For a second you just stare at her, unmoving, something caustic and furious threading up your spine. 

And then-

Look, none of this next part is on you. You can’t blame yourself. It’s her - her tiny hands in tight clenched fists, tummy so flat it seems caved-in, hollowed-out; her own glimmer of slick smeared on her belly, physical proof of how desperately slutty she really is. The bruise on her chest; the one on her throat. Her goddamn eyes. Her lazy, lilting drawl, the exact matter-of-fact casualness she’d had last night when she’d told you to hurt her - fuck me or leave me alone. 

It’s so obvious what she’s trying to do - provoke a reaction out of you. It’s gotta be the only reason she’s talking to you like that. Like, what else are we here for? Like, what else could I possibly want from you? 

So - no, God, it’s not your fault. 

But-

It’s over before you can even think about it. Before you’ve even rationalized doing it, before you recognize the sound ricocheting through the room as the perfect violent land of a blow, the hot whiplash of skin on skin, your palm connecting with its target. Before you blink, and recalibrate, and you take in the rapid reddening of her cheek, and her angled jaw, and her hair falling starkly past her chin - it’s too late. It’s already done. 

Because you’ve just slapped Karina clean across the face - hard. 

“Oh.” You’re babbling as if on autopilot, all your nerves on shutdown. “Oh. Oh, God. Karina-” 

Karina licks the corner of her lip, like she can taste the impact. 

“Jesus Christ,” you’re saying, panicking; you can’t shut up. You don’t know what to do with your hands; you find yourself kneeling carefully in front of her, cupping her face, stroking her temples with your thumbs like it’ll soothe the sting. You can’t believe you hit her. All the things you could do to a girl like that, and you - “I’m sorry. I didn’t - fuck, baby. I’m sorry.”

Karina blinks up at you, expression placid and blank, porcelain-doll cool. 

“For what?” she asks. 

You freeze, her face still between your palms. “For-”

But the serene tilt of her mouth makes the words die in your throat. 

“Seriously.” Karina’s voice is softer now, a kind twist of mirth. “Isn’t that what you wanted to do with me this whole time?” 

Her features seem to fall out of alignment, occurring to you in cut, edited fragments - the baby-animal eyes, the bone-white glint of teeth, the pretty blooming flush of her cheek, blood rising underneath skin but never breaking through. No evidence of a limit breached; she doesn’t wince or wail or cry. She wears the hit so well. She’s smiling. A you-don’t-need-to-be-sorry smile, a you’re-forgiven smile: I’m strong, I’m good, I can take it. Whatever you need. Whatever you have to give. 

You blink and Karina reassembles, stitched up at the seams, beautiful and uninjured and intact.

“You want this,” you exhale, a wondrous revelation.

“Of course.” Karina’s shoulders rise as much as they can with her arms so tightly tied back. “You do, don’t you?” 

The panic recedes, and something else - something electric and brutal, visceral, intoxicating - takes its place instead. 

It’s the way she says it: rhetorical, all-knowing. As if she’s seen exactly what’s in your mind - what repulsive daydreams have settled right behind your ribcage, clawing to be set free - and she’s offering her own body in sacrifice. Saying here, put them here. 

So you do. 

She doesn’t even look surprised when you slap her again. 

“See?” Karina’s chin tips upwards in delicious, submissive invitation: eyes darkly pleased, pale skin a burning wildfire, curled mouth a beckoning. Like it’s been what she’s waiting for, all along. “There you are.” 

And when you’re finally able to catch your breath:

Oh, you think, in some exhilarating epiphany. Here I am. 

Every single reservation falls out the window. Karina’s smirk slants viciously and then you’ve got your hands all over her, on her shoulders and her tits and her hips and her throat and her face, thumb digging hard into her cheekbone. Any sort of gentle caution is gone when you’re getting on top of her and burying your cock deep inside the suffocating vice of her aching little cunt, half-drunk on the high mewling moans you’re forcing out of her, head swimming at the drenched audible sound of her pussy every time you fuck into her - at how tight she clenches down around your cock. Fuck it all, then, it’s not like it means anything - hurt me, she’d said, running through your head on loop; I want it so bad, I need it, hurt me - and so you do, wrapping a hand around her delicate neck and pressing down, slapping hard against her heaving tits, salivating over the marks that you leave. She doesn’t even struggle. Takes it like a good girl, an obedient girl: something meant to be hit and torn up and pulled apart. A hands-on art piece. A disassembling, made purely for audience consumption; a sign hung around her neck that says leave your mark, that’s the point. You’d been so naïve, thinking of being careful with her - like she’d ever even fucking want that-

“You like it like this.” Your voice sounds raw, almost unrecognizable; your fingers press into the base of her throat. “This is all you needed, huh? You just needed to be roughed up real hard.” Your hand trails up to grip a fistful of her hair, merciless. Karina shuts her eyes. “Like you’re just a slutty fucktoy-” 

Karina chokes out a small, wet gasp.

“Oh, baby.” You yank harder at her hair. “It’s okay to admit it.”

But in a way, she already is. Doesn’t fight against the restraints tying her wrists, doesn’t flinch at how rough you’re fucking her, doesn’t whine or blink back tears at the harsh graze of your thumbnail against her nipple. Like she’s a plaything, here in your bed for your pleasure alone. Like-

“Like you were just fucking made for this, yeah?” She comes undone so easily: cunt a wet sticky mess when you reach down to rub her clit, teeth pearly-white where they’re caught on her bottom lip - though nothing can hold back the anguished noise Karina lets out at your pace, the thick stretch of your cock, your palm smacking at her tits over and over. “Look at you. That face, these tits, this little fucking cunt-”

Like it’s her one and only purpose - to have all her fair skin turned searing red and bruised under someone else’s hands. Her cunt just begging to be split open and stuffed full, railed so hard she could break. It’s gotta be what she was created for. She’s more than mortal, so above the concept of imperfection; a nasty little fuckdoll of a girl, meant to be used hard and licked clean. She looks too irresistible all fucked-out and ruined. It has to be in her nature. Made for this, you keep telling her: to be fucked until she can’t walk. To be treated forever how you’re treating her now. 

Your ex-girlfriend couldn’t have been more wrong. It’s not about power or control at all.

“You’d really just let me do anything to you, huh?” you murmur, awed, but you’re holding her throat too hard for her to reply. 

You fuck her, and fuck her, and fuck her. Rub at her clit until she clamps down and cums around you, until you can really get on top of her, force her to hold those huge tits together so you can fuck them. You can’t handle how tiny she is underneath you, her face and her mouth slack with lust, eyes glazed over entirely. She squeezes her tits around your cock. She’s hardly even human. It’s the best thing about her. 

“That’s how I know you’re a fucking whore.” Your grin feels wide and manic on your face. You’re gonna cum all over her - again. “None of this even matters.” 

And it’s only after - after you’ve painted her collarbone and chest creamy white and let up on her throat so she can fight for air; after you’ve groped her tits and grabbed her face after just to see your cum glistening all over her perfect slap-marred cheeks; after you’ve rolled off of her and you finally leave her alone - that Karina gives you a response. 

“No,” she says, hoarsely, staring up at the ceiling. “It really, really doesn’t.” 

-

Power just isn’t the right word for it. It’s something much more beautiful than that. 

Desire. You’re dozing off, halfway in a sleepy fantasy. You imagine rolling the word around in your mouth, using it in speeches, citing it as an obvious central theme. It’s about desire, you’d say, in interviews, at film festivals, patiently explaining your motivations to the masses. That irrational animal instinct. That innate human greediness. You’ll maybe even throw in some fun anecdote about how people in past relationships never agreed with you. It’s never been about power, though, you’d explain: how foolish, how crude. It’s about the ache of truly wanting something. Isn’t that so much more romantic?

So you’ll make a movie about this one day. So you tied Karina to the bed and slapped her hard and fucked her senseless. Actually, you picture yourself explaining, foggy and on verge of falling asleep: actually, it’s about hunger. Irrepressible, all-consuming hunger. That’s why I did this. That’s why I’ll keep doing it. You’re all like me; you get it. That makes sense, doesn’t it? 

And it will, to raucous, riotous applause.

Good. You’ll laugh so hard. You’re dreaming, now; you can’t tell if you’re talking about the sex or the hypothetical future movie. I’m glad you understand. Anyone would’ve done what I did. 

Because - honestly - what’s the point of starving yourself of something that’s right in front of you?

-

(Let’s pull back from your script for a second. Here’s a real story:

A few months back you were visiting a museum with one of your friends when you got into this conversation about performance art. He’d told you about a woman back in the seventies who walked into a gallery and laid out various objects and let the audience do whatever they wanted to her for six whole hours. Her as the artist, in title only; herself as the art. A free, untethered canvas. 

And what happened? you asked, morbidly curious. 

Your friend grimaced. What do you think happened? 

It was a rhetorical question. The performance had been a test of what the general public was capable of - a reflection of their moral compass, of what they’d do if left unchecked. The setup spoke for itself. You didn’t have to get all the gory details in order to understand. 

Seriously, though, your friend said, about the artist: I don’t know what’d compel someone to do something like that to themselves. He’d shaken his head, baffled. Like - I think it takes a deeply fucked up person to just give up their body like that. Like it doesn’t even matter to them. 

It’s strange. It’s an almost universally accepted fact that, at least on some level, artists are inclined to put pieces of themselves into the things they create. A memory; a feeling. Condensing twenty different emotions into a single acrylic painting, or a lyrical reenactment of heartbreak into a song - something personal and unique and lovely. Often inspired, sure, but yours. 

I think that’s what’s funny about it, you told your friend, before you realized that funny was a fucked up word to use here. There’s nothing personal about that. It’s so detached. It’s about the rest of the world, whatever they might make of her - it’s not about her at all. 

You were both quiet, thinking. Visualizing what it might’ve been like. To be there, one of many in the audience, watching this woman who had thrown herself to the wolves and asked to be ripped apart. 

She’s just - material for them to use, I guess, you said, after a moment. A blank page. 

Removing her own identity; becoming nothing, no one. A ghost. An empty vessel. A slab of clay, taking on the impression of everyone who’s ever touched her: the ridges of fingerprints, the half-moon cuts of nails, molding her into something new. Even if it took some force. Even if it hurt. 

Still, it’s what she’d asked for. 

You can’t imagine she’d ever expected anything else.)

-

There’s this fascinating complaint people have about films these days, you’ve found. It’s actually quite the phenomenon. You talk to your colleagues and scroll through social media and read comments on movie trailers trying to get a grasp on it all: market research. This isn’t realistic, people gripe. It’d never sound like that. She’d never look like that. This would never, ever happen - God, are you kidding? Who are they trying to fool? As if they’ve somehow missed the point of fiction - of a sweet, escapist fantasy. As if they’ve convinced themselves that the real world is better. 

Which is moronic, obviously. 

“So what’s the solution?” Karina asks.

Well, you’re no expert; it’s been a while since you’d finished your last movie.

“But you have an idea,” Karina interpets. She’s perched on the edge of your coffee table, nursing a new glass of ice. She’s watching you with her head at an angle, eyes shrewd. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be telling me this.” 

As with most of her guesses about you, she’s right. 

“It’s all about the details,” you say, after a moment. “It humanizes a person. Having little bits and pieces about who they are - it makes them alive. Their likes, their dislikes. Embarrassing stories. Things that make them laugh. Diary entries, favorite foods - first loves, first heartbreaks. So on and so forth.” You’ve got one of Karina’s ankles between your hands; your thumb brushes against the bulbous protrusion of bone. “It’s what makes people real.” 

Karina’s mouth twists, sharp and strange; it takes a second for you to realize that she’s grinning. 

“Oh, right,” she says. “You want me to spill my guts to you.” She pushes her ankle further into your grip. Her legs are just like the rest of her: thin and pale, waifish. Like a nineties catwalk model. “That’s how you’re gonna make me real. In your movie.” 

You pull a face, letting her ankle slip from your hands. Spill her guts; what an ugly figure of speech. As if you’re doing something much more invasive and violent than just writing about her. 

“Basically,” you agree, anyway. “I mean, it helps that you’re already, you know - a real, whole, living person.” 

“Ugh,” says Karina, dry and amused. “Barely.” 

You wonder if she’s also thinking about this morning; you, stunned and staring at her cum-streaked hair, calling her unreal.

She’s got a point, in a way. There’s something slightly uncanny about her sitting in front of you, as if she’s been taken straight out of some wildly different scene - some spotlit stage, some movie set, some glossy high-budget existence - and haphazardly edited into your life. You reach out and press two fingers to the side of her neck, like they do on television if they think someone’s bleeding out. 

Karina tips her head to allow you access. Her pulse throbs hotly under your touch. 

“I don’t know,” you say, smiling at the swanlike line of her throat. “You seem pretty alive to me.” 

“Sure.” Her hair tickles your wrist. “But you want more.”

She says it like it’s this given - as if she’s always faced with people wanting more from her. You wouldn’t doubt it, little tease she is. You can picture her in motion so easily. Always running. Letting people pine and plead for more. 

“Yeah,” you say. It seems pointless to lie to her. “I want more.” 

Karina leans in closer. She reaches up and touches one of your knuckles with the pad of her thumb. Without makeup, you can see the shadows of dark circles underneath her eyes, but even those look painted-on, pre-planned; a study on the aesthetic allure of bruises. She lets her gaze drop to your mouth, then bites down on her bottom lip. Impish.

“Karina,” you say, grinning wider now. 

It’s one of those unspoken things: the translation of body language, the transcription of the tilt of her mouth. Then have me, she’s saying, almost certainly - like a swooning melodramatic heroine, throwing herself into your lap, wanting to be saved. You want more? You want me? I’m right here. I’m yours.

“Fine,” Karina purrs, and kisses you again, like sealing a contract. “Take it all.” 

-

You don’t fuck her again - not at first. There’s more than one way to take someone apart. 

Karina says she’s got a story for you and then she pulls out her phone. 

“This was back in high school,” she explains, scrolling back through her photo gallery. There don’t seem to be a lot of recent additions to it; you’d expected selfies, pictures of her with friends. There are more photos of food than anything: plates of pasta and donuts and burgers and pastries piled with whipped cream. It’s cute. It makes you laugh. “When I won prom queen.” 

You splutter. “When you what?” 

“What?” Karina gives you a bemused, sideways look. “Does that surprise you?” 

It floors you, actually. At first you can’t quite put your finger on why, but then you look at Karina again - at her intense dark eyes and pouty fuckdoll lips and the exaggerated pinup proportions of her body - and you realize you’re making that mistake writers often do: buying into archetypes. It just makes sense that she’d be some kind of brooding bad girl. Mysterious, promiscuous; in your creative vision she’s probably cutting classes and chainsmoking in the girls’ bathroom. A favorite of the rumor mill. A pretty little delinquent.

“Wow.” Karina makes a funny noise in the back of her throat when you tell her this. “No. I was - I did fine in school. Perfect attendance, almost. And I can’t stand the smell of cigarettes.” But she doesn’t look offended, either; you imagine people make these assumptions about her all the time. “The prom queen thing - it wasn’t my idea, though. My best friend did all the campaigning for me.” 

“That’s sweet.” You watch as she reaches the year she’s looking for. Flashes of her in a sparkly dress with her arms thrown around another girl - a tiny doe-eyed brunette - slide by. In one of them, Karina’s got her head tipped back, clearly mid-laugh; in another, she and the girl have their heads bent close together as if they’re trading secrets, unaware that they’re being photographed. “Well - I think it’s sweet.” 

Karina’s fingers stall. “Why wouldn’t it be?” 

“I’m just saying-” You shrug. “It’s a nice gesture if it’s something you wanted, I guess. Seems like a lot of attention, otherwise.” 

“Oh.” There’s a pause. “Yeah. It was - I didn’t get to go to junior prom, so it was kind of - this was - senior year. Senior prom.” Another pause. “Yeah. She did it to make me happy.”

“And did it?” She passes by pictures that fill up with more people: friends with big grins who stick close to her side, wrapping her up in an embrace. “Make you happy?” 

“Of course.” Karina’s thumb pauses on a video, the preview dark and unfocused. She says it like she doesn’t even have to think about it. “She was my best friend. She always knew what I wanted. Hey, look at this.” 

The video’s of her in the back of someone’s car, prom queen tiara askew on her head, satiny sash falling off one shoulder. She’s yelling, laughing; the sound isn’t on, but her mouth’s wide open and her dark eyes are crinkled to half-moons, creased underneath heavy false lashes and glittery makeup that’s begun to smudge and fade. It makes her whole face look very soft. Young, too - cheeks full and flushed pink with excitement, hair blown-out and everywhere, glossed black. As if she’s having the time of her life. 

“How old were you here?” you ask, in awe. 

“Eighteen. Just turned, I think.” 

“You look-” Like a baby, you almost want to say. It’s true, though. Big brown eyes, scrunched little nose - grinning like the rest of the world hasn’t quite dug its claws into her yet. Skin unmarred and infant-smooth. “You look pretty.” 

Karina doesn’t look at you, but you can see the slight, entertained upturn of her lips. All the nasty things you’ve called her - all the irredeemable ways you’ve touched her - and now, inexplicably, you’re going for pretty. 

“Thanks,” she says, and clicks the volume up.

“Shut the fuck up,” baby Karina is saying, delightedly. Her voice sounds high, childish and carefree. “You’re so dumb. It wasn’t - it wasn’t even like that, I swear!” She flaps one hand in the air, her nails all short and painted the same rich deep maroon as her dress. “No - you’re just saying that because you’re jealous, you idiot, I know you - you just-”

The person behind the camera says something that you can’t quite make out. 

Baby Karina presses one hand to her sternum, pearl-clutching, and gasps. 

“I would never,” she admonishes - over-the-top like an actress from a movie - before she throws her head back and laughs. 

It’s a startling, wonderful laugh. A little-kid laugh. A mess of wild, unabashed giggles, hiccupy and sweet, so loud and infectious you can hear the other people in the car start cracking up with her; out of frame, someone reaches out to interlace their fingers with Karina’s, waving their joined hands until they smack against the car window and Karina only laughs harder. With her whole body, shoulders shaking and all. Streetlights flashing across her face, making her look sort of blurry and surreal, like something out of a painting. 

“Your laugh,” you find yourself saying, stunned. 

Karina’s touching the back of her neck, completely engrossed in the video. “My what?” 

You don’t laugh like that anymore. That’s what you mean to say. That scratchy, almost painful laugh that she’s been gracing you with since the moment you met her - there’s no trace of that in how baby Karina wriggles with laughter in the backseat of the car until her happy, breathless blush spreads to her neck and her chest. Head tipping back against the seat, like she’s all tuckered out. 

“Um,” you say, voice caught in your throat. 

On the screen, her eyes fall shut, lashes fluttering so delicately. 

You can’t do anything but stare. Brilliant, past-life, prom-queen Karina - grinning at nothing, and sleepy from a perfect night, and laughing as if she’ll exist as this version of herself forever. As if she just doesn’t know any better, yet. 

“You,” you start to say, again-

Karina shuts her phone off, and turns.

And you’re about to say something - something about the gnawing, uncertain feeling you get when you watch this former self of hers. It’s on the tip of your tongue. You don’t laugh like that. Something happened to you. For a moment the whole image just seems off - like the way people make posthumous holograms of pop stars, superimpose faces of long-dead actors on stunt doubles. A kind of intense wrongness. A murmured, uncomfortable: that’s not really you, is it? It can’t be. I barely recognize her. 

“What?” Karina asks. Her smile reveals her teeth. “Why are you looking at me like that?” 

Then reality hits you, all at once. 

“Sorry.” Your hand finds her thigh. You laugh because you’re being ridiculous - how would you know who she really is, anyway? “I was just thinking - I don’t know. Never mind.”

She seems to take that at face value. You like that about her. How she seems to trust so easily - going home with you, winding up in your bed, staying when you ask her to stay. Giving you whatever you want: her body, her story.

“So,” you say, eventually. “I can put in my movie that you totally peaked in high school, huh?” 

Karina snorts. “Yeah,” she says, playing along, and taps her dark phone screen with a clawed nail. “Say it was the last time I was happy.” She pulls a face, like the thought of it is just unspeakably pathetic. “That’s a tragedy if I’ve ever heard one.” 

“Shakespearean,” you agree, and let her clamber into your lap. “It’s perfect.” 

But you know she’s kidding. You’d like to think that you understand girls like her. They live in a different world than the rest of you - the kind of world where every person on earth looks at them and falls to their feet, falls madly in love. You’ll write about it one day; you’ll feel out the narrative for her, a curious exploration. That rose-tinted life she must flourish in, closed-off and flawless like a snow globe, her spinning and protected in the glass.

“Perfect,” echoes Karina, and kisses you - like she’s proving she really means it. 

That’s the reality, here. That’s it. This is all there is. 

-

Well, almost.

-

Karina lets you scroll through the rest of her photo gallery, front to back. You take the opportunity, because you’re greedy for as much as you can get. 

There’s a lot of photos that are just her, funnily enough - selfies posed in front of the same full-length mirror, over and over again, clad in unholy outfits. Swimsuits, sports bras and little running shorts, lingerie: shit that makes your mouth water, eyes lingering, groaning out loud as she laughs at you. But it’s also her in faded old t-shirts, holding the hem up to expose her stomach. Body angled to the side in girlish sundresses. Hair pulled up, showing off her neck, her gorgeously sharp collarbone - in makeup or out of it, stare intensely focused and sultry. 

“That’s hot,” you comment. “Self-obsessed as fuck, but hot.” 

Karina smiles - her tiny private-joke smile - and doesn’t say anything at all. 

There’s one video in particular that catches your eye. It’s recent, relatively - the date reads late December, last year. Less than a month ago. Christmastime. You click on it, curious. 

Karina’s immediately recognizable in it, black hair winding past her shoulders, drowning in a large black sweatshirt. She’s smiling, but it looks sort of tense and tired - bags under her eyes, like she hasn’t slept in a while. She’s got both hands balled up into fists, held close and protective to her chest; her sharp chin rests on her pale knuckles. There’s a tiny smear of red across her mouth, lower lip bitten bloody. 

“You just got here,” she says. She’s looking at something behind the camera. “The first thing you wanna do is hear me sing?” She laughs once, scratchy and hoarse. “Why are you even filming this?” 

The answering strum of guitar strings, a pretty, perfect chord. An invitation, or a demand.

“You’re kidding.” Karina’s voice is flat.

Another chord - evidently not. 

“Wow,” says Karina. Her smile, out of nowhere, goes very soft at the edges. “You just do this because you know I can’t say no to you.”

“What?” you ask Karina now, laughing. “Is this - what is this? Do you - are you really going to sing?” 

And then - crazily enough - she does. 

“Oh,” you say out loud, adoring, and Karina turns her face into your shoulder. 

Her voice in the video is breathy, sweet. Shyly unpracticed, raspy from disuse, completely and utterly gorgeous; lids slipping shut and open again, laugh leaking into her melody line in lyrics about black eyes and kisses and wanting someone who’s just so, so bad for you. But what surprises you more than anything is the look that dawns on her blurry on-screen face - irises sparkling and smile bashful, hiding her mouth behind the sleeve of her sweatshirt, curled up with her knees to her chest. You see now that she’s wearing pajama pants, fuzzy and patterned with snowflakes. 

She looks radiantly pretty. She looks vulnerable. And not even in a sweaty, satiated, filthy post-fuck kind of way - actually, genuinely vulnerable. Soft and wide-eyed and tender.

Suddenly, you just can’t tear your gaze away. 

“Stop.” 

The song’s over. On-screen Karina’s fully grinning now. Porcelain-fragile, but undeniably happy, too. 

“I hate you,” she says. “Baby, I really do.” 

“You love me,” says the person behind the camera. “You’ll love me for the rest of your life and you know it.” 

And in the video - in vivid, fluid motion - Karina laughs. 

Whole-hearted, lovely. Familiar. For a moment, you swear she’s still that girl sitting in the backseat of a car with her prom queen tiara on, giggling free and uninhibited, unhurt, untouched. A month ago - less than that, even - looking like she’s coming back to life. 

That’s where the clip ends. 

It doesn’t change anything, if you actually think about it. It’s just another version of reality. A Karina from a whole other universe, laughing like a child, and so, so far away from whoever she is now. 

-

(Back between the lines of your script-

The stranger and the girl drink to get drunk and that’s about it. She reads the label of his wine; he makes fun of her for being a snob. She doesn’t really drink, she says at first, but he laughs like this is a challenge, and pours her a glass anyway. She flushes pink and fidgets around. She seems to shed hair like a cat and he thinks this is the most hilarious thing he’s ever seen, picking up thin black strands off of the arm of his couch, teasing her about girls and how they really like to leave their mark, huh?

Leave their mark, she repeats. There’s some trick of the lens here, some sort of strategic camera work - he’s in the forefront and she’s in the background, and she looks so much smaller than him. Why do you say that? 

He still had his ex-girlfriend’s perfume in his cabinet. He probably still has some of her clothes in his closet. Not out of any particular emotional attachment, but sometimes this is just the way things are: when you spend years intertwining your whole existence with someone else’s, it’s hard to rid yourself of that connection. You’ve grown into each other’s spaces, tangling limbs and heart lines, putting down roots. It’s gonna take a little force to get them out. 

They’re just so much, he says, gesticulating with his hands. And they affect everything in your life, like a fucking infection. And then it doesn’t work out, and you - he makes a wide, sweeping motion here, attempting to encompass the wreckage. You have to fix everything they broke. Purge them from your system and all that. It’s so fucked up. 

It’s like this, he means to say - you love someone and then they leave you behind and you’re left staring at the blown-up decimated crater that used to be your life together. You love someone and they don’t love you back and all you have now is the debris.

They’re both drunk. There should be music here and there isn’t. It’s only eerie, too-still silence, suffocating the both of them with every passing second. 

Well, she says, laughing, and takes another sip. You and I can agree on that, at least.)

-

It happens like this:

There’s a monologue you want to write. 

You tell Karina this after you’re finally fucking her again, when she’s balanced on the edge of your glass coffee table with her legs spread and your mouth slick with her cum. Well - not after, technically. She’s between orgasms and you have your thumb on her clit, tracking the expression on her face, the split-second moment where she comes apart. It’s then when you realize so badly that you want to write some great speech for your heroine - something about the sweat beading on Karina’s midriff and her tits that you can’t stop touching and the jerky movements of her hips, trying to get your tongue back on her clit, panting and delightfully desperate. Something about desire. 

“Desire,” repeats Karina, voice halfway into a raspy, worked-up moan. 

“Yeah.” You’ve replaced your mouth with your fingers, fucking up into the obscene tight heat of her cunt. She’s trembling, dripping everywhere; she’s the very picture of what it means to want, probably. “But I just can’t figure it out.” 

Karina laughs roughly, and then she cums. 

“Is that funny?” you ask her, after, when you’re wiping your wet mouth with your wrist and she’s sucking on your glistening fingers, licking the taste of her own cunt off your skin. Her eyes big, lips all full and pink - slutty angel on her pedestal, perched above you. “Me writing about desire?” 

Karina lets your fingers free with a loud pop. She’s still clutching your hand close to her mouth, thumb dragging through the sticky gleam of her spit. “No,” she says, eyes distant. “It just reminded me of something. There’s this Anne Carson quote, about men and desire…” She shakes her head. Presses her lips once to your fingertips in a small, startlingly sweet kiss. “It doesn’t matter. Tell me more.” 

There isn’t much to tell, truthfully. Except that you’ve got this love for movie lines that are just so utterly quotable - things that make their way into the pop culture consciousness. That’s the kind of work you want to be doing: creating something that has an impact, something that’ll exist long after you’re gone. Everlasting. If you had to pull for an example, you’d say-

“You ever seen Closer?” 

“Yeah.” Karina drops your elbow into her lap. “Oh, I get it. He tastes like you but sweeter. Lying’s the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off - et cetera.” She hums the melody line. “So you want an early 2000s pop-punk band to make a song about your movie? Ambitious.” 

“More or less,” you say as she shimmies her shirt back down, hem falling back over her midriff. “But like I said, I’m kind of stuck.”

Karina rolls her neck. Her hair is everywhere, sweet-smelling; snapped-off strands decorate your table, looking like cracks in the glass. 

“Any suggestions?” you ask, thumb skimming along the pale bruised inside of her thigh. 

She smiles, mischievous. “Maybe.” 

That’s how you both end up curled on your couch together with your laptop in front of you, Karina’s eyes glued to the movie playing on the screen, watching as the four main characters fuck and flirt and cheat on each other and scream at the top of their lungs. Melodramatic dialogue. How do you feel about him using your life? You’re lying; I’ve been you. This will hurt, which Karina laughs at - as if announcing the pain will make it better, playacting at exoneration. 

It’s also - predictably - how you end up fucking again. You barely make it an hour in, and then-

“Hey.” Karina’s breath tickles your ear. She’s already seconds from climbing in your lap already; her thigh is hooked over yours, bare and inviting. “Are you inspired?” 

You’re swallowing back a grin. “Sure.” 

“Oh. Great.” She’s no actress herself, clearly. She couldn’t be subtle if she tried. “Do you wanna be more inspired?” 

And - whatever. It’s a movie about sex. If anything, at least you’re sticking to the theme. 

The dialogue plays in the background as Karina rocks her hips down on your lap - you can feel how wet she is again, like she never stops wanting to be fucked. You’re telling her something about how she’s the most insatiable girl you’ve ever met; the sound of the film saturates the room, setting the tone like it knows its purpose. How? How does it work? How do you do this to someone? This big, infidelity-ridden confrontation. Did you phone her? Beg her to come back? Asking him why he falls for another girl, getting this ridiculous answer - it’s because she doesn’t need me.

“Huh.” You smile into the curve of Karina’s neck, already palming her ass. “That one’s funny.”

“Is it funny?” Karina’s sharp jaw brushes against your cheekbone. Her eyes are so dark, shadowed by her long lashes. “I think it’s pretty realistic. People don’t like needy girls. It’s a burden to be loved so hard.” Her tongue darts across her teeth; her smile’s somewhat caustic. “Too much to handle, I guess.” 

“What are you talking about?” This strikes you as fairly fucking ridiculous, too. “What men have you met who don’t like needy girls?” 

Karina just laughs and leans in for another kiss. 

It’s easy to let the rest of the film float away in the background, the lines coming disjointed, unconnected. A spoken-word soundtrack, tone perfuming the air: the angst and pain and eroticism seeping into your clothing. Once in a while you’ll pull back from kissing Karina’s neck or tits or mouth and see a thoughtful little quirk to her mouth. Like she’s genuinely listening, even as you’re taking off her shirt, slipping a hand back between her legs. Where will you go? Disappear. I can’t still see you - if I see you, I’ll never leave you. I amuse you, but I bore you. 

“I bet you’ve never felt that,” you say, half into the silk of her hair. 

Karina pauses. Her shirt’s on the floor; she’s gloriously naked on top of you. “Felt what?” 

“I amuse you, but I bore you,” you recite. You already sound sort of fuck-drunk, far gone. “You’re the farthest thing from boring.”

Back in the movie, the female lead sobs into her fists. Karina studies you, fingertips grazing the nape of your neck. You try to imagine it - her as one of those heartsick heroines, crying herself to pieces, begging a man not to leave her - but you draw an utter blank. Some people just aren’t breakable in that way. 

“You’d be surprised,” Karina says, after a moment. “People get bored of me all the time.”

“Oh, please.” Even when she’s the one top of you, you can’t help feeling so completely in control. It’s gotta be the look in her eyes, dying to be obedient. “I bet you have lots of ways of keeping guys interested in you.” You smack her ass hard just to make a mark. “I bet you let them fuck you however they want.” 

“Exactly,” Karina agrees, without missing a beat. She moves in close until your noses bump together. Lets her voice go all smoky and suggestive. “Wherever they want, too.” 

You open your mouth - probably about to say something very rude about what a dirty whore she is and how you should’ve realized it the second you saw her; I knew it, I know you - but then your hands slip lower and Karina presses her lips to yours and licks into your mouth, over your teeth, making you swallow your words. Filling you up until there’s nothing but her and the movie, playing on.

I think I’ll be happier with her. 

You won’t. You’ll miss me. No one will ever love you as much as I do. Why isn’t love enough? 

“Romantic, right?” murmurs Karina, sweet against your tongue. 

“Shut up,” you say, and grab her by the hair, tugging her off your lap as you stand. “Bedroom. Now.” 

Later, you’ll take the time to consider the different ways filmmakers illustrate a power dynamic - it’s playing on your laptop screen right now. The heroine’s sitting on the arm of the couch, clutching desperately at the hero’s jacket. Gorgeously emotional and pleading for another chance, her tiny chin tilted up, eyes so large and watery. Made fragile and fearful by everyone: the protagonist, the narrative, the director, the audience beyond. By herself, even. It’s a stylistic choice - she wants to look that pathetic.

And you-

Well, you’ve got Karina’s long hair wrapped up in your fist, tits bouncing as she stumbles to her feet, ankle knocking hard and horribly loud against the leg of your table. Cute little ass all red from your hand. Thighs shimmering from how drenched she is, cunt dripping from how you’ve treated her. She hasn’t managed to work her mouth into a trademark smirk fast enough: when she looks at you over her shoulder, her eyes are abyss-dark and bottomless, crease between her brows, lips parted in pained surprise. 

The definition of pathetic, too - but that’s exactly the point. She’s just so much more fuckable like that. 

“Ouch,” you say, touching her hurt ankle with the side of your foot. 

“It’s fine.” Karina’s skin feels clammy and cold. Her smirk’s intact now, camera-ready. “I’ve been through worse.” 

Her ankle throbs under the pressure of your touch; you still haven’t let up on her hair. You’ll go through worse, too, you think of telling her: a sly comment about how rough you’re about to fuck her, what vicious marks you’re about to leave. How you’re gonna hurt her exactly like she asked you to. 

You don’t say a thing.

She must already know all of that, anyway.

-

So, Karina’s not breakable like the helpless, weepy, soft-hearted girls in the movies - but that’s alright. She’s breakable in much more enticing ways.

Case in point:

“Oh, get real, baby. Don’t pretend you don’t love it.”

Well, breaking someone down doesn’t really get better than this.

It’s all a scene of your own making, a perfect pre-arrangement. You on your bed, Karina limp and bent belly-down over your lap - you in control and Karina as the most impressive toy you’ve ever gotten your hands on, creamy ass and needy cunt and skin that turns bruises to artwork. You’re goading her and failing - trying to get her to just admit to what she is, what a filthy slut, what a nasty eager fuckdoll - but it’s hard to get a response when even breathing seems to be a chore for her right now. Every noise out of her mouth is nothing but a gasping, choked-out whimper. Her face is buried in her forearm, hidden. And through the shine of lube dribbling down your hand and her ass and into the sticky wetness of her cunt, you’ve got two fingers stretching out her little asshole - and you’re just getting started.

“I know you fucking need this.” Your other hand slides up her back, slips to tangle in her hair. “You’re just too good at it.” You pull hard, wrenching her head from the crook of her elbow. “Too good at being an obedient fucking whore for me, huh?”

Karina’s whole body stiffens when you fuck your fingers deeper, as if tugged taut on a string: the flex of her feet in the air, shoulder blades straining, neck craned back almost painfully. You pull harder. It’s a buzz at the base of your skull, live-wire thrilling: the knowledge that you can yank her into whatever position you want - fuck her anywhere, work her ass open with your cock, fill her up with cum - and she’s just going to have to take it. Like she’s this pliant, powerless thing. Like she’s yours. 

Your self-satisfaction seeps right into your voice. “Answer me.” 

You hear Karina gulp down a breath. “I,” Karina mumbles, but she can’t do anything but babble. “I - fuck-” All teeth-clenching nonsense; she shoots a baleful glance over her shoulder, desperation clawing its way into every word. “Please-”

Your fingers pause. “You want more?” 

Her cheeks are splotchy and pink; you swear there are tears wobbling in those big dark eyes. The heavy arousal in your stomach turns to violent hunger, as though your mouth could start watering at any second. You can’t help it. The thought of seeing her cry is fucking exhilirating. “You - oh-” 

“Answer me. You want my cock?” You’re waiting for the breaking point. “You want me to really fuck your ass?” 

“Fuck-” 

But that’s not a proper reply and Karina knows it, so she doesn’t protest when you pull your glistening fingers out of her and smack your palm hard across her ass. Once, then twice, and then you just don’t stop. She yelps like a hurt animal - trembles uncontrollably, her thighs and her shoulders and her quivering bottom lip - and makes a sound in the back of her throat that might be a sob, but she still lets you hit her: gives into the harsh crack of skin on skin, over and over again. Listens as you tell her that she deserves this, that she wanted this, that you’re making her into a good girl and this is what good girls get when they’re too cock-hungry to follow orders or answer a fucking question, you know that - you know I’m this rough for a reason. It should hurt. It’s so much more fun that way.  

“I’ve been too fucking nice to you,” you mutter, teeth gritted in an effort to hide your grin - as if you even need to. It’s obvious how much you enjoy this. It’s the point. “That’s the problem with girls like you - you never learned your fucking place, huh? Never really been punished for anything?”

Karina mumbles out something unintelligible, slurring from her drooling mouth to the sheets.

“Yeah.” Your hand comes down again - she flinches just before her body goes slack. “That’s what I thought.” 

And after you’ve spanked her so hard that her fair skin is ravaged and raised with goosebumps along the slope of her back - her whole body in revolt - you finally, finally stop. 

Karina doesn’t budge except to breathe, and even that releases shallow, unsteady. You read it all in the shaky lift and fall of her thin shoulders, her hands in white-knuckled fists, her face pressed to your sheets and hidden - her hair coats everything, all ink, all words written but left unsaid. She shivers beneath your fingers. Her cunt’s dripping all over your lap. She’s a masterpiece. She’s a wreck. 

You’re filled up with thick, swollen pride. “Karina.” 

Karina. Your own personal creation, transformed under your touch. Might as well have your name carved into her, too. A brand right across her back, slicing through tissue, scarring to seal her fate - this is who you fucking belong to. 

“Poor baby.” You follow the sharp ridges of her spine, tracking notches, keeping a tally: counting how many times you’ll hit her, how many days she’ll stay in your bed. How many movies she’ll let you make out of her, being your brilliant muse for decades. “It’s painful when you don’t listen to me, huh?”

But then - inexplicably - you think of her bruising ankle. Her twist of a smirk, detached and humorless. I’ve been through worse. 

You’re abruptly glad you can’t see the look on her face. 

“Come on, sweet girl.” You dig the heel of your palm into her lower back, half a warning. “Pull it together.” 

Between the strands of glossy hair tumbling over Karina’s skin and your sheets, you spot a reddish mark on the back of her neck. Like the impression of a thumbprint, small and round. Blurry enough in the dim light that your brain starts conjuring up strange theories; an old wound, maybe. A birthmark or a burn, a childhood injury.

You graze her shoulder blades with your fingertips, exploratory. She feels so small draped over you like this, a tiny wet wisp of a girl. A doll. 

She still hasn’t moved.

“Karina.”

Nothing.

“Karina,” you say again, suddenly uneasy. Your hand stops. “Are you-”

For a few terrible seconds, you can’t even hear her breathing. 

But then Karina shifts. Slow, sensual, deliberate. Pushing herself up off your lap, arching her back, the slick pucker of her asshole obscene from where you fucked it open with your fingers. Her bruised knees dig into your mattress as she straightens up, and her gorgeous pale face seems to glow in the midday light - heavy dark eyes, bitten-pink mouth, black hair curtaining her cheeks like a frame to a portrait.

“You,” you start to say, feeling suddenly like you’re looking at her for the first time. 

“I’m really sorry,” Karina murmurs.

She doesn’t look close to tears at all. She’s so unfazed, as if having her ass spanked punishingly raw is something that happens to a girl like her on the daily. A run-of-the-mill occurrence - a consequence of having a body like that, made to be brutalized. She’s already reaching towards the nightstand for the lube. 

“I just wanted it so bad I couldn’t think straight,” Karina tells you, with erotic-film certainty - reciting all the lines that’ll make her seem the most insatiably slutty. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Her lips form a pout; she leans down to press them to the tip of your cock, all sweet and demure, like she thinks she needs to convince you. Eyes flicking up at you through her thick lashes, molten-hot. “I should’ve listened.” It’s only a breath, warm and torturous. “I deserved that, I know.” 

Your hand winds tight in her hair. You want to force your cock down her pretty throat, make her gag and choke over her simpering apologies, spitting up your cum until it trickles down her chin, her tits, her tummy. Both a game and a power play: prove how sorry you are. 

Karina pulls back before you can, and holds up the lube. 

“Babe,” she says, the term of endearment almost a singsong - a lilting reminder. “I thought you wanted to really fuck me now.” 

“Uh-huh.” Her tits heave as she moves, crawling closer, offering herself up. “And I always get what I want, right?” 

You feel drunk with power. You forget that this isn’t supposed to be about power. You watch as Karina coats her palm with lube and pumps your cock, her fingers slick and hot, her veins starkly blue at her delicate wrists. Expression delighted at how hard you are, pink little tongue poking out between her teeth - seduction down to an art form, meticulously calculated. 

“With me?” Her smile burns. “Obviously.” 

You pull her in by the neck to kiss the smirk off her mouth. 

It’s interesting. There’s this other thing regular critics and moviegoers have been saying about films these days: sex scenes need to have a purpose. Some sort of coherent motivation. Strip your lead actress down to nothing and get her keening and moaning and you’ve got to explain it away somehow. It forwards the plot, you could insist, pitching it to producers and directors. It does something for the character dynamics. It’ll draw in just the right audience, the ones dying to see their favorite celebrity debauched and getting dirty on-screen - they’ll see it over and over just to get a taste. Isn’t that enough? To satisfy the masses? Isn’t that why we’re all here?

Because otherwise all people are staring at is a play at pornography: useless half-convincing make-believe. The heroine can writhe and whine and arch her back all she wants. Everyone knows she doesn’t feel anything. 

“Tell me the truth.” 

Oh, if you two were a movie - you don’t know how anyone could justify a sex scene quite like this. 

It doesn’t matter what artsy angle you take. It all comes down to the same unforgivable details: Karina face-down ass-up on your bed, the perfect bowed curve of her spine, the depraved wide stretch of her asshole around your cock - the sweat shining along her shoulder blades, the hard smack of your palm against the red raw skin of her ass, your other hand at the crown of her skull with your fingers wrapped entirely in her tangled hair - her cunt fucking ruining your sheets, wet all the way down her thighs, each brutal shift of your hips sending her little body into full-blown shudders-

“Tell me that you fucking love it.” Your hand slips lower until you’ve got her pinned down by the back of the neck, fingers pushing down: a grip she couldn’t escape even if she wanted to. “Whoring out your slutty little ass like this for a stranger. Getting on your hands and knees for me just because you’re so fucking needy for cock, baby - don’t even try to deny it, you’re so wet, nasty fucking girl-”

You just can’t stop yourself. It’s so easy. She really is so fucking pathetic. Too fragile to get free - too easily manipulated and manhandled. Trembling and drenched and giving way as you make room inside her, forcing space. She’s just so tight - it’s godless, how you make your cock fit in her lube-slicked asshole, how she moans like a bona fide bitch in heat over it: needing faster, needing harder, needing more. Cheek pink and pressed hard to your mattress, sharp nails digging into the sheets rough enough to tear through the fabric. Giving herself up to be fucked cruelly and stupid and senseless. 

Like she’s a real-

“Natural fucking cockslut, huh?” 

Look, seriously - you can’t be held accountable for the things you say to her here. 

Because when you say shit like you’d just let me do anything - like you’d let me fucking tie you up and keep you here forever, be an eager fucking cumdump for me whenever I want you, I know it, I know you - that’s just the moment talking. The circumstances. The pretty arch of her back and the drooling wetness of her cunt and the indecent tightness of her ass, conspiring to make you lose your mind mid-fuck - that’s the whole reason you even tell her any of it. You think you’re good for anything else? Right at her ear, your body covering hers, your cock buried deep. You’re not. Just made to get this slutty ass fucked open, and your mouth, and your cunt - this is all anyone’s ever gonna want from you and you know it - better get used to it now, baby. This is all you got. This is all you are. 

It’s Karina’s fault, really. She just takes it - all of it. She doesn’t even try to fight it. 

“But that’s okay,” you murmur, as she gasps and squirms and cries out like you’re killing her. “I’m still gonna make you cum.” 

And with your cock filling her ass and your hand between her legs, slapping hard at her sopping cunt until she can’t do anything but collapse - shaking, shattered - her whimpers fucked-out and drool-soaked and bleeding into one big nonsensical mess, everything about her used and ruined-

“You’re mine,” you tell her, laughing as she falls apart. “You get that? You’re mine.” 

-then, you do.

When it’s all over, Karina rolls over to face the wall, breathing hard. She’s slick everywhere, sweat and saliva and lube, your creamy cum dripping out of her well-fucked asshole and trickling down her thigh. You trace her lower back and grin at the way her skin seems to give into you, turning pink with a press of your fingertips. You’ve come to realize you adore her like this, the fugue state after you fuck her: utterly dead to the world. 

Like she could become a permanent fixture in your bed. Too tired to move. Too tired to ever leave. 

“Mine,” you say again, softer.

Karina doesn’t argue. 

It’s basically all the confirmation you need. 

-

So, really, if you two were a movie-

It goes like this: life can imitate art, too. It happens all the time. The line between fiction and reality blurs together until it’s indistinguishable - until you can’t tell where the fantasy ends, or if it ever did at all. 

-

(It goes like this: the heroine smiles sleepily and tells the hero he’s the best she’s ever had. You’ve seen this film before. The movie stars with their fake on-screen fucks might not feel a damn thing, but at least it’s still fun to pretend.)

-

Also, the mark you saw on the back of her neck isn’t actually what you thought it was. 

“It’s a tattoo,” you realize out loud, drowsily awed, brushing her hair away so you can get a better look. You’re both tuckered out, an inevitability when you fuck like you do; you’re seconds from dozing off. Karina’s looking away from you, on her side to escape the soreness of her ass, sheets loose across her chest. She lets you touch her wherever. “I can’t believe I didn’t notice that before.” 

“You don’t know me,” mumbles Karina, half into your pillow. “It’s not your job to notice anything about me.” 

The tattoo’s crimson-red, all delicate linework. It really does look like it hurts: like someone painstakingly cut the shape into her skin. It’s of a heart, rendered in anatomical detail - valves and ventricles and arteries. It’s beautiful, you realize belatedly. Bright instead of faded, and obviously cared for. Lovely. 

The only permanent stain on her perfect body. You press your thumb against the ink, fascinated. 

“What does it mean?” you ask, but Karina’s already fallen asleep. 

-

(In your script, the girl and the stranger watch some gory crime show, except they don’t pay very close attention and he tugs her into his lap and makes her ride his thigh. The episode they’ve got on is about a serial killer who murders so-called sinners - liars, adulterers, the like. Slaughters them like sacrifices, cutting their throats with vicious efficiency. Fake blood drenches the screen with every crime scene: a form of fucked-up baptism, a psuedo-religious cleansing. 

The girl’s putting on an equally decent show on top of the stranger: head thrown back, eyelids fluttering, high-pitched little moans. He sinks his teeth into her shoulder and keeps watching the TV.

Hey, he says, a murmur against her skin, a close-up on his mouth. You’re a sinner, right?

She’s got her hands on his shoulders, hips rolling. Sure am. 

How do you think this guy would kill you? 

He thinks this’ll shock her, but she doesn’t even pause. Like he kills all the rest, she says. Like an animal.

I think he’d be more careful with you, the stranger muses. You’re too gorgeous. He’d have to use, like - a scalpel, or something. Something cleaner. Something that’d keep you intact. 

It’s no use. Nothing he says seems to scare her. Her eyes are far-off, almost glazed in recollection. Like she’s thought about it too - her own untimely end. Her own vivisection, skin flayed and organs visible, viscera and bone. There, hold the shot: now the audience can consider it with her, ponder all the ways she could be torn apart, all the repulsive things they could do with her desiccated body. All the ways flesh can warp under a human touch: the blue-black yellow-green purpling of bruises, a whole palette on one tiny girl. There’s value in that, isn’t there? There’s something intimately, incomparably beautiful in suffering. There’s art. 

Isn’t that why everyone’s watching? 

I get it, the girl says, still soaking his thigh, smiling as if it’s an inside joke between them. You want me dead. That’s been obvious since the moment you met me. 

I don’t want you dead, he says, and grabs her by the jaw. I just want to fuck you. 

Okay, she says, uncaring, like there’s barely a difference. Fine. Whatever you want. 

They don’t turn the TV off. They let the characters scream and bleed out in the background; he fucks her like she’s got a death wish. It’s funny - he expects her to get louder the harder he fucks her, ruthlessly working over the tight clench of her cunt - but she keeps getting less and less responsive, as if he’s pushing her little body into some sort of trance: expression vacant and blank, body limp and lifeless, mouth open and speechless. It makes him angry. Give me something, he’s saying, frustrated, clawing at her hair: baby, it’s not fair, it’s no fun like this. The on-screen shrieks aren’t enough - he wants it from her. Actually, he keeps saying he needs it - as if fulfilling desire is on the same level as food or air, as if he’ll drop dead in seconds if he doesn’t get her sobbing. He gets his overlarge hands on her face and starts contorting it, pushing her mouth open, her eyes wider, his fingers down her throat until she spits and gags and chokes. Oh, the audience will love this one: it’s reminiscent of those filthy exploitation films with their cult followings, so cleverly referential. Look at her pathetic and pinned down. Look at her helpless and struggling. Think of your favorite on-screen murder scenes, and then think of this.

Anything I want, the stranger reminds her, yanking back her hair as she drools down his wrist. You asked for this, didn’t you? You said anything I want. 

Except now the girl can’t say anything at all. 

This moment will start rumors, invite horrified scandal the same way some purposefully marketed horror movies are passed off as snuff films - that really went down, they really died like that. This scene’ll get a similar response. Did he actually fuck her? Did he actually hurt her? Did everyone - the writer, the director, the crew, the captive audience - actually just stand by and let that happen? 

Sure. Or she might just be a really, really good actress.

There. The stranger’s murmuring to her now, watching her manufactured expression, watching the tears fill her eyes. There you go. There’s my girl. And she is his, she really is - transformed into something all beautiful and new under his clumsy fingertips, molded right into art. The camera will zoom in close on her gorgeous, cadaverous face, a perverse little gift for the audience: here, have this, take a look. She’s all yours now. 

There’s something to be said here about the manmade link between sex and violence - inescapable, brutal, primeval; bodies in all shades of red - but he forgets it the second he touches her, and she’s being fucked too hard to remember.

Maybe they’ll get to it next time.) 

-

AND WE'RE BACK!!!!!!!!!!! <33333

all my luv ever to @capslocked @worldsover @passingnotions @braaan for beta reading my dumbass shenanigans and also for being the best ever I LOVE U!!!!!! AND ANYONE WHO IS READING THIS I LOVE YALL TOO.................. PART 2 COMING SOON!!!!!!!!!!!

#kpop smut #kpop fanfiction #kpop fanfic #idol x reader #idol x male reader #reader insert #karina smut #karina fanfic #aespa karina smut

[infiniteko]

https://www.tumblr.com/infiniteko/740550010507280384/these-non-dualists-seems-to-be-so-bitter-and-for

completely agree with you!

this is why it always makes me laugh when people accuse others of “acting from ego” simply because they critiqued someone or said anything remotely ‘negative’?? ego is just a thought (unreal). it is just this illusory sense of “me, mine”, this sense of being an individual body-mind… so if that’s the case, ‘we’ are technically all “acting from ego”. we all appear to have different livelihoods, interests, preferences, hobbies, relationships, etc…

for as long as you (THAT) choose to express yourself as a person, why not make it fun!!😋 you (THAT) created 7 billion people so you can entertain yourself with disagreements and debates and difference of opinion. the beauty of it is that, ultimately, it is still all just THAT.

no one who truly knows that every thing is all the same “ ” wishes genuine harm or unhappiness on another person. everyone i have met who follows this ‘way of life’, myself included, are all the most chill, laid back, lazy mfs you could meet😭. we have no energy for sincere hatred, and there would be no one to hate but yourself anyway lol.

sending you guys (infiniteko) and anyone reading this lots of love & prosperity 🤍 you’re here to enjoy the dream, so enjoy it & don’t take it too seriously :)

Literally.👍🏻

Criticism ≠ Bullying

Criticizing posts does not mean Bullying the Writer of them, even if it were multiple posts.

Just like how Anons & I criticized people who offer Coachings with the same exact words that are for free on the internet. We criticized Sammy 1-2 days ago or that Scarlet person. Is that bullying them? If they were to delete their socials, did we bully them out of here too? Why would they care about our opinion of them? They're doing fine with that they're posting

Like you said, If one knows everything's "THAT", criticism will not phase you because it is "THAT". Only if you take it personal, it will. We've been criticized by anonymous (& not-anon) people, do we care? It's still THAT. I'm critizing myself. You (THAT) have a problem with yourself (THAT). They're us, we're you. You can say whatever you want to, everyone's fine here.

There was this Msperfect777 person here (is the name correct?) and one Anon pointed out that K once replied to an older post that was limited and MsP.777 wasn't insulted by it. She deleted the apps but that was because her work here is done, just like realitywarpingg did

I've already told Anons to directly show me which part of what I said was "bullying her".

If you like her stuff, go like her stuff. She has 10x as many followers as we do. If she wanted to she could've sent them after us so fast.

Put your thinking caps on for a minute, with her seeming range and success, why would she deactived because of 1 senseless seeming opinion if she knows what she knows. Her likes are idk, probably in the low-mid-hundreds, she has more supporters than criticizers. Why would she care.

#ask

[in-the-sun-is-room-for-you]

Next time you go outside, pick something up and hold it in your hand. It can be anything: a blade of grass, a stone, a bit of bark, whatever.

Then I want you to think about what you're holding. Let's use a stone as an example.

What's the stone made of? Stone, of course. What if we think a little deeper? Well, the stone is an arrangement of molecules, which are groups of atoms... you can keep going until you get to your preferred brand of Smallest Thing. For the sake of ease I'm going to stop at protons, neutrons, and electrons.

We know that mass can't be destroyed, so that means that every single particle in that stone has always existed. What might they have seen in those 13.6 billion years?

That stone, or whatever it is, you're holding was here for the birth of the universe, the first stars and planets, perhaps even life that isn't us. It has witnessed the horrific void of black holes and the wonder of nebulae and beauty that we can't imagine on a timescale we can't comprehend.

And through all of that, it just so happens that everything that stone has been through has led to it being here. Maybe one the particles that make it up were on opposite sides of a galaxy, maybe they were always together.

All of that history is being held in your hand. And in the ground you're standing on. And the clothes you're wearing. And you and everything around you and everything you ever have or will know.

We're not just made of stardust. Everything is made of stories. They're dying to tell them to an open ear

#original post

[howlingday]

InDomitable

Ozpin: DAMN YOU, WHY?! WHY DID YOU KILL THEM?!

Summer: (Pushing Longest Memory off her) I'VE KILLED YOU BEFORE, AND I'LL DO IT AGAIN!

Ruby: ...

Ozpin: You're welcome to try! I won't be killed so easily twi-

Summer: (Grabs his throat, Rips it out) Hah... You always did talk too much...

Ruby: M... Mom..?

Summer: Ruby... We need to talk. It's time I told you the truth. The real truth about who I am and why I'm really here.

===============================

Summer: ...And now it's time for you to join me. Help me prepare this realm for it's time of ascension at the hands of our people.

Ruby: ...

Summer: I... I know this is a lot for you to take in all at once, but soon enough, you'll see... Just give it time and you'll understand why we need to do this. I'm sorry you had to learn this way, but I tried to talk to you earlier. And I know seeing me like this, all covered in the headmaster's blood can be very... unsettling.

Ruby: I... No... No, this... This doesn't make any sense. You love dad. I know you do.

Summer: Ruby, stop. Listen to me. Do you have any idea how long our lifespan as Silver-Eyed Warriors are? The older we get, the slower we age. We're not meant to live among these frail things like humans and faunus. Your father... He's more like a pet. Everything that makes us who we are is so pure, I can create near perfect Silver-Eyes with almost ANY compatible creature. Soon, very soon, you'll be as strong as me. Maybe even stronger, and you'll outlive everyone down there by at LEAST a thousand years! Everyone you know and love down below will die before you even LOOK thirty. You don't belong here. You don't want to watch your friends live and die, do you?

Summer: I know you're confused, and it may even feel wrong, but we... we don't belong here. This world, and these... things are all beneath us. This planet has an invaluable resource sum that would support our race for generations beyond us! With you by my side, we could rule this planet for centuries before we're relocated. Think about it, Ruby; you know this is the right choice. (Shoulder hold) Trust me. This is the only way.

Ruby: (Swats) DON'T TOUCH ME!

Summer: Ruby. Calm down.

Ruby: No, I will NOT calm down! This is insane! You're insane! Just because we're different from everyone else, we're entitled to enslave our friends and families for a bunch of dimension hopping freaks I've never even met?! THIS IS MY LIFE! AND THESE ARE MY PEOPLE!

Summer: Ruby, please. You're not thinking straight. We have a responsibility to our people, to our race. You may not understand now-

Ruby: I DON'T FUCKING CARE ABOUT YOUR SILVER-EYED WARRIOR BULLSHIT! Even if I live for a million, billion years, I won't let you destroy my home!

Summer: Ruby, you don't understand what I'm saying. I CAN'T LET YOU INTERFERE.

Ruby: I know exactly what you're saying!

Summer: ...

Summer: (Clenches fist) So be it.

===============================

One Silver-Eyed Curb Stomp Through Vale, The Black Sea and Solitas later...

Ruby: (Crashes into an icy crater, Bloodied)

Summer: (Gently floats down, Unscathed) Have you had enough yet? (Pulls Ruby up)

Ruby: Ah... I will beat you.

Summer: (Backhands her into a mountain) I'm ready when you are. (Flies close to her) You're doing this for nothing, you know. Humans and faunus will be advanced in both magic and technology beyond their current standing by thousands of years. They'll be brought up to speed with with every other dimension already conquered. In time, Remnant will be better than it ever could have been without us!

Ruby: (Struggles to her feet) Wh... What if... What if they resist?

Summer: Then they'll die. Down to the last one. But that's why we're here! To keep them from resisting.

Ruby: (Rushes in) I won't let you enslave these people, Mom! It isn't right-

WHAM!

Summer: WHY?!

WHAM!

Summer: WHY?!

WHAM!

Summer: WHY DO YOU KEEP FIGHTING?! WHAT HAS THIS WORLD OFFERED YOU THAT'S ANY BETTER THAN WHAT IT COULD?!

Summer: Whatever you're fighting for right now will be gone in just a hundred years, long before you could ever enjoy it! You're fighting so you can watch everyone around you die!

Summer: THINK, RUBY! THINK! WE get older! WE age slower! YOU will outlive everything and everyone frail in this realm! You'll live to see kingdoms rise and fall! Watch civilization itself crumble to dust! EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE YOU'VE EVER LOVED WILL BE GONE!

Summer: WHAT WILL YOU HAVE AFTER YOU LIVE FIVE HUNDRED YEARS?!

Ruby: ...Y-You, Mom. I'd still have you.

Summer: (Raises fist)

Ruby: Mom..?

Summer: (Hand shakes)

Ruby: ...Mom?

Summer: (Gone, Teardrops in the snow left)

#rwby #ruby rose #summer rose #invincible #ozpin

[anaalnathrakhs]

it fucking breaks my heart i've been killing myself for months trying to repair my relationship w my parents and the three of us are just fucking deficient human beings. we're incapable of changing we're fucking incapable of it there's no going back everything was set from the moment i was born. they never should've had a child, but what the fuck could i blame on them? once the kid is here you just do your best you can't just decide it was a bad idea and get rid of it. they did their best. there's no good way to deal with a fucked up child. but holy fuck i wish i wasnt just idk born wrong. i wish life didn't suck and wasn't so hard. i wish when my mom said she'd take more time for family and relaxing she didn't go back to working until 8pm at least every day in the following month, but there's realities pushing her to. i wish when we saw each other we had things to do rather than just stare at each other awkwardly. i can't ever do anything because everything impacts my parents. and god knows i owe them to stop impacting them so much i did enough shit already. i can't enjoy a trip out with them because then we go home and it's MORE incredibly unsatisfactory socializing and forced eating lest they look at me like a monster. i can't leave because then it's WE leave not I leave. i can't just live my life after school because i have to be back to have the terrible binge-inducing dinner with them else i'm a fucking monster who makes them stay awake and worry at night. i have to make them aware of my every move because else they're gonna worry, i can't do that to them i have no valid reason to. i can't ever relax. i have no safe place anymore. there's always food in the house, we always have to go grocery shopping the same day and fill up the pantry. i can't buy anything substantial or component of a "normal" meal because then they just sit there while my mom never uses them despite knowing about them the whole time. there's been bricks of soup in the pantry for like two months she hasn't even MENTIONNED CONSIDERING THEM for the whole time. we bought, and i mean WE bought, WE took a couple canned vegetables from the shelves and we said good idea and we put them in the cart, and then she NEVER used them until i desperately broke the agreement that i was not to have control over what's for dinner and suggested we could perhaps maybe eat the food we had bought to eat, and she was like yeah sure great idea! we ate one can, and then for WEEKS afterwards we still don't touch any of the other cans. she keeps adding and adding and adding a billion things to every meal it makes me wanna rope. she keeps putting huge slabs of butter in pasta MOTHER it tastes the same except it's gross and five billion calories now can you stop doing that thanks. i've had my parents pretty much at my will for many many things all of my life, because they're completely floating in the meaningless void on what it means to be a parent, and it's just not healthy in ways i cannot possibly wholly imagine, and now we're stuck in some sort of circle that if i don't DEMAND something it's like i never said anything. but i can't DEMAND things because that is not a control a kid should have over their own parents and there's no nuance of possible things it's either they'll bend over backwards for even the most ill-advised demand or they will not budge an inch for the most structured three-parted argument doubled with the plead of my failing mental health even if it has demonstrably not worked before, and i certainly do not want to have a relationship with ANYONE where they feel forced to act a certain way because of me. and it's been so weird having developped this kind of very marked independance on like, DRIVE, while i was a neet, that now that i'm older and more legitimate to slowly leave the nest it feels incredibly weird and bad to entrap myself more closely instead.

so i keep trying to give them the elements of what consequences this or that thing has on me, and letting them evaluate themselves what they value, and so far the result has been that they don't give a shit about making me suffer, and they're completely cool with watching me act like i'm coked up in public bc i'm in pain or about to jump out of my skin in fearful anticipation of the next meal. i can handle myself all day and literally just ramble a little under my breath when we're going home at 9pm because it helps with the pain, and they're like "WHAT NOW we say something and you start sighing, what the hell did we do wrong this time??" which i guess is their genuine answer to the situation so i got what i wanted, i didn't control their reactions, but i guess it's pretty disappointing anyway.

and i can't really tell them because hey, how is that conversation gonna go? mom, dad, living with you is unbearable, all of my life you've done nothing but hurt me despite your best loving intentions, and i honestly don't think we're ever gonna fully repair that. cheers. i can't fucking do that to them. i've been the worst child to deal with my entire life i can't do that i just have to hold on until i move out anyway. it itches SO BAD to hurt them to blame them to throw every nasty thing i've ever wanted to yell at them to push them down the stairs and run away in the middle of the night. but i can't because they've done their best. genuinely. i wouldn't have handled it better if i had to parent kid-me. i don't think there's any right answer to a situation like that. i just can't wait until i can live for myself and not for walking around eggshells being the normal kid my parents never got to have now that i can force myself to. it feels like i try my best to give them respect and foster a good mutually-trusting relationship with them, and they don't give back anything different in return. and i do think part of that is that i'm WAAAAAY too in my own head about it and i have massive "nobody is allowed in the kitchen when i'm there" syndrome except my entire existence is the kitchen and anything i do besides "staying the usual unshowered neet disappointment in my room" being seen by my parents feels to me like if walking around naked in public. like how people ask out as a joke, like HA you really believe you could be more than a depressed piece of shit, but you're really nothing more than a pathetic failure barely keeping up the mask of a normal person. and that is totally my responsability to deal with except idk seems like every time i step out it turns out to be a disaster. and the coming down is even harsher, having to turn back into some featureless zombie picking and choosing what interests are undisruptive and inoffensive enough for me to tell my parents about it. i havent even managed to try to get into a sport club because the thought of my parents knowing this and that about my schedule and knowing i do sports and what sports i do and perhaps asking about it just makes my skin crawl. and i can't be spending their money, and i don't have a job, so.

they wont leave me the hell alone, and i can't refuse else i just become defined by my avoidance of them. it's rotting in my bed without any of the recharging. i don't fucking want to eat dinner with them, but else WHAT DO I DO? the kitchen is upstairs, upstairs is where they are, especially during dinner time but also they can hear i'm there if they're awake at home. and i owe them to spend that time bonding w them since we never did, and it's pretty much the only time my mom is home. i don't want to go with them to random events i don't really care about, because they're unenjoyable anyway since they're followed by MORE proximity and shit, but i kinda have to because i owe them that after i was nothing but a fucking emotional leech for my entire life, and also if i don't go to these events with them i go NOWHERE, cf the problem with my parents seeing anything about me mentionned above.

you might notice i've been saying "they" the whole time, rest assured, i mean my mom, or the united parental authority driven by my mom. i barely even have a dad anyway, i have a guy who lives in the same house and comes when my mom calls family reunion time, but spends his entire time every day following his own intellectual pursuits while floating through every actualy physical situation he's in. he barely listens. he barely reacts. he's not stupid or wholly incompetent, he functions alone pretty well, but in most situations in life he just stands to the side and goes "damn" whenever anything would require a reaction. i'm not really sure he fully realizes (or cares) that his actions impact other people. it scares me to be like him. i know how similar i am to him, and i really really hope i don't end up hurting anyone by being like that.

#vent #ed tw #broadcasting my misery #i can't stand not posting this bc i am fucking STARVED for feeling seen and understood #but dw guys it's cool if you have something to say but don't feel obligated it's already nice to know that hypothetically this is being rea #genuinely it does help #just knowing someone COULD read this #im going to try to find compromises and make this shit easier on both me and my parents #i swear #but i needed to vent

[dl-yum]

hey!! I could have a reaction on the monster trio and ace (+ the reaction of their crew, if possible..) with an admiral s/o, and they have a secret relationship (because they are a pirate and she an admiral.. ) They call and send each other letters, of course their crew knows nothing! and one day their crew finds out everything, the letters and their relationship and their teammate is against their relationship!

🐸:this been on my request since forever and I apologize hehehe so here u go

Ps: this is long asf

Luffy

You and luffy meet when Garp takes you to Fusha village and of course, that's all started

No one knows not even Garp or ace no one that's the deepest secret you guys have

We all know luffy can't lie and that's not the problem cause no one gonna think of it like we are talking to luffy here you know

But the crew got suspicious when they see luffy got a letter every 6th day of the month and he also gonna send a letter every 7th day

Ofcources the crew got curious at first they don't ask luffy about it they want to find it they own what is luffy gonna think of them.

And Zoro, of course, got tired and just ask luffy but luffy of course try to lie...

The one who finds out about is robin because luffy asks her for spelling & grammar (lol😭)

And that's world go upside down

The first one who goes against it is nami she was mad about how careless luffy is what if his s/o sells them off

In the background of nami and luffy fighting are chopper and Usopp who are still shocked while brook, frankly and robin is neutral they try to understand both side

Sanji and Zoro are also neutral but a little bit with nami part cause they understand how dangerous it is for an admiral and a pirate to have a relationship but not just a pirate we're talking MONKEY D. LUFFY here one of the worst generations with a billion belli in his head and her girlfriend is fucking admiral

Nami and luffy start shouting mostly nami but luffy got snapped when nami said "You should use your brain luffy can you even trust that girl!? I bet she just go into a relationship with you so she can sell us out!" Luffy got mad you guys start your relationship not even though he's a pirate also. you are one of the people who cheer him to go to sea and achieve his dream

Luffy was mad he want to punch nami but he doesn't want to hurt his Nakama so instead he say

"You should shut up nami you don't know anything about my relationship with y/n before I meet you guys not even when she's a marine or I'm a pirate we already love each other also y/n is not THAT kind of person"

then he leave the whole crew got so silent the whole day luffy don't eat he was so upset with what nami said and only eat when nami apologize

ZORO

you guys meet when he was still a bounty hunter. He always wants you to fight him every time he sees you in marine headquarters in east blue

Ofcources in the end you guys got in a relationship not until you found out he become a pirate

At first, he thought you gonna hate him cause you always say how a pirate crew kill your family and how you despise them but you just smile and hug Zoro and say "I know you will never gonna be like that kind of pirate Zoro"

Since you got promoted and Zoro got to go into the new world you guys never see each other and it's also kinda dangerous for both of you

You guys mostly call each other with your guy's personalized phone made by CAPTAIN USOPP ( Usopp. doesn'tt know it's for Zoro and his s/o he thought it was for zoro and luffy poor usoop....)

When the crew found out of course nami is the one who got mad and yeah usopp too

chopper is scared, Zoro always takes care of him and he trusts Zoro

Luffy being luffy just there cleaning his nose don't care anything about it well he trusts zoro if he trusts you luffy also trusts you how cool is that Zoro has relationship with the admiral it means are you strong right?! He wants you to be his Nakama, shi shi shi!

Robin, brook, and frankly is neutral

And Sanji is just silent even tho he hates Zoro to the death he still trusts him so just there taking his cigarette to the side

Nami still shouting and Zoro starts to lose his patient

So to stop this shit he said

" don't talk to y/n like that's she not that kind of person" and then go to his room to sleep

Everyone is silent until luffy said, "can we eat?"

SANJI

-You meet sanji when he's still work at the restaurant. When you try to visit it cause one of your friends recommend it

-well it become your weekly routine to stop by and eat there you become regular and got close to chefs

-one of them is sanji not long to that you guys got together

-when sanji become a pirate you don't know a thing until you visit him and all the chef just look at you in pity

-you don't really know if you gonna be mad or laugh I mean you heard that his 99% reason joining is because of a girl

-"sanji wtf?" that's was the first thing u blurt out when u see each other in Logue town

-well sanji is pretty shock when he learned you are already an admiral ofcources he is so proud but he still know how dangerous, this is not only he is pirate who have relationship with admiral but he know what can happen if the higher ups find out

-when nami and other find it out it was chaos

Nami was mad, usopp are shouting and crying, zoro and luffy is still shock

-ofcources nami and usopp didn't accept your relationship while zoro and luffy are just neutral most likely zoro...

-Zoro still can't believe sanji got a girl

-it almost take a years before all of straw hat accept you relationship it's when the straw hat start their adventure in new world

-and the reason is the strawhat see how happy and inlove sanji is when he reading news about you or even reading a letter from you

-and they see how hard sanji try not to hurt both side because both side is important to him

-ofcources luffy didn't stop asking if you want to join his crew

@dl.yum

#one piece #one piece fanfiction #one piece x reader #anime #dl.yum #dl.yumyum #monkey d. luffy #roanoa zoro #sanji vinsmoke

[sincerely-sofie]

still cant get over travailshipping. i remember when you first tested the waters with it (which i believe was some time before the tpiag chapters started coming out?) and at first i thought it was pretty funny. ark slowly but surely falling headfirst for twig, who if she had a tagline it would be "if i could turn my feelings into weapons, mine would be a goddamn nuclear bomb", and her at first just being oblivious to it and thinking that the letters that expressed love and care that were written in cursive in her mailbox were just funny and she wanted to show them to ark with the guy just looking at her with the most "well that backfired in the weirdest way possible". but when tpiag finally ended i finally connected the dots as to why these two are just. augh. i wont go into detail here in your askbox but i wanna know is: HOW DID YOU DO IT. HOW DO YOU KEEP MAKING SUCH GOOD IDEAS FOR THE FUNNY DIGITAL ANIMALS. TELL ME.

(thinking to myself) "Ugh I should stop posting so much travailshipping stuff... It's probably so annoying to everyone who sees it. I feel bad for my poor followers. I'll check my inbox real quick and then commit to shaking up my content by—" *gets obliterated by your niceness*

Oh man. I remember posting that poll where I hesitantly described a possible Darkrai/Twig pairing in the tags while proposing Twig/Kip as an alternative route, despite it not being the direction I wanted to take the characters, because I was so scared of what people’s reactions might be. If I remember right, I posted it a little bit before I had just barely reached 5k words in the first draft of TPiaG.

I've been trying to write up detailed responses to how I come up with good ideas for travailshipping in particular, but there's one rule I use that defines everything after it and speaks for all of them: I have fun with the characters.

That's it. That's the rule. If I don't want to write a subject, I don't. I stick with what I find enjoyable and resonant. Does a joke make me laugh? Does a scene make me cry? Does a villain make me punch a hole in my wall? Does a cute gesture make me squeal? If so, then into the project it goes. I think people can feel when someone is having fun with their work, and that fun radiates out into their own experience consuming that work. It's like laughter— joy is something we're sharing with others as long as we feel it. Fun is contagious.

Also: when you don't force yourself to make things you hate, you attract people who like the same things as you. These people will find your work even more fun— because not only did you have fun making it, they're having double fun consuming it.

An important tangent I'll go off on is that I think that every creative project idea is a good idea. There's so many beloved bizarro ideas in the world, even the ones who try to be cool about how weird their premises are. There's this weird show where the main character works as a service industry worker in an underwater setting that's ruled by a Roman deity— he lives in a piece of fruit, and his pet gastropod makes cat noises. This show sounds like word salad garbage on paper and could be tossed out for its nonsensical nature, and yet SpongeBob SquarePants has made Nickelodeon over $13 billion dollars and is a treasured part of many childhoods. There's also a character who spends his time locked in intellectual and physical combat with a wannabe clown and wears a costume with bat ears while doing it. Batman's been an icon for over 80 years.

All of this is to say:

Ideas are always good ideas by virtue of existing. They don't derive their goodness from external sources. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Make more of what you love. Don't make things you hate making.

If you have fun while making the thing, people will have fun while they consume the thing's content.

I hope this makes sense. I didn't touch on idea generation as much as embracing existing ideas. Fingers crossed that was the right response. I'd just woken up from a nap as I was writing it, so hopefully it's not too meandering and managed to answer the question and—

— Oh shoot. Was that a hypothetical question??? Uh. Sorry if I went off on this rant when you were just trying to voice your niceness. Oops. 🫥

#also: feel free to go into detail in my inbox 👀 #i am always happy to hear people's thoughts on my blorbos #creativity tip #creativity advice #writing tip #writing #creativity tips #swear warning #creativity tips with sofie #(kinda) #sofie answers asks

[allaya-the-alien]

Being Divinekin ✨️ I've posted a lot about being an alien but I'm also a divine being so here's a little about that: also this drawing is sort of what my true form looks like but it was really hard to capture it in my art style so it's not totally accurate

So a divine being is a being that has been given divine magick by the universe - they're usually split into mortal and immortal divines of which I am the former but it's complicated lol. There's also a whole magick caste system but I won't get into that in this post. My sister and I are divine beings, I guess I should also explain the relationship between me and my sister so real quick tangent, My sister and I for the majority of our souls existence were just one being and we have been divine for billions of years. In this most recent incarnation we split into two souls (we're twin flames). Our magick as one being was that of balance between opposing forces (like creation and destruction) and when we split my sister took over the creation half of the magick and I got the destruction bit. Now divines aren't bound to one 'kind' of magick, but when you first become a divine you obtain a specific kind of magick and your growth outside of that is determined by the caste system. Also kind of related to this but there has never before this been a case of a divine soul splitting into twin flames. Tangent over! I don't remember anything that happened before this incarnation but I do remember bits and pieces of the creation story of the star system I'm from (so my world and two other planets, that I'm aware of). Basically when my sister and I were one soul, billions of years ago, we made our star system. And ever since then we have reincarnated as the alien species that lives on the biggest world in the star system. Maybe I'll make another post about my home world, I don't know much about it though, all my memories where that's concerned are really blurry. I've just been thinking about this a lot more recently and it's really put things into perspective. Like you know when you learn a fact but then years later the fact really sets in and you're like "omg yea that's a thing holy shit". That's basically what I'm going through XD This started because I was talking to my main spirit guide and I was asking for confirmation on a bunch of stuff and she just kept refusing to answer my questions. Which isn't totally unusual because she takes a very hands off approach with the whole spirit guide thing. But this time was a little different so I was like hey what's up, and she basically said; you don't need to come to me for answers, you have access to all the answers you want and you don't need to use divination tools (tarot, pendulum) because YOU are a divine! And that was crazy to me because I had never thought about it that way, I had always assumed that being in a human body meant I didn't have access to my magick. So my plans now are to figure out how to access my magick and memories and stuff intentionally. (up until this point the memories have just been coming in passively I haven't been actively seeking them out). I have NO IDEA where to start with this lol but apparently I 'have everything I need' so 😅🤷

#otherkin #alienkin #alterhuman #divinekin #nonhuman #otherkin blog #otherkin community #otherkinity #otherkin art

[unbidden-yidden]

The whole "culturally Xtian" debate is going around again and I've so far been staying out of it, because I feel like I've said most everything I have to say about it, BUT. I now have additional thoughts and can no longer help myself.

To recap earlier posts of mine:

I still think it would help The Disc Horse to focus on describing behavior rather than assigning immutable traits to people on the internet you almost certainly don't know.

Therefore I don't think we need a *new* term so much as some minor grammatical modifications.

Namely: Collectively, a group, a society, an idea, a behavior, etc. can certainly be culturally Xtian. Individually, a person can be engaging in a culturally Xtian behavior or arguing a culturally Xtian idea. If you really must describe the whole person's culture, making it a verb indicates better the lack of choice: i.e. - "from a christianized culture." Obviously if someone identifies themselves as culturally Xtian, that's a totally separate and fine thing.

I still think the baseline problem here is unexamined Xtian antisemitism repackaged as "secularism" or "rationalism."

I feel like nearly every post I've seen about this has treated the term like it's clearly defined and obvious, and then proceeded to define it in an interesting and unique way. It's amorphous and ubiquitous enough that it almost seems to have taken on the "obscenity" problem: How do you define obscenity? You'll know it when you see it.

This is actually completely fine, so long as people are aware of and honest about that factor. Which does mean that there needs to be some nuance in how it does or does not apply to any given person at any given time.

It's also really important to ask "whose Xtianity?" and not treat a global religion with 2.6 billion adherents (and a truly dizzying number of denominations) as a hivemind. There are certainly general Xtian theological ideas that bleed out into the societies they exist in, but let's be honest about how truly weird American neo-Puritanism/late Calvinism is, too.

However, some stray comments/questions that I think are new and I'm interested if people have thoughts/answers:

I think the mixed message that's going out is that yeah - culturally Xtian people are always culturally Xtian and that is a theoretically neutral identity, but it's usually only relevant and therefore only being brought up when that background happens to be causing them to further the oppression of religious minorities, namely, antisemitism. So the overall perception from the people on the receiving end of it is that this is a Bad thing because they only associate it with being called out for antisemitic ideas. It's not *just* the trauma they individually may have, but also the context in which they're hearing about it. I think if it had first gained traction in the context of people identifying additional ways to deconvert by deconstructing these Xtian hegemonic ideas, we'd be having a totally different conversation here.

I saw a post about how Xtianity views itself as modular and completely distinct from culture in a way that few, if any, other religions do. I mostly agree, but I do think that's specifically because I'm Jewish. I think viewing culture and religion as inseparably intertwined is very specifically an ethnoreligious viewpoint that others the mainstream hegemonic Xtian view of "religion" as modular. And I suspect that is at least part of why it has gotten such a negative reaction.

There have been lots of comments about how Xtian secularism is still culturally Xtian (with France as one very clear-cut example); however, I would be extremely interested in seeing how this stacks up to, say, Chinese secularism that is of course not culturally Xtian. I definitely don't know anywhere close to enough to comment; just, that if we're going to make claims about Xtianity's arbitrary bifurcation of what is "religious" versus what is "cultural," we need a counter-example of intentional, large-scale non-Xtian secularism. I know literally just enough about the Cultural Revolution to know that it would be extremely interesting to learn from someone who did know what they were talking about to see how those divide lines compare to the divide lines in culturally Xtian societies. I'd also be interested in other examples as well; that's just the primary one I thought of.

And just to really make sure I beat on every hornets' nest because I apparently love headaches: Are we gonna talk about the cultural Xtianity within American Jewish communities? I bring this up specifically because if we are going to go hard on keeping out forms of cultural Xtianity from outsiders, it would behoove us to understand what we are protecting and make sure we've addressed the calls coming from inside the house. How do we talk about it respectfully when fellow Jews are exhibiting these same ideas and behaviors? Can that analysis also be applied out to others? Should it be?

I think it would also be fascinating (albeit a much larger discussion) to consider whether, if what we consider culture, religion, and/or societal ethics to be so interconnected as to be functionally different aspects of the same concept, then is a secular society even possible? Is individual secularity? Or is it simply a continuum of individuals' ritual observance, faith, and spirituality? Because the answers to those questions have some significant ramifications on this whole conversation.

[livwritesfics]

Hello!

I saw that your requests are open so I thought I'd make one, don't feel obligated though, I know myself that it's hard to write an idea that you don't really feel.

Anyway, I want to request a LawLu where Law is really insecure if Luffy likes him or not and if he really wants a relationship or not and he successfully resolves it ❤

Have a great day/night and I hope you get your AO3 account soon

A/n: Thank you for your request friend!! I hope you like this oneshot :) Also, I am not caught up with One Piece (yet I read fics with spoilers anyways cause I don't care anymore) so bare with me here! Also, most of this is taken in Law's POV.

Law sighs dreamily as he looks at Luffy sitting on the Sunny figurehead. Leaning on his head on his hand he has a small smile on his face as he just watches him.

"Law? Law!"

He immediately get's snaped out of his daze and looks up in surprise. It's the cook of the Strawhats. Sanji.

Sanji frowns as he cleans his hands with the handkerchief. "Law you need to stop this and make a move."

Law sighs. He's heard this millions of times from the Strawhats. No. Billions. If he had a dime for every time he got told by one of the Strawhats to make a move on their captain, he'd be rich!

"I can't do that eyebrow-ya." He lamented looking back at Luffy.

Sanji sighed and went back to doing the dishes.

For months this has went on, ever since Law had met Luffy at Sabaody, he's been shot with an arrow of love. He's fallen hard for the Straw hat boy. His crew and now the Strawhats found it hilarious and teased him relentlessly for it.

The Strawhats felt bad for Law though. Their captain was very oblivious so he didn't understand how much he affected Law.

Law always got so flustered around Luffy. Luffy would hug him, he would blush and gap like a fish. Luffy would compliment him, same effect. Whatever Luffy does really, gets him all flushed and wordless.

At night, Law slept in Luffy's captain's quarters because Luffy never uses it. He makes up scenarios in his head about what it would be like to be with Strawhat-ya.

He knows it'll never happen, he knows he'll never be good enough, that Luffy will never feel that way. Or even want a relationship. That doesn't mean that he can't dream. And boy does he dream (a/n: wink wink).

He sighs sadly as he crawls into bed that night. It all seems like an endless loop now. Him silently pining over Luffy and Luffy always never getting the message.

╚⏤⏤⏤╗❀╔⏤⏤⏤╝╚⏤⏤⏤╗❀╔⏤⏤⏤╝╚⏤⏤⏤╗❀╔⏤⏤⏤╝

One day, the Thousand Sunny finally gets to Zou. They made it! Law's crew greet him and welcome their captain back. Hugs and sobs take place while the Heart captain puts up with it, secretly thankful to be back with his crew. He missed them very much.

But he would have to part from His Luffy. Right. Not his.

Law's smile falters and he glances to the ground.

"Are you okay captain?" Law looks to Bepo who had asked the question.

"I'm fine Bepo, don't worry."

╚⏤⏤⏤╗❀╔⏤⏤⏤╝╚⏤⏤⏤╗❀╔⏤⏤⏤╝╚⏤⏤⏤╗❀╔⏤⏤⏤╝

Later that night, after dinner the Strawhas and the Heart pirates had a meeting. Minus their captains.

"So we all agree that we're here because of our captains, right?" Zoro started the meeting.

"AGREE!" everyone shouted.

"Okay, we know that Law is going nuts over your captain so that's why Nami and Robin made a plan. We slipped a note underneath the door to Law's Captain's Quarters saying it was from Luffy and you guys gave Luffy a note saying it was from Law." Shachi explained.

"Right!" Chopper exclaimed, raising his hooves in the air in excitement.

"Okay, so they know to meet at a flower field for a date, correct?" Ikkaku asked.

They nodded. Everything was set.

╚⏤⏤⏤╗❀╔⏤⏤⏤╝╚⏤⏤⏤╗❀╔⏤⏤⏤╝╚⏤⏤⏤╗❀╔⏤⏤⏤╝

Law:

He was in his office reading a Sora comic when he heard a pair of feet in front of his door.

He turned in his chair and headed to it. As he was about to open the door, a note slipped through it.

Luffy.

It. Read. Luffy.

Luff sent him a note!

Law quick threw open his door to try to talk to him, but much to his dismay, he was met with nobody.

He went back into his room and opened the note.

Dear Torao,

I really like spending time with you! Let's meet at the flower field and spend time together!

Oh! And dress nice! It's a date.

Luffy

Law gasped as he read the last part. He pinched himself to see if this were real or not. Nope! Real, real, real.

He quickly went to his closet and started picking out what to wear.

╚⏤⏤⏤╗❀╔⏤⏤⏤╝╚⏤⏤⏤╗❀╔⏤⏤⏤╝╚⏤⏤⏤╗❀╔⏤⏤⏤╝

Law went to the flower field and waited excitedly. He has dreamed of this day since forever. He never pictured it would happen though. He never thought that Luffy would ever like him like this. Ever since he met him he always thought he wouldn't be good enough to be in a relationship with Straw hat. Luffy's so special and Law's so... meh. Nothing special.

Then Law saw him. Luffy. He looks so beautiful. Law thought. Once Luffy found him he jumped and started waving at him. Law and Luffy both giggled gleefully and started running for each other.

"Hey!" They both greeted each other at the same time.

They both blushed and looked away. "Thank you for inviting me out for a date," Law looked back at him, trying to hide his blush beneath his hat.

"What? Law I never asked you out? You asked me out!" Luffy stated confused.

"But... But I got a letter that said you wanted to spend time with me here!" Law explained to him, holding out his letter.

"I have a letter too," Luffy took his letter from his pants' pocket.

They looked at each other in confusion before Law realized what was happening here.

"Oh, I see. Luffy-ya, our crews set us up" Law told him, sad that this entire thing was fake. He knew that Luffy would never like him. It was too good to be true.

Law bowed his head in despair before Luffy grabbed his hand. He looked up. "Well, let's not let them ruin our night. I still have a hot date here, so let's have fun!"

Law gapped like a fish and turned red fervently. "You still want to?" Luffy nodded. "You like me?" Law continued. Nod again.

"Okay," he whispered, a growing smile on his face.

╚⏤⏤⏤╗❀╔⏤⏤⏤╝╚⏤⏤⏤╗❀╔⏤⏤⏤╝╚⏤⏤⏤╗❀╔⏤⏤⏤╝

Luffy:

The rest of the night they talked and talked, walking through the flower field. They later went out to dinner and started walking back to their ships. Holding hands.

As Luffy was swinging their hands, he looked up at Law and studied him. Mine. He's mine.

Law caught Luffy staring at him and stopped walking. "yes?" he chuckled.

"Tonight was fun. We should do that again."

"Yeah?" Law smiled, "I'm glad it was enjoyable. I had fun too."

All of a sudden their faces came closer and closer to one another.

They ended their night kissing underneath the streetlight.

THE END.

A/n: I hope this was okay, I know it's long and drags on but whatever, it's cute lol

#fanfics #lawlu #lulaw #pining #slow burn #getting together #law is a dork #pining law #insecure #alone with my thoughts #young love #boyfriend #lovers #onepiece #straw hat pirates #straw hats #heart pirates #lawlu fanfic #lawlu fic #lawluffy #one piece lawlu #gay couple #love #gay love #relationship #inlove #out of character talk ( ooc ) #ooc #ooc post #ooc tag

[firespirited]

In other news my Dune fixation caused by some amazing tumblr meta writing has not been sated by watching the DUNCs.

I had a long pretty good post typed out after the first one and tumblr ate it:

here goes:

I considered it an alternate timeline (by the time we get the non-Alia and Chani choices of DUNC 2, we're definitely in a different version of this story - I like not knowing if Messiah will be much like the book, I like it if there's no escaping the plots set in motion). I had to repeat Alternate Timeline as a litany when there was no diplomatic party, no tweaking methhead bitchy Piter and Kynes didn't get That Moment with nature.

Was disappointed by the fact Paul isn't already tormented by potential futures at his first major fight wondering if dying might be the best way to avoid mass death and escape the machinations. To me, in that fight, he's chosen a path to the suffering of billions and justifies it and refines it later.

Lynch Dune remains fun because it's bonkers, this is fun too but definitely alternate timeline and neither are at all how I imagine it. Lynch seemed to nail the spirit of some of the characters better despite massive creative liberties with the plot details. It's its own weird and wonderful artefact.

Villeneuve remains the king of ovoid spaceships, mega landscapes and letting the fashion and sound designers get a great budget. I love the Chani additions, not canon and I don't care, it works!

The lack of Arabic complex concepts and more references to eastern religions was sorely lacking: flow has to be more than just a picture of moving sand, i wanted that cells interlinked within cells interlinked: galaxies and molecules and populations easter egg.

I also had a hope for DUNC 2 that it would show the whole universe as deeply religious, as in hardwired to give themselves over to a higher power even if that belief is atheism or eugenics. It didn't and I think that's really important context to properly understand what the story is saying. We've got political devotion bad and religious zealotry bad with both being culturally groomed into people but not the larger context of other "cults" that aren't explicitly about power but self-improvement or belonging or even service.

----------------------

My silly pet theory is that the font is like that because we're probably never getting the two other "ones who bridge everything" of the trinity: sad worm god emperor and our man DUNC potadaho the ultimate renaissance man with a thousand lives. (As much as I'd love DUNC 8 2039: we're putting silver fox Momoa in situations again)

The dream will always be the cartoon/anime adaptation:

52 x 50-minute episodes that teeter wildly between dense political machinations, ecological exposition, that Bakshi LOTR trippy violence and even trippier visions interrupting action scenes, but most of all, near blasphemous levels of religious symbolism top to bottom, the Abramic sure, but the Buddhist, Hindu and Taoist. If they could add Paul getting a big dose of gender WTF: trill-style after being exposed to the water of life that would be amazing.

But yeah I need to get my hands on large print books - yeah yeah, the migraines will murder me regardless. I missed being in everyone's head. Like, the films are great a conveying scale but not how much it's an interpersonal drama first and foremost... for many of the side characters too.

#saf #movie reviews #dune

[goombasa]

Everything Actiblizz Owns and What's Happening With It

Hey all.

So a big topic of discussion last year, especially near the last fourth of the year, was the fact that Microsoft had successfully acquired Activision Blizzard for around $69 Billion dollars.

Despite what the number might suggest, this is most certainly not nice. Acti-Blizz was far from a perfect, or even good, company, but a single company consolidating power is never a positive.

However, beyond the horrifying, monopolistic implications this could have down the road, this did get me thinking… Activision-Blizzard has been around for a very long time, in multiple incarnations, and they own a lot of different IPs. So I thought it might be a good idea to go over what they own, or rather what Microsoft now owns, and what's actually been done with these series and IPs recently, if anything. Because Activision-Blizzard owns a lot of stuff, but they don't necessarily do a lot with them, as seems to be the case with a lot of larger game publishers who have chewed up and spat out smaller studios.

I'm going to do my best to cover all of what Acti-Blizz owns, but I don't think this list is going to be entirely comprehensive, because beyond the big names that everyone knows about, companies this big often have nebulous piles of acquired IPs that they just quietly sit on and do nothing with, content in the fact that no one else is making money off of them, even when they're just rotting there in solitude. So if you see any sort of omissions that you think might below to Acti-Blizz, or any big, glaring ommissions, please let me know, because I'd love to know what sort of stuff a company this large, and with this long a history, is just letting waste away in their copyright office. I'm well aware of how prolific the company was during the early days of gaming for things like Atari 2600 and DOS computers, but I wasn't sure if I should include them or not, and because of their sheer volume, I decided not to for now.

Also, while many of my personal thoughts in this moment are pretty negative, I would in no way be disappointed to be proven wrong on my personal predictions here, many of which are a bit sour. But hey, the gaming industry itself has been souring on me for a good long while. I love games, I love the people who make them, I just hate the companies that run things.

So, let's get started:

Caesar

First Game: Caesar, 1992 (Developed by Impressions Games and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Latest Game: Caesar IV, 2006 (Developed by Tilted Mill Entertainment, Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Personal Thoughts: Historical RTS games don't feel like they're very prevalent anymore, do they? I don't know how well this series did because, to be honest, I had never heard of it before. I'm assuming it did decently well, as a sequel cropped up every now and then, but consideirng that the last game in the series was  released not long before Vivendi Games, who owned Sierra at the time, got gobbled up by Activision, I'm guessing this is an IP that got lost in the shuffle. Always there, just buried deep in the vault with a majority of the rest of Sierra's back catalogue.

Personal Hopes: We aren't exactly hurting for good RTS series nowadays. Civilization, Anno, Age of Empires, Northgard, Supremem Commander, Starcraft 2, Driftlands, Tropico, we're not hurting for good strategy. While I could potentially see this coming back considering that Microsoft pushes games just as heavily on the PC as they do on console, They'd be wading into a pretty crowded market, and Caesar isn't a name that resonates very strongly nowadays. I doubt a lot of the wider gaming market that Microsoft often targets would even know that it's based on a pre-existing series of games at first glance.

Call of Duty

First Game: Call of Duty, 2003 (Developed by Infinity Ward)

Latest Game: Call of Duty: Modern Warfae III, 2023 (Developed by Sledgehammer Games)

Personal Thoughts: I've never played a single game in the series. It is interesting to me as an outsider how it continues to be one of the highest selling series for the company when anyone I ask about it says that the series hasn't been good in years now. Not in any danger of having production ended, but eventually I do think it's going to become a console exclusive. I don't believe a word of what Phil Spencer says when he says they want to keep putting the games out on rival consoles. It might not happen right away, but I'm pretty sure it will happen eventually, even if they have to make a whole new series to justify it.

Personal Hopes: I have no interest in the series myself, but I do hope that those who play the series get some games down the line from here on out that they can say are genuinely good, rather than people buying it out of obligation and just thinking the game is mediocre.

Candy Crush

First Game: Candy Crush Saga, 2012 (Developed and Originally Published by King Games)

Latest Game: I… THINK this is the only game  in this series? Correct me if I'm wrong, but despite how big it is, I think Candy Crush might be standing alone.

Personal Thoughts: What do you want me to say? It's Candy Crush. It basically came pre-installed with Windows for a while. It's one of those things where it's been around for so long and is apparently super popular, and yet I cannot think of anything good anyone has said about it. It's not even that unique of a concept. Match-Three games are so synonymous with mobile games now that there's an absolute deluge of them whenever you look around any app store. Heck, I don't think it's the only candy-based match-three game anymore. And of course, like every game made by King, it's designed to be predatory and push you towards microtransactions for helpful little tools you can use to get past those super hard puzzles that are holding you up, so it's already there on my shit-list.

Personal Hopes: It's Candy Crush. It's going to be fine, so long as it's still making money. If I have any hopes for this at all, I hope it just goes away, along with most of its micro-transaction pushing ilk.

Crash Bandicoot

First Game: Crash Bandicoot, 1996 (Developed by Naughty Dog, originally published by Sony Computer Entertainment)

Latest Game: Crash Team Rumble, 2023 (Developed by Toys for Bob)

Personal Thoughts: They had such a good setup for a comback with this one. Activision gobbles up Vivendi, who gobbled up Sierra Entertainment, who had the rights for Crash at the time, they did nothing with the IP for years, then bring it back with the N.Sane Trilogy, a very warmly remake of the first three games. Follow that up with a remake of the equally as beloved Crash Team Racing (subtitled Nitro Fueled), and then they release a long awaited original continuation with Crash 4: It's About Time. And then what? They turn Toys for bob and Vicarious Visions, the studios responsible for this excellent resurgence for the character, into support studios for CoD, release a maligned endless-runner mobile game that barely lasts two years, and take a scrapped multiplayer mode for Crash 4 and turn it into an online only MOBA game. They've squeezed the blood from this stone and they're happy to just put it back into the vault until they need another big of nostalgic goodwill. And I don't think that's going to change now that Microsoft owns the IP either. Microsoft has a few kid-friendly, or cartoonish IPs and they aren't chomping at the bit to do anything with them because those games don't appeal to their primary base. I just don't see this series continuing in any meaningful way under Microsoft's stewardship. It is still early days, though. Crash 4 was only a couple years ago, and despite a rather small player base, Crash Team Rumble is still active and getting updates, so there is a chance that we might see something more substantial in the near future.

Personal Hopes: Well after all that belly aching and my pessimistic outlook, my own home is that if they do continue using Crash and friends, I want to see more like Crash 4 in the future. Maybe do away with the more egregious 100% requirements and just focus on making a fun, straightforward platformer. Make it a smaller, more budget conscious project, something that doesn't mess with the formula laid down by 4 too much rather than trying to make it a big spectacle. And if they decide to remake other games in the series down the line, I would love to see a more complete version of Twinsanity, a version of that game with some of the cut content reintroduced would be real interesting I think.

Diablo

First Game: Diablo, 1997 (Devloped by Blizzard North, PS1 Version by Climax Studios)

Latest Game: Diablo IV, 2023 (Developed by Blizzard Team 3, Blizzard Albany)

Personal Thoughts: Hoo boy. If ever there was an example of a game company's shift in ideology. I have not played the most recent game. My experience mostly comes from the first two games, which were great dungeon crawlers. Never tried the third, or the remaster of 2, and let's be honest, Diablo has not been in the best place as of late. A horribly received mobile game in Immortal was released, which was hideously grindy, and then IV comes out and is just littered in microtransactions, like a disgusting amount. No matter how good the game itself, and I have heard folks saying that the game itself is a fun enough dungeon crawler, you just can't excuse how much is being charged for cosmetics in this game. It's terrible. The game also has battle passes and has an expansion coming out some time this year, so I'm going to watch this one carefully to see how its monetization pans out as it continues to be updated.

Personal Hopes: Look, the game sold really well, and it's apparently great for yanking more money out of people's wallet. I just want to see a diablo free of these nasty monetization practices, but considering that this is becoming part and parcel for a lot of Acti-Blizz's games, I don't see that happening, and I don't think Microsoft has any incentive to stop this sort of practice considering that now, they get a slice of that pie. And if the game can continue to be expanded with more expansions and battle passes and such, I highly doubt we'll be seeing another new Diablo of any form, in quite a while. So for this one? I don't have a lot of high hopes at all.

Empire Earth

First Game: Empire Earth, 2001 (Developed by Stainless Steel Studios and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Latest Game: Empire Earth III, 2007 (Developed by Mad Doc Software and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Personal Thoughts: Didn't take us long to run into another historical RTS series. This one had about just as much staying power as Ceasar, and in fact, most of the games in the series came out in the time between the third and last game in the ceasar series.

Personal Hopes: Most of my thoughts and hopes are pretty similar to Caesar. It's more similar to Age of Empires rather than focusing on a single civilization, but other than that, I feel like it's in the same boat as Caesar.

Gabriel Knight

First Game: Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, 1993 (Developed and Originally Published by Sierra On-Line)

Latest Game: Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers 20th Anniversary Edition, 2014 (Developed by Pinkerton Road Studio, Originally Published by Phoenix Online Publishing)

Personal Thoughts: Ah, our first example of an IP that Activision has acquired and has owned for a good long while now (around 10 years) and has done nothing with it. They've had this IP, a classic point and click series from Sierra, for a decade and I'm willing to bed most folks at the company don't even realize that they have it. Now granted, point and click games aren't exactly flying off the shelves, but adventure games in general have been making comebacks in recent years. We had that King's Quest game that was released piecemeal a while ago, and I think that Gabriel Knight could work in that sort of style if someone wanted to take a crack at it. But let's be honest, this is a series that doesn't have near the reach, fanbase, or history that its contemporaries at Sierra had. It's not a King's Quest, it's not a Leisure Suit Larry, it's not a Quest For Glory, and don't get me wrong, that doesn't make this game any less important than those titles, but it's not a series that has the same draw strength as any of those names, which makes Activision taking a chance on revitalizing this series, even with, say, an N.Sane style remake of the first three games, very unlikely. And despite the original creator, Jane Jenson, stating that she's interested in making a fourth game, she admits that the legal tangle with Activision-Blizzard makes that very unlikely. Doubly so now that Microsoft owns Activision-Blizzard, who ate Vivendi, who ate Sierra.

Personal Hopes: I just want a new game to come out. Again, it doesn't have to even be a lavish production. A small digital-only point and click would be great. Or some remakes of the first three games. Get it out where more folks can see it, already! And this is coming from someone who is garbage at Adventure games. I just want to see what a more modern take on this series and genre could be like.

Geometry Wars

First Game: Geometry Wars, 2003 (Developed by Bizarre Creations, originally published by Bizarre Creations)

Latest Game: Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions Evolved, 2016 (Developed by Lucid Games)

Personal Thoughts: I'm honestly surprised that we haven't seen more from this series over the years. You'd think that occasionally dropping a small, arcade-style experience like this would be an assured means of making something comparatively quick and easy compared to the constant deluge of AAA ‘blockbusters’ splurging forth from Activision's maw. Yet the series has been dormant since 2016, since basically every massive game studio only knows how to make massive games now. They don't want to make smaller, more digestible experiences, because those aren't the most profitable or something like that.

Personal Hopes: Considering that this game was originally a Microsoft-made series, a darling of the Xbox Live Arcade, I do think that we're going to see this series come back in some way shape or form. The question is going to be whether or not it's going to be more worth it compared to the indie space, where we've seen plenty of 2D twin stick shooters come out over the years, quite a few of them having a look or feel pretty close to what Geometry wars is. Still, I'd like to see another entry in this series, even if just a little bonus game you can play over on Game Pass or something.

Guitar Hero/DJ Hero

First Game: Guitar Hero, 2005 (Developed by Harmonix, Originally Published by RedOctane)

Latest Game: Guitar Hero Live, 2015 (Developed by Freestyle Games)

Personal Thoughts: All right, this one, I get why it isn't around anymore. Guitar Hero was THE rhythm game series to have back in the 2000's, what with its awesome controller and having a rhythm game based around classic and contemporary rock songs, rather than the typical pop, dance, or house music you saw in series like DDR… and also whatever Donkey Konga was trying to do. But between Guitar Hero, its attempted sister series DJ Hero, and its future rival Rock Band, the genre quickly became very oversaturated, the popular bands were mined clean, and we were drowning in a sea of plastic peripherals. No one is really eager to see this series return, and I don't see how you could easily bring it back. No one wants to have to buy a bunch of peripherals to have an optimal experience anymore, and while you can technically play the games with an ordinary controller if you really want to, the whole draw of the games was being able to feel like you were actually playing something resembling a guitar.

Personal Hopes: None here. Guitar Hero had its time in the sun, it was a fun fad, but I think that's all it was. We have plenty of other rhythm games to play now and the genre has been expanding out into other mixed genres as well. We have rhythm beat-em-ups like No Straight Roads and Hi-Fi Rush, or rhythm FPS games like Bullets Per Minute. And traditional rhythm games are doing well enough too with things like the Theaterythm series from Final Fantasy, or independent and free games that are still decently big and infinitely more customizable like OSU! and Stepmania. And then there are the funny weird ones like Trombone Champ, which lets you experience playing an instrument (badly) without the need for an extra set of plastic in your home. If they could find a way to make the experience still feel engaging without the need of peripherals, maybe there's a chance of it coming back, but I don't have high hopes for this one, even under new management.

Gun

First Game: Gun, 2005 (Developed by Neversoft)

Latest Game: Uh… there's only one game in this IP

Personal Thoughts: I'm kind of surprised with this one. This is an Activision Original, they've had it since before they merged with Blizzard, and during its hayday, it was pretty warmly received, basically got ported to every sku possible at the time, and it's even still available on steam right now. It's certainly a bit on the clunky side, and twenty bucks feels like a lot to be asking for an old PS2 era game… but that's also sidestepping the fact that it also does not have the best portrayal of Native Americans, to the point that it was boycotted by the Association for American Indian Development for the stereotypes portrayed in the game. It's a game that, even in its most recent re-release, still has that problematic element, that was still problematic when the game was released. So yeah, I'm surprised that we haven't seen other games using this IP… but I am surprised that the game is still up for sale in a time where such problematic content is more uncomfortable than ever.

Personal Hopes: I mean, the game might have legs for the future, but you'd have to definitely revamp that image a bit. Go back and start from scratch, with a more sensitive perspective in mind, and maybe there might be some legs to this, but I doubt anything more will be done with this IP. Big publishers don't strike me as really wanting to put the work in to address the insensitive nature of some of the things that were made in the past in hopes of giving such an old IP legs again.

Hearthstone

First Game: Hearthstone, 2014 )Developed and Originally Published by Blizzard Entertainment)

Latest Game: Same as above, it's an IP with one game to its name… unless you consider it part of the greater Warcraft ecosystem

Personal Thoughts: Hearthstone is one of those games that I remember thinking was real interesting when I first heard of it, but even after trying it, it didn't grab me. It's longevity at this point is a very good indicator of just how ingrained it is to its players, even if at this point it is nowhere near as large as it once was, at least from the outside looking in.

Personal Hopes: This one's gonna be fine. It's still around, even if it is more in the background nowadays. I don't see a lot of big Hearthstone news circulating is all I'm saying, but the fact that it's still around suggests that it's still profitable enough to keep going and I don't see Microsoft changing that. The reason it's never gotten another game or a sequel or anything is because it's never needed one, and I don't see that changing now. Unless of course, Blizzard decides to apply their current philosophy on Overwatch to this game. We might see some issues then…

Heroes of the Storm

First Game: Heroes of the Storm, 2015 (Developed and Originally Published by Blizzard Entertainment)

Latest Game: Yet again, one game here

Personal Thoughts: The game is basically dead at this point, as Blizzard ended development on it and put it into maintenance mode halfway through 2022. Near as I can tell, the game can still be played for now, but a game entering into maintenance mode is never a good sign. I admit, it had a better run than most live service, battle royale, and MOBA games nowadays have. It managed to make it for a full seven years, and most live service games WISH they could last for the better half of a decade at this point. But it was a game that was entering into an over-saturated market, even at the time, and it just didn't have the same sort of draw power that other big crossovers had. At least in my opinion.

Personal Hopes: The idea does have legs. I say that as someone who absolutely loves big, dumb crossover games. I love seeing a bunch of characters from different universes clash together, no matter how little sense it made. Even so though, if this IP wants to have any legs underneath it, I think it should reconsider its status as a MOBA, which at this point is a notoriously hard genre to break into, and maybe, now that they have Microsoft as a parent company, consider throwing in characters from the big M, or the other companies that Microsoft owns. I mean, I'd play a MOBA where I could play as the Doom Slayer, that's for sure. Probably won't happen and I doubt anyone's chomping at the bit to try and revitalize the storm, but the option is always there, and I would love to see another crack at a large-scale crossover.

Heavy Gear

First Game: Heavy Gear, 1997 (Developed and Published by Activision)

Latest Game: Heavy Gear II, 1999 (Developed and Published by Activision)

Personal Thoughts: Did you know that Activision made a pair of really cool mech games based off an old sci-fi tabletop RPG? I sure didn't! And hey, it's once again an activision original, so it's something that's been with them for a good, long while! However, this one is a bit more straightforward, I think. Since the games are based on a pre-existing, cross-media universe held by Dream Pod 9. So the games were only one piece of a much larger universe, including a tactical war game, an RPG, and even a card game. So it's pretty obvious why this one isn't showing up anymore, the rights are probably in flux, probably not helped by the fact that the second game sold like… horribly compared with the first.

Personal Hopes: I don't think we'll be seeing a Heavy Gear game again, even if Activsion still technically holds the publishing rights to video game adaptations. They'd probably have to renegotiate a licensing agreement with the original publisher, and while they're still around, I think their stuff has become a lot more niche than it used to be. Activision isn't the same company that they were back in the 90's, so doing something this niche just isn't seen as something in their wheelhouse anymore, which is a shame. We need more fun mech games out there, and Microsoft has had some success with their own sci-fi games before. But this particular universe? Yeah, I don't see it coming back in today's climate. It's a shame, but this one seems like it would be more of a licensing issue than anyone's willing to go through.

Interstate '76

First Game: Interstate `76, 1997 (Developed and Originally Published by Activision)

Latest Game: Yet another single-game IP

Personal Thoughts: You know, I'm not sure why this one didn't take off. It was a Windows only game in the late 90's, so while it didn't have a massive audience, vehicular combat games did tend to be pretty popular around this time. This was two years after the oriignal Twisted Metal, and the same year as Carmaggeddon after all.

Personal Hopes: Vehicular combat games are kind of a rare breed nowadays. Not entirely unheard of, but not something that shows up very often. It'd be a good time, especially considering that there isn't a huge amount of competition kicking around anymore. Not much else to say on this one, I just think a modern vehicle battle game would be nice.

King's Quest

First Game: King's Quest I: Quest for the Crown, 1984 (Developed and originally published by Sierra On-Line)

Latest Game: King's Quest, 2015 (Developed by The Odd Gentlemen)

Personal Thoughts: I love the old King's Quest games. While the Moon logic needed in order to get through some of the puzzles could grate on the nerves now and then, it's another quintessential adventure series, and the episodic return of the series in 2015 was a fantastic way, I felt, to modernize the old flavor of adventure games. It's both important to the history of the medium and still a beloved example of early adventure games. The fact that it's been so quiet is odd to me, especially with how well the revival went over.

Personal Hopes: The remake didn't see any great big revival for the series going forward, but I do think it was a step in the right direction. King's Quest is probably one of, if not the most well known of Sierra's old adventure game catalogue, and if the Odd Gentleman reimagining is any indication, there are still a lot of interesting stories that could be told in this world and with these characters, or with new characters here and there. The question is, though, Is Microsoft going to indulge more in the colorful, cartoonish games of this sort? I doubt it, but hey, if they gave Battletoads another shot, if only for a single game, if they let the right creative team handle this one, I think an occasional episodic adventure in the kingdom of Daventry wouldn't be too bad.

Laura Bow Mysteries

First Game: The Colonel's Bequest, 1989 (Developed and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Latest Game: The Dagger of Amon Ra, 1992 (Developed and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Personal Thoughts: Only two games in this series, and this is one of those IP that I would probably call a ‘deep cut.’ It's something that is beloved by those who have experienced it, but that group is fairly small, and the series itself was pretty short lived compared to other Sierra series of the same era, whcih would often get five to six games. I feel like this was one that was hanging out in the background long before Activision acquired Sierra's back catalog.

Personal Hopes: We're probably never going to see this one again. Like I said, there are folks out there who remember these two games very fondly, but in terms of an IP that would be likely to be revived by a major gaming conglomerate? Hate to be blunt, but no, this one is just going to be shoved to the bottom of the pile and they're not going to touch it again. Thankfully, both of the original games are available over on GoG, so who knows, maybe if there's enough interest shown over there, that might change. As it is now though, I just don't think we'll be seeing Ms. Bow or her adventures again any time soon.

The Lost Vikings

First Game:  The Lost Vikings, 1993 (Developed by Silicon & Synapse and Originally Published by Interplay Productions)

Latest Game: The Lost Vikings 2, 1997 (Developed by Blizzard Entertainment and Originally Published by Interplay Productions)

Personal Thoughts: If anyone knows anything about Blizzard's early days, before the Warcrafts and Starcrafts and such, back when they were called Silicon and Synapse, they probably at least know the name of the Lost Vikings, one of the first puzzle platformers I ever played growing up. I never got very far into it when I was a wee lad, but damn was it fun. And while I knew it had a sequel, I was kind of surprised that we didn't see more of it later down the line. But nope, two games is all we get, and while this series has cropped back up in recent years, thrown into the Blizzard Arcade Collection… which is digital only and feels like it only exists to sort of remind people of some really obscure IP that Blizzard owns? It's strange.

Personal Hopes: This is one that I really hope would be coming back at one point or another. While multi-character puzzle games aren't really unique nowadays. Things like a Tale of Two Brothers, Toodee and Topdee, and of course multiplayer experiences in the same vein like It Takes Two, but I don't feel like it's a particularly oversaturated genre, and LV's take on it with three different characters, or even more given the other characters introduced in the second game, might even make it stick out. I think this is something that could have legs in the future, so I think it's something that could come back, though again, I don't see it being a very high profile production if it does return.

Overwatch

First Game: Overwatch, 2016 (Developed and Published by Blizzard Entertainment)

Latest Game: Overwatch 2, 2022 (Developed and Published by Blizzard Entertainment)

Personal Thoughts: I don't think I'll be adding much to the conversation on this one. I'm aware that Overwatch still has its fans, but from the perspective of someone who has watched Blizzard and Activision slowly piss away all of the good will and good press that the game got upon launch, I feel comfortable in saying that this is the first time I've ever watched someone take a diamond and just grind it into dust in front of my eyes. I don't think it's necessarily going anywhere for right now, but it just feels like Blizzard has been slowly removing all of the personality out of this game and this franchise. It bothers me because when the game first launch, it really felt like it set itself apart, and pretty much all of the characters were, at least from an aesthetic and personality point of view, interesting and unique. I can't comment on how the gameplay has changed since then since I never played the game, I'll leave that to someone who knows what they're talking about, but purely from the standpoint of how the game's image has been handled, even disregarding the company's overall behavior (and you really shouldn't disregard Blizzard's overall behavior), man did they screw this one up royal.

Personal Hopes: I'm begging you, just do something with a more coherent storyline. Make a more traditional shooter. Give folks what you initially promised for the sequel's story mode as something like a standalone game or something like that. These designs are too good to just waste away in a hero shooter that I've only heard people describe as aggressively mid since the sequel came out.

Phantasmagoria

First Game: Phantasmagoria, 1995 (Developed and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Latest Game: Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh (Developed and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Personal Thoughts: I know that a lot of older media tends to not age particularly well as our understanding of certain social stigmas and the history of other peoples in relation to ourselves comes to light as time marches on, but I thing Phantasmagoria and its sequel are two excellent examples of just how poorly a game's content can age. These FMV games were both made with the purposes of rocking the boat, being very dark and touching on subject matter that games nowadays really don't want to touch upon, especially from major AAA publishers. I haven't played these games in years now, well before I developed any sense of social grace for myself, which probably means I was too young to have been playing them in the first place, so I can't say just how poorly they've aged, but I do know that i think back to my own experience with the games and it makes me shudder a little bit.

Personal Hopes: It's an FMV game series from the 90's that does have some merit to the history of the genre, if only for the risks it took in its subject matter, but the fact that it hasn't aged well, FMV games are seen more as memetic throwbacks nowadays, and the fact that the subject matter the games were famous for probably wouldn't fly today. Horror games in their many different iterations are seeing a big resurgence in popularity and while games nowadays can push the envelope at least a bit in terms of their content, I don't think invoking an actually controversial PC game from the 90's would be something they'd want to do.

Pitfall

First Game: Pitfall!, 1982 (Developed and Published by Activision)

Latest Game: Pitfall! 2012 (Developed by The Blast Furnace)

Personal Thoughts: I had no idea this series… was actually a series. Pitfall to me has always just been one game, the original Atari game that helped to codify the platforming genre, but no, there were several games released, all the way up to the PS2 era, and then it just sort of drifted off into history, with the last game using the IP that I can find being an endless runner from 2012.

Personal Hopes: Again, I don't see this coming back in any sort of big way. While the endless runner is no longer available, the original Atari Pitfall is available on Android at least, but pitfall could maybe make a comeback as a Tomb Raider or Uncharted style game, but we already have Tomb Raider and Uncharted for that and Pitfall has more of a historical legacy than a big brand identity, so not much hope there.

Police Quest

First Game: Police Quest: In Pursuit of the Death Angel, 1987 (Developed and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Latest Game:  SWAT Elite Troops, 2008 (Developed by Rovio Mobile, Originally Published by Vivendi Games Mobile)

Personal Thoughts: One of Sierra's classic adventure series that wasn't meant to be more on the comedic or fanciful side of things, Police Quest was well known for being a proper police procedural game; if you didn't follow the rules and proper protocol, you could end up bricking your game for something as simple as not showing your badge before you started questioning a suspect. It was wild, and a hell of a lot more involved than it ever had to be. I applaud the older games for their wish to stay as accurate as possible to the idea of being a cop, but I do feel that it makes the series kind of impenetrable to anyone who didn't grow up with it.

Personal Hopes: I don't think that this series would come back in any form mostly because the series is pure copaganda. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of that in video games and in media in general. Video games in particular have a real problem with fetishizing how awesome the American military is, for example. Now, if they brought it back and gave the series a seedier bent, I think it would be more interesting, maybe something more along the lines of This is The Police. However, I don't see it coming back in its original incarnation. I don't think stories where cops are portrayed as the out and out good guys resonate with a lot of folks of my generation and below, and while we do have examples of games where being organized and filing paperwork can be enjoyable (Papers Please, and Death and Taxes come to mind), I don't think a police procedural where missing even a single step in a lengthy process could kill a run hours beforehand is what folks are really looking for these days.

Prototype

First Game: Prototype, 2009 (Developed by Radical Entertainment)

Latest Game: Prototype 2, 2012 (Developed by Radical Entertainment)

Personal Thoughts: Edgy generic duology all about binary good and evil choices as well as some really well done animations and transformations and powers that you can attain as the game goes on, along with a free-roaming map hiding a bunch of secrets. There was an explosion of stuff like this at around the same time when the first game came out. The same year we had Assassin's Creed 2 and the original Infamous, so it simultaneously came out at the perfect time for a game of its type, and yet at the same time, I feel like it was always just sort of in the background and never really did much to stick out. I actually remember thinking for the longest time that this game was coming out of Ubisoft for some reason.

Personal Hopes: The second game, which came out 3 years after the first, apparently underperformed so badly that it was used as the justification to lay off a lot of the people at Radical, and turn it into an assistant studio for their large projects, primarily COD. It's one of those series that I see as a creation of its time, and I can see Microsoft showing some interest in the property given Xbox's perceived base. It's a shame that Radical Design wouldn't get another crack at it, since they're probably busy helping others with their own projects, and while I don't see it happening any time soon, I do think that this might be something that could see some sort of revival under a new regime. Maybe.

Quest for Glory

First Game: Quest for Glory: So You Want to Be a Hero, 1989 (Developed and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Latest Game: Quest for Glory V: Dragon Fire, 1998 (Developed and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Personal Thoughts: This is the other big-name adventure series from Sierra, right up there with King's Quest, and while it didn't run quite as long, it has quite a big legacy, and is just as famous for it's many, many quirky death scenes, much like King's Quest, but often with a more personal bent to it with the ability to choose your class and customize your main character a little bit, with stats that can actually effect how you have to approach some of the puzzles, many of which have multiple ways of solving them to account for your stats, but it also allows for a certain level of creativity on the part of the player.

Personal Hopes: I do hope we see another one of these games in the future. We're inundated with a lot of games that have binary choices that affect the game superficially, but what I would love to see would be an adventure game more along what they did with the King's Quest revival, which did something similar, giving players multiple ways to complete a task depending on what sort of virtue you were going for. I think there's more fun to be had here, and while it's been a while since the King's Quest revamp, I think this would be a logical follow-up.

Singularity

First Game: Singularity, 2010 (Developed by Raven Software)

Latest Game: Yep, one game again. One could say that this particular IP is very… Singular?… where'd everyone go?

Personal Thoughts: It's a shooter for the PS3, during that horrid time where the brown and beige shooter kind of ruled the world, where because they could do pretty realistic, for the time, graphics, well, the real world isn't super colorful, so let's make our future-war, realistic world really boring to look at. Singularity, while its looks didn't really set it apart from a lot of the other military shooters that were out at the time, but it does at least have some mechanics that set it apart, with a sci-fi/horror bent to it that seems the main character hopping back and forth through different points in time. But even with that, I kind of see why this one didn't spawn a franchise. It sort of disappeared into the same sea that a lot of other shooters of the time sank into.

Personal Hopes: I think this does have a chance to come back. Shooters are still big business, but we aren't quite drowning in the genre as much as we were back during the PS3 and 360 era. And while we've seen these sorts of time manipulation mechanics before, a fresh start for the series, a shooter that keeps the ability to jump between time and place, that could work. It could be like Bioshock Infinite if the dimension hopping were an actual gameplay element instead of regulated to set pieces or story moments. The odds of it happening are slim, since the IP has languished for 14 years, but hey, there's a spark of an idea there.

Ski Resort Tycoon

First Game: Ski Resort Tycoon, 2000 (Developed by Cat Daddy Games)

Latest Game: Ski Resort Tycoon II, 2000 (Developed by Cat Daddy Games)

Personal Thoughts: The idea behind the Tycoon game has kind of fallen off in recent years. The idea of owning and operating a very specific business as sort of a faceless CEO who makes all the big decisions, fires and hires the people, and makes decisions about how your business operates. There are a ton of these now, from developers of various sizes, and of various levels of quality and seriousness. That is to say nothing of those tycoon games that have their own series in and of themselves. It's a bit of a mess, all things considered.

Personal Hopes: There are. So many. Tycoon games. Don't believe me? Go on steam and just search Tycoon and take a look at how many games pop up, and what sort of themes and businesses and ideas they use. Then think about something as basic as Ski Resort Tycoon being brought back. I'm not saying it couldn't happen, but even with the backing of major names like Activision or Microsoft, I don't see it doing much, especially not when there are just… SO MANY alternatives to something like this, and I don't know if a Ski Resort sim would be able to stand up against them in terms of interest. Maybe something niche, but ‘niche’ is a bit of a dirty word in the AAA game industry.

Skylanders

First Game: Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure, 2011 (Developed by Toys for Bob)

Latest Game: Skylanders: Ring of Heroes, 2018 (Developed by Com2Us)

Personal Thoughts: It's kind of hard to believe how hard Toys-to-Life has flopped in the last few years. Wasn't that long ago that it felt like everyone was trying to get in on this grift, and now we're at a point where no one's really doing it anymore beyond Nintendo, and the only real reason it feels like Nintendo's held onto it is because their characters are recognizable enough that people outside of the game sphere are interested in them… and they can be used across a bunch of different games. At least, some of them can. Point is, they aren't locked down to a single game or series the way that something like Disney Infinity or Starlink or Skylanders was. Skylanders was the first big one that I remember coming out, the first one to really sink its teeth into kids, and while the series basically never changed much from just being a series of basic beat-em-ups for children, they were decent enough for what they were, if a little on the slow side. Each new game tried its best to have a new gimmick with the toys to keep giving people a reason to keep investing in more plastic around the house. The problem was there was just too much plastic…

Personal Hopes: As far as games aimed at a younger audience, they weren't terrible, but there were a lot of them in a very short amount of time. From 2011 to 2018, with the exception of one year, there was at least one new Skylanders game a year, and with them, a deluge of new toys to grab. It flooded the market all on its own, even before competition started to appear. This isn't going to come back, at least not in its original form. It lived on as a mobile property for a while, which as much as I hate the mobile market, it does fit right in with. The multitude of characters and heroes makes it a natural fit for the Gacha style of a lot of those sorts of games, but as it originally was? No. It even attempted to branch out into other genres briefly with stuff like the racing game Super Chargers, and from what I recall, that did next to nothing. Skylanders, I think, is done, and Activision doesn't seem in a hurry to try exploiting kids again, at least not on the console market.

Soldier of Fortune

First Game: Soldier of Fortune, 2000 (Developed by Raven Software)

Latest Game: Soldier of Fortune: Payback, 2007 (Developed by Cauldron HQ)

Personal Thoughts: I'm not really sure what to say about this one. I didn't play it at all, though it was a series that started before the PS3 shooter flood, and I understand that it was pretty well liked for the fact that enemies would react differently depending on which area of the body they were shot in. It did well enough to get a couple of sequels, and a very short lived MMO FPS (only released in Korea), but apart from that, was there anything that set it apart from its contemporaries or the contemporaries of its sequels?

Personal Hopes: Again, I haven't played any of the SoF games, so please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but from the outside looking in, I'm not seeing anything that would really set this one apart from the shooters that we have today. And I'm not saying that ‘Call of Duty’ is a title that really stands out in a crowd, but ‘Soldier of Fortune’ feels just as generalized and generic, but without the massive sales numbers to keep itself in the limelight. So I really don't think Microsoft would bother trying to pull this one out of obscurity.

Space Quest

First Game: Space Quest I, 1986 (Developed and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Latest Game: Space Quest 6, 1995 (Developed and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Personal Thoughts: This series was to science fiction what King's Quest was to fantasy, though I often feel like it somehow managed to be even more absurd than the series that was based around a fairy tale land where magic bridles could turn snakes into horses and sugar cubes could make you invincible. It was fantastic.

Personal Hopes: I would love to see a revival of the main series of this. And again, I feel like the King's Quest reboot would work for it. However, it should be noted that the original co-creators of this series have, after a long decade of development are allegedly close to releasing Spaceventure, a spiritual successor to the series. as it hasn't released publicly yet, I can't say whether or not it measures up to that moniker, and the fact that it took so long to develop doesn't help matters. While I'm always excited to see developers try and give us a well loved, long absent series successor, but I will always hope to see the series itself make a return as well. There is, in my mind, room for all these games to coexist, even if they only reach a niche audience. It's just a shame that Microsoft and Activision think differently.

Spyro

First Game: Spyro the Dragon, 1998 (Developed by Insomniac Games and Originally Published by Sony Computer Entertainment

Latest Game: Spyro Reignited Trilogy, 2018 (Developed by Toys for Bob)

Personal Thoughts: This one is pretty similiar to the Crash Bandicoot situation. Popular series, goes through a lot of hard times, ends up with Activision, they make a few cursory attempts to cash in, including using his name and likeness to help jumpstart the Skylanders franchise, but otherwise has allowed the series to remain dormant, until Crash Bandicoot's successful revival. A few years later, hey, Spyro gets the same treatment with the Reignited Trilogy, which does ‘well’ according to Activision in its launch window. And now… now he and a few of the other characters from his games are DLC for Crash Team Rumble.

Personal Hopes: This is another one that just makes me made. At least Crash got managed to get one brand new game out of the deal after his revival. Spyro? He got the revival treatment just in time for the studios that helped make it to get turned into CoD assistance studios and now for all we know, the series has once again gone dormant. You had a perfect setup to continue that train of success, and you blew it, ActiBlizz. Fuck you. Microsoft could, maybe do something with the series, like Crash, and I pray that they do, but considering their reluctance to do anything with other beloved kid-friendly characters they've acquired over the years (hello Banjo-Kazooie), all I can do right now is just hope.

Starcraft

First Game: Starcraft, 1998 (Developed and Originally Published by Blizzard Entertainment)

Latest Game: Starcraft: Remastered, 2017 (Developed and Published by Blizzard Entertainment)

Personal Thoughts: The sci-fi equivalent to Warcraft, and still a major beloved series for Blizzard, despite not really getting a truely new game since 2010. Starcraft II received a LOT of expansions from 2013-2016, and then we got a remaster of the original Starcraft the year after, but that's been it. And why would they need anything else new? Starcraft and its sequel is still played really often, it's doing just fine, to the point where Blizzard even did a good back in 2017 and made the original Starcraft (the non-remastered version), the Brood War expansion, and the vanilla version of Starcraft II completely free, if you download and play it from Blizzard's website over on Battle Net. And guess what? As of my writing this sentence, they are still available for free there! That's honestly nice to see.

Personal Hopes: I don't think that we have to worry about Starcraft going anywhere for a good long while, as its popularity as a competitive RTS game keeps legs underneath it, and ActiBlizz's willingness to keep a majority of the game free for people to play at their leisure (so long as they're playing using their proprietary launcher of course) has no doubt done a lot to keep the game fresh in people's consciousness. However, five years have gone by without any sort of new games or even new expansions for the existing games, and I worry that once people start to get tired of what they have (and they will, no game sticks around forever) that there won't be another new game on the horizon for the series. I don't think that's going to happen any time soon, but it is an inevitability that I think should be accounted for. I mean, they could always try to expand it out to other genres… might be a good time to revive Starcraft Ghosts, yeah? 

Tenchu (Kinda)

First Game: Tenchu: Stealth Assassins, 1998 (Developed by Acquire)

Latest Game: Tenchu: Shadow Assassins, 2008 (Developed by Acquire)

Personal Thoughts: I wasn't entirely sure if I should add this one because technically speaking, Actiblizz, and therefore Microsoft, don't own the Tenchu IP itself, instead, they only own the games that they publushed before they sold the rights to the IP to FromSoftware in 2004. So while they can't make new games, they do have the rights to a lot of the classic Tenchu library. But I don't think they're doing anything with the games that they actually own.

Personal Hopes: I just hope that they make the games that they have the rights to available to find. Throw them up on game pass or put them together in a collection or something along those lines. I did check all of the digital storefronts I could think of (Steam, Playstation Store, Xbox Game Pass, etc.) and I could not find a single Tenchu game, Activision-owned or otherwise, so at least for now, it seems like the entire series is basically locked to physical. If I'm mistaken there, I do apologize, but I genuinely could not find a legitimate place to purchase any of the games in the series digitally at this point in time.

TimeShift

First Game: TimeShift, 2007 (Developed by Saber Interactive and Originally Published by Vivendi Games)

Latest Game: Single game IP again. Lot more of these than I thought there would be, to be honest.

Personal Thoughts: This was another one that came around during that infamous PS3 and 360 glut of shooters all trying to vye for the top of the shooter stack. Considering that this was the only game in its IP, that didn't work out too well. Whatever information I've managed to find on the game suggest that it really did not have the best development cycle, changing publishers, and being delayed multiple times, eventually just dropping out of the news cycle entirely and missing a lot of hype because of that. And after all of that, the game only really managed to do ‘okay’ which is pretty unexceptional when it comes to AAA gaming.

Personal Hopes: I really don't know what to say here. Like other shooters I've highlighted in this list, I just don't think this will be something that comes back. The idea itself does have some legs, and without having to compete with a glut of other shooters, it might have some legs to stand on, but with Gears of War, Halo, and Call of Duty all under the same roof, TimeShift's chances of getting another roll of the dice doesn't seem very likely.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater

First Game: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, 1999 (Developed by Neversoft)

Latest Game: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2, 2020 (Developed by Vicarious Visions)

Personal Thoughts: The fact that the latest release of this series is also a remaster of the first two games kind of shows how much staying power the original formula has, as the series sort of got bogged down in itself as time went on, relying more and more on outlandish comedy and scenarios, or gimmicks like the plastic board controllers for Ride and Shred, the horrible online for Pro Skater 5, or even just getting off the skateboard and running around the environment in several of the later games. Going back to basics was probably one of the smarter things they could have done with the series, but…

Personal Hopes: Given Activision's track record when it comes to remaking or remastering classic or beloved titles, to much fanfare, and then just not capitalizing on that to reintroduce new entries in the series to a new generation, so while I'd love to see more classic style, smaller skating games. I know that the status of the Tony Hawk license name has been a bit in flux as of late, so a rebrand might potentially be in the works as well. Maybe.

True Crime

First Game: True Crime: Streets of LA, 2003 (Developed by Luxoflux)

Latest Game: True Crime: New York City, 2005 (Developed by Luxoflux)

Personal Thoughts: A duology of open world games where you play as law enforcement in the named city. They're pretty close in gameplay to the GTA games of the time, something that the first game actually got favorable comparison for. First game was mixed in reviews, but did financially well, second game wasn't so lucky. Other than that, the only cool thing I can find about the series is that the cancellation of a proposed third game taking place in Hong Kong led to the creation of Sleeping Dogs over at Square Enix.

Personal Hopes: If the failure of the second game wasn't enough to state that this series probably isn't coming back any time soon, there's the fact that we don't really see a lot of GTA-esque games anymore that aren't GTA. Saint's Row did attempt a comback recently and unfortunately that didn't pan out well. Doesn't seem like there's a huge amount of open world city games anymore. There's also the fact, and I'll admit, I don't know how much this would effect their ability to make a new True Crime game, but apparently Activision basically abandoned the trademark for the series. If that doesn't say that they aren't really interested in this series anymore, I don't know what does.

Ultimate Soccer Manager

First Game: Ultimate Soccer Manager, 1995 (Developed by Impressions Games and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Latest Game: Ultimate Soccer Manager '98, 1998 (Developed by Impressions Games and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Personal Thoughts: I have absolutely no interest in sports games at the best of times, unless they have some sort of gimmick or are more arcade in nature. Closest thing to lrea life sports games I play are things like Mutant League Football or Mario Tennis. Even with my bias, I just don't think this will be coming back any time soon. First, this is a pretty niche idea. Sports fans like the fantasy of playing on their favorite team, or being able to put all their favorite players on one team, but it's a very specific group of people who wants to be more a part of the management side of things. Add to it, making sports games nowadays is difficult mostly due to the fact that Electronic Arts still holds a monopoly on most popular sports league licenses, and if you want a game to sell well, you either need to have the backing of an organization within the sport (NBA, NHL, FIFA, ETC), you need a well known character or franchise that can help draw in people who aren't necessarily sports fans (See the Mario sports games), or you have to have a really well executed gimmick that intrigues people to try out the game. As someone who doesn't travel in sports game circles, I unfortunately do not have a good example of this last one. Maybe the Pangya series? Even though that really is just anime golf… still fun though.

Personal Hopes: Even if this were a game that was aimed at me, I really don't think that it will be coming back because it's a topic that's very niche. Playing a sport in a video game has a certain amount of appeal to it that even folks that aren't necessarily fans of the sport can appreciate, but being hit with the management side of the sport, that is, I feel, much more niche, though admittedly it's a niche without a lot of competition. There's Sega Football Manager, but that's about it, and like… maybe you could branch out into other sports? Maybe? How have I put so many words into this particular game?

Warcraft/World of Warcraft

First Game: Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, 1994 (Developed and Published by Blizzard Entertainment)

Latest Game: Warcraft Rumble, 2023 (Developed and Published by Blizzard Entertainment)

Personal Thoughts: You all know what Warcraft is, I hope. Out of anything that has Blizzard's name on it, Warcraft, or probably more accurately, World of Warcraft, is what most folk are going to think of when the company is brought up. WoW has fluctuated in both quality and popularity over the years, but it's always been near the top of the MMO pile, and is even still getting brand new updates and expansions about twenty years after its original launch. That's staying power. Or maybe stockholm syndrome depending on how you look at it. The original Warcraft series though, that hasn't been given nearly as much love as the MMO. Last year we did have that tower defense mobile game, Warcraft Rumble, and before that, there was the disastrous launch of the remake of Warcraft 3, but in terms of brand new RTS games, discounting the mobile games and the remake, there hasn't been a new Warcraft game as in a full PC/console game release since 2003. Hearthstone was a phenomenon for a time as well I suppose, but that's also sort of fallen off.

Personal Hopes: Look, WoW might not be quite as big as it once was, but it's still a very big, reliable money maker for the company, but when it comes to the main Warcraft games, I don't think we'll be seeing a new one of those beyond mobile games for a long while, especially with how poorly the whole remaster fiasco went over. I'd love to see the series go back to other genres that aren't just relegated to mobile games that may or may not be around a few years down the line, of course, as things stand, I don't see that happening any time soon, not while there isn't a reason to end the stagnation.

Zork

First Game: Zork, 1977 (Developed by Infocom and Originally Published by Personal Software)

Latest Game: Zork III, 1982 (Developed by Infocom and Originally Published by Personal Software)

Personal Thoughts: I have not played the Zork games. I know them more from cultural osmosis than anything else, and of course that's mostly just that one memetic line that continues to crop up every now and then. Zork was a series of three (or four?) text adventure games, back before even the most rudimentary of graphics was standard for games of this nature, and I think that lack of any sort of visual element to it is what really made it a special series. It was a weird and wonderful story that required a lot of imagination to make sense of what you were reading and seeing, and how best to react to whatever you're faced with. Of course, every text adventure is like this, but Zork's quirky and charming descriptions really helped to set it apart from everything. Again, I'm going off of what little I've seen of the games, as I've never experienced a full playthrough of them, but what I have seen is very fun and clever, if a little bonkers sounding out of context.

Personal Hopes: Zork is a pretty legendary series, but considering how long the IP has existed, and the fact that it perpetually has existed in this one singular for maybe suggests that no one really knows how to bring this series back. A text adventure on its own, no matter how well written and no matter what the attached IP is, I don't think would pull a lot of interest in a medium that's come to be so heavily defined by its visuals, save for a small niche audience. For an indie production, that would probably be enough to be satisfying, but not for a company as big as Activision or Microsoft. Zork is a nostalgia name, but not much else, and I don't see it losing that distinction any time soon.

Closing Thoughts

This was a lot longer than I thought it would be. Apparently I couldn't shut up about all this stuff. It was also incredibly sobering to go through as I realized, going through all of these games that the odds of a lot of them coming back in one form or another is pretty unlikely, even re-releases. 

I did my best to find as many IP that activision definitively own as possible, but I would not be surprised if I missed any, and I did make some exceptions like with Tenchu, which they only kind of own and can't actually make new games for. And yet, despite that, they're doing nothing with the games they do own, which is honestly just as annoying. Through my explorations of Actiblizz's back catalog (and there were plenty of places to look, considering that a lot of news sites were quick to put out lists outlining what Microsoft now owned), I did find a few that I wasn't entirely sure about and therefore did not include on this list. The two big ones that came up multiple times in my scouring were the Hexen and Heretic games. These two showed up on lists of IP microsoft gained in the Actiblizz acquisition, and yet when I looked up the series' myself, it seemed to suggest that they were currently owned and developed by Id software, which is currently owned by Bethesda, which is owned by Zenimax, which was gobbled up by Microsoft not long ago anyway. Either way, the games end up owned by Microsoft, so in the long run it doesn't matter, but I'm confused as to why these games kept coming up as something that Activision had ownership of when I couldn't find any conclusive information on whether or not they actually owned any of this.

While it was kind of depressing to see all these various IPs that are just laying dormant, I do have to remind myself that indie games have been picking up the slack. Despite this, one can't help but wonder what the added budget or manpower of a larger developer could do for classic series currently left out in the cold. I hold out hope for a few of these coming back at some point, but with the current corporate attitude of making nothing but absolutely massive blockbusters that have to sell millions of copies to be considered successes, and that are focus tested to hell and back to cast the widest possible net and get as many folks on board as possible, rather than taking a chance on a low-budget niche game… even though the risk would be low if the scope of the game was kept small and it was aimed at a specific audience, but hey who would want a more diverse portfolio made of more quickly produced smaller experiences that reach a smaller audience but overall would serve a wider demographic thanks to the variety?

Me.

I want that.

Do that, game industry.

And pay your fucking workers better.

#Activision #Blizzard #Everything that actiblizz owns #everything that microsoft now owns #Everything they're actually doing something with #My god #this took so long to put together #They own too much stuff they aren't doing anything with

[kurosukii]

𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭

hello everyone !! this is probably an overdue announcement already lmao but i think it's for my peace of mind as well because i feel guilty for being shit at interacting for the past months. (this is not me leaving tumblr btw, just lessening interactions and trying to recover from a burnout) navigation.

i don't usually like talking about things that are going on in my life because this is a safe space for me to get away from the shit happening in reality but as much as i want to escape it, it will always catch up.

the last time i posted a fic and properly interacted here was december 2021. since then, life has been a constant turmoil for the past 5 months. you may or may not know, but it's the national and local elections here in the philippines (in just a few days actually). because of that, the lives and future of millions of filipinos are so unsure. and before i am anything else, i am a filipino first.

can you imagine the son of a dictator that selfishly ruled the philippines for over 20 years, plunged my country into billions in debt (that we're still paying to this day), committed heinous crimes against humanity, and many more atrocities actually having the chance to rule over the land once more? it's absolutely sickening—how history has been easily forgotten, how historical revisionism is their main goal.

it's not an exaggeration but the 2022 elections are a do or die, now or never, good vs evil moment. the whole world is watching every move we make, trying to see if we filipinos are truly a forgiving, gullible, stupid culture or if we filipinos are hungry for change, good governance, and can fight against a political dynasty that will ruin our very democracy. they are the marcos family.

we have a good fighting chance, actually. it's why the stakes are so high. there's a woman that emerged from the ashes of disinformation, heckles, negative campaigning, and every other shit they threw against her. she is leni robredo, the lone female presidential candidate. the only one who is qualified to lead the country and lift us from the despair we've been living in for over six years. the best man for the job is a woman, and with her, we can clearly see the hope that we have been desperately longing for.

indeed, the future is female.

standing by her side is kiko pangilinan, the only man qualified to be her vice president. he is running against the daughter of our current president, the president that sowed hate and discord within the hearts of filipinos, grew troll farms, and committed crimes against humanity with his extrajudicial killings for six years. they are the duterte family.

but i digress, because of everything that is going on, i can't be the person that i like on this website. i'll still be here, lurking and probably reblogging art and fics when i feel like it but i've turned off my asks because i feel overwhelmed. i don't know when i'll really go back to writing and interacting, but this is me for now.

i hope that this time next week, life will be different. but the good kind of different, the good different that every filipino deserves.

tumindig para sa bayan, para sa kulay rosas na bukas, para sa radikal na pagmamahal. tara na, at ipapanalo natin ito, dahil sa gobyernong tapat, angat buhay lahat.

if you want to know more, i'll be leaving some links below.

the marcos revival || international criminal court goes after duterte's drug war || who is leni robredo || the last man standing is a woman || bakit si leni? (why leni) || who is kiko pangilinan || bakit si kiko? (why kiko) ||

mabuhay at laban pilipinas, bayan kong minamahal.

#um yeah so....this is me #you guys dont have to read it i just really want to let it out #it feels good #tw.politics. #just in case

[unproduciblesmackdown]

as "let's see if will roland's birthday prompts any billions production clues from posts castmates may make about it" continues to yield "no one's posting about it, while some castmates post about other people's birthdays," already having more thoughts abt [i'm sure he'll show up in at least one episode even if only to be written out] type things like:

a) would be insulting if winston is fired to serve a subplot about philip and taylor having some difficulty in finding their footing re: working together as coheads, like, we're good at anticassandraing things and have gone "lol what if philip & taylor disagreed abt quants in that philip preferred winston. which he feasibly could," so what if instead it's philip arguing that winston should be fired to streamline things or because everyone who's not taylor will want him gone b/c they dislike him, and in learning how to successfully work together, taylor's like well alright. like, don't pit these elements against each other the insult is instead just Anyone, higher ups or lower downs, wanting winston gone b/c they dislike him, so he's fired

b) winston getting bullied by anyone or everyone is seen as him distracting them &/or provoking it with his presence, so he's fired winston being friends w/tuk is seen as a bad influence of loserdom on the latter (or distraction, or annoying, or w/e) so he's fired some Problem that needs solving or otherwise some need to fire Some people that really doesn't have much to do with him gets him fired anyways. like 5x05 all over again, isn't it always. or even if he's particularly involved in some problem you know it'd be something other people could get away with just fine. see:

c) what's even "a problem" like that despite everyone being in a hostile workplace, winston is especially, and we're so graced with dollar bill back on the premises who has already harassed and threatened and assaulted him (not only limiting the lattermost to something like "did he hit you, and like, closed fist, and i mean pretty hard. well that's just what he's like, you're fine." or the way like sabotaging a toilet is just epic pranks and only a problem if something looks bad to theoretical investors and we should talk about what tmc people might be doing to deserve it) while rian has been holding down the fort bullying and using winston. perfectly in line with everything if this kind of thing prompting any hostility in turn is like, nobody blinks at the other stuff, wherein if anything everyone keeps trying to fix dollar bill's feelings for him and talk about how who he's being awful to needs to appease him asap, and rian simply Wanting to use winston as a chew toy is just taken in stride while separately people have already been motivated by theoretically looking out for her / supporting her in various ways as well. whereas if winston Acts like he regards her as a hostile party, which she is, rather than seeming to operate in good faith that they can have regular constructive basic respect interactions, which he does while those decent interactions seem to come through rarely and unreliably, then i'm sure he'd be seen as mean / starting shit / out of line / etc, especially when it seems him Disrespecting the Rules & Social Hierarchy that should disallow him from like, speaking unless it's to self-flagellate, means people see him as aggressive or whatever. basically the classic scenario like, kid's bullied at school, they're supposed to just ignore it or it's otherwise "not that bad" / stuff gotten away with, even if supposedly it's like well just tell an authority figure here, that won't/doesn't work, any resulting obvious tension/dislike between the kid and whoever is like "uh oh, a Both Sides problem" at best, same if there's a physical fight or something or else it's like well That was unacceptable and if it was initiated by Your reaction to all other kinds of terrible treatment for however long, you're the problem. not that i expect winston to throw a punch about it, but, figuratively / parallel to this scenario

d) winston is sick of his deluxe hostile environment, doesn't actually like whatever coheading changes, sick of rian and/or dollar bill specifically, and/or doesn't appreciate some other goings-on, like one that results in him even being threatened with firing, and gets to just quit as has regularly seemed like something he might want to do anyways since 4x11 and intermittently on

e) not really another Way to imagine they kick him out but was thinking how like, Is a reason we're shown that taylor and rian hugging in the middle of an office was seen by i guess winston alone gonna be further relevant at all and about him making anything of it, which, he really couldn't possibly be wrong about any inferences. but going :/ at the taylor and rian dynamic just as a spontaneous, contained event would be self-explanatory too. but had the thought of like, maybe it's all "well taylor's been here 5 seasons and is in a more prominent position than last season, throw a PR problem at them for the first time for real, just as a shakeup / something that throws them off" wherein like winston wouldn't even have to be there to be cited in something like yeah i was fired or quit or whatever else and my former boss is dating an employee i think. or seems to have a real personal preference for them if not personal somethingship. which is true lmfao like? even if winston ""wrongly"" assumes they're dating like "oh sorry these claims are ridiculous, i only proposed as much to this employee who i already was informally mentoring and do favor such that she was promoted offscreen after like half a season to be able to make trades and this only came up when her using that capacity to do some shit she could've been fired for had me like 'but i'll take the heat for it' b/c any feeling that i'd wanna fire you is worth working through as a personal problem, and that employee turned me down not only just b/c apparently dating through work is too much (but not hooking up through work) but because she's afraid of how much she could love me, and now we're further personal somethings or who even knows what's ever been going on and so who can say if we were supposed to have fully closed the door on dating or not, even." wherein like....someone then doing further research consulting with every named tmc employee, in this hypothetical (and ignoring any hypothetical new, named/dialogued hires) scenario all now Former employees except rian who clearly won't have been firedor quit at the start of season 7, b/c yknow god forbid lmao....like, oh i'm taylor's best friend so no comment except that when i'm mad at them i'll apparently say that i always thought they inhumanly don't have feelings and all, very helpful. then there's like, oh yeah i was taylor's employee and dated them until business misalignments lead to a less than ideal breakup, and then kind of an aftershock of that for fun i guess. and then yeah i was also taylor's employee and knew they were dating another employee and i disapproved if only b/c i told them it could look bad but then also one of the reasons leading up to my quitting was having difficulty getting in touch with them while the other employee lived with them at least part of the time and i didn't seem to be a fan of that bonus access re: discussing business getting in the way of the formal structure / chain of command or whatever at work as well which is part of what i was already there to file a complaint over, so....even just the "it does look bad / people do think you leverage status for access to sex through employees" like no but that's My boss though. but also just that yeah taylor has at least tried to date employees twice, and their personal preference does affect professional matters, though that's also just like, pick any place of work and any slice of it, may not be a meritocracy after all versus how much it matters that some people are popular and/or liked by the right people while others can be recognized as Good Employees on paper but be left where they are or antagonized by peers or higher ups b/c of "failing" at the popularity contest aspect. and this could just be some new Kind of problem for taylor, and/or their just having to question themself more. or else go "ugh leave it to winston" and shrug it off once whatever's smoothed over.

f) winston isn't fully written off but rather it's something zany like, the twist is dollar bill coming back (god forbid he didn't either) while mafee, who evidently sees taylor outside work despite it all, is like eh we'll get dinners sometimes too, and does not likewise return despite saying he's the one who'd consider it. winston, being fired, or having quit, or just being unhappy w/things enough to consider it, is like well you're kind of regular at me sometimes and can't yell at me abt loyalty to taylor if neither of us work for them and you have weird confusing ideas about how they should be loyal to you if anything, and i can do the work of 50 phds, and i know you don't know shit abt the math and quanting but if you just leave it up to me entirely, that's pretty much been my work experience thus far anyways. then he'd be filming on different sets, possibly more rarely, and also dan soder has been likewise elusive but is also on site on the two even vaguely or implicitly [s7 production] related pics will's turned up in.

g) idk billions feel free to prank us where once again between seasons we worry winston could be written off but then he isn't, but elusivity paired with suddenly now castmates w/no mention of him for [march 5th] and [we are doing any bday acknowledgments] overlaps that otherwise get posts, especially. weird even if he Was written out in ep one but okay then

#winston billions #maybe he'd feel petty after being disposed of; maybe someone's doing really specific investigative journalism lol.... #although also the idea that lauren's known one ep return last season was like. will This be an unfriendly ex gf/employee using insider info #and if winston were to be fired or quit; no matter the specific reason behind that it's like. how would he have only the fondest memories #he's been here for taylor & i imagine it can be inferred he hopes his Skills being valued are a shot at also being valued as a person #but if it seems like he was only ever begrudgingly kept around & given that [useful tool] status while other employees got more personal & #preferential treatment; which like everyone save sara kinda but she at least got to have substantial & frequent enough exchanges w/taylor #while here's a quant peer he even likes & does keep trying to be amicable with but she also regards & treats him as usable & disposable #while taylor at least ignores & allows this while v much preferring & Would Be dating this employee like. probably could be pissed abt that #and just to go off the shits lol like oh Petty Ex Employee behavior But....add in tayston fwb history lmaooo Like. oof #with some end of s3 into s4 timeline especially like where maybe winston wants a personal somethingship w/them as well but instead the #whole fwbship (& any undiscussed / not directly acknowledged somethingship along with it) was dropped when taylor dated lauren #like yes add in nonzero petty ex something as well lol. or Wish i could be a petty ex but got burned by the implication that like #no taylor doesn't not date employees as a rule nor even seem to worry abt it much personally; On Paper especially re propositioning rian #but also combining [dated lauren] and [dated oscar] stats it's like yeah they Ought to consider winston a romantic candidate as well lol #he Does get [autistic character] different negative / diminishing treatment all round from all elements so like. grievances lol #and of course taylor could choose to be petty ex employer/something as well like great so we're fighting now #and if winston's sharing the other trivia he's not sharing His personal history w/them. and taylor could threaten to but isn't gonna share #that b/c it'd make them look worse too (i am aware of the gfy proximity at this point yes lmfao girl help) but Can throw it in his face #can go after knowing he had that personal somethingship with them; the closest gfy esque thing here would be if taylor was also a bit too #clueless like well that is just hypocritical of you to take issue w/it Or take advantage of it when it suits you....w/o realizing that #element of like yeah i'm jealous actually?? remember when you dumped me to date someone else when [why didn't you date Me].... #or be Aware like well you're jealous actually. and winston can be like Yeah? I Am? lmao. we both know why we're fighting.... #impossible to tell if taylor didn't infer winston might like rian or else just ignored it but they could throw that at him too #i don't really imagine winston still Likes rian crushwise by the end of s6 for sure but. might also be annoyed they even get an affinity #like man don't worry their dynamic really isn't convincingly that good or enjoyable b/w them....missing out on what. #then the most gfy similar thing to do would be like don't take it out on me just b/c nobody would wanna date you #a move that could range from [merely laughably stock pettiness] to [surprisingly genuinely cutting] depending on specific execution ig #anyways whether he's still filming or not; if any cast members were to remember will exists & give us Any info w/acknowledgments we might #expect based on precedent. that it's Axe; Dollar Bill; and Rian who are most firmly established as [will be present] via ppl's posts. Great

[ouroboobos]

i need a new fucking job lmfao. ITEMIZED LIST OF GRIEVANCES AS OF RIGHT NOW

its customer service

i make less as a manager than the starting wage at mcdonalds

theres at least two grown men with sexual harrassment complaints against them because they cant stop hitting on teenage girls

the two guys got in zero trouble and continue to be treated like perfect hardware store angels

one of them gave me a rose on valentines day and kept trying to give me rides

theres a completely seperate third man in his 60s who continually makes comments about my body and touches me and tried to give me a massage in the break room one time

everyone loves him and hes been working here for like 8 years so even if it got bad enough to report him theres no way my boss would give a shit and no one would ever believe me and im worried abt retaliation

i havent told him to fuck off because im scaredcore so idk if he even knows hes making me uncomfortable

i get routinely sexually harrassed by customers and when i asked my boss abt how to handle it he basically said other girls have quit over it and "the real problem is when they dont call a manager up" so he definitely does not udnerstand what its actually like to deal with that and that its usually too subtle to do anything abt it

since i got promoted i almost never get my 10 minute breaks which maybe doesnt seem like a big deal but it is wearing me the fuck out

im surrounded by proud vocal conservatives

EXCEPT for my boss who is one of those people who doesnt think hes a bigot (hes very proud of being one of the chill open-minded Christians) but definitely is

also i couldnt make this up even if i wanted to, but hes 36 years old and a cpuple days ago he made me stand there and listen to him rant about hes not homophobic but why did they make Good Omens gay not everything has to be gay 😡😡😡 hes 36. hes fucking 36

we're almost always understaffed and they dont want to pay anyone so they dont start hiring more people until we're already in our busiest season and then we have to train a bunch of 15 year olds between dealing with 36 billion kajillion fucking customers

truly abysmal fucking communication. i didnt even know i was getting promoted to management until i was in the middle of supervisor training (which they never bothered to finish so i got like... tiny disjointed snippets of training over a period of a few weeks and then i was a manager)

i was functionally head cashier for months and they never gave me the title or the raise because i was "being trained for the position" when actually they allotted less than a day of training from the FORMER head cashier on her last day even though they knew she was retiring for months and then i just figured it out by myself and was already doing all of it

im finally going back to school and next semester when im better settled i want to transition to full time classes, so i met with my boss to give him a heads up and told him i wanted to start training a couple people on some of my basic responsibilities in case i have to cut down my hours, and he basically brushed me off and said we can talk about it in a few months.

and then he talked about his time in college for like twenty minutes and said i shouldnt overwhelm myself by working full time and going to school full time, which made it seem like he was on the same page

but then he kind of was like "well its good you want to get an education but if you go part time in the spring that kind of screws us over" so im not really sure what the fuck is happening in his brain but it almost sounds like he expects me to stay part time in school and keep working full time and doesnt want to prepare for anything else

also he didnt tell me i inherited the key department in addition to the front end until i was like hey whos ordering keys now? and he was like ummmm you? 🤨 ok thanks for the heads up man

its one of those places that looks pretty nice but theres like 20 things breaking throughout the store that theyre too cheap to fix

^recent example: the receipt printers arent working for duplicates (which we need for returns, special orders, etc) so now you to walk across the room to the actual printer and they dont want to fix it because "the printer paper is cheaper than the receipt paper". im not even that irritated about having to use the big printer but that is so fucking cheap for such a massive successful company that now im genuinely pissed off about it.

my boss is one of those guys who seems super nice and friendly and great at first, and pretty much everyone thinks he is, but the more time you spend with him the more you're like. hey buddy is something a little bit fucking wrong with you? and every day i resent him just a tiny bit more

they want us to follow homeless people around the store like fucking spies until we find an excuse to kick them out

theres a guy that comes in every now and again and harrasses female cashiers, walks around casually dropping hate speech, and once literally told one of our teenage boys about his rape fantasy and they wont do anything about him because he's rich and he spends a lot of money

we all have like 4 jobs with barely the pay of 1

i hates it

#IM SO MAD IM SO MAD I M SO MAD RAAAGAHHH #i just needed to write this all out i feel like i need to punch a wall #ask to tag #♥︎