House of the Dragon opened its last season with an episode full of action, error, dragons, and, yes, incest. After finishing the episode, I…
There’s no doubt that Alicent is experiencing misogyny. Of course she is. And it’s constantly contrasted with the misogyny that Rhaenyra faces, even though she identifies less with those traditionally feminine roles, and actively works to break from the standards of her sex where Alicent fought to prove she could be perfect in those confines. Neither of them will be spared. There is no right answer. But the show is extremely consistent in making the brutality Alicent experiences ABOUT Alicent.
a 3k word greater breakdown of the Aemond and Alicent kiss, based my little tumblr post, including images and video clips to demonstrate what I mean, as well as further analysis of how this parallels with Rhaenyra, and what HotD does right that we saw go very wrong in Game of Thrones (it's Sansa Stark, it's always Sansa Stark)
I was put on this earth to talk about the soft masculinity of Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze. read in full (pls, i beg)
Point Break has more in common with Wuthering Heights than Die Hard, as Bigelow’s beaches offer up a doomed romance between her protagonists with the same Byronic acuity of Emily Brontë’s moors.
[...]
While Point Break's spiritual successor, The Fast and the Furious, replaced character development w/ revving engines, Point Break is Romeo & Juliet on waves. In the age of IP slop, Point Break is a reminder of what’s sorely missing from the modern action machine – intimacy & connection."
When I was in high school, I only got to go on the computer when I was at my older cousin’s house. Nowhere else. No other time. The…
These shitty, dirty boys were vessels for our hopes and dreams. They were an entry way to the tastes of yaoi, avatars for a masculinity increasingly barred from those of us branded Women™ , a full-on mouth kissing, ball punching, group hugging Bacchanal ritual for those of us branded Men™, and so barred from affection. If Greene’s roving gang was desperate for a new world after the posterity and doubling down of classism after World War II, poor millennials and middle class millennials who felt the approaching peak of “house poor” were desperate for autonomy and joy under the heavy curtain of “Never Forget” after 9/11, an accelerant on the human rights violations and war crimes committed by the adults in charge of us.
Knoxville and co’s representations of a reckless, hedonistic, sadomasochistic destruction was more honest than the thousands of yellow-filtered, made-for-sleeping-dads action movies that would punctuate the time. It’s not innocent of insensitive and poorly aging bits, but Jackass never made hateful, one dimensional caricatures policy, and if it is propaganda, it’s propaganda by Big Emergency Room, or The One Teenager Who Has Done Stitches Before.
Last year, I made this post about wanting to see art of Alt Cunningham losing her shit at a NYE party, inspired by an image of Jennifer Lawrence from Die My Love. Tonight, I tripped and fell into a little fic.
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“Something big is coming, Cunningham.”
Alt sneers at Cunningham as she rubs the last of the synthetic blue powder into her gums. She's told Yifan to just call her Alt repeatedly. No matter how much they risk for one another, the cold crackle hits the encoded earpiece with her last name like they serve fucking NUSA together.
Maybe that's what the Corp culture was like in Hong Kong before the UK surrender and Arasaka interference shook it all apart and forced it to rebuild. Yifan was considerably older than herself and every other contact she had in Hong Kong. Maybe Yifan was showing Alt respect. But to Alt, respect and trust were the same thing. She trusted Yifan. She trusted Yifan by choice. And that meant that she cared about her on some level. So the surname stings.
“How big, Yi?”
Alt wipes a new run of blood from her nose and looks at herself in the mirror. She's been mixing some variety of the colored glass strain of synthcoke with traditional stims and synthetic benzoids for weeks. It's taking its toll. Her eyes were a little wild, cushioned by darkening bags and their swelling red waterline handles. Her face is puffy where it's usually angular and gaunt where it's usually full. Her various Euro sculpting procedures almost seem to give away to her old face. Certainly her old nose, too pointed downward, nostrils a bit too wide for the standard of the day, is threatening to reappear.
But she had to finish this. She had to finish this and get it somewhere - or to someone - safe before it could fall into the wrong hands.
“Cunningham…”
Alt sighs.
“Alt… it's… I think we should cut and run.”
“Someone knows?”
Alt poses it as a question even though she knows that's the only thing that would make Yifan this cautious. She was practical and precise, yes, but never overly careful.
“More than someone.”
Alt wishes she could see Yifan's face. Her real face. Not the motion enhanced avatar she could get away with at home on her monster handheld that ultimately wasn't a handheld because it could only be used in her apartment where she'd rigged a set up that was unlikely to be breached, that even in that circumstance would waste hours or even days of a would-be hacker, NetWatch shithead, or pig gonk's time. She needed more than avatars and encoded auditory crunch. Alt wanted to read her face.
Since she couldn't, she accepted her fate.
“You cut and run. If they get me, I never knew you. But I have to do this, you know that.”
“You do not understand. It's not someone. It's Arasaka.”
Alt starts washing her hands. She doesn't know what else to do. She splashes the cool water onto her face and laughs at the cliche.
“Are you still there?”
Not for long, she thinks. I'm good as dead.
“Thank you for everything, Yi. I wish we had time to try those soup dumplings your brother raved about when I saw you in Tibet.”
“There has to be a way to get you out, Alt. Let me help you.”
“Happy New Year.” Alt cuts the call and pulls the earpiece from behind her left ear. She flushes it.
Voices grow louder outside the bathroom door. The countdown was starting.
10…
And a man she didn't love was waiting for her.
9…
A tech prodigy who never lived up to his potential, but had turned into a useful diplomat and/or sycophant to the new names in biometrics -
8…
A grade A schmooze who ran the safest, purest drugs to the most powerful, and least humane, diplomats.
7…
She reapplies her lip gloss and practices the kind of coy smile he likes in the mirror. She fucking hates herself.
6…
Alt opens the bathroom door and crosses to him. She prepares to kiss him. She wants to kill him.
5…
He was supposed to be a cover, he was potentially an answer to a few of her problems but now she was out of time.
4…
He leans in to kiss her. To claim ownership over her not just for tonight, but for all of 2012. For all of time. She's nothing to him. He has other trophies, other conquests, and he would have more of both.
3…
Still, in this moment, he thinks she's important to him. Like all these fucking morons always do. It's why she'd done the Euro sculpting. She needed the edge. The kind of sexuality that could hurt men back after gathering intel and making yourself part of their in-group. Not the kind where your mentors and teachers and bosses and coworkers just get to hurt you with none of the benefit.
2…
She wants to die. And soon she will. Work to do, harm reduction, even when she dies this will be on her hands…
1…
Alt dodges his kiss, pushing his head away from her. She spits in his face.
The crowd around her sings.
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Alt wondered, could she neuter her own program enough to keep Arasaka from ruining the fucking world?
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne?
Before that, she needed to see him. Even if she couldn't tell him the truth…
Alt had to see Johnny. He was the only person on earth she wanted to see right now.
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Let me know if you'd be interested in reading more. Here's my AO3 where you can find more fully realized Cyberpunk 2077 fic.
this was originally an ask prompt and now it is 11 pages long. please enjoy soft dom Gale, light bondage, mage hand, invented spells, and face sitting. :)
His eyes darken with an increasingly familiar ache. It makes her want him more. She knows it won’t make him stray from this path of driving her wild. No matter how badly he wants her, he wants to see her out of her mind for him more.
The conjured hand slides a finger on either side of her, spreading her open, and Gale licks his lips but makes no move towards her.
"You know, no one would believe me if I told them how much of a tease you are,” Tav laughs, half desperate, half thrilled.
“Oh, there’s so much I still mean to do to you.”
this fic expanded as I stated it would be if I made rent last month!thank you to everyone who was kind enough to give to my ko-fi, twitch, or directly through Venmo (MirandaBrave). I'm leaving this open for ANOTHER CHAPTER if I we crowd fund a delicate $200 betwixt those places between now and next Saturday-ish. I will smut for my supper. Anyone who gives $25+ on Venmo/Ko-fi can use the notes to recommend something for that chapter or perhaps a future smut (I love to be a heaux but I gotta serve the story and vibe appropriately, you feel?)
Tav and Gale after Tav licks the spider and is still feeling the after effects 😏😏😏
“Oh, Tav, Shadowheart said you wanted to see me.”
He pushes through the opening of Tav’s tent, a gesture that still feels painfully intimate.
“If it’s about what I said around that spider, I am sorry. I was… riled up. I can’t imagine a thing in the world that would turn me from you, though I cannot fathom why- WHY- your instinct was to lick it! I truly hate those-”
Gale is quieted by Tav’s lips finding his own as their hands tug on the middle of his robes, searching for the tie.
“Gods,” he moans into their mouth. “Careful… I… I still don’t know…”
“Right,” Tav whispers between kisses, their hands resting on the small of Gale’s back now, desperate to be doing anything else. “Right.”
Gale takes Tav’s hands away from his back, pressing them between his own, “I am… beyond flattered and would love… I’ve thought about it… quite a lot…”
“Thought about it how?”
Gale laughs, blushing, “I’d rather show you, than tell you.”
For a moment, only the sound of Tav’s heavy breathing and Gale’s sigh fill the space between them as they both step backward.
“The orb,” Tav said.
“The orb,” Gale shrugs with exaggerated defeat.
“So,” Tav removes their shirt, “you sit there…”
Gale does as he’s bid, sitting on a small cushioned stool in the corner of the tent.
“And I,” Tav begins unlacing their breaches. “Will be… here.”
“Yes,” Gale’s voice nearly breaks. “That will do.”
“And you tell me when to stop…”
Tav slips off the last of their clothing and crosses to their bedroll, lying down. Gale readjusts on the stool. Licking his bottom lip, he sighs.
You get whatever it is you want to get from The Righteous Gemstones. For plenty of people, it’s a loosely connected series of sketches…
"As Eli tangles with a barely-there empathy and decides to finally read the Holy Word, there is no holy light. [...] In some hollow, good time direct-to-DVD Christian program, this would leave you heart-warmed."
Wrote about The Righteous Gemstones armed only with southern religious trauma and storytelling disease.
For most people who know me, I’m the one they most associate with Cyberpunk 2077. In the five years since launch, I’ve only gone maybe a…
A somewhat poignant reflection on what Cyberpunk 2077 means to me in an ever-dystopian world, five years after its release. A thing of beauty will never fade away…
I was an idiot baby, just like V. And just like V, I find myself becoming less of all the things I dreamed I would be, and more and more like Johnny Silverhand. With even less permanent living, worse health, and an increasingly sincere belief that I will kick the proverbial bucket before there are ever real writing jobs again, I feel blown to pieces. I feel fragmented. I feel soulless. I feel like I failed every tenet I believed in and every person who believed in me.
Every fan fic, headcanon, or piece of analysis that I spend on it is an echo of what late-stage capitalism and “high tech, low life” are doing to me in real time. It’s a cool drink of water down a burning throat to engage with a story so honest about the technocracy and the enmeshment of corporate and government entities. Every time that I find a way in my mind to save Johnny Silverhand, I think I am really finding a way to save myself.
