#-had or could find a good-quality version of it. that is all ty for your time

[drop--pop--candy]

does a good quality version of kanade's full melody-lit sky (kanadetomosusora) alt even exist or all they all crunchier than deep-fried corndogs

[celestiamour]

I saw that you said your asks are open so, what kind on kinks do you think Cassandra Nova has?

ft. cassandra nova x f! reader — marvel

╰₊✧ kinks i think she would have┊0.9k words

contains: smut!! dom cass & sub reader┊look at the warnings for the short version & the keep reading for details, master/pet dynamic, dollification, power imbalance, bratting/brat-taming, dacryphilia, overstim/edging, bondage & blindfolds, corruption kink, dumbification, exhibitonism, marking

➤ author's note: OOHHOO IM SO GLAD YOU ASKED ANON, I THINK SHES A FREAk

this is just a list of the major ones, but i’m a firm believer that she’s open to trying anything at least once as long as you’re open to trying them out with her!

━━━ .°˖✧ master/pet & dollification ˚₊ ⊹

╰₊✧ she is the one who rules the void, the empress who you’ll inevitably work for if you want to survive, of course, she would love to have a pretty little thing like you at her knees to spoil while running the land. someone as adorable as you would be much more useful entertaining her and keeping her company rather than acting as one of her minions, and you’re more than happy to be the eye candy she keeps by her side who eagerly answers to her every beck and call with a bright smile. the power imbalance with you is different than the ones with her minions, more intoxicatingly dizzy knowing she has complete and utter control over you.

╰₊✧ as a reward, she likes to pamper you with all the fine things she could get her hands on: feeding you fruits and sweets, dressing you up in lace skirts, tying ribbons into your hairs, maybe even applying rose tints on your lips— most of the nice things that are impossible to find or cultivate in this wasteland are presented to her, but she always ends up gifting them to you since she has no other use for such opulence aside from spoiling her pet.

━━━ .°˖✧ bratting/brat-taming & dacryphilia ˚₊ ⊹

╰₊✧ despite how much she loves to indulge you in luxury when you’re good for her, she also loves it when you give her a bit of a challenge even though it all ends the same way with you whimpering out an apology under her. she’ll tie you up so tightly that you could hardly even squirm with a blindfold as she either overstimulates or edges you until you cry, choking out whiny little sorries with tears streaking down your face. the contrast between how you were just pouting and digging your heels into the ground a few minutes ago versus now when you’re begging for relief and moaning her name like a prayer is such a turn-on for her.

╰₊✧ possibly an unpopular opinion, but i don’t think her sadistic and apathetic personality would apply here. yes, she likes seeing you cry, but only from pleasure and not from pain. there’s a safe word in place in case it’s too much for you, and she listens to you about what you like and don’t like. 

━━━ .°˖✧ corruption kink & dumbification ˚₊ ⊹

╰₊✧ she likes being your first, whether it’s the first person you’ve been intimate with, the first time you’ve had such a mind-blowing orgasm, the first time you tried out a kink which quickly became your favorite— she believes it makes her more memorable to you, but let’s be honest, it’s impossible to forget a woman as extraordinary as her. slowly, you’ll find yourself being more depraved and more needy after your first time together, begging for her attention so sweetly just as she planned. it sounds wrong to be purposely tainting your innocence, but it’s not like it was something that was going to stay for very long if you wanted to maintain this relationship.

╰₊✧ after a while, you start thinking with your pussy more than your brain since you’re so understimulated with how busy cassandra can be and her refusal to let you get your hands dirty. reading the same books, watching poor-quality noir dramas on a barely working television, and playing with yourself in an attempt to achieve the same effect she had could only entertain you so much. when she finally comes back to you, she always fucks the boredom out of you until your eyes are rolling back and you can’t think about anything but the buzzing euphoria. she loves how dumb you go on her fingers or mouth and can’t say anything aside from useless little mewls and she coos that it’s okay and she’s got you. 

━━━ .°˖✧ exhibitonism & marking ˚₊ ⊹

╰₊✧ of course, when you’re always by her side and dolled up like a princess, it’s inevitable for there to be some wandering gazes which are more leering than anything. although she knows you only have eyes for her and that none of them could take care of you like she did, she’s a possessive person. what’s hers is hers and she would like to keep it that way (what’s theirs is also hers, that’s just how it works around here). 

╰₊✧ to prevent anyone from getting any ideas, she’ll leave hickeys all along your neck and upper chest to show that you’re taken (she’ll even go as far as to have her name tattooed on your skin if you’re okay with it). also has a tendency to have sex with you in places where she knows other people will hear you screaming her name over and over again, you don’t know about this because you’re more shy and your try to muffle yourself if you did, but she’s shameless about her sex life and very proud to be the one fucking the prettiest girl in the void.

╰₊✧ (also, if anyone had the gall to flirt with you or something and she found out, best believe that they are going to be doing the most tediously difficult tasks available. or worse, she can be very creative with punishments.)

[arminsumi]

HELLO! You're literally one of the best writers that I've found here on tumblr, you write Eren so good😭, Idk if you're accepting any requests ATM if you're not, just ignore this🙇🏻‍♀️ BUT I HAVE THIS UH THOUGHT, college student Eren x reader likeeeeee Eren is chasing after reader, (Zeke's best friend, they're both also in college) that's all, iloveoyyou

Awh ily too! Ty for your req and kind words!

Puppylike

Oneshot / E. Jaeger

Eren just has this puppylike quality about him. He really likes you and wants to enjoy your company more, but it his brother receives almost all your attention.

Cws; fluff, slight angst, mentions smoking (Zeke), slight jealousy

Notes on reader; gn!

Notes on au; college!au

Puppylike.

That was how you described your best friend's brother. But it was only you who described him like that. I mean, some people called him a vulture, or an arrogant asshole, or a deadpan bitch. The list goes on.

But to you, he was puppylike. Because when he was around you he assumed this role of an adoring-eyed, head-tilted college boy. He trotted behind you and Zeke from lecture to lecture.

One bright day, you visited the Jaeger house. Emphasis on bright; the sun was ruthlessly scalding your scalp while you knocked at the front door. The Jaeger house was... well, not just a house, but an awfully extravagant mansion, its architecture was pleasing to the eye.

"Oh, hey." Eren greeted you when he opened the front door.

He stared at you for a moment, then spoke again. "Uh, Zeke is out right now. Um, wanna come in anyways? He'll be back in an hour."

"Okay!" You beamed up at him.

He stepped aside for you to walk in. God he was tall, he was practically a skyscraper. You two had a hilarious height difference. You couldn't help but laugh whenever he pulled you into a hug and awkwardly smushed your face into your torso.

You and Eren went up to his bedroom on the second floor, and even though he tried hard to maintain his deadpan expression, he let his excitement slip through his eyes and body language. See, he really fucking liked you, but he was too intimidated by the fact that you were his brother's best friend to have actually asked you out.

He idled around his room shyly before you started a conversation.

"Did you get it restrung?" You asked, nodding towards his guitar which rested with its neck against his desk.

"Huh? Oh, oh yeah I did." He replied.

"Then play something for me! C'mon, pretty please?" You asked, pouting after he showed reluctance.

"I haven't practiced in a while..." He mumbled.

"Please?" You begged, more so with your eyes than your voice.

He gave in because of those eyes, those sweetly begging eyes. He was only like this with you. You could have snapped your fingers and he would have been there, at your feet, with whatever you requested, even if what you requested was the whole world.

Eren took his guitar by the neck and positioned it on his thigh. He had such a gentle way of handling things, a manner about him that you could only describe as an 'endearing brunette feeling'.

He strummed a few chords and tuned his guitar accordingly. If only you knew how much he liked you. He refrained from retuning his guitar with Armin yesterday just so that he could retune it with you instead, because he thought you might find it cool that he could do that.

After he fiddled with the pegs, Eren strummed again. His fingers then plucked the strings while you watched. The vibrations of the melodies was so wonderful that you could feel it reverberating deep in your chest; it was one of those ungodly expensive acoustic guitars, one you could have never even fathomed buying.

Eren started playing something familiar, and your ears quickly picked up the notes; it was the acoustic version of your favorite song.

"That's nice..." You praised, letting your eyes flutter shut so you could drift off to the melody. Each vibration of the strings quelled your buzzing nerves.

See, it was a hot day. A melt-your-face-off kind of hot day. Unbearable heat. And yet you still went over to Zeke's house for a study session.

Usually you two studied at the library. But sometimes, to Eren's contentment, it was at the Jaeger house. If Zeke ever notified Eren that you were coming, this is what usually happened;

Zeke would yell from his bedroom, "Eren, Y/n is coming over in about 'ten."

Eren would spring from his bed and scramble the mess.

"TEN MINUTES!? Why didn't you tell me sooner, you dick! I don't even- I don't even look good!" And then he would fuss with his hair in the mirror.

Today, though, Eren averted this crisis because he knew you were coming. He cunningly gave Zeke some excuse to be out of the house so that when you knocked on the door, Eren could be the one to answer it and steal some time with you before your study session.

Eren just always felt like his brother hogged all of your attention and time. When there was an opportunity to steal your company, he seized it in a heartbeat.

So, he sat there strumming a song for you, too shy to speak, but contented to be alone with you.

You opened your eyes to observe him; he was in his natural habitat, hair spilling over his shoulders, clad in that black tank top that drives you crazy. He was so sorely attractive yet so sorely unaware of it, which in some way made him all the more attractive.

Zeke came back home and announced his arrival by making this coughing-yelling noise in the foyer (it's an inside joke between them, who knows what it means). Eren just seemed disappointed that his brother had come back from the store so quickly.

"Anyone home?" Zeke called again, climbing the stairs.

"Oh, we're up here!" You replied.

"Hello hello." He greeted you two, entering Eren's bedroom.

Zeke suggested you have some food and drink before studying.

"I wanna study in your pool." You said, and this caught Eren's attention.

You three were heading downstairs to the kitchen; a very luxurious kitchen, of course... their dad is a doctor.

"You'll get the textbooks wet." Zeke said, but you persisted.

"Dude, it's like ten billion degrees outside today! And you have a pool, and I don't, and I wanna swim!" You complained.

Eren's whole being became shyly muted when Zeke joined your company. But his eyes spoke to you. They blazed so brilliantly for a moment that it captivated your attention. He felt electrified by the eye contact.

Unfortunately, though, your attention was stolen by his brother because he started talking to you. And now all Eren felt was this dull burn of jealousy.

After a quick lunch (and I mean it was just a thrown-together sandwich on your part and a fancy meal on Zeke's part) you three went out back to the pool.

The bright sun made Eren squint, and you just had to check him out; he looked so good already, how could he look even better? You always wondered this, and then discovered that he got hotter each day just like the summer temperatures.

An hour later, his shirt came off and he descended into the pool with you, while Zeke refused to get wet and studied by the edge of the pool on the hot bricks. The heat just never seemed to affect those two like it did for you.

Zeke was trying his best to keep your attention on studying, but you kept going underwater.

"Pay attention, Y/n. They'll ask this stuff in the exam." Zeke sighed.

You laughed, "I'm listening!" You said, then waded to the edge of the pool. Like Eren, you propped your elbows on the hot bricks.

"Hot." You sighed in satisfaction, feeling the coldness of the pool water contrast to the hot bricks.

The smell of chlorine filled your lungs, as well as the Eren's cologne and the smoke that Zeke had lit up. Eren's cologne was the most distinct you've ever come across; it reminded you of a spicy rose.

Your attention slid off of Zeke, and you looked over to your left; and there it was; Eren's puppylike gaze.

He looked up adoringly at you, his eyes all big. They felt like two emerald pools that radiated sensual energy. His brows were heavy, and dark, and they hung over his eyes like a model.

It was such a brief moment, and then Zeke interrupted it.

"Alright, enough messing around. We've got work to do." He said, noticing how yours and Eren's atmospheres almost collided.

You groaned and made a big fuss about it, just to be dramatic. Eren seemed disappointed while climbing out of the pool behind you.

While heading into the house through the kitchen's backdoor, you looked back at him and spoke; "See you later, Eren." You said.

Eren nodded and combed the back of his wet hair. He pursed his lips, almost like it was an effort to keep his feelings from spilling out at you.

"Mmm, yeah."

[miupow]

How true it was when you've posted your recent txt as love languages that each every languages you've chosen for members fit them well.... 😩💕and BeomKai version so canon like quality time and physical touch? PERFECT. And yeah, my man Jun be spoiling with souvenirs, Soob's always gonna coax you with anything. TYUN. His own unique subtle of loving through acts of service is so him that yes, he'll be the perfect househub and with his every servicing act, he'll always remind that you are always loved.😭❤️

eeeeee ty noulli hehe !! i originally had a drabble piece just like that on my first blog all the way from last summer but i could not find it anywhere to repost :( decided to just rewrite the whole thing cos it was such a good idea

tyun is so househubby ur so right.. i’m always so on the tyun w a housewife agenda but he’d be a househusband for her too hehe

[houseboatisland]

For the ask game: Arthur?

The locomotive version of "a pleasure to have in class."

just mentioning again, this'll be my last "send a character for headcanons" thing for a while! feel free to send other questions as long as they're more specific. ty all for sending! <3

The NWR Numbering scheme is... a mess, and has nothing to do with engines' order of arrival. When the NWR became independent at BR's privatization, they were basically like, "Okay, guys. This is the last numbering order. For real this time. On God. I don't care who has what questions or suggestions, we're NOT doing this again. Numbers 1-11 everybody knows. Numbers 12 and up... what happens, happens. And from now on until numbers stop existing, THIS IS THE ORDER." Additionally, that renumbering threw every earlier renumbering out the window. Oh, you were No. XYZ in 1950? No, you weren't; as of now, you've ALWAYS been No. ABC, don't dispute this, you'll do my head in. Toby's first NWR number for instance WASN'T No. 7, but later became it, (and nobody knows when anymore,) and that's good enough to say he's always been No. 7. And that's why Arthur, despite being preceded by dozens of engines for decades, is considered No. 12, and on paper at least, has ALWAYS been No. 12.

Arthur was bought directly from BR in 1967. At that time, the NW Region was going on a huge engine buying spree as the final abolition of BR steam neared. Several of the engines weren't in running order at the time of their purchase, but Arthur was.

He appears much the same in my canon, but his wheels are black, he doesn't carry his "LMS" initials, nor does he carry the number 41241. What his actual BR number was specifically is immaterial, but it wasn't that. Also, his dome is brass! This was inspired by James, who had been in the Works for some maintenance or another during Arthur's preparation for service. James was *flattered,* and he's taken a shine to Arthur ever since. If you mess with Arthur and James finds out, your life won't be worth living.

Arthur floated from place to place as a spare engine until getting the Norramby Branch in the Nineties, which he now runs with Ryan's help. They're a couple <3

Arthur's "Spotless Record" thing was sort of like his TV debut. Since the dawn of public railways, (depending of course if said railway was diligent in record-keeping, and we know many weren't!), behavioral profiles have been kept by the various managements on their engines. These were considered important not just for rewarding or punishing engines, but also their potential resale values. Say you had two twin engines, both exactly the same in strength and build and upkeep from funnel to rail, but, Engine A was a saint who behaved well and never shied from work, while Engine B was rude, spiteful or lazy. Engine A, all mechanical qualities aside, would command a slightly better price than Engine B. Arthur, from the minute he rolled out of the workshop, has been, and I'm hardly exaggerating when I say this, an angel. Crews used to fight or bribe to get assigned him for shifts. He was and is so willing, saw no job as beneath him, and followed instructions to the letter. He was everything an engineman would want for a fuss-free day of work. Being in working order at time of purchase, with this in mind, Arthur was worth a pretty penny compared to his siblings. But, that made him an especially worthy find in Sir Topham Hatt's eyes.

The accident that tarnished his record happened when Thomas was temporarily pulled aside to teach him piloting, and happened in Tidmouth Yards, not out on the line. Arthur forgave him coldly, but bygones were TRULY bygones when he found out Sir Topham Hatt wouldn't put the accident on his record, it having been Thomas' fault. Then things could really be hunky-dory between the two tank engines.

[uselessidiotsquad]

asks from the jumbo ask game for you (and tyt no worries!): 💧🌠💜🌸 for riag, if you'd like! :) @kerra-and-company

Ty for the ask! It's appreciated :D Riag hours!

💧 What is the earliest memory your OC can recall? Do they know what their first words were or remember where they took their first steps? Do they have any mementos of their childhood they’ve kept such as a stuffed toy or tiny baby clothes?

Like with many canon Sylvari Commander's his first actual memories were pre-awakening, in that sequence with Caithe and fighting the Shadow of the Dragon. Grumps has been fighting things since before he was even 'born' if you will. He didn't keep any of the things he had during sapling era, mainly because he's hard on equipment and weapons! None of them are Riag-proof just Riag resistant.

He was such a pain in the ass as a sapling though, straight out of the pod and already on a mission. It wasn't seen as important, Caithe saw it as something special but to everyone else it was mainly one willful, moody, and combative sapling who would not listen to mentors or lessons. Like yes, they knew of Zhaitan, but it's hard to take a wobbly legged ball of righteous indignation seriously when he's on a one man self imposed mission.

🌠 Who was your OC’s first friend? Do they remember them or are they still friends now? Talk about some of the people your OC has lost contact with over the years. Do they have any regrets about losing these people and would they revisit them if they could?

That would be the Short Red Ruby herself! Riag had just gotten in major trouble with mentors (he uh may or may not have attacked another sapling who was being arrogant and shoved his freshly conjured Blood Fiend directly onto their head) and was off sulking. He had actually been considering giving up necromancy, since he wasn't naturally gifted in it (unlike the sapling who had the Blood Fiend stuck on their head, that's why he got into a fight about it). Ruby stumbled across him while tracking spiders and trying to befriend them.

He promptly told her to go bugger off when she asked what was wrong. But Ruby is very nearly as stubborn as him, and kept pestering. Finally getting the short version of it from him she encouraged him to keep trying necromancy even if it wasn't easy or natural. Unlike the mentors who would encourage, but show very clearly in tone that they didn't think it was going to work - Ruby thinks anything is possible. He could tell she wasn't just BSing him and actually thought he could do it. Ruby gave off ecclectic sibling who will cover for you if you need it vibes. They friends after that.

They still are friends to this day! He would 100% not be here without her (both for moral support and physically helping take care of him during his recovery). Riag is well aware of this too.

💜 Music or Silence? Swords or Spells? Cities or Nature?

Silence, for the most part. Ambient chatter in the background is his favorite.

Swords! Or daggers, specifically. His magic was more like the equivalent of poison, something to make the physical tools work better and less on their own (besides his minions).

Oh close - he loves and dislikes both. Probably cities? So long as he can find a corner with less people but still not totally isolated.

🌸 What does your OC’s voice sound like? Their laugh? Are they good at singing? Do they have an accent?

Riag has a very specific voice in my head at least, I've yet to be able to find a perfect match but I've found some that are close enough that if you sort of imagined aspects of each of them get pretty close. The main qualities I can think of is that his words tend to have a heavier sound to them at the end, so instead of like an upward lilt its a downward ending sound. If that makes sense.

There's also often a little bit of hoarseness to it just because he's pretty much tired all the time and it sounds like he's gotten maybe 2 hours of sleep (because he has). Lastly he has a funny habit of saying everything like a fact, even his questions. It's not because he doesn't get the need for tonal change it's just his disposition is very 'as is'.

I think in comparison to the canon Sylvari voice, he's got a lighter tone that's more bright in places. There's less tension on some of his vowel placements - it feels a bit more open.

He has two main laughs, one is sort of a huff or two that subsides. Usually for something funny or situational amusing. The other is a sharp, unexpected bark of a laugh that trails off into quieter snickering.

He is not good at singing and is very much tone deaf, he jokes that the only place he would be allowed to sing is Orr because everyone there is already dead.

If he has an accent, man I couldn't tell you where it's from or what it sounds like. It's all just Riag to me.

Here are the two voices that if you sort of put pieces of them together make a pretty good approximation of what he sounds like!

Son Lux - War

Rufus Wainwright - Shadows

[lilxberry]

NSFW Alphabet - Jughead Jones*

NSFW Alphabet Version

Fic Relating To Kink: COMING SOON

Warnings: NSFW obviously. Mentions of SMUT. Contains sexual gifs that may include nudity.

_______________

A = Aftercare (what they’re like after sex)

God, he’s so soft and sweet. He takes such good care of you, softly asking if you’re okay, if you need anything or just plainly whispering sweet words into your ear as you come down from both your highs.

B = Body part (their favourite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

Jughead likes his hands for many reasons. There’s surprisingly quite a difference in size compared to yours and they cover a large area of your skin when he kneads and squeezes and grips at your thighs when things heat up between you. Plus, he can certainly pleasure you well with them *wink wonk*

Now, he absolutely loves, LOVES, your thighs. It’s pretty obvious from the amount of touching. Jughead loves to tease you by subtly placing his hand a bit to high up on them, giving them a quick squeeze before massaging his thumb across it, sending tingles straight through your being and a heat rushing straight to your core.

C = Cum (anything to do with cum, basically)

I mean, you’re both still in high school so you’re pretty careful. Some form of contraception is in play usually. It’s rare you take the risk of pulling out but, when you do, God he loves the sight of it covering your ass and the small of your back or covering your thighs and abdomen.

D = Dirty secret (pretty self-explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

Jughead honestly can’t get enough of you sat in his lap facing him, running your hands through his hair, nuzzling into the crook of his neck, warming his cock as he writes.

E = Experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)

He’s experienced, but only in so many ways. He can definitely hit the right spot when it comes to missionary but, throw in a position that’s new for him and it becomes a very important learning curve in your relationship.

F = Favourite position (this goes without saying)

He kinda loves it when you’re on top, riding him at any pace that you set. When he’s pretty pissed or needs to release some pent-up energy/anger, he can go pretty primal and dominant, pounding into you vicariously but usually, you’re on top, whispering sweet words to each other.

G = Goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.)

He’s pretty serious when it comes to your intimacy but, that doesn’t mean there aren’t moments where he won’t make you laugh a smidge, and vice versa.

H = Hair (how well-groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)

Jughead is more on the natural side, but only because there isn’t really any grooming nessicary. You both agree that you’re comfortable with how everything is maintained in both of your lower areas.

I = Intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect)

Jug is super romantic. I mean, he’s an author for God’s sake. Even if the pace or position isn’t exactly one that would “sweep you off your feet”, his words definitely will.

J = Jack off (masturbation headcanon)

He’s human. He’s a warm-blooded male that has serious levels of testosterone. Of course, he masturbates. Granted, it practically never happens anymore, especially since he barely did so when single.

K = Kink (one or more of their kinks)

Jug enjoys marking you and being marked. Not to an extreme, of course. Light scratches, gentle biting, light spanking on your ass and the back of your thighs, nothing that leaves visual evidence for more than a few days.

L = Location (favorite places to do the do)

He’s usually over yours and desk and bed are usually the surfaces you find yourselves doing it on a lot. You’ve had the sneaky session at school, but nothing compares to the comfort and privacy at home.

M = Motivation (what turns them on, gets them going)

Honestly, so many things could get this boy going when it comes to you. When you’re angry, when you’re making huge breaks in cases that you work on together, when you throw your leg over him when you’re cuddling and watching a movie, when you cross your leg over the other and show them off slightly. Anything you do could get his motor running.

N = No (something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

Jughead absolutely hates the prospect of sharing, even just visually.

O = Oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)

You two actually don’t take part in oral as often as the usual expected when it comes to sexually active teens. You two are rather good at it but prefer to feel each other in other ways.

P = Pace (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.)

It’s all dependant on mood, position and occasion, along with time. Usually, like mentioned before, when you’re on top, you usually set the pace, with the occasional assistance from him.

You tend to go slow and sensual, but if your limited with time or your in a particular mood, it can definitely be quickened.

Q = Quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)

Definitely not opposed it them, especially with everything going on in Riverdale. You never know when you can get interrupted. Snap thrusts of his cock and quickened circles around your clit and you’re all set for a quick session before you have to go meet the gang.

R = Risk (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.)

Risk taking isn’t a huge part within your sex lives as it is in your everyday lives. Jughead and you both agreed that less risk is definitely good.

But that doesn’t mean he isn’t game to experiment. Maybe a new position you are yet to try, maybe something that usually isn’t found within the bedroom brought in.

S = Stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)

He can actually go for a good 3 rounds with enough time to cool off in-between. Obviously, if you haven’t participated in such activities in length of time, it’s usually one and both you and Jughead are done. Although, that singular one round can definitely be long.

T = Toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)

He doesn’t own any, and you only really have a single bullet vibrator. He usually isn’t around when it’s put to use but, it can definitely come into play when you guys do phone sex. Plus, he thinks he does a better job than a little toy. (Which he does.)

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)

OH BOY DOES HE TEASE. He whispers absolute pure filth when in public while he smirks ever so smugly. His touch is like fire when he does this. Any little touch feels searing hot, and you feel weak at the knees. You undoubtedly become putty in his hands and it just becomes a game of how long you can hold out until you’re both alone.

V = Volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)

Apart from the sweet talk while inside of you, Jughead is a grunter. His grunts are deep which only egg you on further.

W = Wild card (a random headcanon for the character)

He would love to be dominated fully. He loves his power over you in the bedroom, even when you’re on top, he’s still relatively in control. So, the thought of you taking charge, even tying his hands to the headboard of the bed all the while you control when he cums is something that really gets him going.

X = X-ray (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes)

Jughead is pretty average but that doesn’t lower the quality of pleasure he gives you. It seems he’s just the perfect size for you, hitting all of the right spots.

Y = Yearning (how high is their sex drive?)

Although he never masturbated a lot, his sex drive is definitely high. Sex is a very common occurrence within your relationship.

Z = Zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

If the day had been tiring, yeah, you’re both pretty prone to falling asleep quickly. The two of you do enjoy just softly talking between you both whilst cuddling when you can, though.

_______________

.

.

.

.

.

If you would like to be tagged in the up-coming fic related to this post, just let me know

Anywho, I hope you enjoyed

As always, constructive criticism and requests are welcomed and greatly appreciated :D

[shihalyfie]

“There is no one right way to live”

Adventure and 02 really make up an unusual series in many ways, and I think one of them is how kind it is to the human condition. One of its most consistent commitments is to portraying its kids as “real children” -- as in, messy kids with some very deep nuances to their behavior, in ways that don’t reflect what you’d usually expect from media tropes. In some ways, it ended up backfiring (tropes are not inherently a bad thing, and it’s led to miscommunication that persists to this day because the audience has to fight a tendency to read the characters through the kinds of tropes we’re all expecting to find), but it also had the effect that these kids could be intimately relatable to the audience in ways that “textbook” portrayals of kids often wouldn’t be.

Adventure had eight main characters in its human cast, which was extended to twelve in 02 -- a massive balancing act -- and yet took the stance that none of these twelve characters’ very different ways of thinking or living life are fundamentally wrong. Rather, it celebrates the differences between them, and encourages them to embrace them about themselves. But it also does not shy away from the struggles those with each line of thinking might have in terms of communicating and interacting with the world. It’s easy to say words like “be yourself”, but what does “be yourself” really mean?

“Each character’s way of thinking”

Most people tend to define “character development” by “how much the character changed over the course of the narrative”, but if you look carefully, not all of the characters change that much. In fact, Koushirou and Miyako’s character arcs are about how they shouldn’t have to change much about themselves!

What we do get to see, however, is everyone’s intimate thought processes. We’re given so much information about each kid’s background and how it shapes their ways of thinking, and how they react to given situations, that you can get six fanfiction writers who have studied the series well and give them a completely hypothetical situation with some of the characters, and most if not all of them will roughly agree, because each kid’s thought pattern is so well detailed that you can easily imagine how they’d behave even when the scenario is hypothetical.

This, despite the fact that Adventure and 02 rarely use internal monologue (this is something specific to its Japanese version; while Japanese anime generally has less of this compared to Western shows, Adventure and 02 are unusually low on this even compared to later Digimon series, and it’s a possible byproduct of the narrative being eventually revealed to be from Takeru’s perspective and not someone truly omniscient). This is something that also somewhat backfired in that characters who are difficult to read or unaware of their own feelings become very difficult for the audience to read, so you have to read their behavior patterns and put two and two together (such as Takeru outright lying about his feelings regarding his childhood in Adventure episode 12, or Sora’s testimony about her confrontation with her mother not quite tracking with what’s actually depicted in Adventure episode 26). It does, however, have a very powerful weapon that it uses to help the audience understand each character’s mentalities and what they’re thinking at a given moment...

Digimon partners! In a sense, “talking with a Digimon partner” is a replacement for internal monologue, because the kids spill their internal feelings to their partners as if they’re talking to themselves. (Protip for all of you fanfic writers out there who struggle to figure out how to integrate the Digimon smoothly into the narrative: “cutting out most of your internal monologue and replacing it with a conversation with a Digimon partner” is one of your most reliable fallbacks.) This is helpful for characters like Koushirou, who initially starts off Adventure as very isolated from the others but immediately takes well to Tentomon, and Ken, who spends a good part of 02′s third quarter still very emotionally distant from the others and not entirely willing to open up to them, but very conversely willing to open up to his own partner. Iori converses about his conflicted feelings regarding the situation with Upamon during the process of forming his Jogress relationship with Takeru, and, back in Adventure, Takeru himself was willing to show his more “less well-behaved” side in front of Patamon that he normally wouldn’t when he was constantly in the presence of elders.

On top of that, Digimon partners being reflective of the kids’ own personalities in some sense means that they are very good at asking just the right questions at the right time, or saying perfectly well-timed things that the kids needed to hear the most, to get them to reconsider their position or realize that they might be going in the wrong direction...

Moreover, we get a lot of help in 02 simply by virtue of the fact it’s about relationships -- I’ve said this a few times before, but 02 is not a series about platitudes or toxic positivity, and has a strong emphasis on “you must understand the other person’s feelings if you want to truly reach out to them.” Showering happy platitudes about friendship on them means nothing if you’re still technically dismissing their feelings and making zero attempt to figure out why they feel this way! Therefore, everyone only accepts Ken when they each come to understand his feelings on the situation, and the Jogress arcs involve the relevant parties making active attempts to “understand the other person’s feelings” and what exactly makes them behave the way they do, before addressing their problems using what they need most at that moment. Being able to push people forward in a positive direction requires having a proper understanding of all of the negativity that came with it, accepting them in spite of that, and choosing to address what they need.

And in 02 episode 49, Daisuke says something that embodies a lot of Adventure and 02′s attitude towards these things: it’s not a sin to have feelings. Your reaction or way of seeing things, based on your backgrounds and experiences that have shaped you, is not something you can be blamed for having, whether that means being worried, sad, frustrated, angry, resentful, what have you. The only question is what you do in response to your feelings.

It’s easy to say “be yourself”, but that’s obviously a problem if you “be yourself” by rampantly ignoring what other people think and trampling on other people’s feelings, and it’s also a problem if “being yourself” is causing problems for others, and it’s especially a problem if “being yourself” is also hurting yourself while you’re at it -- so what does it mean to be true to yourself?

It’s not about your inherent personality traits, it’s about what you choose to do with them

As I said earlier, Adventure and 02 all arguably celebrate the fact that everyone is so different, and has their own skills to contribute to the group. Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses, and everyone makes up for each other’s weaknesses when they work together. And some of these characters do change in order to become “better people”. But what does being a “better person” mean? How does that tie into still “being true to yourself”, and yet changing at the same time?

02 episode 18 has Miyako in possibly one of her worst bouts of loss of control -- she has an effective panic attack and starts yelling at everyone in all directions, resulting in Hawkmon getting hurt. However, everyone here understands that Miyako meant well and was trying her best given the situation, and nobody scorns her for it, with Hikari even arranging for Miyako and Hawkmon to have proper space to emotionally air things out. Again: it was not a sin for Miyako to have feelings of anxiety, but it was a problem once those feelings led to causing trouble for others -- as in, trampling on their feelings, not having enough regard for their welfare, and such. Well-intentioned or not, Miyako just caused problems, and for that, Miyako labels herself as a “bad” person (tying into her ongoing character arc that involved negatively comparing herself to more mature and put-together people). However, Hawkmon assures her that he likes her the way she is.

But Miyako can’t keep going on like this -- it would obviously be very bad for her to keep being inconsiderate and trample on others’ feelings! But what does happen is that Miyako simply learns to channel these traits in the correct direction -- it’s established that, on the flip side, her being over-the-top brings joy to other people by making them laugh (02 episodes 31, 36, 38), and her aggressive personality is able to reach out to those like Hikari who are too closed in and on another unhealthy extreme! And as it turns out, she is capable of channeling all of those “aggressive” qualities into “aggressively”...reaching out to others and proactively supporting them; all she needed was a bit better sense of regulation so that her energy would go to the places she wanted them to be, rather than rampantly all over the place to the point of causing trouble. She didn’t have to fundamentally change herself into someone like Mimi or Hikari; it was just about adjusting her way of going about things just enough so that she could become more considerate.

Even all the way back in Adventure episode 10, all of the “problems” caused in this episode specifically have to do with Koushirou ending up (accidentally) being inconsiderate to Mimi and Palmon and not taking their feelings enough into account. Again, Koushirou is not treated as if his feelings are wrong or malicious -- he even states that he thinks that the research he’s doing will help everyone in the long run -- but his way of handling this situation is awful, and, regardless of his intent, Mimi and Palmon are feeling abandoned and tossed aside.

For the rest of the series, Koushirou learns to hone his existing skills in analysis -- even his fixation tendencies are treated as a potentially valuable trait -- and, once we learn the details about how he started keeping distance from everyone due to the shock of learning he was adopted and his social anxiety tendencies in Adventure episode 38, Koushirou momentarily tries to force himself to use casual language, and his parents assure him that he doesn’t have to force himself to change. In the end, it’s not an inherent sin for Koushirou to have social anxiety, nor that he needs more time to adjust to becoming more casual with others -- according to Adventure episode 54, he does want to get closer to others eventually, but even Tentomon says he shouldn’t force himself. Koushirou “working past” his social issues doesn’t mean he suddenly has to turn himself into a socialite overnight, but rather, he simply needs to do enough to be able to communicate with others without (accidentally or otherwise) ignoring others’ important feelings. Thus, in 02, he’s still working on becoming less distant from everyone, but he’s managed to become someone who can communicate with and organize people, and is well-respected for it.

A recurring theme in Adventure and 02 is that there’s a good and a bad side to everything, and so if we look at the twelve kids over Adventure and 02, we can see that a lot of the “good things” and “bad things” about them really stem from the same thing:

Taichi: Being an ambitious person who can oversee people in disparate places and bring them together (good) also means that he’s not always good at checking the nuances or other potentially negative contingencies, and can be rather insensitive (bad)

Yamato: Being emotionally sensitive to others means he can be passionate and open about everything, and compassionate to others (good), but also means he can get explosively angry and lose control of himself (bad)

Sora: Being caring towards others and supportive (good) means that she can also end up developing self-destructive tendencies due to her perceived obligations to others (bad)

Koushirou: Being constantly curious and fixated on learning more means he can get to the bottom of things and answer questions that others can’t (good) but also means he can get too absorbed in it and not be able to take others into account (bad)

Mimi: Being extremely sensitive and empathetic means that she’s open-minded, compassionate, and all-loving (good) but also that she takes any kind of discomfort or emotionally draining thing extra hard, and may all too often be unable to take a stand even when she really should (bad)

Jou: Being constantly invested in everyone’s welfare and compelled to help them means he’s very honest and dutiful and otherwise reliable (good) but also means he can make very reckless decisions because he’s so stressed about everyone and everything (bad)

Takeru: Being good at maintaining an atmosphere of moderation and generally being able to handle very tough things means that he has a very strong grip on himself and doesn’t cause trouble for others easily (good) but also means he’s prone to sudden and irrational emotional outbursts because he’s suppressing so badly that he gets no catharsis and isn’t being honest about his own feelings (bad)

Hikari: Being compassionate and all-loving means that she can put her foot down easily for the sake of others and advocate for kindness (good) but also means that her desire to not be a burden on others makes her compulsively unable to vocalize any of her own personal problems to the point of self-destruction and passiveness (bad)

Daisuke: Being so deferential to others and pure-hearted means that he can focus practically on what needs to be done and be a supportive person to others (good) but also means that he’s prone to insecurity, defensiveness, and lack of assertiveness in the face of others (bad)

Miyako: Being over-the-top and full of bright energy means that she can bring joy to others and can reach out to those who have troubles (good) but also means that she has difficulty having restraint from losing control of herself (bad)

Iori: Being humble and a principled person means that he’s good at approaching things directly and driven by a constant desire to do good (good) but also can be so fixated on those principles that he clings onto them even far beyond practicality, and is constantly restraining himself more than should be necessary (bad)

Ken: Being assertive and able to have firm will means that he can get what he wants done for others and show kindness when he needs to (good) but also means that the same assertiveness can be used for uncontrolled sadism and inflicting pain on others (bad)

So, again: all of these characters are encouraged to embrace all of the good things about themselves, and to channel them in ways that are productive or healthy or help them live happily alongside others; all of those “bad” traits also being there doesn’t necessarily mean they have to blot out those personality aspects that have good sides to them as well! It’s just that those “bad” things need to be kept in check so that they don’t cause trouble, and you can read all of these character arcs in ways that involve everyone changing just enough to make sure those “bad” things don’t go rampant and cause problems everywhere -- and everyone’s an imperfect human being, so it’s unlikely that they’ve completely gotten rid of those entirely even into adulthood -- but they have better awareness of what they need to do, and how to better adjust themselves into better people.

Look at the difference between Ken and Daisuke -- Ken had to go through some massive changes because, as the Kaiser, his “bad” traits were going over the top and causing all sorts of harm to everyone, and there was a huge journey he had to go through to get that all in check, whereas Daisuke was always clearly a very pure-hearted person from the get-go and didn’t have to adjust himself as much. Yet you could say the same thing about both of them -- by Ken learning that his efforts and assertiveness were misplaced, and by Daisuke getting around his constant insecurity and need for validation in order to better lead everyone forward, they basically did the same thing, just in different ways, and they’re both better people for it.

And it’s also the philosophy Jou endorses in Adventure episode 50 -- Mimi and Jou aren’t people who are necessarily best at fighting, and this isn’t inherently a sin. It’s just that they need to find ways to productively play to their own strengths in ways that are true to themselves. If Mimi can’t bring herself to engage in direct violence, she can at least use her skills to bring together everyone else who wants to protect the Digital World and prevent more casualties, and if Jou is, by his own admission, “not strong”, he can consider a path ahead of him that involves becoming a healer who can help those who are wounded, and prevent casualties that way.

There is no one right way to live.

What it is you want to do

Here’s an interesting question about the 02 epilogue, and, while we’re at it, 02 episode 50 as a whole: Why are “careers” brought up so much? Timeskip epilogues are hardly new to 02 (and of course have popped up in media for years thereafter), but not all of them involve careers, and even fewer of them have that much focus on shoving “careers” into your face as the main centerpoint, especially since usually this kind of thing would be about family lives or romance or something (and we can say a lot about how the 02 epilogue cared so much about the career thing that it was blatantly prioritizing it over the hot-topic romance issue of Yamato and Sora).

Because, in the end, a career -- or, perhaps, a “future aspiration”, because various details about how the epilogue is presented indicate that “the career that defines your income and adult life” may not actually be the correct term here -- is the ultimate manifestation of “what it is you want to do with your life”. The point driven home by 02 episode 50 is that such a thing should be “what you want to do”, and, given that this was originally supposed to be the Adventure ending before 02 was conceived, it also ties into Adventure’s own theme of “finding your own path”. All of those “careers” listed in the 02 epilogue feel a lot more nonsensical when you think about it in terms of the material hobbies they had during the series, but make significantly more sense when you frame it in terms of what kind of personality each person had and what they would prioritize. Materially, if you think about what Taichi had as a “hobby” during Adventure and 02, it would be soccer, but when you think about him being “an ambitious, wide-reaching leader who brings people from different places together”, his career of “diplomat to bring two worlds together” makes much more sense. It wasn’t about what they’re doing to pay the bills; it’s about “what’s most important in each of their lives”.

And, as far as the series is concerned, none of these decisions are the “wrong” ones; if there’s a “wrong” decision, it’s the one 02 (and later Kizuna) warned you about, in terms of blotting your own self out and making yourself unhappy because you did it for the sake of society’s expectations instead of for yourself. There’s even a difference between the Adventure group and 02 group in their own priorities, in that the former is more individualistic and far-reaching in terms of personal ambition, and the latter prioritizes mutual support and living simpler lives as long as it makes them happy, and as far as Adventure and 02 are concerned, that’s all fine, because those are choices that suit their own dispositions and fit things that they want to do first and foremost.

Everyone is different, everyone has different priorities, and everyone has different ways to live. Everyone has different perspectives and feelings, and once the arguments are ironed out, those should be cherished and celebrated.

[alecatmew]

QArt Code Signature Blocks

Oh boy, let me take you down the rabbit hole that keeps sneakily stealing hours of my life from me.

We’ll start with a topic I’ve covered a few times before:

Seals

I’ve written before about my mock sinograph signature – a pseudo Chinese-character sequence that I use to sign my artwork with.

Inktober piece with the latest version of my calligraphic sinograph

I have also signed my work in the past with a signature stamp that I picked up at a dollar store in Japan, that simply contained the character of my surname.

The first artwork I can find that uses the 林 stamp.

In the intervening times, I’ve experimented with laser engraving seals of my sinograph, and modifying its design. I briefly hit on a design I absolutely adored that incorporated “Alethea” into the character 鴨 (duck), which when put together with my surname 林 would have correspondingly given me “forest duck” as my signature. This would allude to the name of the chenonetta jubata in Chinese, nicely tying all of my identities together.

Seal script version of 林鴨

Unfortunately, a Mandarin-speaking coworker cautioned me against using 鴨 as a pseudonym. They informed me that when referring to people, “duck” is sometimes used as a euphemism for a male prostitute. So with that knowledge, I decided to fall back to my made-up characters.

Only a couple of pieces were signed with the calligraphic version of this signature before I reverted to my older signature.

When I made the most recent revision to my signature, I decided to get it professionally carved into soapstone, and had the company confirm that I wasn’t going to run into any similar embarrassing misunderstandings with the design. The actual seal carving ended up being very expensive (considering I could have just laser engraved it myself), but I valued the peace of mind that came with having someone knowledgable vetting it. Experiencing how the seal design transferred so cleanly with good quality seal paste (the ink used to stamp the blocks with) also unlocked the next step in my journey.

Soapstone chop and the stamped design

QArt Codes

Some time ago, I read this blog post about embedding images into QR codes. As a tl;dr, QR codes are made to be tolerant to damage. Most QR codes that contain logos in them just cover the data contained in the code and take advantage of the error-correcting algorithm to ensure the right values are read out. “QArt Codes”, on the other hand, use a provided image to generate a URL that naturally encodes to something that resembles the source image.

I can’t remember what led me to the article initially, it was a looooong time ago. I may have been working on a puzzle hunt for AVCon that used QR codes to log people’s progress and I wanted to embed the AVCon Invader logo into it (so some time around 2014). But the puzzle hunt, and QR codes in Aus generally didn’t catch on so the idea just got relegated to the back of my mind.

Still, QArt codes are super neat and I’m surprised I haven’t seen them in the wild more. Actually, I think the page that generated the codes was down during the rise of QR codes in the pandemic, so there was a bit of a missed window. But the page is back now, and you can play with making your own! Or if you want to play with the code there’s a standalone version you can run locally.

(Side note, when I was researching game-parsing screen readers to work on Ikalog stuff, I ran into this blog post by Up Banking. That’s the only QArt code that I’ve recognised in the wild to date)

Adding 2+2…

This is the post that lit the lightbulb in my head.

What do you guys think about the possibility of artists using small QR code’s as watermarks to link back to the artist? pic.twitter.com/9gk3a6GHhK

— matt (@MattikarpArt) March 28, 2021

I mean, having hit this point in my post it’s pretty obvious what we’re gonna do, right?

QArt Chopping and Changing

“So how did you lose hours of your life to this? There’s a page that generates them, you just put your picture in there and you’re done, right?”

Well, to start off with, as I mentioned above the page that generates them was actually not available for some time, so I had to mess around with the original QArt source code (with a few headaches) and then later had the fortune of running into the standalone version.

After that… I lost time to the search of perfection.

Here’s my first draft of a painterly QArt signature. The output of the QArt generator still had a lot of noise, so I used painterly brushstrokes to make the noise look more appealing. At this point I still only superficially appreciated the stuff in the article and while I knew about some areas that were more important to preserve than others I was mostly just drawing willy-nilly with the understanding that “QR codes can repair damaged data”.

It’s neat but it’s off-centre, it contains only my surname and it probably won’t scan properly when scaled down for overlaying on art.

I was satisfied for a while with the proof of concept, but later I started thinking about laser cutting myself a new signature chop anyway, as the soapstone one I’d purchased was too large to use on A4 and smaller art (the majority of my pieces!)

So I looked at the QR codes and realised that I should provide a source image that wouldn’t need to scale. I want to control the pixels of the code so I should provide a pixel art version of my signature.

Something like this. The QArt generator will try to respect the original colours of the pixels, but it almost always has to make compromises. The generator will put priority on preserving areas with full alpha, and will relegate its manipulations to transparent areas in the source image.

This provides an okayish output – it’s a good basis on which to paint over parts to arrive at a more aesthetically pleasing version.

I did do some test runs with this kind of “corrected” design and to my delight they did scan when stamped.

The seal paste that I originally got with my soapstone seal proved an excellent transfer medium for the design

However, I anticipate that the stamping process can be error prone and therefore it will be impossible to perfectly transfer the design. So I keep returning to these QArt codes to try to minimise the errors. First by lowering the amount of modifications that I make to the generated code…

Here’s a really tiny version where did some painting over the generated code but compromised a bit towards the lower area of the design.

Then, by changing the generation of the code itself.

One strategy was to reduce the area of the QR code that must be dedicated to my URL. I chose not to use a URL shortener. I intend to keep the chenonetta.com domain into the forseeable future but I can’t control what happens with any URL forwarding services.

I also opted to include the full http:// prefix in the URL. I did some playing around with readers and some automatically open pages if the URL starts with www. or ends with a .com but I didn’t want to rely on that behaviour. I kept the ale subdomain but that’s the least defensible decision and I might change my mind on it in the future.

So how to save space if I’m not shortening the input data? The original QArt coder uses byte encoding for the main part of the URL. This uses 8 bits per character. I modified the generator to create the URL in two parts – an alphanum encoded section for the main URL and then byte encoding just for the # that joins the URL and its throwaway anchor. Alphanumeric encoding uses 11 bits for every two characters. Overall I did still save a little space, even with the extra stuff needed to define the single-character byte encoded section.

I also played with manually specifying the masking strategy (the mask is a pattern that gets XOR’d over the generated QR code – read the original QArt code article for details).

After a lot of iterating, this is probably the closest I’ll get for now. I think this is technically still a damaged code but the areas that I drew through are part of the instructions about how to read the code, not the data. Like the data itself, there are some redundancies for the instructions so the codes still scan ok. Most of the time I’ve spent on these codes has been spent in the cleanup and tweaking stages – what can I get away with without introducing errors?

This is supposedly an error free code according this debugging website – though the scale of the source image definitely affects its assessment of whether the code is error free or not. The site also doesn’t recognise flipped QR codes (even though other readers seem to be fine with them)

Working on the flipped design is kind of convenient because it’s how the plastic will be engraved for printing.

Being forced to make compromises on the final outcome always keeps me coming back to tweak things again and again – can I change the orientation so that I don’t have to use a flipped code? Can I rebalance the density of noise around the main design so that it doesn’t distract from the centre as much? Can I smooth the curves in the image more? I’ll just keep searching and searching for the ideal version of this design…

To wrap up, here’s the current setup I use for transferring the print to paper. I’ve been experimenting with moving to block printing ink instead of seal paste, because the latter is oil based and takes days to dry. So far I haven’t had a high success rate with the new ink but I think I’m learning. Sometimes a dodgy print can be recovered with a little bit of hand editing, though it requires some deft brushwork!

The seal, the artwork and a folded piece of kitchen paper are clamped to a table.

"QArt Code Signature Blocks" was originally published on Proairesis

[imanes]

My dream job would be testing and reviewing stationery for a living lol. I think I like it so much because it helps me look forward to studying. But tbh I’ve also learned that you then also actually have to do the work, the stationery alone won’t do it. And also, making your notes pretty to the studyblr-extent is a waste of time if you’re doing it for productivity.

The zebra sarasa vintage are so nice! I think if I had to choose between the two sets, the one that has camel yellow would be my favourite, but they’re all great. Unfortunately you can’t buy them individually unless you buy the premium version (metal pen body) where one is like €10.

Also I’ve had the same issue with bullet journaling as you did. But I’ve seen a post on here that discusses how it was essentially created to be a disability aid and that’s made me consider maybe trying it again.

Do you prefer European/American or Japanese stationery?

i hope u get that dream job! or at least that u turn it into a hobby like having a youtube channel or an instagram page about it. i really find comparisons in stationery items sooo valuable and someone has got to do it so maybe it could be you! and u obviously have very valuable insight, i totally agree with u that aesthetically pleasing notes aren't the end all be all of actually properly studying like it's about effort as u said and about methodology. neat notes can help (i can't study anything that looks messy) but it's not magic lmao

listen i've bought notebooks in the 10€ range but i don't think i could do it for a pen alkjdflg except if it was a fountain pen maybe. but i'm gonna get the sarasa vintage when i get paid! ty for the recommendation again <3 and for helping me find an alternative to muji pens!

ultimately i don't think i have a preference, i find that western stationery can be rather bulsky or sport really ugly colours LMAO and i really do love a pastel like most eastern asian stationery brands are now putting on the market that's why i got an expensive ass A4 notebook granted it's from a french brand but it was definitely inspired by japanese items. it was all about zebra mildliners before stabilo came out with the pastels too! but i'm glad that they're doing that bc i don't really want to order everything, i like going to a physical store and pick up what i want. but u really have to look long and hard whereas for stuff i see in korean and japanese online stores they just immediately grab my attention and the shape of the pens is never too bulky and the colours are great and the quality seems really good... although i will say in terms of quality the germans are really at the top. deutsche qualität! what about you??

[popculturebuffet]

Simpsons Review: Simpsons Comics #102 “Uncle Burn$” or Homercore Nudity!

Whelp out of all the commissions Kev has thrown me this one’s kind of a curveball. I mean it makes sense why cover it: It’s a pastiche of Donald Duck Comics done in the pages of the Simpsons long running comics. I cover duck stuff on here, and not only do I love the Simpsons but I tend to reference it for jokes a LOT. I just genuinely never thought of reviewing it till now, likely because earlier on in my new career of reviewing animated shows, I wasn’t really convinced I could do pure comedies. With my regular reviews of Darkwing Duck and as it comes out coverage of the Loud House (I still need to get around to Band Together), that’s no longer a real issue and I should consider doing the show in the future, especially since I have an unabashed love for the first 10 seasons and a few episodes beyond that. 

As you can tell, I love the Simpsons. While I do genuinely wish it would end and have no real intrest in the current seasons, though if you’d like me to take a look i’d be willing to. The show in it’s prime was funny, witty and each episode was crammed with jokes. And refreshingly for an adult cartoon show of it’s time,  the show genuinely wasn’t afraid to mix things up: Milhouse’s parents divorced and stayed that way for so long that them apparently getting back together decades later is itself a huge status quo shake up.  Lisa went Vegetarian which stuck thanks to sir paul mcartney, and then went Buddhist, both of which have never wavered since and both fit her well. Skinner and Krabbable started dating. Barney went sober for a few seasons. Apu got married. These are minor changes but the show does have things happen occasionally and doesn’t just snap everything back and it adds genuine tension to plots knowing they might stay the status quo They usually don’t but the occasional change gives things stakes. I could go on for days, but I couldn’t go on for 8 weeks, point is the Simpsons are awesome, and deserve the praise they get early on I just wish they’d stop as by this point people really have stopped carring and it’s time to pass the torch and Let Bob’s burgers be the wholesome family comedy that runs forever.. and even then that one should stop at 10 seasons. Or if not at least let the kids age dammit.  But that aside, while many of you simpsons fans looking at this probably have at least seen the comics, or a collection of them over the decades, many of you like me are wondering what the hell Bongo Comics is and how they managed to last so long. Bongo was founded by Simpsons Creator Matt Groening in 1993. Matt Groening had noticed that at the time there just weren’t any funny books on the shelves, funny books being comedy based comics primarily targeted for kids, with Archie and Disney being really the only ones left at the time. So he founded Bongo to rectify that, and given Fox naturally liked the sound of more merchandising dollars, the publisher was primarily used to produce simpsons comics, though looking at wikipedia there were one or two that weren’t including, of all things, a Coldplay comic tying into their album. Why did Coldplay publish a comic book at a primarily simpsons comic book company?

Though most series seem to be either short lived or one shots, there were a few exceptions: Naturally the company put out an annual Treehouse of Horror issue, there was a Bart Simpson ongoing focusing on him and the other kids of Springfield, I had a trade for that one once, and once Futurama premiered it too got a comic book that held through both cancelations. But standing above them all was Simpsons Comics, a 245 issue long runner that ran all the way up to the company’s closing, likely due to a combination of a lack of profits and the then upcoming Disney-Fox merger depriving them of the very heart and soul of the company. 

Naturally being a Simpsons fan I have a connection to these comics having gotten the trades out of the library multiple times as well as the collection of Bartman’s solo series, which was my favorite and I might cover some day. In addition to the Free Comic Book Day issues i also picked up scattered issues over my life since, much like Archie, Simpsons comics were a mainstay of bookstores and super markets and the decline of both comic markets is likely why the Simpsons comics started to peter out in the first place. The quality and memorability of the stories varied but they were a fun thing to have around and it’s sad to see them go, as well as see Disney not even make a remote attempt to bring them back or at the very least republish the vast library they now have access to. Also finally if your wondering yes, there indeed was a Simpsons/Futurama crossover. And no I have not read it.  So with that history, most of which I just learned some of which I already knew, in mind, it is very fitting the comic’s did a tribute to the Uncle Scrooge comics. Though it does feel very weird that I have yet to cover any Donald Duck or Scrooge comics.. yet i’ve already covered one of the Ducktales tie in comics and a Simpsons homage to it. I’m going to have to correct that but until then, join me under the cut as I dive into adventure with the Simpsons. 

This issue was written by Ian Boothby and drawn by John Delaney, I feel mentiong the writers and artists should be important in comic reviews and I kick myself for not having done that or gone into them as much before. Boothby was apparently the Ian Flynn of these comics, writing more simpsons comics than any other writer according to wikipedia and winning an Eisner for his work on the comic if sadly not this issue. He was nominated for an outstanding Canadian Writer award for it though so that’s good. Point is the guy is a decorated vetran of this series and it shows in how good this issue is and I felt he deserved some recognition as most Comic Book Readers, myself included up till now, likely weren’t aware he even existed nor took over the comic in the 2000′s. 

We open with Burns getting attacked by a mummy! Gotta say wasn’t expecting this as where we started out but the simpsons have started with wonkier premises to end up somewhere. I mean there was the time a bag boy strike ended up with them in Africa. Also i’d say Burns should call the police, being the kind of privileged white guy they actually care about protecting and all, but frankly the Springfield Cops don’t have the best track records with Mummies:

But no it’s just Smithers, who dove in heroically to save the company 15 dollars after Homer took a bet to see how many fire crackers he could jam in his computer’s disk drive. Lenny said 20 but he proved him wrong. And yes those are all actual jokes from the comic, this issue is very funny and feels very much like a Golden Age Simpsons episode. They also all gather to sign Smither’s cast.. which naturally is a legally binding contract.  Burns takes his loyal minion to get some quality medical care only to find an arcade because he traded the Medical Bay in for one during an outbreak of Pac Man Fever... again I really can’t top that and there may be a good reason why I haven’t covered the Simpsons till now. But yeah as Buns gives Smithers a roll of Pennies, he wonders who to have replace Smither’s on their annual summer treasure hunt.. which would come out of nowhere but we genuinely don’t know what they do most summers. I assumed Burns just road Smithers like a horse to play cricket while Smithers enjoyed it way too much. But a stray comment from Homer getting a Krusty Doll from a crane machine about being king of the treasure hunters leads to this. 

I mean it’s an easy joke but damn if it didn’t get a laugh out of me. So later at the old Simpsons place, because this comic is fantastic, Marge and Homer talk things over, but Homer insists Burns said he’d split the treasure, and Lisa wishes she could come along. And Marge says he should, especially for his own saftey.. and when Bart complains, says all the kids should go, she already packed their bags, she’s heading to Rancho Relaxo byyyyeeeeeee. Once again, this comic is amazing, and I would say this is out of character for Marge, but frankly that’s the whole point. Plus it really isn’t when she has to deal with 4 children on a regular basis, and her sisters, and a town gone mad.. yeah can’t blame her here. 

The next day at Burns Office, Homer is wearing his navy outfit.. or rather Donald’s Navy outfit. But given I did a quick google and found him having at least 4 different outfits during his time in the Naval Reserves, it’s not a stretch to assume the Simpsons Version of the Navy gave these out too. Seriously Ian Boothby has put more thought into continuity than most writers on the show proper. Also Simpsons Tide, season 9 episode, still very memorable and hilarious and not due to childhood nostalgia. Just looking up this bit had me laughing hard. 

I now  want to watch that episode sometime soon so thanks Kev. Anyway Homer seems to have misplaced his plants. Now I could spare you the image since I don’t do things panel by panel anymore and only use panels from a comic when relevant. Buttttt

This traumatizing of my audience brings me to a point about this issue and why it works. While there are tons of nods to the Donald Duck comics and what their homaging is very clear, the issue doesn’t REQUIRE you know them to enjoy it.  Knowing them I obviously enjoy it more, but most of the jokes aren’t reliant on you knowing anything about the barks comics and even someone with a passing knowledge of  the Original Ducktales can still get the reference if not why Donald is here. It helps this is less of a parody, with the exception of some jokes, and more of an homage, using stylistic elements of those comics while telling i’ts own story as a loving tribute to it’s predecessors. Speaking of one of those jokes poking fun at the source material, Burns is delighted Homer brought child labor, which kept me laughing for a good minute, and when the kids introduce themselves we get this bit. 

Not only am I 100% sure every version of Donald or Della did this to make sure they could tell them apart, very much including the reboot with Donald, but it’s a genuine hilarious bit. Donald’s response as they head off is “there’s somehting hooey Dewey and screwy about this. “ Also I will criticize the fact Bart isn’t the one wearing a blue outfit. For those wondering why, after all Maggie wears blue shouldn’t she get it, who haven’t seen this a LOT of merchandise early on had Bart in a blue shirt, due to early Merch being rushed out pre-show and since he wore one in some earlier concept art, he got to wear blue. He also wore it late into the 90′s. 

Sidebar: I just found this and while it isn’t a bad joke given his character it is  questionable to have a fourth grade boy tell you to buy him. Just saying. But the reason I bring it up is partly because the show itself referenced it at one point. 

As well as it’s sister show Futurama

And you remeber that Bart Simpson solo I mentioned? That one frequently, both in and out of story, had Blue Shirt bart show up for some variety. 

Also why yes each issue does have it’s own fun “Superman’s Pal Jimmy Oleson” Esque subtitle. And I love it so. Point is Blue Bart is part of the series legacy and this very comic company, so it’s VERY weird to not have that here. That being said there were  a few Green Shirt barts apparently as a printing error, so he could just as easily be 80 steps ahead of me. I just don’t know. 

Back at the plot Burns and the Simpsons show up at Frink’s lab, Frink rather obviously filling in for Gyro, with his own version of little bulb named F.L.O. who gladly shakes Lisa’s hand.. and releases a Pterodactyl but hey you can’t win em all. It’s a nice nod, though one only fans of the source matieral will really get, but the pterodactyl bit right after helps distract from it. Frink slotts into the roll well, as Frink has no reall affiliation with anyone and is basically, much like Gyro, there for various characters to go too when the story or joke needs him. Frink has two gadgets for them: Some Scuba suits that can go to any depth and a grappling claw that accidently gets him gripped to the pterodactyl. Also homer accidently switches suits with maggie, so we get an adorable shot of her serenely sleeping in a diving helmet while her daddy chokes to death. 

So the next day it’s out to the open seas where The Simpsons are doing all the work while Burns lounges.. which yeah this is a typical uncle scrooge adventure all right. While the man unlike Burns does work hard and do things for himself, he spent most voyages talking about the destination while putting all the hard work on Donald, in case you thought there was at least one universe where Donald isn’t miserable most of the time. Lisa wonders what he’s doing and we get this lovely bit. 

I just.. can’t stop finding that hilarious or a nice way to get the Uncle Scrooge bit in there while still fitting the Simpsons, and it at least explains what happened to Herb, whose been mentioned all of once in the 30 seasons since he last showed up. I checked. And yes for those unaware, which is fair, or who just now remembered Homer does indeed have a brother, one his dad had out of an affair who showed up twice, once with Homer unintentionally, and largely due to Herb’s own foolishness, ruining his life, the other time with Maggie helping him get back on top and him and Homer reconciling. He’s also voiced by comedic legend and your friend and mine, Danny Devito, whose still making us all laugh to this day and is a wonderful person from all accounts. Rock on Danny, here’s the only way I can think to honor you. 

But yeah it’s a good gag. Burns claims to be watching for a Giant Squid.. and turns out to be right. So it’s up to the simpsons to fight the giant squid, a sentence I genuinely didn’t expect.. I thought like the Griffins they’d just ignore it. 

I miss that show.. oh i’m aware Family Guy is still running but much like the Simpsons the show it USED to be is long gone. Anyways Bart tells a worried homer octopus suck out the innards and drink it first quipping “It’s not like you haven’t been drunk in the morning before homer. Homer chokes bart only for the squid to choke him which is easily the second best “Homer getting choked after Choking bart” gag i’ve seen.. the best being this one I found on youtube. 

Though personally my faviorite part of that whole bit is Bart’s proud “THAT’S BECAUSE I SOAKED HIM IN SLIME!” Anyways Lisa figures out a way to beat the squid, painting the likeness of each of them on it’s tentacles and letting the thing devour itself. Lisa lampshades it making no sense PHysics wise but with that she reluctantly accepts calling Mr. Burns, Uncle Burns and we’re off to our next location.  Next up is Mt. Donrosa, a very clear nod to Uncle Scrooge maestro Keno “Don” Rosa, an avid fan of Barks work who expanded on it and turned it into a solid continuity, most famously, and what got me into the ducks in the first place, with the epic “Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck” which I proudly own and.. well I did say watch this space didn’t I?  Enough hinting at the future as the Simpsons scale the mountain with Homer carrying burns up on a rickshaw. Burns however looses his lucky #1 penny, SUBTLE, and cuts Bart down to get it. We then get the best line of the issue:

Bart thankfully survives and we find out the Penny, much like Scrooge’s Dime is how Burns started his fortune.. for this issue and nowhere else but that’s standard for the Simpsons. Specifically loading it into a gun and threatning to kill Jasper’s grandfather with it during the gold rush, a nice twist. At the top of the mountain they find the fabled key of Strobl, which comes from the Taliaferro tribe.. more refrenes this time though I didn’t know them and had to google. Tony Strobl was an artist on the Duck Comics at one ponit  and Al Taliforino id forgotten about. He did the Donald Duck comic strip which I had heard of and weirdly hasn’t been collected yet despite Fantagraphics covering mickey, as well as reprinting barks and rosa’s respective works. 

The key is suspended in the air by what Lisa suspects to be magnetics, and while Burns plan is naturally “Have Bart swim in it and see if he surivives”, Bart, still pissed from the penny and not wanting to die today, grabs the Penny and uses his slingshot to fire it at the Key. The bad luck from the penny casues an erruption, but Bart once again saves the day and has them surf down, with naturally tons more great jokes.  The family enjoys some steamed Seafood, except Lisa whose eating Seaweed, while Homer enjoys a sting ray “It tastes as good as it stings, Ow, Ow.” ON to Goddfrodson Trench, an odd choice given Floyd Goddfrodson was barks equivalent for the Mickey Mouse Comics and not really a duck writer, but he still deserves the honor regardless.  Under the Sea, no accusations just friendly crustaceans here.. our heroes are close to the treasure but loose the map to the Jailbird Boys, aka Snake and his cousins, who found out due to Lisa’s blog. She didn’t want to loose any more readers to Sheri and Teri’s Olson Twin’s Fan Page.. which.. it’s 2004.. weren’t they dead by this point? Nope still alive? Still are today in fact? Alrighty then. Also this bit, and some of the other references are a bit heavy handed, I will admit that, but the jokes are high quality enough otherwise that it just comes off as a bit of an adorable wink more than laziness. 

Snake and co cut their air with Starfish used as throwing stars. 

The gang tie their air suplies to avoid dying, and Maggie, in a clever bit, talks with the starfish, since they communicate via sucking, to attack the Jailbird Boys. Again.. 

I genuinely don’t know, but our heroes find the fabled vault of Barks Billion.. named after Bark Barks, that polar bear from the sonic games.. no of course it’s named after Disney Duck God Carl Barks, who created the Duck’s share of Donald and Scrooge’s supporting cast: Uncle Scrooge himself, Daisy Duck, a fact I just learned but given he created her first short “Mr Duck Steps Out, shouldn’t of surprised me, The Beagle Boys, Magica DeSpell, Goldie O Gilt, Flintheart Glomgold, Gyro Gearloose, Gladstone Gander, The Junior Woodchucks as a whole, Neighbor Jones, John D. Rockerduck, The Number One Dime, Gus Goose, April, May, June and Whitewater Duck. Just the sheer impact he’s had on the comics on all continents cannot be overstated. He is also the one who refined Huey Dewey and Louie from hellraising little shits to the good little boys they are today.. well okay they were, thankfully the reboot has created much better versions. Point is what a man, what a man what a mighty good man, he is truly missed.  We get two great homer gags in the same page, one where somehow he’s put the giant key on a key ring and still can’t find it.. with Bart helpfully taking it from him, and then we get this, which I missed on my first read through. 

Naturally Burns betrays them, using a Gold Magnet, kay, to suck up all the gold and naturally planning to leave the Simpsons for dead to no one’s surprise. But thanks to Bart teaching Maggie how to use the spittoons, Homer gets one stuck on his head.. and starts getting sucked up with the Simpsons using them to escape. Naturally Lisa’s first instinct is obvious. 

But Burns weasels his way out by promising them free gold after their free lunch. Naturally the next day this turns out ot be a trick as their lunch came from frinks and thus, for now, their weightless.. but Karma gets Burns when he tries swimming in his new gold vault... only for the natural result of what happens when am an who never exercises and who doctors once described as having so many diseases packed into his body at once they tripped each other off and that a strong wind could kill him, trying to do with a similarly aged but still physically fit and well trained at swimming in money man does on a daily basis. 

We then close on a quick gag of weightless homer getting caught on fire and we’re out. 

Final Thoughts:  This was a really excellent comic. It captured the tone of the Simpsons at their best and while stiff in a place here or there, it’s mostly just really funny, entertaining and a nice and warm tribute to Donald and Scrooge’s long comics history, not really mocking it but instead just homaging it, while still throughly feeling like the Simpsons. It honestly feels like the Treehouse of Horor Segement on the shining, a bit that parodies something, but for the most part the jokes still feel firmly rooted in the simpsons and their cast. This was a treat to review and i’m glad Kev comissoned it and I may take a look at more Simpsons in the future. If you guys like this review, you can follow me on patreon at patreon.com/popculturebuffet, or if  there’s a specific simpsons or ducktales episode or a specific comic you want me to review, you can comission your own review for just five bucks. Just send me a direct message on here through Tumblr, or take a look at my ask box or submit. However you want to do it. I take payments through paypal and until next time: Happy Days are Here Again. 

[mk-wizard]

Top 10 Things Robots In Disguise Did Wrong IMO

Hello, fans.

I really hate knocking a series because I hate trash talking, so I won’t do it, but rather, I will some criticism on Robots in Disguise aka RID. I had a lot of high standards for this show especially considering it was supposed to be a sequel to Prime. There are many things about it that didn’t sit well with me, but there ten things I feel really stood out that really hurt the show the most. Note that Strongarm is not one of those things. Not liking Strongarm is a matter of taste it is not the make or break aspect of an entire series. Despite what many people think, one character you don’t like doesn’t ruin an entire series.

1- It didn’t feel like a genuine sequel to Prime. - I understand that in RID, some time has passed after the end of Prime so things around going to be different. However, the only thing from Prime that was brought over to RID was Bumblebee himself and I felt he did not have a lot in common with his Prime counterpart. RID felt like a completely new show or rather like the sequel of another series. The old cast is never brought up or shown, old alliances seemed to have been forgotten and whatever happened to the Predacons? When making a sequel TV series, it should follow a certain level continuity with the series it is following kind of like how Beast Machines followed Beast Wars so smoothly.

2- Fixit’s performance as the first handicapped Autobot was rather insensitive towards the viewers. - I don’t mind Fixit being handicapped or being the comic relief, but I do find it kind of insensitive especially in today’s day and age for Fixit to be comic relief because he’s handicapped. He was portrayed as weak, an invalid and at times, incompetent which he clearly isn’t. In fact, he has an arsenal and can hold his own, but even after this was found out, he was put back into his “weakling” role. This is not a good look for Transformers. A lot of people watching the show wound up handicapped because of an accident like Fixit did or have handicaps similar to his, and I don’t think it’s very nice to give off the message that people like them are “broken” and this makes them clowns we should laugh at. This is backwards writing at its worst and shame on Hasbro for that.

3- Forgettable human characters. - In Prime, Jack, Miko, Raf, agent Fowler and even Jack’s mom had very strong personalities that made an impact in the show. They were actually helpful to the Autobots and could even be forces to be reckoned with. You could never say the humans of Prime were weak or just played humans in distress. They would rescue the Autobots just as often if not more so than the Autobots rescued them. In RID, Denny and Russel were not as impressive. If anything, Russel felt like a copy of Jack at times, but in a much weaker way. He lacked Jack’s maturity and character development. At times, I also wondered why Bumblebee never just tried to make contact with Agent Fowler at least upon returning to Earth (more on this later).

4- The quality felt like a step down from Prime. - I understand RID was supposed to appeal to a younger audience, but when you’re following an act like Prime, you should put your best foot forward even when presenting to kids. After all, Rescue Bots was also made for kids, but it took place in the same universe as Prime and never compromised its quality. RID felt very silly in its humour, the majority of the episodes felt like the old fashioned and outdated “monster of the day” formula, the plot felt made up as it went along and the characters were rather one dimensional.

5- It should have brought back a large majority of the Prime cast as regular characters. - I understand that even a sequel series is going to have a few new characters. Beast Machines did, but what it didn’t do was scrap 99.9% of the old cast for a new one. It didn’t fix what wasn’t broken and kept the characters who worked best for the series. Like I mentioned before, why didn’t Bumblebee ever try to contact the old human gang especially agent Fowler? Didn’t they keep in touch? And didn’t Ratchet stay on Earth at the end of Prime because he wanted keep Earth safe from any remaining Decepticons? And what happened to the Decepticons who were already on Earth? RID is supposed to be a sequel to Prime not a parallel. It should have brought back most of the old gang especially for its setting.

6- It had tons of plot holes. - As well as forgetting its own cast, RID forgot a lot of pivotal plot elements left behind by Prime that it should have worked with. The most obvious being the Predacons considering most of the enemies in RID had animal motifs. Also, if Bumblebee was so important on Cybertron, his absence would have been felt on Cybertron. People would have gone looking for him. And as mentioned before, there were already a lot of Decepticons still on Earth. It wasn’t necessary to bring in these new animal themed Decepticons.

7- Optimus stole Bumblebee’s spotlight. - RID was supposed to be the series where Bumblebee was supposed to shine, be the hero and leader, and possibly become a Prime. He kind of did those things, but the way Optimus was brought back overshadowed him a lot and that’s no good. Rescue Bots showed a good way to bring in Optimus as a guest or secondary character without overshadowing the heroes of the story. In Rescue Bots, Optimus is assisting, but stepping out of the way for the most part. In RID, as soon as Optimus came back, he completely got in Bumblebee’s way and even made him look bad. This just seems like muddled storytelling to me. Maybe it would have been better if Optimus hadn’t been brought back at all.

8- The enemies were rather lackluster. - Prime gave us tons of enemies that shocked us, had grit and were not afraid to be truly bad like Megatron the conqueror, Starscream the snake and of course, Unicron himself who truly did live up to his chaos bringing persona. And even Predaking was the stuff of nightmares yet at the same time, has this majestic aura hence his name. The enemies of RID felt like a bunch of thugs, they were mostly monsters of the day and even Megatronus felt like a step down in villain quality. He didn’t make me feel anything really and while I know the series wanted to be child friendly, I think it tried too hard. Megatronus just felt like a lesser version of Unicron and many of the villains felt like lesser versions of their Prime counterparts. And this is bad. Even when they explained their motives, I didn’t feel like they delivered that impression that they were all that bad. Just more like they were trying to play the role of being bad like actors in a show. Pardon the harsh criticism, but that’s how I felt.

9- The ideas it presented had been done before. - I hate saying this, but everything I saw in RID had been done before in other Transformers series. None of the ideas felt that fresh at all especially not the setting of Autobots being marooned on Earth and then needing to fight the Decepticons marooned there with them. Like, come on! Even the idea of reviving Optimus had been done before. I think the plot of RID would have benefited more and would have had more of an opportunity to be original if it had literally picked up where Prime had left off with rebuilding Cybertron or tying up loose ends left by Prime.

10- Bumblebee’s performance felt like a step down after Prime. - In Prime, Bumblebee went from being a Scout to a full blown Megatron slayer. He was a badass who didn’t take trash from anyone and he knew what to do without needing to say it. And as soon as he did have a voice, he showed a lot of promise as a leader in every way possible. However, in RID, he seems to have regressed in both leadership skills and in maturity. He’s goofy in all the wrong ways, he is overly concerned with catchphrases and he can’t keep his team together. As mentioned before, RID Bumblebee did not give me the impression that he was the same Bumblebee from Prime. He felt like a different guy.

To anyone who is a fan RID, I don’t mean to offend you. I just had to get this off of my chest. Usually, I don’t care for a sequel following its legacy, but RID felt like a huge drop in standards to the point where it didn’t even look like a sequel anymore.

To anyone who agrees with me, what are your thoughts and what reasons can you think of that caused RID to not live up to Prime’s legacy?

[hua-fei-hua]

(can’t remember if I’ve already sent in an ask for this but I meant to) aries cancer and leo for the zodiac writing asks!!

asfsdf forgetful adhd strikes again

aries: when have you felt the most confident in your writing? when have you felt the least confident?

hmmm i think peak confidence was like 2018 which i know sounds like a long time ago, but that was the last time i had a major wip that was getting steady attention. i felt really good about my writing then because it was a mulan au, so the basic skeleton of a story was already laid out before me, and i was pulling a lot from chinese culture, which, as a halfie living in a predominantly east asian community, is something i’m very very familiar with, so i could focus a lot more on the beauty of the writing itself. i think i wrote some truly quality stuff for that au, to the point where this has reminded me that oh my god i still have that annotated version of the fic to finish up hahaha.

as for the least confident omg so it’s a really funny story. so basically in my senior year of high school, i almost had this guy i barely knew be my fake boyfriend for a night (for revenge purposes, long story), and he was the head drum major of our school band. after finishing up the aforementioned mulan au, i wanted to work on this school band au, but the plot i had in mind meant i had to ask around for some particular details. long story short, i asked my almost-fake-boyfriend to ask the head drum major of one of our sister schools (who happened to be the girl he liked) to ask her some questions for me, and we got into an argument that ended in him saying, “who would ever want to read something you wrote” and i was destroyed for the rest of 2019. that’s basically why i had a fic/fandom hiatus for all of 2019, but that was a long time ago now.

these days i do my best to feel neutrally about my writing, because if the reception to a particular piece doesn’t go exactly the way i imagined, i’ll start getting insecure again hahaha.

cancer: how do you write emotional scenes? do you ever feel what the characters feel?

mmmm not necessarily! being grey-aro, i haven’t held romantic feelings for anyone since before i started taking my writing hobby seriously, so it can be a little difficult to project the newly-falling-in-love feelings onto characters. i do keep a very regular diary, but to look back on those times is also omg Deeply Cringe(tm) because watching people fall in love embarrasses me.

that being said, i do feel very strongly as i write about emotions like embarrassment, anger, hurt, and joy!!! i like to sit with an emotion when i’m writing it, kind of pick apart where it’s coming from and how i’m feeling it, and then i’ll give it to the characters.

leo: what things will show up in every book you write? do you ever feel like a one-trick pony? 

my favorite themes in writing have been “lying,” “consequences,” and “searching,” with the final one showing up in the majority of fics i plan or publish, and all three showed up in the mulan au i mentioned earlier!! the night sky, stuff like the moon and stars, show up pretty often too, although they’re not always symbols. a lot of the time i’m literally just sitting there like “you know what i LOVE? tHE MOON AND STARS”

as for feeling like a one-trick pony? not at all! i find that there are a lot of ways to explore the same idea, even by the same person especially since those themes are so broad.

hehe ty for the ask!!!!!

zodiac writer’s ask uwu

[danyka-fendyr]

Absence of Good - 8

Chapter Eight: Despair and Devotion

I’m so sorry this took so long to get out everyone! I’ve been doing literally a ridiculous amount of traveling lately, what with COVID-19 and all the travel plans I had even before the outbreak. Suffice it to say, I’m extremely exhausted as I post this, and I haven’t edited it at all so I deeply apologize for any spelling mistakes or any other errors. Thank you so much to all of you for being so patient and waiting for me! (Also yes I did just watch Emma and it shows okay?)

Taglist: @dreamwritesimagines @rhabakoli @alwaysadreamingoptimist

AoG Taglist: @pancakefancake @prettyboyspenerrr @youreasnack @alioop3818 @newtslatte @rathersuspiciousbumblebee

Wordcount: 3773

Warnings: None! This is mostly fluff. Some vague references to PTSD.

“A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.” ― Jane Austen 

You rolled over in your bed, trying to fall into the spot of sunlight you knew would be painted over your sheets at this time of morning. Though you were only vaguely aware of what time it was, it was probably about an hour before you were actually supposed to wake up, your mind just starting to stir again. Instead of encountering your usual sunny spot in bed though, you found an entirely different source of warmth.

You cracked your eyes open in confusion. Dr. Spencer Reid was lying in your favorite pool of early morning sunshine, and you felt a brief moment of panic strike its way through your chest before doing an evaluation and realizing that you were both fully dressed and furthermore, had remained sober last night. It came back to you as you looked at him, remembering that he had helped you inside as you broke down crying and a very sleepy, very compromised version of your current self had begged him to stay with you.

Was that bad? It was probably okay to platonically sleep with your coworker, you reasoned. Nothing had happened. You hadn’t even thought about it happening. Maybe under other circumstances you would have thought about what a nice mouth he had or the look he got in his eyes when he was concentrating on something or his hands, which were very nice hands, you had to admit-

Oh gosh. Nope. Nope, nope, nope. This was a terrible idea, and had been a terrible idea before you had even had the idea, before anyone in the history of time had ever had an idea. You had to get out of here, right now.

Except here was your apartment, which was also a problem. Which meant that Spencer had to get out of here right now.

You shook his shoulder, pulling him out of his sleep. You almost felt bad for doing it, having noticed the dark circles under his eyes on more than one occasion. He looked so young and sweet in his sleep too. Spencer always had a boyish quality to him, but in his sleep it only increased, the concerned wrinkle in his brow falling away to a soft little half-smile that made you wonder if he was dreaming, and if he was what about.

That only increased your urgent need to get him out of here and awake though. Your half-asleep mind was still compromised, and your traitor fingers were itching to swipe across the velvet of his mouth, to gently push back the locks of hair falling into his forehead. All of which you had certainly never thought about before.

“Spencer! Wake up!”

It took a moment, but gradually he complied, honey brown eyes emerging only to be lit up by the morning sky.

“Hmmm? Oh, Y/N.” He smiled hazily. “Good morning.”

You suspected he hadn’t forgotten a single detail of what had happened last night, what with his eidetic memory, so you didn’t bother giving him a recap. Instead, you launched plan “Get Spencer out of here immediately” into action.

“We’ve got work in 2 hours. You have to get out of here,” you said, all brisk business to counteract Spencer’s alarming lethargy.

You had never seen the man relaxed, and he chose today of all days to appear pleasantly drowsy, of all things.

“2 hours? I think we have a little bit of time.” Spencer chuckled, raising his arms above his head, the muscles in his arms tugging his rumpled white dress shirt up to reveal the surprisingly toned planes of his stomach.

Which you were not thinking about. Which you were under no circumstances even contemplating contemplating.

“Well, you live 20 minutes from here, and you’ll need clean clothes and-”

Spencer cut your frantic ramblings off, seeming confused by your concern as he sat halfway up.

“I have clothes in my go-bag. What’s the matter?” A look of concern settled into the muddy depths of his eyes, and he reached out to pull you closer, one warm hand wrapping securely around your elbow. “Did you have a nightmare?”

You felt that tugging in your chest again, that longing, that need to just fall into bed with him. To take a sick day. To take 12 sick days. To lay in your bed with Spencer and never ever leave, just stay there running your fingers through his hair, tracing the veins in his arms. All things you absolutely could not do.

“No,” you said quietly, unable to stop staring into his eyes, entranced.

He leaned forward, and you caught a whiff of him, the smell of mostly coffee with something else a little bit woodsy left over from some aftershave or cologne he must wear.

“Then what?”

He tucked a loose strand of hair behind your ear, and your heart did a little tap-dance in your chest.

I need you to leave because I want to kiss you desperately, but I can’t.

“I’m afraid if you stay, I’ll get too attached. You saw how I was last night. I’m…unbalanced. And if you stay, I might start relying on you, and I can’t do that.”

One full truth in exchange for the absence of another.

“Relying on me how? Relying on me for help? Being willing to come to me when you feel ‘unbalanced’? Because I want that, Y/N. I want you to come to me.” His voice was soft, low.

You were so screwed.

“It’s a bad idea,” You whispered, still not looking away.

Then he said the worst thing he could have possibly said to you at that moment, when you were already so weak for him, so tantalizingly on the edge of something equally dangerous for both of you.

“You think I don’t need you too?”

Sometimes I need you so bad I can’t breathe because of it. Right now, right now I need you so bad I can’t breathe because of it.

“We’re not supposed to. We’re not supposed to need each other. What if something happens?” Still, you were leaning towards him, falling forward like gravity was playing some kind of sick game with you.

“It already did. And maybe it makes me selfish, but I’d rather have as much of this as I can get now instead of waiting for something terrible to happen again.”

Did he even know what he was saying? What he was implying? How good his mouth looked when he was saying those kinds of things to you?

Okay. Just kiss me, and I’ll forget everything. I’ll forgive you for every selfish sin you’ve ever committed if we can make this one of them.

“You should go.” You had never sounded less convicted of anything in your life.

Spencer faltered, and immediately you regretted the words when you saw the flicker of pain race through him. The way his hand fell from your face, the way his eyes fell to the sheets to hide how much you had wounded him. And before he could speak, you desperately scrambled to say something, anything to make it better, and said the one thing you probably shouldn’t have, if only because you meant it.

“I don’t want you to, though.” Another correction would be necessary for that kind of truth, and you frantically changed your mind again and tacked on a new amendment. “Which is why you should.”

He was looking up at you with a blazing hope and determination now, though.

“But you don’t want me to?”

Not even a little bit. I’ve never wanted anything less.

“Not even a little bit. I’ve never wanted anything less.”

You shouldn’t be allowed to speak words before 7 AM.

“I know how to make pancakes,” Spencer offered.

“I like pancakes.”

“Okay. Good.”

Then he got up out of your bed which immediately made your life slightly easier because at least he’s no longer just lying there in your bed looking beautiful.

While Spencer made pancakes, you hurried to get dressed, tying your hair up into a bun and abandoning the thought of anything more fashionable. Most of your makeup was just a touched-up version of whatever ended up smeared all over your pillows last night.

“You know, in the U.S., the most pancakes are eaten in the South. They make up 32.5% of pancake consumption in America.”

You laughed a little bit, unable to stop yourself from smiling at him. It was a little bit blissful having him here in your kitchen like this, making you pancakes for breakfast. You were allowed to have this, right? This little bit of platonic intimacy?

“No, I didn’t know that.”

“Well now you do.”

You kind of thought he smiled like an angel.

You stole the finished pancake straight out of the pan from him, and he gave you a playfully disapproving frown.

“Hey! I wasn’t done with that!”

You hopped up on the counter beside him and took a bite out of it, ignoring how hot it was in your hands.

“Tastes pretty done to me,” you responded cheekily.

He reached into the cupboard behind you, knowing in that creepy way that he knows everything exactly where your plates were, procuring one for you to place the pancake on. You set it down, looking up only to find yourself in a very compromising position. He was so close to you, and he wasn’t moving away. He could kiss you if he just leaned a little bit farther forward. You wanted him to kiss you. Does he know that too? Does he know where you keep your secrets just like he knows where you keep your plates?

“We can’t do this again,” you said, your voice coming out pleasantly firm for the first time this morning.

“Can’t do what?” He pushed hesitantly.

“We’re colleagues. You making me breakfast is weird. Besides, we wouldn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea, right?”

His posture went stiff, and he pulled back further away from you, the space between you freezing over.

“Right. I should go get dressed for work. We have to go soon.”

He disappeared and you took another bite of your pancake. It was cold.

 You made a point to arrive separately from Spencer, but the second you walked into the office you knew it was pointless because there he was being cajoled by Morgan about how he was wearing his go-bag clothes and therefore must have gotten laid last night, and then you locked eyes with the very wise Jennifer Jareau and you could see that she knew. She could see the messy traces of your hastily corrected makeup and she knew exactly where Spencer was last night.

You needed to fix this. Now.

“I’m going to go grab some coffee. Missed my usual stop this morning.” You made pointed eye contact with her.

“I could go for some too,” she said, casually following you.

You had been out of hearing range for maybe a second before she asked the obvious question.

“Did you and Spencer sleep together?”

“Sleep? Yes. Anything else? No.”

“So, he stayed at your place but nothing romantic happened.”

“Why do you sound so skeptical?” You scoffed, pouring coffee into the Styrofoam cup you had grabbed.

Jennifer grabbed your arm, making direct eye contact with you.

“I sound skeptical because I’ve known Spencer for years and I’m a profiler, which means I know that he’s in love with you, and you’re in love with him.”

It was a shot in the dark, and it just happened to hit you right in the heart.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you said, adding cream to your coffee now.

“Cut the crap, Y/N. If you can’t be honest with him at least be honest with me.”

“Fine. I think I might love him. He’s the best man I’ve ever met. I am absolutely not allowed to love him. Are you happy now?”

“Why aren’t you allowed to love him? I mean, there are the obvious reasons, of course, but there are ways to get around those. Those are just excuses. So, what’s stopping you?”

“An interrogation over my morning coffee. How lovely.” You forced your voice to be breezy, light.

It didn’t work on JJ, though. She just waited, knowing that sooner or later you would break the silence.

Your hands were shaking as you stirred the cream in your cup.

“I’m not in a good headspace for that kind of thing right now JJ. I’m all messed up, and I don’t want to mistake feelings of being grateful to him for feelings of love. He’s helped me more than anyone can know but I don’t want to get it all mixed up. I can’t love him like this.”

Another moment of silence lingered between the two of you before JJ spoke, solemn and quiet.

“Are you afraid you can’t love him like this or are you afraid he can’t love you like this?”

Your hands locked up around the stirring stick at her words, jaw clenching around the truth. Maybe she was right, but that didn’t mean you didn’t hate it.

“I’ve seen the way you look at him, Y/N. I know that you cared about him before this. All I’m saying is…don’t let something bad ruin something good. I know what it’s like to think your trauma defines you. To feel like you’ll never get past what he did to you. But if you let him stop you from doing what makes you happy, he’s still winning.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” you spat. “You have a husband and 2 sons who love you that you go home to. You have a life and a family and friends.”

“You have friends too. You’re not alone in this. We love you. All of us, not just Spence. Just…don’t stop yourself from being happy just because you’re afraid.”

You took a deep breath. Willed yourself to relax, to listen to her words. You knew that she did know something of what you had gone through, had endured her own torture over the years. Unbidden, an image of Spencer smiling at you, flipping pancakes over your stove popped into your head, and you felt that increasingly familiar jump in your chest.

“What if he can’t love me like this?” You whispered.

“Then the rest of us will.” With that JJ squeezed your hand, poured herself a black coffee and walked away.

You stood there for a moment longer, a bit frozen as you stared down into your cup, something that didn’t escape Spencer’s notice.

“Hey, you okay?” He said, approaching you.

“Remember how this morning I said that we shouldn’t do breakfast anymore because we’re colleagues and it’s weird?”

“I have an eidetic memory, Y/N. Yeah, I think I remember,” he joked, though you could tell it pained him a little bit to do it.

“Do you agree with that? Do you think it’s weird?”

“Well…I’ve never really been what people call normal, so I guess I’m not a good gauge of what’s weird or not,” he said, dodging the question.

“Did you disagree with me when I said it?” You wanted so badly for him to say that he did.

“I…no. I know most colleagues don’t have breakfast together. I mean, not in that sense. Plenty of professional relationships involve various different meetings over food, breakfast being slightly more casual than, say, a lunch meeting-”

“But did you want to do it again anyway?” You interrupted.

He paused to think, chewing on his lip nervously.

“Yeah. Yeah, I did. It was nice.”

“It was, wasn’t it?” You smiled at him.

“You…you thought it was nice too?” His doe eyes went wide with surprise.

“Yeah. Can I uh…can we take this somewhere a little less crowded?” Your eyes darted around the bullpen.

“Uh, yeah,” Spencer said, his voice doing that nervous thing where it jumped up an octave, making you hide a smile behind your hand. “I think Garcia’s office might be available?”

“If it isn’t I’m sure she’ll make it available. She owes me a favor since I let her eat all my Red Vines.”

“Do you even like Red Vines?” Spencer asked.

“That’s for me to know and Penelope Garcia never to find out,” you said, setting a quick pace towards her office.

Spencer had no trouble keeping up, his long legs tripping over themselves less than usual as he followed you. His body could never seem to decide whether it was going to have the grace of a gazelle or the clumsiness of a newborn foal, but today he strode with purpose across the less than pristine tiles of the Quantico floors.

You threw open the door to Garcia’s office without ceremony.

“Garcia we’re appropriating your office, leave now and do not breathe a word of this to anyone or I swear I will steal all of your candy until the end of time and also tell Hotch about that thing you texted me last week.”

Garcia froze in her desk chair. “You wouldn’t. Not the thing!”

“Yes. The thing. Now get out!” You gave her a stern look, then softened. “Please.”

“Alright, alright, it’s all yours. Just be quick about it why don’t you?” She poked her head back through the door even as she was closing it, neon headband a glaring indicator of her continued presence. “Oh, and also? I knew it!”

You could hear her cheering as she closed the door, and you groaned.

“So…you wanted to talk?” Spencer prompted.

“Ummm…yes.” You looked up at him, suddenly regretting your impulsive urge to tell him anything.

What had you been thinking?

He stepped closer to you, and for a minute your heart beat far faster than could possibly be healthy before he sat down in Garcia’s desk chair. The light of the computer monitor glinted off of his hair, and you got the overwhelming urge, not for the first time, to run your fingers through it. Taking this under consideration, you realized JJ was right. This was not a new thing. Truth be told you had been attracted to Spencer for forever and a day, you had just been…afraid. But if you could survive a near-death experience you could survive a little rejection, right?

“I’m going to say some very crazy things now very fast and I want you to listen before I lose my nerve. The truth is I was so nervous this morning because I was trying really, really hard not to kiss you and I was still definitely thinking about doing it. You have this like, aura about you, do you know that? Like, “hello, yes, I’m your friendly neighborhood sexy genius here to make your life harder by not only being smart and hot but also, to top it all off, nice!” Which is very rude of you, in case you were wondering. And so like, naturally I’ve had a crush on you since basically I met you, but then last night you were just…so good to me, and you’re just such a genuinely kind person, and it sort of hit me that I never want you not in my life? And then I woke up next to you this morning and I was like, ‘holy crap, I think I’m in love with him,” which I’m sure you realize was a very startling realization for me, and super not allowed with our jobs and everything, so…I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m in love with you and I’m really sorry about it.”

Spencer had been staring up at you with something that resembled awe as you made your way through your rushed confession, but when you finished, he smiled.

“Sorry? Why are you sorry?” He stood from Penelope’s chair, stepping towards where you were leaning against her desk.

“Because that was all kind of fast and uncalled for and I know you don’t feel the same, so this was sort of a really crappy thing to do to you.”

He slipped a finger under your chin, tilting your head up to make you look at him. “How do you know I don’t feel the same?”

You could feel his warm breath on your face, brushing against your lips, and you fought the urge to kiss him once again.

“I just…assumed?”

“Well, you assumed wrong, because the second I realized there was a chance you might not be in my life because some psycho took you away, I also realized that I never wanted you not to be in my life. I wish I could explain it better, but I’ve never been very good with words that didn’t involve statistics or oddly specific information. You like Jane Austen, right?”

He knew, of course, that you did, because he knew everything you had ever told him about you. You nodded anyway though.

“’I cannot make speeches, Emma…If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.’”

You kissed him then, unable to resist it. Sunk your fingers into the twining grasp of his curls and tasted him, breath wild and heart running rampant. His hands wrapped around your waist dug into your hips and pulled you flush against him, where you stayed even after you broke off the kiss.

“Maybe it makes me selfish, but I want as much of this as I can get,” he whispered, paraphrasing his words from earlier.

“Okay,” you breathed, indulging your earlier thoughts. “Just kiss me, and I’ll forget everything. I’ll forgive you for every selfish sin you’ve ever committed if we can make this one of them.”

He did, kissing you hard and heavy, something frenzied to the way he held you like any moment now, something would try to rip you away.

“That’s what I wanted to say,” you murmured against his lips. “This morning, when you said that. That’s what I wanted to say.”

“I wish you had. Then I could have had this sooner.” His grip on you loosened, allowing him to pull away to smile softly at you.

“Yes, but we never would have made it out of my apartment,” you said casually, before slipping out of his grasp and out of Garcia’s office, a smug little grin on your face.

Spencer was left to watch you walk away, looking like the cat that ate the canary. It was going to be a long workday.

“In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.” ― Jane Austen

[artificialqueens]

Galactica, Chapter 1 (Group Fic) - TheDane/Veronica

Summary: Welcome to the world of Galactica, one of New York’s most renowned fashion houses, ruled by the legendary Miss Fame. Follow Violet Chachki, Miss Fame’s talented assistant, as she navigates the colorful personalities and daily dramas of the cutthroat fashion world in order to prove herself as a designer.

Ego, romance, ambition, loyalty, and intrigue all collide in this epic of a story.

A/N: Hey so…have you ever wanted to read Galactica, but were totally intimidated by the astronomical word count? Well, you’re in luck! Because we’re going all the way back to the beginning, and slowly posting a re-edited, remastered, improved version now. (AO3 Link if that’s your jam.) And if you’re wondering “what is Galactica?” then boy are you in for a ride. 💫

***

“Mh-” Violet swallowed a sound of discomfort as she allowed her body to dump down in her chair.

If the door to her boss' office hadn’t been closed, Violet would never have dared to act so ungracefully, but it was closed and she was aching all over, her shoulder pounding with it’s oh so familiar pain.  Violet carefully toed her heels off, her stocking clad feet touching the carpet, her painted toenails visible through the nylon material.

She had been running around Manhattan all day in yet another desperate chase to satisfy her boss’s every whim, racing against time to predict her every need before she even realized it was there.

Violet had known right from the start that working at Galactica would be hard, what she hadn’t expected was how hard it would actually be to work for Miss “The Brand” Fame herself.

Galactica was one of the most successful fashion houses in America, the company rising to stardom during the early 2000s, led with an iron fist by Miss Fame, her trusted right-hand woman Raja Amrull always by her side.

Miss Fame was a perfectionist in everything she did, Galactica known for their quality and attention to detail, the brand always amazing for bigger and better.

The company had one rule.

Perfection above all—and Violet would rather die than not live up to that.

Violet grabbed her personal phone from her drawer, using the moment of privacy to check her messages. There was only one, and Violet felt a red hot spike of anger and annoyance stab itself right into her stomach.

It was from her landlord, informing her of the fact that the electricity in her building was once again acting up, the tone of the text pretending that it wasn’t something that happened several times a month, her teeny tiny studio apartment barely more than a glorified closet.

There was nothing she could do about it, arguing with her landlord or trying to file a complaint getting her nowhere, so Violet took a deep breath, straightening her back.

“Keep it together, Chachki.” Violet grabbed her keyboard, her moment of rest over. She would look for another place to live, wanted to find a reliable place she could call home, but that was impossible in Manhattan on an assistant’s salary.

She could hear chatter come from the office, Fame’s melodic voice carrying through the door, the chatter occasionally interrupted by the baritone of her husband, Patrick.

Violet barely kept a groan back as she saw her mailbox. She had only left to deliver a reviewed sample to the in house tailoring department, but in the 35 minutes she had been gone, over 100 emails had ticked in. She quickly sorted them, her time under Fame’s firm hand almost making the job easy as she knew exactly what her boss wanted to see, and what she could consider nonsensical garbage.

Violet was exhausted, the time already past 6 pm, but if Fame was at the office, she was at the office.

It was part of the game, and Violet always played to win.

“Still here, pumpkin?”

Violet looked up from her computer, only to see someone watching her from the door.

“Hello, Pearl.”

Pearl smirked, her long beachy waves spilling down her back. She was wearing a black leather jacket, a white t-shirt tied into a knot to expose her midriff, and her long legs were clad in black skinny jeans, and Violet felt her heart skip a beat.

She didn’t look anything like the department head she was, Pearl in charge of all online content and written media that Galactica produced.

It was Pearl Liaison who had gotten her the job at Galactica, though Pearl swore she had only gotten her the interview, but Violet could recognize a favor when she saw it, and Pearl had definitely done her one.

They had met during Violet’s final year at Parsons School of Design. Pearl was writing a story for Galactica’s social media on the new crop of design students, and Violet was graduating top of her class. Pearl had sent her the article for review, and somehow they had continued emailing, a random twist of fate tying them together in a friendship that Violet treasured with her entire heart.

She was desperately searching her brain for a way to extend their conversation, the want for something, anything, to come out of her mouth that could catch and keep Pearl’s attention simply not showing up, when the other woman continued talking.

“Tell her I stopped by,” Pearl smirked, tilting her head towards Fame’s office, “If she ever finishes that budget meeting.” Pearl pushed herself away from the door with her shoulder. “See you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow…” Violet replied, but Pearl was already gone. She was just about to return the emails at hand when she heard a voice call out. It was one she’d recognize anywhere at any time.

“Violet!”

Violet froze in place, Fame’s voice coming from inside of her office.

Fame never called for her when she was with her husband unless something was seriously wrong, but Violet had no idea of what she could have possibly done. She clicked on her calendar, her heart hammering away in her chest, but there was nothing there, no sign of anything she might have missed. They had asked for coffee, hadn’t requested dinner. There was nothing on Violet’s desk to deliver and most of the department heads had already gone home for the day.

“Violet!”

The impatience was clear, and Violet knew she was out of time.

“Coming, Miss!”

Violet stood up and stepped into her shoes, smoothing down her dress and checking her makeup in her now black computer screen before she grabbed her notebook and made her way into the lion’s den.

***

“There you are.” Fame heard the click on the door, her assistant finally responding to her call. “How many times do I have to scream your name?”

Fame was sitting on the small couch in her office, the coffee table filled with the budget proposals for the upcoming NYC Fashion Week show. Patrick was sitting at her side, their knees touching.

Fame didn’t actually need him there, the days of Patrick helping her and Raja with the day to day Galactica budgets long behind them. Nowadays, he ran a law firm on the 19th floor, only involved in Galactica matters as a legal consultant. But even though he was no longer their acting CFO, Fame liked having him with her when she dealt with financial matters, since she liked to go into meetings with her new CFO as well-prepared as possible.

She valued his opinion, enjoyed her husband’s direct, no-nonsense perspective regarding her company’s finances, even when she ignored most of it.

“Sorry, Miss.”

Fame took a proper look at Violet. Her back was perfectly straight, her light pink lips set in a thin line, her brows furrowed in a serious expression over watchful brown eyes.

Violet was always beyond attentive, and that combined with her impeccable dress sense was one of the things Fame liked the most about her. She never had to worry about Violet embarrassing her or the brand, even now, as Violet was standing there after a long day of work in her black Louboutins, the dress of the day hugging her slender body, black wavy hair spilling down her back, sharp bangs across her forehead, she looked good.

She had had many assistants over the years, her commands and demands driving weaker willed people away, but Violet had stuck to it, had worked through everything Fame had thrown at her.

“I need the expected showroom budget and staff needs for the influencer event...”

Violet jotted it down right away, elegant hands taking note of everything.

“Yes, miss.” Violet held still for a beat, waiting in place in case Fame needed anything else, but all she wanted was the budget.

She turned her attention back to her husband, Patrick looking up at her with a small smile, which reminded Fame of a conversation she had had with Raja over lunch earlier that same day.

“Actually-” Fame twisted her body. “How do you like it here at Galactica, Violet?”

Violet had frozen in place, her fingers around the door handle. She didn’t move, and Fame raised a brow, just about to tell her assistant to please pay attention for the love of god, when her husband chimed in.

“You’ve been with the company for almost a year now, haven’t you?”

“Yes Miss, umh, sir-” Violet turned around, and if Fame didn’t know her so well, she wouldn’t have noticed that her fingers were clutching her notebook. “I love it here.”

Patrick smiled, clearly pleased with himself, and Fame loved him for his attempted rescue of Violet, how he always showed compassion for everyone around him, but she couldn’t help but want to needle Violet one last time before she delivered the news that was on her mind.

“I’ve noticed.” Fame kept her tone light, keeping Violet on unstable ground. “Others have too.”

Violet’s eyes widened, and Fame couldn’t figure out if the surprise on her face, the display of modesty, was fake or not. Violet had to know that she was doing a good job, didn’t she?

“You’re a Parsons graduate.” Fame folded her hands in her lap. “Correct?”

“Yes, Miss.”

“I’ve taken a look at your portfolio.” The thick leather-bound thing was lying on her desk, Pearl handing it to her right when Violet had been hired, but Fame hadn’t taken the time to actually open it until now. “I didn’t dislike what I saw-”

The set of Violet’s shoulders changed, pride radiating from her. Not disliking the portfolio was an understatement.

Her and Raja had flipped through it together, the pages taken up by photographs of what could only be fashion students wearing clothes that suited them wonderfully, sketches of intricate gowns tucked in with embroidery samples and pearl work worthy of an atelier employee.

It was absolutely stunning, and Fame had already made up her mind to file it away in her personal library in her townhouse.

“You have potential beyond your years.”

Fame could practically feel Patrick roll his eyes, her husband often finding her antics overly dramatic, but this was a serious moment, and Fame wanted to treat it as such.

“Raja and I had a discussion-” Fame smiled, “and we’d like to move you to design.”

Violet looked like she was about to faint, which was exactly why Fame had chosen to give her the news of her promotion like this. Fame loved playing the role of fairy godmother to the people who caught her interest almost as much as she loved crushing her enemies—but only almost.

“We’d have to hire a replacement for you.” Fame tapped her fingers on the table, pretending like the plan wasn’t something she had discussed in detail with Raja. “and I of course expect you to train your successor before you can leave. You know how much I despise incompetence-”

Violet nodded, the grave seriousness on her face almost making Fame feel giddy.

“So-” Fame crossed her legs. “What do you think of my little proposal?”

“That it would be very acceptable.”

“Good.” Fame swallowed a laugh. “That’s all.”

Violet turned on her heel, the only thing betraying her emotions the slight slam of the door as Violet closed it behind her. She picked up the budget, ready to get back to work when she was interrupted.

“So that was quite the little play.” Patrick was looking at her, a smile in his blue eyes. “I’m shocked, my darling.”

“Why?” Fame bit her lip, a moment of uncertainty breaking through her armor. “Do you disagree with my decision?” Patrick didn’t have anything to say, hiring and how she managed her workers entirely up to her, but there was something in Patrick’s face she didn’t quite recognize.

“Oh no, not at all.” Patrick put his hand on her knee, his fingers bunching up the ivory white silk of her skirt. “I simply assumed that you wouldn’t have let someone like little Miss Chachki go without having your fun with her.”

“Really Patrick,” Fame scoffed, pretending to be offended for a minute by her husband's suggestion, but they both knew there was a truth to his words, Fame rarely passing a gorgeous woman up, but she had never felt the spark with Violet, and she wasn’t going to start now. “We’re here for the budget.”

“Of course my love.”

[theredscreech]

Grammar Tips That Are Actually Useful #2

So I honestly didn’t expect to do another one of these, but ever since my first GTTAAU post got a whole bunch of hits over the last few days, I decided to do another one about a popular piece of grammar that I notice is often misused.

Writers, gather ‘round as we explore the dreadful and terrible aspect of writing that is the...

Epithet.

Dun, dun, duuuuuuuun!

I first want to preface this by saying that I was notorious for this. I am so sorry to everyone who read my TMNT fics from 2016; I didn’t know better and I apologise profusely!! I went entire pages without naming a character in the narrative and I have no one to blame but my own ignorance, which has now been remedied - Hallelujah!

To explain: An epithet has a few definitions, so let’s take a look at them. (Definitions courtesy of dictionary.com.)

1. Any word or phrase applied to a person or thing to describe an actual or attributed quality: “Richard the Lion-Hearted” is an epithet of Richard I.

2. A characterizing word or phrase firmly associated with a person or thing and often used in place of an actual name, title, or the like, as “man's best friend” for “dog.”

3. A word, phrase, or expression used invectively as a term of abuse or contempt, to express hostility, etc.

In other words, an epithet is an adjective or noun to describe or name someone without using their proper name.

(There’s a ton more under the Keep Reading, so buckle up.)

Epithets are used in a variety of ways to describe a variety of any character’s characteristics (haha). Most common examples for this are:

hair - the blond, the blonde, the black-haired person, etc.

eye-colour - the green-eyed person, the brown-eyed person, etc.

skin-colour - the pale-skinned person, the dark-skinned person, etc. (Side note: NEVER use food to describe skin colour/tone (eg. olive-skinned). It is offensive and wrong, so just don’t. If you have any questions, I’d encourage you to follow @writingwithcolor (which I do). They have excellent commentary for writers who write characters of varying ethnicities, religions, etc. Check out their FAQ before asking anything, though, because they’ve answered a ton of different questions already.)

status - the child, the teen, my boyfriend, his husband, etc.

profession - the engineer, the doctor, the ninja, etc.

species - the dwarf, the human, the dragon, etc.

or any combination - the green-haired teen (I saw this one in a fic from Izuku’s own POV), the orange-masked turtle (this one is mine and also from Mikey’s POV, and I am sooooo sorry.), etc.

There are, of course, dozens more of examples, but these are the most common ones, especially in fanfiction, so let’s leave it at that.

So why do writers use epithets so often?

Honestly, it becomes tedious and repetitive to write out the characters’ names all the time. It looks odd, too, all those ‘Mikeys’ and ‘Izukus’ and ‘Natasha Romanovas’ and what-nots. They’re just prancy-dancing all over your page and it looks. so. off. There’s just something about seeing characters’ names that, for whatever reason, some writers don’t like. And I kid you not, I had to train myself out of this way of thinking.

I had to train myself because as soon as I learned about epithets, I saw that I was using them absolutely everywhere. I would write literal pages without using anyone’s name, and four years later, I look back at those stories I wrote and posted publicly, and I cringe. But it’s the good kind of cringing because it lets me know how far I’ve come in my writing craft, that even though I’ve been writing for years and years, there’s always something new to learn. There’s always something to improve upon.

“Good for you, Red, but why are epithets so bad?”

Well, technically they’re not bad. They’re just used poorly or overused or both (as was my case).

We’ve already talked a bit about over usage (unless you missed the parts where I confessed to writing pages without using names), so let’s talk about poor usage.

Poor usage of epithets is when epithets are used incorrectly.

Here’s an example: Mikey looked at his red-masked brother.

Gah, that physically pained me to write! Okay, so what’s wrong with this sentence? Well, unless we’re writing for Mirage Studios’ comic (1984) where all four turtles of the TMNT wore red masks, then we’ve got a pretty good idea that ‘red-masked brother’ actually means ‘Raphael’.

Okay, great, so we know ‘red-masked brother’ is Raph, so why is this an example of poor epithet usage?

Answer: Because we already know Raph has a red mask. It is set. It is eternal. It’s a part of who he is, just like his skin or his shell. If you are at all familiar with this character, you will know that Raph is the ‘red-masked turtle’.

Here’s the thing epithets do. Epithets estrange characters from each other. This is why they’re most commonly and properly used for characters whom either we as the audience/narrator or the characters themselves do not know.

This is why phrases like ‘the dark-clad figure’ or ‘the blonde cashier’ are so popular - because we do not know who the people are! Sure, we can always go up to the dark-clad figure and introduce ourselves, or we can look at the blonde cashier’s name tag, and that’s sort of the point because we do not know who these people are yet. Epithets are used, more often than not, for unknowns until they are made known.

There are exceptions to this, of course, of course, most commonly of which are status ones: my husband, his son, their niece, etc.

These are fine, but use them wisely and sparingly (tying into the over usage part again).

Here’s a better example: I walked into the kitchen and found my husband already there and making breakfast for all three children.

‘My husband’ and ‘all three children’ are epithets, but they don’t estrange the characters, per se, because they’re letting us know who’s who and their importance to the narrator/character. That being said, you should still use ‘my husband’ sparingly because if you’re ‘my husband’-ing your husband, whose name is Henry, all over kingdom come, it begins to sound...not good. Like, why would you need to remind yourself Henry is your husband all the time? Do you have amnesia? Are you just forgetful? Are you insecure? Maybe he was unfaithful at some point and he’s doing better, but you’re internalising that and reinforcing the fact that he’s yours? Maybe you just don’t like his name? Or don’t know his name?

Hard to say.

The fact of the matter is this: the closer the characters are in terms of their relationship (platonic, romantic, as friends, as siblings, whatever), the less they will use epithets for each other.

For example: I, personally, have never thought of my mother as ‘the brown-haired woman’. She has always been mom or mum or other such derivatives. It never crosses my mind.

Contrarily, when I’m working at the book store and I’ve taken a few things up to the cash desk for a customer, I’ll let the cashier know that the items are for ‘the curly-haired woman with sunglasses’. Because she is a stranger to me.

Consider Disney’s film Lady and the Tramp (1955). I haven’t seen the live action, so I can’t make a comparison, but the 1955 version fits for what I want to talk about here.

Please name Lady’s owners.

If you said, ‘Jim Dear’ and ‘Darling’, you would be absolutely correct! While we can safely assume that ‘Jim Dear’ is actually ‘Jim’ or even ‘James’, we have no idea of Darling’s real name. Some pet names and nicknames are technically epithets if we’re being especially pedantic today (please see Disney’s Tangled’s character Flynn Ryder’s nickname for Rapunzel), but let’s say for the sake of argument that all pet names fall into the category of proper names, particularly since we’re talking about Lady and the Tramp (1955).

If you listen closely, you will notice that not once - not a single time, ever - do any of the characters that know Jim Dear and Darling call them by anything else (except for Jim Dear’s men friends at the baby shower; they all call him ‘Jim’). Even Darling’s friends call her ‘Darling’. Jock and Trusty both call Lady’s owners/masters ‘Jim Dear’ and ‘Darling’. Never ‘Lady’s owners’ or whatever else.

This is a perfect example of using names instead of epithets. It helps immensely that they aren’t main characters - secondary characters, certainly, but not main - but the point remains.

“But, Red, the Tramp never calls Lady by her name!”

And you’re right! But there’s a reason for that: Lady never formally introduced herself. The story begins in December of 1909 (thank you, Wikipedia). So by the time Lady is six months old, we’re well into 1910. Conventions in this era, as far as I know, not that I am an expert, dictate that ladies/women introduce themselves so that men could then address them (or something like that? Someone please correct me if I’m wrong). Since Lady never does that, Tramp is reduced to giving her the pet name ‘Pigeon’ or ‘Pige (Pidge?)’. Also, Lady doesn’t find out Tramp’s name until the dogs at the pound tell her.

Either way, Tramp is forced to use a pet name, but it is not an epithet simply because ‘Pigeon’ isn’t describing Lady’s characteristics.

Now, Tramp on the other hand...is a characteristic, and someone can definitely win the argument of whether this is an epithet or not. Hint: it is because it’s preceded by ‘the’. He is literally introduced as ‘the Tramp’ (Bull, the bulldog, says it first in a scene with him, Peg and the Tramp, and then Toughy drops it at the pound in front of Lady). This is his epithet, his defining characteristic, because he is introduced as it: The Tramp.

But this is not his only characteristic. He’s helpful and compassionate (the entire scene when he fights off three alley dogs chasing Lady and then proceeds to help her get the muzzle off), he’s also playful (shows Lady there’s more to life than “life on a leash”), courageous (he fights a rat), and respectful of Lady’s choices (tries to persuade her to run away with him but pursues the matter no further when she tells him ‘no’, and he also backs off when she’s mad at him).

This is what epithets do. Not only do they estrange the characters, but they also reduce the characters to a base level. Those well-rounded, complex babies you so carefully crafted become one-dimensional and flat in the span of a single phrase. They become ‘black-haired men’ and ‘green-eyed teens’ and ‘red-masked brothers’ and in that moment, that is all they are and when you continue to reinforce that, that is all the readers will see them as. Besides the fact that readers might very well forget their names entirely, especially if it’s an original work where the audience is not as familiar with the characters as they would be with fanfiction.

This is why Lady never addresses Tramp directly in the film. If she’s speaking to him, she’s looking at him so he knows she’s addressing him. It’s a subtle nuance in the film because Lady refuses to reduce Tramp to his epithet (once she learns it) because he isn’t that basic. (Another reason why Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp’s Adventure bugs me because I swear she actually calls him ‘Tramp’ and it feels so wrong for her to address him like that.) But Tramp gives Lady a nickname. See the difference?

So, yes. While epithets are not strictly bad, they are best when used properly and sparingly. Like, yes, please, feel free to remind us that Mikey loves his brothers and that Katsuki calls his friends ‘Spiky-hair’ or whatever. These are descriptive and good and should be used, just be aware of when and how often you use them, not to mention why. If you’re simply using an epithet for the sake of avoiding saying someone’s name, then it’s poor usage.

And holy freaking wow, this thing is ginormous! I’m going to stop here because I don’t think I can write another word about epithets and how important they are.

Thank you for reading! I hope this helps. And a reminder: check out RavenshellRorschach on DeviantArt for comprehensive how-to’s on some of English’s toughest homophones and grammar points.

Cheers, y’all!

~ Red