#200% Accuracy
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disneyvoguemagazine · 2 years ago
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multifairyus · 1 year ago
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The Punkflower playlists still need work but it occurred to me the Hobie’s Vibe and Hobie’s Aesthetic Playlists have been more or less completely for weeks? May fuck around and drop those for a shot of dopamine to kick off September.
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historyofguns · 4 months ago
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In his article "The Gray Ghost: My 200K-Round XD-M Elite" published by The Armory Life, Steve Tarani reflects on his extensive use of the XD-M Elite pistol, which Rob Leatham, a renowned competitive shooter, introduced to him. Affectionately nicknamed "the gray ghost" due to its worn appearance, Tarani recounts the firearm's impressive durability, having fired over 200,000 rounds. He highlights features such as the ambidextrous slide stop, META flat-face trigger system, and the transition to a red dot sight. The article shares Tarani's experiences using the XD-M Elite in various training environments, including Gunsite Academy, where it consistently performed well across diverse climates and ammunition types. Despite minimal maintenance, this Springfield Armory firearm has proven to be a reliable and valuable tool for both professional training and personal skill development.
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steviebbboi · 2 months ago
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Demon's Devotion
Pairing: Incubus!Lloyd x F!Hunter!Reader
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Word Count: 6.2k~
Summary: A deal that should have been black-and-white has suddenly become grey. Swapping souls means swapping places. You just didn't think that meant to spend eternity with him.
Disclaimer: This is my submission for @yenzys-lucky-charm & @sweater-daddiesdumbdork Horny Hootenanny writing challenge~ sincere thanks to lovely Yenzy and Amber for being the gems that they are <3 I'm also going to submit this into my own writing challenge (lol) Stevie BB 200 Followers Celebration Writing Challenge . Anyone is welcome to join~
Dividers and banner by me :)
***I don't give any permission for this to be reposted anywhere! Pls do not steal work, plagiarism isn't cute~~~~
Warnings/Triggers: 18+ Minors DNI; dubcon, non-con, softdark!Lloyd (but mainly dark tbh), mentions of death, very slight slight mentions of infidelity, drugs, alcohol, Reader has low self-esteem/self-worth, demonic manipulation(?), Latin dialogue (cannot claim accuracy!).
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Tropes/situational prompts: fantasy/supernatural AU, the villain/monster has feelings (or thots) for you
Kinks: size, cockwarming, belly bulging, praise, possessive, squirting, corruption.
Seasonal prompts: meeting a demon/ghost/witch on All Hallows Eve
Smut dialogue:  "You gonna be good for me?" + "I'm gonna make you mine" + "you love it like this, don't you?" + "If you only knew the things I want to do to you" + "Tell me you're mine" + "You wanted my attention, now you have it" + "Please! I can be good. So good for you. I promise" + “You belong to me now” + “Look at that, I think I broke your pretty brain, made you all dumb for me” + "Just a little more" + "Look at how good you're taking me" 
Other kinks: mild choking, spanking, overstimulation, dumbification; degradation, thigh fucking, dacryphilia, aphrodisiac/demon trance (if I missed any TW, feel free to lmk)~
A/N: this is the first time that I'm writing Lloyd too so I hope I did him some justice. Also, mild references to the tv show Supernatural (I do not own the lore of TGM nor Supernatural)!
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The wood was splotchy– and itched against your skin uncomfortably as you sat on your knees. The ‘devil’s trap’ was intact as you leaned over to complete the chalk-circle. Quickly gazing over the symbol to ensure the correct sigils, you leaned back once more to close your eyes and take a deep breath. You tried your best to calm your body and connect with that part of you justifying the reasons behind calling upon a demon.
“Promise me that you won’t do anything stupid.” 
You cringed as you heard your ex’s solemn request echo in your thoughts. Yet again, you made a promise that you couldn’t keep. But this time, it was for his life. His soul. Your relationship was never perfect, and that’s certainly what nipped your romantic relationship in the bud, but you’ve known each other for so long…you couldn’t let him go through with it.
Broken promises was the cycle of your romantic relationship together – whether it was infidelity, drugs, alcohol, all the way to the end of the spectrum where it would also be just him going on extensive hunting trips without proper communication. 
You both knew that the relationship was doomed when it started. He wasn’t capable of showing up for you the way that you were ready to do for him. You knew that, that’s why you ultimately ended the relationship. 
And yet, here you sit in a mildew-infested, smelly, abandoned church on All Hallow’s Eve - ready to trade places with him. 
He was meant to do a lot of good in the world. He was a good hunter, a good brother, and a good friend. He was the main character in a story that you weren’t meant to be a part of, and that’s fine. You didn’t belong in his arc. You were a side character that had a stunted narrative for a while, but didn’t belong nor play any significance into moving the story forward.
When you heard the news about how he made a deal with the crossroads demon, it suddenly clicked on how you could actually do something worthwhile. You knew that he experienced a loss, a real hit from what you’ve heard. They fell in together not long after you both ended your relationship. While that fact spared no pain on your end, you did your best to stuff it down as he obviously loved her enough to have made that deal for her life. So you did what you did best, extended light and support through your pain. Feeling so selfish to have even felt a mark of bitterness.
A hunter’s life is a grim one. Everyone knows that any relationships that you do end up having either end in misery or in blood. But the value of something light and wonderful like love was tempting for people in the life. But, it always seemed to have a cost.
You were a shit hunter, maybe a mediocre person, but maybe, just maybe, your life could have purpose by doing this one thing. 
Something that just makes the pain that you have endured worth it. 
It was that purpose that hardened your resolve. Any lingering doubts solidified into genuine acceptance as you relaxed your body and invited a deep breath, “I summon you, anima daemonium. Anima obscura, i vocare te.”
You repeated the command two more times until you finally felt it. A warmth that seemed to grow steadily hotter which had you hiss in pain as you felt the sordid temperature through your jeans. The chalk circle in front of you started to beam this blinding, white light that illuminated the dark vast space for a few seconds. Your eyes couldn’t hold open for too long as you scrunched them closed in alert from the sudden, bright visual. 
The air in the room became thin and you could feel your lungs expanding to fill them up with as much air as you could with your breath falling heavier with each silent minute that passed. The silence was consciously loud as you looked around the still empty dark space. 
“Hmmm…now what’s this?” 
You heard a low rumbled, amused voice come from behind you. Your heart was beating so fast and you could feel your stomach just plummet to the floor. He was supposed to manifest within the circle…if he bypassed it like that completely, that meant that he was no ordinary crossroads demon.
A deep and intense fear rose up in your throat as you attempted to ground yourself out of your frozen state. You could feel your body tremble as you slowly turned your head to look over your shoulder only to find a looming, darkened figure standing directly behind you. Your gaze drifted upwards to find the identifying face to the haunting voice and you couldn’t hold back the gasp that left your dry lips. 
He was…human. A tall silhouette that exuded an air of danger and allure. His skin seemed to absorb the light around him, contrasting sharply with the piercing, smoldering gaze that flickered an ice blue in the dark. A chiseled jawline gave him an almost otherworldly handsomeness, while his full lips, donned with a daring mustache, curved into a knowing smile that hinted at secrets best left unspoken.
Your confusion to his form, and his looks, felt like an aside as you took in this almost invisible yet loudly formidable being standing over you. 
“Who are you?” Your lips moved faster than your brain could register any coherent thoughts. Your curiosity peaked the moment that you saw him appear in the space.
The handsome demon merely chuckled at your confusion before indicating towards his own body. “This meat suit? Mmmm, not too sure. A poor, unfortunate soul shrouded in his own darkness enough for me to climb into him and take over.” A resounding smirk followed his explanation as he narrowed his gaze at you with an interest that you couldn’t place.
You could only stammer out, “B-but, you’re h-human?” You looked over his figure again as he donned an unorthodox causal fit that you would never have pegged a demon, or honestly anyone, to wear. But with the way that he carried himself, the demon’s confidence was palpable. He was comfortable in this physical form, that’s for sure. The power that was exuding from him was staggering.
The demon cooed at your naivety, “Oh, sunshine. You have no idea who you’ve called and what you’ve just done, do you?”
He moved with a grace that was both mesmerizing and predatory as he knelt down to meet your petrified stare. There was an intoxicating aura about him, a magnetic pull that made it impossible to look away, even as a primal instinct warned of the peril he represented. His presence was electric, a heady mix of danger and desire, making it clear that this was a being not to be trifled with—a seducer cloaked in darkness, where charm and menace intertwined seamlessly.
You’re frozen in place in dual fear and pure fascination as he leaned forward into your personal space to clutch your chin with two fingers, prodding up your face for his invasive inspection. You weirdly felt awkward as you knelt before him under his scrutinous gaze. Piercing blue eyes were washing over the features, nooks-and-cranny, details of your face. Every so often, he would tilt your head to the side to inspect your profile, all the way down towards your kneeling body, and just smirk.
After 5 minutes of his torturous appraisal, he let go of your chin suddenly only to lean closer to your face. His pointed nose brushed yours so lightly, you couldn’t help the urge to look down at his mouth, feeling the hairs of his mustache graze your skin. But you could also see and almost feel the softness of his pink lips. His smirk grew on his face as if he figured something out as he turned to brush said lips against yours very faintly, almost teasingly. 
You gasped at the unexpected contact and a haze washed over you that you didn’t question and felt compelled to close your eyes. Almost as if you didn’t, you would pass out from the intensity of the contact of the potential of his kiss. You leaned in slowly as your mouth was almost waiting for the pressure of his teasing brush…but it never came. 
Coming back to yourself, almost like out of a trance, you gasped harshly at noticing the proximity between the two of your bodies and pushed against his chest to sit inside of the chalk circle to gain distance. 
Breathing heavy at how close you just were to this supernatural inane being, you cursed yourself for letting yourself get entranced into his allure as it hit you.
“You’re an incubus.” A sneer was released unconsciously at the realization. The demon’s smirk only softened at your disdained use of the term and his only response was to deeply hum in confirmation.
“I suppose that is one name that people know me by…but I sense that you may not be so comfortable with that. How about we go with…’Lloyd’?” He proposed as he stood up with his hands in his slack-pockets. 
You ignored his comfortable jeering to stand from your coveted position within the circle. “I didn’t call for you, incubus. I’m here for a crossroads demon.” You clarified sneeringly.
“And yet again, another name that people may know me by.” Lloyd said simply with another smirk on his face. He couldn’t help but let his gaze wander over your shifting body once more. You certainly looked like a hunter, but your ignorance and naivety gave you away at how utterly unskilled/trained you were in the craft. 
The realization made Lloyd’s dark soul tremble in excitement at the potential of catching a brazen, beautifully innocent, yet idiotic soul like yours. And to feast on one that looks like you, with an energy so devoting and submissive…he was suddenly ravenous.
The haze that you felt earlier felt almost like a white, hot energy that was wading towards you when you noticed ‘Lloyd’s’ gaze shifting over your figure once again but with this newfound hunger in his eyes. You shifted uncomfortably as your body responded to the shift in the air. You couldn’t help but close your eyes briefly in shame as you felt it…the wetness that was accumulating in your underwear. 
It didn’t matter that he was a literal sex demon who preyed on women– it was like all boundaries didn’t matter as you felt a similar urge to throw all inhibitions out the window, stalk over to him to have him throw you down on the dusty, creaking floor to just take you over and over again as you begged him for more. 
You shook your head to clear your sinful thoughts, knowing that demons can sense wicked thoughts– but to your detriment, Lloyd seemed to clock something about your tense and conflicted frame and suddenly inhaled deeply. 
You knew that you were caught when you saw that his cocked head straightened in discovery at smelling your arousal in the musty space. He released a deep grunt as his eyes rolled to the back of his head in pleasure. The atmospheric drop in the air was palpable and the room became so distinctly warm, you could feel sweat dropping on your temple at the change. 
Panting at the sudden rise in heat and thinning air, tears started to build in your eyes at looking over the demon’s now darkened gaze. He looked like he was going to attack you, and it didn’t scare you that you may lose your life nor was it that he would take you without consent. 
What was scary was that you wanted him to take you. You wanted to feel him in his own heat on your bare, naked skin as he thrusted his hard cock into your eager pussy and feel the supernatural strength of his grip holding your hands above your head. So much so that you wouldn’t be able to escape him. You didn’t want to leave him, you wanted him to devour you.
You tried to shake your head out of these fantasies and get back to the present but the heat wouldn’t let you. The haze felt so strong. You could hear yourself mumbling something about the heat and subconsciously took off the denim jacket you’re wearing in desperation to feel cool.
In your present view, you could see Lloyd walk determinedly towards you and you found a consciousness present enough to take a few steps back to the tops of the chalk circle. You knew that he wouldn’t be able to enter it, that’s why he bypassed it in the first place. A demon’s trap is meant to do exactly that, he wouldn’t risk losing his prey and enter the circle where you could easily escape. 
Almost as if he could hear your thoughts, Lloyd’s eyes narrowed in mirth as he released a dark chuckle and stopped before entering the circle. “Oooh, sunshine, you’re so cute to think that you could escape me now. You wanted my attention, now you have it.”
He took one dramatic step inside. 
Your eyes widened in shock, not being able to process what he was doing and you turned to run out but you couldn’t. 
You physically could not leave the circle as you felt an invisible barrier brush against your hands that were banging against them to desperately leave. “NO! What’s happening, no–,” you gasped out, tears started to roll down your flushed cheeks as you felt him close. What was worse was that even though you wanted to get away, you wanted him to get even closer. To keep you inside of the circle with him. Delightfully trapped.
A large, warm hand touched your shoulder and spun you around as you shrieked. Tears of panic and confusion were still streaming down your face. Using the sudden invisible barrier as a wall, you shrunk yourself against it as much as you could, trying to resist the confusing and tempting pull, but it didn’t work. Lloyd gripped your waist and pulled you tight against him, your body non-resisting to his touch even though your mind protested.
Your hands reacted to instinctively catch yourself against his suddenly bare chest. You released another squeak at the feeling of his skin. The heat of his naked torso felt so relieving against yours. 
“Just like you thought he would feel like…” You thought to yourself, eyes narrowed in its seeming haze. The part of you that was still conscious and afraid frowned at the feeling of his skin on yours. Looking down, the both of you were bare naked. 
“What- !” You shrieked, not even remembering when or how your clothes disappeared. A wave of insecurity rushed through you at the vulnerability that you were left with in front of Lloyd, who although is a demon, was shaped like a Greek god. You felt as if dignity was taken away from you as Lloyd’s hands wandered over the skin of your naked back and up towards the back of your neck. His touch was not forcing though, it was as light as a teasing feather.
You tried, you really did, to get away from his wandering, sinful hands but he felt so smooth, warm, and so comforting. The reality was that you didn’t want to get away as he kept you pressed against him where you could feel everything. His hardened cock that you weren’t able to really look at earlier was firmly pressed against the pudge of your stomach. You couldn’t tell where the intense rush of heat was coming from, whether it was this haze or him, but you felt it flushed in your cheeks at feeling Lloyd’s erection. The knowledge that he was turned on by you.
“Of course I am, little one. Look at you. So beautiful before me. Calling for me. I'm gonna make you mine.” Lloyd murmured seductively as he responded to your hazed thoughts. His other hand moved to grip the front of your neck carefully.
He wasn’t choking you, his grip was deceivingly light, but the promise of it was what had you whimpering in response. You just barely registered how he was able to give you a response to something that was being noticed in your head.
“What’s happening to me? How are you doing this?” The only curiosities that your clouded mind was able to circle around were asked as his grip turned your face upwards to sultry and lustfully graze your lips against his.
Lloyd wickedly grinned and hummed again before he murmured his response against your pillowy lips, “You’re sleeping, sunshine.” 
You could only look up into his mirth-filled eyes as you mildly registered the shock settling in your system. “No, that can’t be…I drove here and drew the circle, I called…” you drifted in your disbelief as Lloyd turned your bodies so that he was behind you. Your view no longer obscured by his taut body, you looked down to see your limp body…just laying there, seemingly unmoving.
Your eyes only widened more as Lloyd petted your hair soothingly, sensing your distress. “Oh my god, I’m dead. I’m. dead.” Flooded with panic, your body was frozen as your thoughts ruminated in a vicious cycle.
Almost condescendingly, he noted carelessly, “You’re not dead, little one. Your body is in what we call, the in-between. Or purgatory, as some may say.” 
A high-pitched ring sang in your ears as you tried to take in Llloyd’s words. “But, I didn’t let you in. I didn’t give you permission.” You remarked disbelievingly as you tried to recall the regulations and rules surrounding demon possession. It’s only if you invite them into your soul, do they insert themselves, almost brutally, into your physical body and spirit. But you didn’t say the words…
“Didn’t you though?” Lloyd deviously smiled again in response to your disbelief. He hummed against your skin as he proceeded to inhale your hair and down towards your inner neck. 
Unknowingly, your eyes closed deliriously as you felt his breath brush against your skin. Lloyd nosed your shoulder affectionately while he revealed mockingly, “Sealed with a kiss – a brush against the lips is all it takes to bind a human soul with a demon. And you, sunshine, are the sweetest soul that I’ve taken in a long, long time.” 
His cerulean blue eyes met your shocked filled irises as he witnessed the reflective realization wash over you. Noticing the tears in your eyes, Lloyd thought that you’ve never looked more beautiful than you did right then and there.
He cooed at you again and turned your frozen frame to face him once more. “Aw, little one. I promise to take good care of you. If you only knew the things I want to do to you.” 
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Lloyd’s large hands grasped the back of your head to pull you hard onto his weathered lips. You were stunned at the sudden move but also couldn’t hold back the pleasured moan that left your throat at the feeling of his wet tongue caressing yours. You’ve never been kissed like this in your life– feeling cherished or owned by somebody…something else. And it felt so fucking good.
An insidious and sudden gratification came over your body as your hands clutched onto Lloyd's muscular frame to clutch yourself to his body. The heat felt overwhelmingly dangerous as you kissed the incubus demon with as much eagerness as he was extending upon your aching lips. 
You couldn’t remember the reason as to why you even came here in the first place, nor do you even recall where you were at that moment. All you could feel was Lloyd as he kissed you languidly and passionately. He was all that you wanted to feel. 
Breaking the kiss, Lloyd drew back but kept his hands in your hair to ensure his control. "You gonna be good for me, sunshine?" 
The only thing you could do is cry desperately as the warmth overtook your body once again. Feeling flushed and needy for his skin on yours, you wantonly cried out, “Yes! I promise I’ll be such a good girl for you, Lloyd. Please! I can be good. So good for you. I promise. Please.” 
You didn’t sound like yourself at all, but at that moment, you couldn’t find anything in you to care. You were desperate for him. You only wanted to be touched, wanted, and seen by him. Almost as if you needed him to know how devoted you were to giving him all of you, your soul.
Lloyd’s eyes rolled back in his head in derived pleasure as he smelled the desperation and need come off of you in waves. He nuzzled your nose against his with a gratified hum and said, “Tell me you're mine. You need to say it, sunshine, and then I’ll give you whatever you want.”
In one breath, you didn’t even hesitate, “I’m yours. Please, I let you in.” 
Hearing the words explicitly spoken from your pouty lips, Lloyd growled out possessively while granting you another deep and wet kiss. As he pulled back, his teeth bit your bottom lip slowly and seductively as he finished the deal against your pursed lips, “You belong to me now.”
A binding force tingled from your feet and up all over your body once his words were spoken. It felt ethereal and other worldly, but it felt right. You didn’t even recognize what you’ve just done as you have suddenly found yourself on your back, Lloyd kissing you so softly, it felt so contrasting to his demonic nature.
“I’ve treated all of my soul thralls as I see fit in the past. Though you, little one, are by far the brightest soul that I’ve come across in a millenia. Right when I saw you kneeling right by my feet, those eyes looked up at me so delicately. There was longing in your gaze that I needed for myself. Seems like you knew that you needed me too, hm?” 
You only could nod preciously against his soft lips as you pursued another kiss from him. Your tongue sought his as you battled for his attentive mouth, and before you knew it, just as you predicted and wanted, he was laying you on top of the chalk-drawn circle. 
Not even registering the cold harsh wood against your back, you felt so enveloped by his aura. Something internally shifted as you felt that warmth that radiated from your physical body internalize and bloom into something so wholesome, almost as if you felt that hole in your heart repair into a strong, full organ that wanted for nothing. 
You felt complete. 
A gasp escaped you as you broke away from the impassioned kiss. The warmth in your chest seemed to materialize all over your body, inside of you and out. A keening moan left your mouth as you felt the heat start to rush down to your core between your legs. Another gush of wet just seeped out of you and Lloyd growled as if he could feel it escaping too. 
You questioned him breathlessly against his impatient lips, “What’s happening?”
Another whimper left your throat as you felt this deep desire from before just amplify into something that felt not of this earth. It felt transcendent, ancient, and light. It felt like a high that tuned up the feeling of pleasure and ecstasy so that any brush of Lloyd’s skin on yours, the smell of him, the ridges of his muscular body, turned you on so delightfully.
Lloyd teasingly brushed his lips against the exposed length of your neck and you could feel his smirk almost seep into your skin with the following words.
“Our souls just became one, sunshine.” 
A brief moment of panic escaped that cloud of bliss that overcame your conscious body and mind. Sensing your panic, Lloyd cooed at you once more to provide a comfort that you didn’t know that you needed in that moment. A reassurance of sorts against the thought that this feeling between you in this moment was fleeting and temporary. 
“Don’t worry, little one. I’m yours just as much as you are mine. Forever.” His lips whispered against yours intimately before he licked into your yearning mouth, capturing your tongue in another heated dance. 
His words lit a fire deep inside of you and you felt your pussy clench on nothing but his promise. You gasped and tilted your head back in pleasure as Lloyd proceeded to press heated kisses down your throat and towards your breasts. 
“Forever?” You gasped out as your lungs tried desperately to breathe in more air. The conscious part of you incredulously realized that all of this made no sense to you. How was he able to read your body so well? Your thoughts? How is he able to impact you like this? Give you the greatest pleasure and burning desire that you’ve ever felt in your entire life? 
Taking a pert nipple into his mouth, his tongue brushed over the tip teasingly while you pressed his head closer to your chest at the sensation. 
“A soul contract is an everlasting bond between your soul and mine. You have something valuable that I need, and so did you. I just needed you to submit to me, give yourself completely to me in order to make the trade.” He spoke in between placing wet kisses on your sternum to switch his attention to your other breast. Blowing cold air on your nipple, Lloyd smirked and darkly chucked as he witnessed you tremble in delight. You sobbed at feeling the cold air brush against your warm skin, a temporary aid in relief for more.
“But, you didn’t even know what I wanted.” You attempted to recall the reasons as to why and when you summoned him. Although, you were unsuccessful as that part of you was dimming as time went by, especially the more that you felt Lloyd descend closer towards your heated core. 
Lloyd chuckled against the smooth flesh of your soft tummy and to your detriment, kissed his way back up towards your lips. After taking you apart with his fervent mouth once more, he gathered your clenched fists to hold them against the sodden wood in one strong grip. 
Your wrists were now caught in his powerful hold and he leaned in close to capture your yearning gaze. His eye contact was so intense as he stared back, even though he already had your soul, it was almost like he was trying to peer inside.
“You didn’t really want to save that piece of trash hunter, did you?” He kissed your cheek innocently as you felt a shock wave up towards your newly-filled heart. 
“How did you…? But I didn’t say anything about him…” Your shock was on full display as he continued to press small kisses over the frozen expression of your face.
“He abandoned you. Mistreated you. He left you for another woman, and you still wanted to go and save him?” He whispered darkly against the swell of your ear before pressing delicate kisses to your earlobe. Nipping lightly, he continued to murmur ominously, “He isn’t worthy of your loyalty, little one. So, I decided to take it instead.” 
A tear fell down your cheek at the feelings of loss and sadness, memories of your old life flashing behind your bewitched eyes. Lloyd quickly licked up the fallen tear with a growl, “He didn’t deserve you, sunshine. You and I both know that even though you came here for him, you really came here for yourself. You wanted to give yourself to something that could actually hold you. Tame you.”
Your deepest thoughts of yourself being verbalized by Lloyd in such an unconcerned manner brought more flashes to recent memories, it played like a movie in your mind’s eye. Moments where you felt that abandonment by your ex, hearing his resolute voice on the phone as he mentioned the deal with a demon for the ‘love of his life’, a woman who wasn’t you. 
Pressing kisses to the corner of your eye that was now freely leaking fresh tears, Lloyd made sure to nuzzle you in comfort, “But you weren’t meant for that life. A life that only involved the killing of creatures, demons– living a hunter’s life wasn’t what you were destined for, little one.” 
Your teary gaze met his confident blue eyes as he leaned over you once more, “Don’t you see, sunshine? You were made and meant for me. And for me alone.”
With that, Lloyd pressed his curled lips against you harshly and any traces of sadness or loneliness left your soul. A feeling of wanting to be possessed completely by him replaced the aloneness that came over you from before. It was like he was the only cure. 
Eagerly and recklessly losing yourself in the enriching feeling, you were almost inhaling his kiss as you pressed your naked body up into his. Feeling his erection against your inner thigh, you writhed against him to finally make him take you.
"You love it like this, don't you? The fact that I own you and now, I’m going to ruin you, little one." Lloyd groaned against your warm and willing skin. Shifting just so, you gasped as his hard cock brushed against your weeping pussy. 
“Answer me, my little thrall.” Lloyd allowed you to grind against his cock but just barely against your slit. Fucking into your wet and slippery thighs, you whimpered and tried to rock your hips closer to him to push him inside you.
“Yes! I love it! I need you to take me, please! I don’t want to be alone anymore, please.” You begged the demon as the tears returned, feeling this want and power surge through you as your soul and body fully submitted to him. It was so overwhelming. All you knew was that his possession helped smother the darkest depths of yourself from coming out. He welcomed you into himself and you gladly gave it to him.
Lloyd groaned quietly and deeply inhaled the darkest of truths that were emoting from your pheromones within the crook of your neck while he whispered seductively, “Ah, there it is. Thank you, sunshine. Shush now, my good girl.” 
He raised his head to look into your weepy eyes once more, “You’re never going to be alone again.” A soft smile graced the strong features of his face and a warmth full of genuine love blossomed inside of you at the sight. Around your repaired heart sat Lloyd’s genuine smile, such a stark contrast to darkness that you would’ve ever expected to receive from the incubus. 
The warmth only expanded as Lloyd pushed his cock inside of you with one smooth thrust, your wetness facilitating the most pleasurable union. Instantly, your eyes rolled back in complete bliss as you were so worked up, it was the feeling of his girthy cock just sliding inside of you that made you come undone. You cried out in pure ecstasy and a ringing sound numbed around your ears where you could barely hear Lloyd’s wicked chuckle as he praised you for surrendering yourself to him. 
He didn’t stop thrusting inside of you, not even when you clenched around him so tightly that he gritted his teeth at the sensation. His cock was stretching you out and hitting spots deep inside of you that no lover ever could– the gratification of finally being joined together was just too much. His hands weren’t idle as they caressed your breasts and roughly groped your waist, down towards your plush ass where he slapped the reddening flesh. 
He slapped your ass again and tilted his hips so that you could feel him go even deeper. You released a squeak at the novel feeling and Lloyd took that as his opportunity to slow his pace, but not lessening the controlling grip that he had around your waist. You marveled and whimpered at the thought of seeing his marks on your body later as you tore you apart. 
Going deep and slow, his thrusts became harder and your body jolted with every thrust he gave you as you were inundated with how good his cock felt, finally reaching the spot inside of you that made your mind go blank. It activated that switch where your body just went limp and you felt even more vulnerable to the demon’s ravaging. You didn’t even care to feel embarrassed by your loud moans and whimpers, nor the drool that was escaping you. Your eyes simply rolled shut as you lost yourself in the consistent press against your g-spot. 
“Aw, look at that, sunshine. I think I broke your pretty brain, made you all dumb for me.” Lloyd had a smug smirk on his face, accentuating his intimidating presence even more. 
You could only release quiet ‘ngh’s as if in a trance as he continued to fuck you hard and deep. The knot in your stomach started building again as tears of heartfelt satisfaction and adoration filled you once more. You couldn’t describe it, but it was like Lloyd was fucking you with purpose and intent to show you that you were truly made for him. Almost as if he already knew all of your kinks and was exploiting them for proof– evidence that he will always be what you need. 
“Thaaat’s it, just a little more," he groaned out and readjusted his grip so that he could tilt your hips just right until your eyes opened in startled ecstasy, a cry leaving your lips as his cock went even deeper. “There you go, my little thrall. Look at how good you're taking me." He gestured to the slight bulge protruding from your lower stomach. The sight of his cock being that deep inside of you was what had you shatter around him for the second time.
You released a guttural moan as you let go, barely coming down from your orgasm when Lloyd decided to rub your swollen, drenched clit with the rough of his thumb. Your back arched and your legs thrashed until Lloyd held down your body and fucked you faster with his thumb still placing frantic pulses on your bundle of nerves. 
At your limit, your face contorted into an expression that can only depict unrestrained and unexpected bliss as you screamed out your orgasm, squirting all over Lloyd’s wide cock.
The feeling of your sopping cunt gripping his cock made Lloyd release a dark, guttural and infernal roar as he came inside of your still pulsing channel. He gave you three more half-hearted thrusts as his spend leaked around his cock, inadvertently pushing his cum deeper inside of you. 
Lloyd caressed your trembling thighs soothingly as he also attempted to catch his breath. He couldn’t help the last resounding smack against your supple flesh as he noticed your fucked out expression. Eyes wilted with pleasured exhaustion, your body shaking as exhilaration died down.
“You're so beautiful like this, sunshine." He moaned adoringly as he pulled his half-hard cock out of your still quivering pussy. You moaned at the loss of him and could feel your shared cum dripping out of you.
“Mmmm, a sight that will never tire me, I’m sure.” Lloyd groaned out deeply with his smirk still upon his pink lips. He leaned over you for a moment to continue taking in your post-coital glow. He pressed a hand to your chest covering your heart and shuddered at the warming feeling it brought him under his palm. 
What you would find out later is that every sensation that you felt, he felt. Your thoughts were now his thoughts too. Your desires were his. While you were exhausted from your soul celebrations, the enmeshment gave Lloyd an invigorated rush of power. He only took pieces of you with every orgasm he gave you. Your heightened arousal would become his, and so on, everytime that he would take you.
The way that his own empty hearted chest filled with a lightness and charge that he’d never felt before since his existence. He knew that he would, indeed, keep you forever.
Lloyd genuinely smiled in satisfaction as he felt power rushing through his veins. Nuzzling your flushed cheek with affection, he murmured, “Now, little one, let’s go home, shall we?” 
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Final A/N: Welp! that happened. I originally was writing this SoftDark!Demon!Lloyd as a stand-alone from this poll but when the Hootenanny challenge was announced, I thought it would be a perfect fit 😈 Hope you enjoyed reading this ficlet, and reblogs/comments are very welcome~
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bookmaker-untaken · 5 months ago
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you're ugly, you're disgusting - give me 200 horses
Suo Hayato x Reader // Mythology AU
Summary: To marry you, a suitor must beat you in hand-to-hand combat. Or do whatever the fuck Suo did instead.
Warnings: Canon Typical Violence, OOC!Suo, Probably (Look, I Tried), Misogyny
Word Count: 1, 953
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i. 
Contrary to popular belief whispered throughout the steppe, you do not hate men.
But, by god, are they a stupid bunch.
There is this story your Father liked to tell after a few drinks, of you, as a toddler, gripping a snake by the throat and happily slamming him into the ground, repeatedly.
So why are men always surprised when they end up in the same spot?
Your most recent challenger groans from the ground, dust settling around him. 
"Three...two...one!"
The fight master holds up your hand once more and you grin. 
Behind you, there is familiar laughter and clapping, your Father waving you back to the cushioned seat near him. 
"That's my daughter! A force to be reckoned with!" 
He claps a hand on your back and shakes you a little and you smirk.
The man with the eyepatch and expensive clothes lowers his cup of honey wine, a tranquil smile adoring his features. "Your fighting technique is quite impressive."
You look over at him, up then down. His robes make it hard to tell what kind of stature he has, hard to tell what kind of fighter he might be. 
"Most men still challenge me afterwards. I hardly receive compliments."
"Fight you?" He laughs, and the small jewel attached to the eyepatch quivers. "I would most certainly lose."
You give him a look out of the side of your face. Somehow, you know he's bluffing. He might put up a good fight at the very least, and that in itself would be a miracle. 
"You are wise, Suo! My daughter is well versed in combat!" 
You watch this Suo for his reaction. He shows you nothing, taking another sip of wine.
"You see, my daughter has one rule for suitors! They must beat her in hand-to-hand combat!"
"Oh?" He says, sounding genuinely interested. This, too, is rare.  "And what happens when they lose, as that man did?"
"They owe me a horse." You say, chin raised, daring him to speak ill of your methods as many often do.
"Huh." He says. "How many horses do you have?" 
"1,000." You say, smirk curving on the corner of your lips.
"Wow," He says, sounding genuinely impressed. "That is quite amazing!" 
"And a hassle! We hardly have room for them all," Your Father laughs.
 
ii.
The arrow sings through the breeze, hitting its perfect mark.
You're almost boring to watch with your accuracy and skill. 
The Merchant speaks to your Father under a richly colored tarp.
"You must forgive my daughter," You hear when you go to pick up more arrows. "She worries for me." 
"It's cute," Suo replies. 
Your face wrinkles in confusion and he laughs. 
"Don't let my daughter hear you say that," Your Father leans over, whispering conspiratorially. "She might bite your head off." 
"Right," You say loudly, another arrow piercing the bullseye. "Like that would be the optimal way of killing someone."
The smile on Suo's face remains, despite your dark joke.
iii.
The other girl scoffs and storms away, leaving your handmaiden and best friend Líu.
"What happened?"
Liú gives you a one armed shrug, putting another cloth into the basket at her hip. "Well, I told her I had my first time with my husband the other day,"
Your eyes widen. “How … how was it?”
“Somewhat underwhelming,”  Líu admits. “I think she was expecting more of a story?"                                                                                                              
You had the heard stories girls gossiped in the night. Sometimes horrifying, sometimes filthy, seldom in between.You supposed you had been wondering, even if you never asked.
"Don't get me wrong, I love my husband but ... it was just fine."
"'Just fine', huh.” You laugh, eyes crinkling. “So I suppose there really is no reason to stop throwing them into the dirt, then?”
Liú laughs. "I suppose not. But getting married wouldn't be the end of the world, either. Whichever you choose, I know it'll be true to you.”
"You have a lot of faith in me.” You say, puffing your chest.
“Of course!” 
iv.
Another day, another victory. 
The man hits the dust and you're already turning around to walk away, not seeing him scramble to grab a saucer from a plate and fling it at you.
But you do see the hand cast out before you, blocking your vision.
"Come now," Says Suo, smile taking an odd sort of edge. "There's no need to be a sore loser!" 
"You have good reflexes, Merchant," You say.
"Thank you!" Suo drops the saucer into your outstretched hand. 
"Though, you absolutely stole my thunder." 
"Sorry," He says, scratching his cheek. "My hand moved on my own."
"You're going to have to make it up to me," You say, still smirking. "Tomorrow. Archery grounds." 
v.
Suo is just as much of a challenge as you had predicted. 
You often tie. 
You await his return to visit your Father and give him a new challenge each time.
He's fantastic with a polearm, but often lets go of the arrow too early.
Your horses adore him, even the most stubborn old girls allowing him to feed them carrots. 
He tells you stories of his travels, and in exchange you regale him with your exploits.
vi.
"Your next challenger..." Your Mother says. "He's a good man."
"They often are?" You say with a quirk of the brow. You feel the trap closing in on you, even if you do not know what it is for. 
She sighs, seeing that such a method would not work on you. "I want you to throw the match."
"What?!"
You look to your Father, who says nothing. 
Your Mother continues. "He comes from a good family and - "
"What of our honor!" 
"This is honorable!"
You look again to your Father, who simply shrugs. "It is your decision in the end. I trust our judgment." 
You stand in front of the man considering the conversation from earlier.
“100 Horses.” He is saying. “I bet I could beat you.”
“The men before you said the same.”
He spits. “The men before me were nothing.”
You do not throw the match. 
vii.
On a later visit, you and Suo are returning from a hunt, when you tell that story.
You wait for his reply.
"Hm. Good."
You're surprised. 
"Hmm?”
"I just thought you would have taken more of a ... business minded approach?" 
"I think it was merciful," He said. "Any fighter worth their salt would have been able to tell if you threw a fight."
"Have you ever thrown a fight?" You ask. "Is that how you lost your eye?"
"Nothing nearly as interesting as that," He says smoothly. 
"Aww," You smirk.
"Is there an interesting reason you started fighting your suitors?"
"Because I have to," You say automatically, then seal your lips. It dawns on you that nobody has asked you that question before. "Well..."
You look up into the sky as you think. He doesn't need an answer, you know. And he doesn't deserve an explanation. But you've already started thinking. On one hand, it's instinctual - you cannot help but not go down easily. 
"My grandmother ... was taken from her home by a foreign prince, my grandfather. And on her deathbed, she longed for it."
Suo is silent, waiting. He watches you intently. 
"She made me promise as a little girl for that never to be my fate. To never let any man possess me. "
Suo looks at you for a long time. "I cannot claim to completely understand, but I do empathize." 
You make a sound in response.
“Though. It is a lot of weight to put on a child.” 
viii.
"So," Liú says. "Is there something going on with you and that Merchant?" 
You stop cleaning your sword for a second to look up at her, "You mean something other than friendly competition?"
"There are rumors,"
"You know how I feel about rumors." 
"I do!” She say, plopping down next to you. “Which is why I came to you instead,"
"Suo is great competition. More than the likes I've ever seen before."
"And that's it?" 
You pause. "Should there be more?"
"No," Liu says with a loose shrug. "There doesn't have to be." 
ix.
It's a sharp second, like a pinprick - attacks you suddenly like a bird of prey..
The sunlight hits Suo's hair just right and it's like it glows. 
A terror grips you by the back of the neck. 
You shove the feeling away and decide to deal with it another time. 
x.
And then the rumors start. 
The rumors that the reason your so object to marriage is that you are in a secret relationship with your Father.
You balk. It's ridiculous! Why would anybody believe such a thing! 
Your surprised when your Father calls you to his tent, full of onlookers.
"You must get married." 
You laugh. "You're going to let some silly rumor decide for you!? You might as well let it run your court as well!"
"No," He says. "I've let this charade go on for far too long. It's not fit for a young woman to remain unmarried like this."
"You're joking."
His face is unmoving. You realize he is not relenting. 
"Father. Father! You can't just offer my hand to some stranger! ... Please!"
He closes his eyes. "One year. You have one year to choose."
xi.
When Suo returns, he cannot find you. 
"She rides every day," Your Father tells him. "From dawn till dusk." 
When you return, you give him a smirk that doesn't meet your eyes. 
"What happened?"
You start to tell him, the emotions swimming in your eyes, but instead say, "Ride with me."
The moon illuminates your shadows.
You approach a shimmering lake, looking at its surface. "My father wishes for me to get married."
"Ah." 
"I -" You are crying. The tears that squeeze out of your eyes are of desperation. "I know of none who would wish to marry me of their own accord, so I am to be promised to a stranger."
Suo is silent.
"I have fought my whole life for my freedom and now I will be remembered for my failure!"
"You didn't fail." 
You look at him, crystalline tears still falling.
"You never lost." 
"But I did!" You say. "Because I fell for somebody!"
"Falling in love is not losing," He says. "And knowing you, knowing the decisions you make - the person you fell for would probably never have you give up on yourself. If they do, it isn't love."
"You don't understand!” You snap, fists forming at your side.”I do not know if I'll ever be able to love them like anyone else! I respect them! But what if it is not love? What if it is all I am capable of? You do not wish a life with me!"
"That is not for you to decide," Suo says, then after a moment, “Fight me.”
“What?”
“A King once told me that fighting is a conversation of one’s souls. You have something to tell me, don’t you? Fight me.”
You begin to walk from behind your horse. “You have to be serious.”
He nods. “I will.”
“Even if you think you can’t win.”
He begins to stand in a fighting position. “I’ll try.” 
You shift into your fighting position. "Then come!" 
The two of you lunge at each other. He’s faster than you are, and reflects most of your attacks, but when you finally manage to grapple him he hits the ground hard. The two of you dance along the moonlit shore to a rhythm nobody else will ever hear.
The two of you fall to the ground at the same time, panting and sweating. 
You laugh.
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fipindustries · 10 months ago
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there is something beautiful in saying that someone is a natural at some task or talent that is purely a product of modernity. there are some people who, due to whatever strange combination of genetics, upbringing and natural temperament, they seem to be perfectly suited to programming. there are people who seemed to have been born to play the saxophone, there are people who seem to take to knitting or papercraft or building bridges like a fish to water. all of these activities for which there was no training in the ancestral evolutionary enviroment.
genetically speaking we were made to walk long distances, throw things far away with accuracy and communicate with each other. plus a couple of other things.
and yet there are humans for whom piloting planes seemed to be etched into their very soul and i have to wonder. how. how come. what would those people had done with their lives if they had been born 200 years before?
i seem to be really good at doing 2d animation. how would have i felt i had been born before the zootrope? would i have felt the lack deep within. the yearning for an artform that doesnt exist yet? or would i have discovered that i was actually really good at another thing of its time like puppets or working a loom?
and conversely, is it possible that if we had grabbed a baby from the year 1000 bc and raised them in the modern world they would have been capable of becoming a famous vtuber? or a dj? or maybe a figure skater?
it really speaks of how powerful we are as a species that we are this insanely adaptable. this incredibly powerfully capable of mastering a medium that did not exist a generation before us.
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artbyblastweave · 2 years ago
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A while ago, I heard some piece of Apocrypha that Fallout 3 was originally set only 20 or so years after the Bombs dropped, and was later moved up in the timeline in order to accommodate familiar and marketable setting elements like the BOS, the Super Mutants, and so on. I forget where I heard this, and I don’t necessarily think it’s true. But I think it’s a really interesting lens to view a lot of the stories and characters through. You assume 20 years and suddenly it makes sense that someone like Moira is just now getting around to trying to codify survival advice; your choice to take the project seriously or half-ass it for personal gain then becomes a statement about the future of the world. You assume 20 years and suddenly it makes sense that they’d build Megaton in a crater, even if it had a live bomb in it, and haven’t yet had opportunity to move somewhere without a bomb. You assume 20 years and suddenly the Andale cannibals make a lot more sense; they aren’t LARPing pre-war life with eerie accuracy, they’re desperately play-acting at the lifestyle they thought they were going to have when they were kids or young adults, and the old guy they’ve got with them is the actual adult from that period who has the context to understand what they’re aping and how fucked it is. Tenpenny, Moriarity, and Dukov all make more sense now; their immigration doesn’t post date the war, they immigrated *before,* to escape the resource wars. Tenpenny Tower as a power bloc is an affluent settlement that *held out* rather than something that just happened to spring up centuries afterward. Agatha doesn’t have a tenuous connection to a famous musician who got sealed up in vault 92, she herself was a famous musician who got out before it all went to shit, and reuniting her with the violin is a decision to help something purely good from the old world last a little while longer. The Gary uprising was recent. The Lone Wanderer is as old as the new world. Lucas Simm’s sheriff getup, Three-Dogs anachronistic radio DJ routine, the whole thing with the Vampires, the Mechanist and the Antagonizer- it’s not passed-down half-remembered cultural knowledge, they’re doing bits as a coping mechanism, or because its still actively recognizable to a plurality. Little Lamplight and Big Town I think make a little more sense under this paradigm. Vault 112 is aping a world that recently died. I haven’t even touched how much more sense the main plot makes if people have only been dealing with the bad water for half a generation instead of 200 years. Going full Charlie Kelly this fine evening
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eyeodyssey · 5 months ago
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MOON AGE 15 : DAMNATION (English Translation) Moon Age 15: Damnation is a 1988 short comic by pseudonymous author Not Osada, who openly drew influence from the Tokyo Grand Guignol's work in such a way that can arguably give a loose insight to the TGG's mysteriously anomalous works. While only a slight window into what could've existed in Ameya's vision, each contemporary rendering of his world of gore-soaked medical equipment and rusted metal is valuable in what it represents. As mentioned in my prior Litchi essay, the fragments of the Tokyo Grand Guignol we have now are descendants of a cultural phantom, standing as shrouded windows to a strange intangible stage that's positioned somewhere between post-Maruo inferno, industrial subculture and decadent poetry. While Osada’s manga featured notably grizzly and cruelly morbid scenarios, his stories were made explicitly for the shoujo market with a distinctly shoujo-influenced art style. Characters appear almost doll-like with their visual perfections, all while they’re often dismantled and reassembled in bizarre surgical practices by sadistic doctors. Much like how Zera expresses horror to seeing his own imperfect organs in contrast with his youthful appearance, our pristine victims share the same internals as any other slaughtered cadaver, all in a maddening spiral of narratives that contemporary readers often described as resembling descents to insanity. This fixation of the contrast between perceived beauty and grotesqueness is arguably traced back to the Tokyo Grand Guignol’s own works, with lines accentuating the youthful features of certain characters while audience members were known to fondly look back on the actors’ appearances. Litchi himself was described as being a “cute” robot despite the violence it was programed to carry out. It’s possible that this collision is inherent to Ameya’s conceptual destruction of the TGG. A known detractor to poetic writing, he called on a romantic author to pen the screenplays to the TGG’s first three plays so he could “destroy” them in his direction. The use of beauty could arguably be a mockery of it, taking these idealized dolls and leaving them trapped in worlds of fascism and hospital rooms that are haunted by the stinging stench of antiseptics and blood. Plastic hospital drapes were used in place of stage curtains and autopsy films were shown to the wide-eyed characters, who spoke of pure blood and dirty blood, the antithesis of blood, mercuro. What is beauty a representation of in the Grand Guignol’s works with the prominent fascist leanings of the protagonists? Considering the perspectives of our characters where the Hikari Club and the deranged teachers and Nazi doctors are treated as protagonists rather than explicit antagonists, the plays could arguably be read as the decay of a self-convinced beauty under fascist rule. Songs of the pure-blooded ubermensch fading into silence as the singers all collapse, lost in their own delirium as they pump mercurochrome into their hearts and try to rationalize their own organs that resemble the internals of the so-called ‘landraces’ they rendered into lifeless meat. It’s the natural conclusion of fascism, a collapse that occurs in demented violence to the face of a denial of death. I was originally split on publicizing my translation due to copyright-related complications, but after seeing the increasing gatekeeping of TGG materials at the hands of a rapidly growing market riddled with competitive spending and scalping, I feel obliged to share it to the public who (like myself) can’t afford to spend the now literal hundreds that are required to access angura ephemera that was meant to be openly available to the public to begin with. When originally finding this story, the book it was featured in was only 5 dollars. Now it goes for 60 to 200. That's ridiculous. With all the preamble out of the way, the story is under the cut...
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While I made my best effort to maintain accuracy to the source material in translation despite my practically nonexistent understanding of Japanese (my translation method is a Frankensteining of language learning videos, a Japanese to English dictionary from the Internet Archive and Google Translate with a lot of localizing and dissection in between), there are several details I feel I should note for the sake of transparency. One smaller one was the inclusion of the term l * lita. It was in the original text, and I was honestly very unsure of including it in my translation as it’s a term I’m personally icked out by. While I was ultimately recommended to keep the line as is for accuracy, I wish to state that it's a term I'm personally very uncomfortable with in what it represents. The other note, which is the more prominent one in the final product, are the references to The Last Attempt at Paradise. In the original text the club members solely refer to their hideout as paradise and Eden, leaving a lot of excess space in the speech bubbles after translation when making the shift from Japanese text to English. The Last Attempt at Paradise was the name of S.P.K.’s 1982 live album that documents their set at the Off the Wall Hall venue in Lawrence, Kansas. Often considered one of their best concerts and a highlight of the industrial genre, the S.P.K. Appreciation Society of Sydney in their All The Way With S.P.K. / American Tour article describes the concert as being the group's “best performance to date”, further adding that they “Flattened (an) enthusiastic audience with massive P.A. amplification of FX bass regeneration”. This insertion wasn’t done at random, as the Tokyo Grand Guignol’s works were heavily engrained in the original industrial scene of the 80s. Both the 1985 and 1986 performances of Litchi began on a playback of the S.P.K. song Culturcide (from their 1983 Dekompositiones EP), and it was likely that use of the track that led to Not Osada’s early fixation on S.P.K.’s music. At the end of Blind Beast, in a sort of reader Q&A Osada is questioned about some of his favorite music. At the top of the list he features the tracklist of the Dekompositiones EP and the track Mekano from their 1979 Mekano / Contact / Slogun single. Interestingly enough he states that he only likes those four songs from the band, following the text with laughter in regards to their remaining discography. I’m unsure if this means he was unimpressed with their noisier work (which would be curious knowing his liking of Mekano with how it originated from their earliest noise-adjacent album) or if he was directed to their later Machine Age Voodoo material and was alienated by it. In the same Q&A he also mentions the band Funeral Party, who featured specially commissioned art by Suehiro Maruo on their Dream of Embryo single. It's apparent that he also had a copy of the compilation album Vision Of The Emortion, as the list also includes C·C·Mekka and Ego'n Mole, who were both featured in the album alongside Funeral Party's only two other documented tracks, Das Sunde and Gears - Night. S.P.K. references are sprinkled throughout this story along with Osada's other Litchi-adjacent entries. Aside from one of Zera's henchmen being named after the Mekano track, it's very likely that the frequent references to Eden are in homage to the lyrics of Mekano. The first lines of the track include the verses "One by one, odd to even. Break the scenes, rudely eden...".
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Moon Age 15 was originally printed in 1988 as a two-part miniseries in the horror magazine Complete Collection of Horror and Occult Works - HELP, namely in volumes 5 and 6. While being an early work that derived from the TGG, it still wasn’t the first comic to adapt the Litchi stage play, with Das Blut : Blood and Eternal Girl preceding it with their 1986 publication in Osada’s debut anthology Night Reading Room, sharing the same year as the TGG’s early closure following creative conflicts between Norimizu Ameya and K Tagane (the group's author, who remains anonymous to this day). It’s to be noted however that while Das Blut and Eternal Girl were the first stories to feature the Hikari Club as antagonists, they are only tangentially related with Moon Age showing more distinct Grand Guignol archetypes (musings of the full moon, examinations of the Hikari club’s misogyny, idealization of technology, and even an early rendition of the Litchi robot itself). First kept solely as a brief serial, Moon Age was later reprinted in abridged form as a short story in the 1996 Blind Beast anthology. While copies of HELP are notably hard to find and demand high prices, I was given an in depth view of both volumes that featured Moon Age’s serialization by a collector earlier last year. While the drawings are still the same on a rudimentary level, the length of the serialized version is notably longer than the later Blind Beast variant, with the HELP serialization being over 40 pages while Blind Beast’s is only 24. This was the product of the manga being entirely revised for Blind Beast’s print, with the layouts being drastically altered along with basic revisions of the line art. Certain scenes that would usually take 2 to 3 pages in the HELP version were condensed to 1, resulting in a unique tradeoff where one version feels unusually spacious in its framing while the other is heavily condensed and almost chaotic by comparison. It’s only a thing that springs on you once you compare the two variants, I saw the revised version first and originally didn’t pay any mind to it. One thing that is certain is the polishing of the art. The brush work in the Blind Beast version is refined with a more elaborate sense of weight and flow while the HELP version is notably rough with the prominent use of rudimentary screentones. It reflects as a somewhat rougher variant of the art shown in Night Reading Room. It feels strangely digital, like it’s the product of early computer art. The line-by-line reuse of the decapitation scene from Eternal Girl being shown on the TVs further adds to the strange digital feel of the art style.
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Similar to Moon Age, Osada's other stories of the Hikari Club featured the members luring girls to their brutal deaths. In Eternal Girl the members bring in a student and film her mutilation for a snuff film that acts as the story's namesake, in Das Blut they corner another student to the woods where they hang her, and in Jinta Jinta they kidnap a student who bullied one of her classmates to suicide before trepanning her with a strange device that's somewhere between an electric chair and a drill. Not Osada was very recently namedropped in the concluding essay of an English print of Kawashima Norikazu’s Her Frankenstein under the alternate Nagata Nooto anglicization of Osada’s pseudonym. Their name is a curious case as while there is a prominent written variant (長田ノオト), it’s seen numerous English iterations. In Osada’s own English signatures it is written as Not Osada (with the name apparently being derived from a German phrase), but other variants include Osada Nohto, Osada Nooto and Not Nagata. If I'm not mistaken, it could count as one of the first English acknowledgements of Osada's works in print.
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bg-brainrot · 1 year ago
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Day four of Astarion x Rogue!Tav winter fluff for the BG3 Winter Holiday Challenge!
Prompt: Mulled Wine
Featuring: Astarion x Rogue!Tav
Series: Fits into Love at First Knife, AO3 link here
Premise: Astarion walks into you making mulled wine. He doesn’t understand why you must ruin wine for the sake of winter. When he refuses to see your point, you find another way to show him.
Tags: POV Second Person, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Fluff, Holidays, Alcohol, Kisses, post-cannon
Word count: ~1k
“Darling, what are you doing to that red wine?” Astarion walks into the kitchen, turning his nose up at the concoction you’re stirring.
“I’m making mulled wine,” you say, turning to smile at him. “What do you think I’m doing?”
He gives a single sniff and turns his lips down into a grimace. “My nose tells me that you’re ruining a perfectly good bottle of wine.” You drop the smile and give him a glare.
“What do you mean ruining?” you ask, incredulous. “I’m following the instructions that Gale gave me to the letter. Though I guess I am skipping over some of his longer-winded tangents…” A quick glance over at the notes on the counter confirms your accuracy.
The vampire shakes his head at you and walks up to the stove where you’re still stirring. “I have no doubt that you’re executing it perfectly, dear. You’ve made poisons that require more finesse than this. However, adding all of those spices– and oranges? What was wrong with the original wine?”
“Nothing was wrong. I just wanted to make something seasonal,” you say, feeling the need to defend your creation. You look down at your mixture, at the various pieces of seasonal flavors swirling as you stir, and you’re almost positive that it will taste perfect on a cold winter’s day like today.
“Why not a nice buttered rum? I don’t mind if you torment the rum.”
You roll your eyes at this, knowing full well now that this line of questioning was meant to be entertainment for Astarion. He was likely just bored and wondering why you were spending so much time in the kitchen. “I don’t want buttered rum. Why are you so against mulled wine– when was the last time you even had mulled wine?”
A moment of silence passes between you, and you turn away from your pot to look at him, suddenly fearful that you accidentally struck a nerve you hadn’t meant to. However, he just looks pensive, a single finger tapping his chin thoughtfully. When his answer finally comes, he just says it with a sense of awe, “You know, it’s likely been over 200 years.”
“Oh,” you respond, pursing your lips. You gesture at him with the spoon you’re holding. “Maybe it would be like a brand new experience?”
“It could be,” he responds, and while there’s some hesitation to his tone, he does sound more amenable to the idea now. He wafts the steam from the pot toward his nose, as if a better sniff might change his mind. Instead your lover physically recoils and places a hand over his face. “Gods, what are these spices?”
“Let’s see... cardamom, cinnamon, and star anise,” you recite, looking back at the paper Gale wrote you.
Your lover makes a face at you before he chokes out, “Star anise? That’s where the pungent smell is coming from. Darling, as the resident connoisseur of scents, you should have asked me for your spices.”
“Ah,” you breathe out, understanding dawning on you. You point the spoon at him excitedly, “I got it!”
“Got what?” he says, staring at you blankly. You can feel his assurance in your ability to make mulled wine deteriorating by the second. No matter– you know how to fix this.
Scooping up a bit of your brew in the stirring spoon, you blow gently on it to cool it down and hold it out to him. “Try it.”
“Oh no,” he immediately says, taking a step back. “I refuse to be your test subject.”
“Fine then, let me try it first.” You sip the mulled wine out of the spoon, savoring it on your tongue. It’s sweet, it’s spiced, and it tastes just like cozying up to a fireplace– your face breaks into a wide grin at its rich flavor. As you suspected, the star anise only gives it a subtle note, none of that strong licorice smell it typically has. Astarion wouldn't remember that after hundreds of years away from drinks like this. “Mmm, it’s perfect.”
Astarion looks at you for a second, as if waiting for your composure to crack, your body to convulse with disgust. When nothing happens, he only asks, “What does it taste like?”
“Would you like to try it?” You’re beaming at him now, absolutely certain that this will change his mind about mulled wine.
He still seems cautious, probably wondering if this is all some ruse devised by you and Gale.
Sensing his worries, you scoop another spoonful for yourself, take a drink, and close the distance between you. “Mmm mm,” you say to him, behind closed lips.
“What?” the man asks, raising a single eyebrow at you.
“Mmm mm!” you repeat, pointing to your lips, which you’re emphatically puckering at him.
Your request clicks in his head a moment later and he can’t help the laugh that escapes him. “My love, have I told you that you’re utterly ridiculous lately? Because I feel like you’re overdue.” Nevertheless, he takes a step forward, placing his hands on your waist and pulling you close as he meets your pursed lips with his.
The kiss, much like the mulled wine, starts off sweet but quickly comes with a kick of spice. Astarion’s tongue traces your bottom lip and you open your mouth to allow him in. One of his hands finds your face and angles it to deepen the kiss, locking his mouth with yours to try to keep the wine from spilling.
You feel a few trickles of liquid fall down your chin, but you find that you don’t mind– in fact, the only thing on your mind is the way Astarion’s tongue is relishing the mulled wine. The vampire gives a low hum as his tongue circles yours, tasting the liquid fully. He has yet to run away in revulsion, so you’re pretty sure he likes it. Or at the very least likes kissing you.
When he finally pulls away, a bit short of breath, his lips stained with wine, he gives you a smirk. “I think I finally understand the appeal of mulled wine.”
“So does that mean you liked it?” you ask him, equally breathless.
Astarion swipes his thumb down your chin, wiping away the wine that dribbled down before bringing it to mouth. He gives you a dark, lidded look as he licks it off and gives a rumbling hmm. “I’m not sure yet. You’ll have to give me another taste.”
It’s slow going, but you enthusiastically ensure that your lover gets his fill of mulled wine.
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greatworldwar2 · 26 days ago
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• M50 Reising Submachine Gun
The .45 Reising submachine gun was manufactured by Harrington & Richardson (H&R) Arms Company in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA, and was designed and patented by Eugene Reising in 1940. The three versions of the weapon were the Model 50, the folding stock Model 55, and the semiautomatic Model 60 rifle. Over 100,000 Reisings were ordered during World War II, and were initially used by the United States, though some were shipped to Canadian, Soviet, and other allied forces.
Reising was an assistant to firearm inventor John M. Browning. In this role, Reising contributed to the final design of the US .45 ACP M1911 pistol. Reising then designed a number of commercial rifles and pistols on his own, when in 1938, he turned his attention to designing a submachine gun as threats of war rapidly grew in Europe. Two years later he submitted his completed design to the Harrington & Richardson Arms Company (H&R) in Worcester, Massachusetts. It was accepted, and in March 1941, H&R started manufacturing the Model 50 submachine gun. H&R promoted the submachine guns for police and military use, and the Model 60 for security guards. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 the US was suddenly in desperate need of thousands of modern automatic weapons. Reising's only competitor was the .45 ACP Thompson submachine gun. The US Army first tested the Reising in November 1941 at Fort Benning, Georgia. During this test, several parts failed due to poor construction. Once this was corrected, a second test was made in 1942 at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. In that test, 3,500 rounds were fired, resulting in two malfunctions: one from the ammunition, the other from a bolt malfunction. As a result, the Army didn't adopt the Reising, but the Navy and Marines did, due to insufficient supply of Thompsons.
The Reising submachine gun was innovative for its time. In comparison to its main rival, the famous Thompson, it possessed similar firepower, better accuracy, excellent balance, a lighter weight, a much lower cost, and greater ease of manufacture. Despite these achievements, the poor combat performance of the Reising contrasted with favorable combat and law enforcement use of the Thompson mired the weapon in controversy. The Reising was far less costly ($62) compared to the Thompson ($200). It was much lighter (seven vs. eleven pounds). The Model 55 was also more compact (about twenty-two vs. thirty-three inches in length). The M50 Reising's delayed blowback operation, often classified as hesitation lock, works as follows: as the cartridge is chambered, the rear end of the bolt is pushed up into a recess, in a manner similar to tilting-bolt locked breech guns; but whereas such weapons rely on an additional mechanism to unlock them, in the case of the Reising the end of the bolt that pushes against the back wall of this recess, is subtly rounded, while the wall is correspondingly curved. On firing, the extreme pressure from the propellant gases is thereby able to force the bolt-end down, back to the horizontal. From here the bolt can move to the rear removing the cartridge from the chamber; but the combination of mechanical disadvantage and friction the force of the gases must overcome to push the end of the bolt down has achieved a delay of a fraction of a second, allowing pressure in the barrel to drop to a level sufficiently low for safe and efficient cartridge extraction. The Reising was made in selective fire versions that could be switched between semi-automatic or full-automatic fire as needed and in semi-auto only versions to be used for marksmanship training and police and guard use. The Reising had a designed full-auto cyclic rate of 450–600 rounds per minute but it was reported that the true full-auto rate was closer to 750–850 rounds per minute.
The U.S. Marines adopted the Reising in 1941 with 4,200 authorized per division with approximately 500 authorized per each infantry regiment. Most Reisings were originally issued to Marine officers and NCOs in lieu of a compact and light carbine, since the newly introduced M1 carbine was not yet being issued to the Marines. Although the Thompson submachine gun was available, this weapon frequently proved too heavy and bulky for jungle patrols, and initially it, too, was in short supply. During World War II, the Reising first saw action on August 7th, 1942, exactly eight months to the day after Pearl Harbor, when 11,000 men from the 1st Marine Division stormed the beaches of Guadalcanal, in the Solomon Islands. The same date of Guadalcanal's invasion, the Model 50 and 55 saw action with the 1st Marine Raiders on the small outlying islands of Tulagi and Tanambogo to the north. Serious shortcomings in both guns were becoming apparent. The reality was that the Reising was designed as a civilian police weapon and was not suited to the stresses of harsh battle conditions encountered in the Solomon Islands—namely, sand, saltwater that easily rusted the commercial blued finish, and the difficulty in keeping the weapon clean enough to function properly. Tests at Aberdeen Proving Ground and at Fort Benning, Georgia, had found difficulties in blindfold reassembly of the Reising, indicating the design was complicated and difficult to maintain. The producer, H&R, had not yet mastered mass-production technologies in 1940-1941, and many of the parts were hand fitted at the factory just like the company did with their commercial firearms. While more accurate than the Thompson, particularly in semi-automatic mode, the Reising had a tendency to jam. The Reising earned a dismal reputation for reliability in the combat conditions of Guadalcanal. The M1 carbine eventually became available and was often chosen over both the Reising and the Thompson in the wet tropical conditions.
In late 1943 following numerous complaints, the Reising was withdrawn from Fleet Marine Force (FMF) units and assigned to Stateside guard detachments and ship detachments. After the Marines proved reluctant to accept more Reisings, and with the increased issue of the .30-caliber M1 carbine, the U.S. government passed some Reising submachine guns to the OSS and to various foreign governments (as Lend-Lease aid). Both the Soviets and Canada purchased some Model 50 SMGs, others were given to various anti-Axis resistance forces operating around the world. Many Reisings (particularly the semiautomatic M60 rifle) were issued to State Guards for guarding war plants, bridges, and other strategic resources. After the war, thousands of Reising Model 50 submachine guns were acquired by state, county, and local U.S. law enforcement agencies. The weapon proved much more successful in this role, in contrast to its wartime reputation. Production of the Model 50 and 55 submachine guns ceased in 1945 at the end of World War II. Nearly 120,000 submachine guns were made of which two-thirds went to the Marines. H&R continued production of the Model 60 semiautomatic rifle in hopes of domestic sales, but with little demand, production of the Model 60 stopped in 1949 with over 3,000 manufactured. H&R sold their remaining inventory of submachine guns to police and correctional agencies across America. Decades later, in 1986, H&R closed their doors and Numrich Arms (aka Gun Parts Corporation) purchased their entire inventory.
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kybercrystals94 · 3 months ago
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Blaster Bolts
Read here on Ao3
Summer of Bad Batch 2024 | Week 11: “Yeah, kid, we’re fine. | Week 13: Crashing Hard
Rated: G | Words: 200
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Prompt: Crashing Hard
“I hate you!”
She didn’t mean them. But she’d said them. Ugly, anger fueled words. They shot out of her mouth like a blaster bolt, hitting their mark with devastating accuracy. Like a blaster bolt, they wounded. Like a blaster bolt, they couldn’t be taken back. Couldn’t be unspoken.
The space between them goes glacial.
Omega wants to cry.
Hunter won’t meet her watery gaze, her fiery rage extinguished by hot tears. “Go cool off,” he says, low voice tight. Controlled.
She retreats, all too aware of the eyes that watch her go. Crosshair. Wrecker. They’re disappointed.
She is too.
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Prompt: “Yeah, kid, we’re fine.”
Hunter is reading a message from Echo when Omega sits down next to him on the couch. Rigid and ramrod straight, she has her fingers knotted together in her lap, white knuckled. “I’m sorry for what I said,” she says, voice flat and careful. “I didn’t mean it. I never could.”
“I know, kid,” Hunter says. He puts his hand between them, palm up, an offering. Omega swallows audibly, unknots her fists, and puts her hand in his. He grips it tight. “I love you. Always will.”
Squeezing back, Omega says in a soft, breaking voice, “I love you too.”
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✨Let me know if you’d like to be on my tag list!✨
Tag List: @followthepurrgil @amorfista @mooncommlink @arctrooper69 @groguandthebadbatch @proteatook @ezras-left-thumb @maeashryver @baddest-batchers @laughhardrunfastbekindsblog @omegafett99
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uwmspeccoll · 4 months ago
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A Wood-Engraved Feathursday
We recently received Birds of the British Isles by British author and wood engraver Eric Fitch Daglish (1892-1966) as a donation from our friend Tony Drehfal. Published in London by J. M. Dent & Sons in 1948 in a limited edition of 1500 copies, the work is illustrated with 23 black and white and 25 hand-colored wood engravings by Daglish. In discussing his illustrations, Daglish writes:
In preparing the plates I have endeavoured to record impressions left on my mind by living birds observed in their natural surroundings. Skins in museum collections have been consulted from time to time, but none of the drawings on which the engravings are based were made from dead, stuffed, or mounted specimens. . . . A camera study can show a subject with complete accuracy in a single pose . . . whereas a drawing made after prolonged observation . . . may catch something of the spiritual essence of the species. . . . it is hoped that the degree of simplification adopted in some cases will help, rather than hinder, their interpretation, and be justified by the effect obtained.
Today we display a hand-colored wood engraving of the Eurasian Hoopoe (Upupa epops), a very striking bird with with a marvelous, retractable, fan-like crest, golden-brown fore coloring, and dramatic, laddered, black and white rear coloring. Hoopoes are a genus in the order Bucerotiformes, and so are most closely related to hornbills.
We sometimes think of the Eurasian Hoopoe as a British bird because of its frequent appearances in books about British birds; even the first guide book to British birds to use wood engravings, Thomas Bewick's A History of British Birds (1797-1804), included an entry and illustration about the Hoopoe. Yet, the bird is actually a rarity in Britain, with only 100-200 migratory birds accidently blown across to the island each year, mainly only along the southern coast.
The title page shown here includes a b&w wood engraving of the European Goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis).
View more Feathursday posts.
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andromeddog · 6 hours ago
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Oooo jumping off the previous anon ask, do you have any websites/books that good for reference that you’d recommend?? Or is a simple Google search/going from there good enough to start with
I’ve always been interested in uniforms n stuff but idk where/how to actually FIND info (especially for accuracy) but idk if Wikipedia/Google is the best for that lol
i’ve talked about this (here) and (here) before, but i will elaborate a bit more (a lot more) for you!
again my first response is to ask, what kind of uniform are u looking for? bc there’s just more info on some types than others. like, ww2 american paratroopers? sooo so so much stuff out there, maybe bc there was a wildly successful miniseries that is often listed as one of the best tv shows ever made and it mythologized the paratroopers and now everyone has a big ol boner for them and their uniforms and you can’t got two searches deep without tripping over those jump boots (said w all the love in my heart). but that being said, sometimes just a google search is enough!
this is where being familiar w each of the components of the uniform comes in handy. like oh damn i need ref of that one specific small pouch the marines have on their guns, what was that called?? oh duh it’s a carbine butt stock pouch, sometimes they wore it on their belt, i can just google that and get the exact result i want
buutttttt sometimes the online sources/pics u get are undated/unlabeled, and you have to piece together what ur looking at based on ur own knowledge of a uniform. this is especially true the older you go, and ive run into this issue with ww1 stormtrooper uniforms specifically, where you don’t have an exact date and u have to be like “welllllll i can’t be 100% sure if this is from early or late war, if this is german or austrian, but it’s close enough to what i need and i can’t find any other source that even comes close and ive spent four hours looking so im going to use this” and then you get someone in ur dms like “well actually 🧐 they didn’t wear those specific suspenders/have that patch on their uniforms/use that limited issue pouch in this theater” and then you feel kind of silly. but it’s like damn dude i spent hours looking for ref and found the only like five jpegs still remaining of this uniform pls cut me some slack. ig this is just me saying that i dont get it right all the time and inevitably there will be someone out there who has a better grasp on it and will clock your tiny error from 200 yards
to stop my pointless rambling and actually get to your question, google is a pretty good place to start but u gotta know what to be looking for. wikipedia can b helpful for kind of an intro/getting names of items. pinterest is a big one for me, i mostly like that you can save pics and organize them. i’d also check out reenactment websites/forums; those guys are dedicated to being 100% accurate and can also provide some good action shots. youtube is also a resource that i forget exists haha. following artists who are into that kind of shit, taking notes from the uniforms they draw (careful w this one, as i said earlier even ppl who draw uniforms a lot still mess up occasionally). honestly any big website is bound to have some military history enjoyers and so u can do a general search and see what comes up, that can help point to users/a community that will often have their own sources/discussions that can be helpful. ive said it before but watching movies/shows about the specific era ur looking for is great, you can see how a uniform sits and moves with a person 👍
also books! there isn’t a single catch all book for uniforms, again (again) it’s all by era/country you’re looking for. ebay is GREAT for finding super specific books on topics only you and five other people care about. sometime u can get lucky at an old used book store but that’s a real gamble and only happens veryyyyyy rarely hahah
i always use these sorts of references in tandem and double check to be sure, i swear i have like 12 tabs open and two books open per drawing just so i can get everything as close to accurate as i can. but like ive said im kind of obsessive about details (negative) and can’t be chill about anything ever. what a super cool and very practical skill set that makes me very popular amongst my peers and interests everyone once i have two beers and won’t shut up about it
ending this with my standard “did any of this make sense?” i’m going to turn on my computer now and spend the next eight hours staring at reference pics and drawing my silly little war boys have a great day everyoneeeeeeeee
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aniyas-weird-writing · 9 months ago
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Could you do something with Erron, Sonya and Cassie challenging the reader to a marksman contest? (You can choose who wins in each)
Erron Black, Sonya Blade and Cassie Cage with reader challenging them to a marksman contests
warning: none
theme: fluffy, either romantic or platonic
a/n: I rlly want to make my blog aesthetic but idk how 😭
Erron Black
M’sorry but Erron Black would totally beat you by the long shot (figuratively and literally)
The man has 200 years of experience in his hands 😭
You already know he knows all the tricks and stuff
Though, Erron Black would totally teach you some things that he noticed you were struggling with
Sonya Blade
Since Sonya doesn’t have much time on her hands, you both would have the schedule beforehand for the competition.
Depending on your experience, you may or may not beat Sonya
If your experienced, there is a possibility that you would both draw. However, if you have little experience, Sonya will beat you. The result will be the same if you have no experience
If you have little or no experience, Sonya would be happy to teach you some tips.
Cassie Cage
(For this scenario, let’s assume your decently well at aiming your gun)
You and Cassie hang out a lot with eachother! You both know a lot about eachother.
However, there is a chance that the contest would either end in a draw or you losing to Cassie.
You, not wanting to lose to Cassie, decide to trick her. Your tactic works as she’s momentarily stunned and you shoot the targets with proficient accuracy.
Cassie whines, saying you cheated but you smirk and tell her you don’t know what she’s talking about..
Actually, it would probably end with none of you winning because you and Cassie would argue with eachother; with Cassie claiming you cheated with stubborn old you denying it.
I got motivation to write this.. Erron’s part is kind of bland but I didn’t know what else to write.
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askagamedev · 1 year ago
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Lately I’ve noticed a bit of, let’s call it pushback, against the upcoming release of Baldurs Gate 3 and Larian Studios, by developers and studios alike. From your perspective as a game developer yourself what is this all about? Why are they calling BG3 an anomaly and making it sound like Larian hasn’t earned the praise they are getting? Why all the attempts at what sounds like trying to discredit their work?
The unfortunate truth of the matter is that the discussion I've seen from devs is subject to signal decay when in an environment where the most maddening and viral takes are the ones that get amplified over accuracy or educational takes. The various "hot takes" I've read were traced to the observations of [Xalavier Nelson Jr. about BG3] and I have to say - after reading his original thread, I am very much in agreement with him. Baldur's Gate 3's success is absolutely not a template that can be easily repeated and is very much an anomaly.
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You can tell a lot about a game by the number of developers in the credits and the length of its dev cycle. If you multiply (number of devs) x (months of development) x ($10,000 per month per dev), you get a pretty good estimate of a game's overall budget. BG3 started development in 2017 and had a team of over 300 developers working on it. 300 devs x 72 months x $10,000 = approximately $216 million USD. "Step 1: Secure $200 million in funding to develop your game" is absolutely not a business plan that is feasible for 99.9% of indie developers.
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This also goes for other circumstances beyond their control that managed to favor them. Larian was incredibly successful in raising funding during early access, but they are one of a tiny fraction that made it. Larian got incredible word-of-mouth promotion from their fans while thousands of amazing indie titles languish in obscurity on Steam. Larian managed to secure a major license that is extremely well-regarded - not exactly an easy feat to replicate. Each of these various circumstances ended up a win for them and every single one of them was necessary to obtain the success they did.
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This isn't to say that Larian doesn't deserve praise for their success - they absolutely deserve all the praise and more. They managed to deliver a fantastic high quality game and I laud them for it. It is a tremendous accomplishment and I am happy for their success. What I will never agree to is saying that this is the path others should follow, because I believe that Larian managed to capture lightning in a bottle. All of the ducks had to line up just right for them to succeed like this, and any of the major factors in their success could have gone very very wrong for them through no fault of their own and sank the project partway through. Larian managed to win and they deserve huge amounts of praise for it, but it is in no way an easily-repeatable formula for success.
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scrapironflotilla · 26 days ago
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"During the course of a combat it is well known that the accuracy of fire falls off to an almost incredible degree, and the mean expenditure of bullets per man placed out of action previous to the introduction of long-range weapons never fell materially below 200." Continental vs South African Tactics - Col Frederick Maude, Royal United Services Institute Journal, 1902.
Something you don't see a lot of is the research that the British army did before the 20th century about the wars they fought. This is mostly because they didn't have an organised staff to actually do this research, but interested individuals certainly did.
Maude doesn't cite his sources, but he draws reference to the Napoleonic and US Civil wars as being before the advent of "long-range weapons". Gives you a sense of how inaccurate smoothbore muskets and even mid-century rifles were given the close ranges at which they're firing.
What's also interesting is how much that number grows by the middle of the 20th century. In WW2 it's taking upwards of 5,000 bullets to cause a single casualty, and by some accounts 50,000+ during the Vietnam War.
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