#But I mean like if you want realism but don't want it to quickly look outdated you can combine elements)

[actualaster]

Y'know, I wish more games realized there's a balance they can strike between "super mega ultra hyper realistic" and "super mega stylized"

You can have REALLY GOOD attention to lighting, water, textures, etc. which makes the graphics crisp and pretty while also giving them a clear stylized look which helps preserve them against looking super dated over time.

[my-secret-shame-but-fanfiction]

Lightning Makes The Roots Grow Deep

Basil Stilt x afab!Reader • Rating: 18+ pals Masterlist• ao3• want to be tagged? | request info • Kinktober 2024 Masterlist • Kinktober 2023 Masterlist • Day 19: Voyeurism

Summary: There's something watching in the woods.

A/N: This was meant to be for kinktober 2023 (I'm so sorry). I don't know how this became what it is.

Warnings: sort of magical realism, Basil becoming a sort of Green Man, plants growing out of people, cut to black sexy times, please let me know if I have missed a warning!

Word Count: 1101

It had started when leaves began to grow from the scar tissue along Basil’s face. It wasn’t painful, just odd. But then again most things had been strange in the last few days… months? How long had it actually been? 

He often woke with berries on his eyelashes, the small red fruits falling when he first opened his eyes to the new day. 

He ate less. Began to just sit for hours by the window to soak up the sunshine. On rainy days he opened them, hung out bowls and cups on string to catch the rainwater and drink it down. There was nothing else like it. No other food or liquid, even tap water sustained him in the same way, nothing else quenched the deep ache in his chest. 

After a long time, when the vines from his skin had begun to twist and creep down along his arms and across his chest he had left. Finally. 

He wasn’t sure where the energy had come from, the drive. He just simply walked out of his flat in the dead of night. 

His car, the poor thing had sat dormant for years, started the second he got in and put his hands on the wheel even though his keys were still somewhere upstairs in the reminiscence of his old home. 

He drove for a long time. Out of the city and further still. He wasn’t sure where he was going, but something pulled at his nerves, an urge he could not deny. 

Basil didn’t know the name of the place when he arrived, surely a national forest of some sort. But it was the right place. 

As he walked further into the trees his muscles relaxed, the cobwebs in his lungs cleared. He was home. 

. 

“Are you sure there’s no bears?” Elizabeth asked sincerely, and Barry laughed. 

“No fucking bears, I promise.” He grinned. 

Elizabeth didn’t look so reassured. “Are you 100% on that?” 

Jamie, her boyfriend wrapped his arms around her. “No bears.” 

“Hmm.” She didn’t look so impressed. 

“I wouldn’t be here if there were.” You say, trying to comfort her. 

She gave you a brilliant smile. “Okay, you I trust.” 

You laugh, all four of you saying goodnight as you went to your respective tents. Elizabeth and Jamie shared, Barry to another, and the last was yours. 

Part of you was sure that this whole trip was secretly Jamie’s and Elizabeth’s attempt to set you up with Barry. He was nice but there was something you couldn’t put your finger on. Something just didn’t seem right. 

It’s difficult to sleep. You’d expected the cold and had packed well for it. It was the noise that was getting to you. This forest seemed louder than any you’d ever been to before. Busy. As if it was teaming with life ten times the usual amount. 

Somehow you manage to get to sleep for a while. A little after 2am you wake, needing to pee. 

You sigh and pull yourself out of your sleeping bag and grab your torch. Even though you were just going to duck behind a tree didn’t mean you weren’t going to get lost. People who got lost were people who thought they couldn’t get lost. 

You stepped as quietly as you could, not wanting to wake the others and walked around the back of a large tree and peed quickly. 

You’d just finished disinfecting your hands when there was a snap from the distance. You jolted, looking up in the direction quickly and shining your light. There was something there. Between the nearest outcrop. Like… light? Soft glowing orbs of dark pink and red. They floated like bubbles, a seemingly high pitched soft sound emanating from them. 

You don’t remember following them, one moment you were there by the campsite and the next you were deep in the undergrowth, mud high up on your jogging bottoms from your journey. 

“What?” You frown, blinking hard and trying to shift the wave of dizziness that floats next to your eyes. 

Panic doesn’t grip you, doesn’t sink in despite you not knowing where the hell you are. Instead, you feel sort of… warm. 

There’s a faint light blue glow up ahead filtering through the trees. A ranger’s station or something. You walk further in, closer to the light and…

You stop in your tracks. 

The forest is glowing. All manner of plants, flora you have never even seen in a textbook cover the clearing. Soft moss lines the floor. You lightly touch the bark of the closest tree, it’s warm. Not uncomfortably, not in a way that would make your skin crawl. It’s nice, soothing. 

It’s only then that you notice the figure in the middle of the clearing. You pause, swallowing as he looks at you. 

He says your name softly.

“How… how do you know…?”

“I’ve been watching,” he pauses, turning his head so you can see the leaves growing from his face. He moves closer, seeming to float across the moss. “You… and the others.” Lightly he touches your cheek, you can feel the vines that run along his fingertips. 

“What… are you?” You breathe, unable to take your eyes away from his skin, how the ivy twists in his hair and the moon seems to glow in one eye, his other dark like the night itself. 

He leans forward, pressing his lips to yours and opening your mouth with his own. You moan, shiver as his hand trails down your neck, his hand resting just above your heart. 

You pull him closer when he licks into your mouth. He tastes like fruit, sweet and heady and when you pull back small flowers have budded and bloom along the side of his face. 

He places his hand on your hip and minuscule vines grow and slip under your clothes, pushing them from your body and tearing them away with small thorns that do not touch your skin.

You gasp, heat rising to your skin. 

“It’s alright,” he whispers, kissing your cheek and jaw. “You’re safe. I promise.” 

“I…” You swallow, words escaping you as he sucks a love bite into your skin, pulling you flush against him while he traces his hand down and lightly teases your nipple. 

When your mouth opens in a soft moan he groans, letting his fingers sink further down your body and stroke along your centre. You can feel the vines from his hand run along your skin, start to twist and stroke along your thighs. 

He licks into your mouth the same moment he sinks his fingers inside of you.

Thank you for reading!

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[jonathan-samuel-smith]

BoSS Dami is like the same character but rather than serious and grumpy they play up his arrogance into him being boastful and cocky and I love it. He's having so much fun in the film, he loves fighting. He's bloodthirsty in a way that makes the audience happy for him which is pretty funny. I love the way they animate his facial expressions it's so good, and I love his voice. It's a little bit serious and broody while still being arrogant and youthful it's great. Jon sounds a little too old to be ten but I like his voice other than that. I love how Jon thinks he's cool and how quickly they bond despite clashing early on. And they're so cute. So. Cute.

The colorism thing is a big problem and it's par the course for Damian, when given the full range of color options for a character of his heritage they will always choose the lightest unless they're actively fighting their subconscious racism and colorism.

I went off on a rant on DC colorists colorism under the cut this post really got away from me, but READ THIS IF YOU DRAW DAMIAN!!↓

I get that you draw what you see and if you see a lot of white and lightskinned people you end up getting good at only drawing white people, and light skin has been purposely highlighted in visual media for centuries in this country, but USE GOOGLE IMAGE SEARCH GOD DAMNIT, FOLLOW POC ON SOCIAL MEDIA, HIRE POC. Go out of your damn way to learn this shit. If you can't do it good now, learn!

I went through this with homestuck, all the human characters have #00000 skin so you're free to have whatever race headcanons you want of them, but that's not actually representation. I was influenced by this style because coloring skin is hard so I just shaded it with my pencil and left it uncolored but then I realized by refusing to color the melanin in someone's skin, that's colorism. Fuck that. So I decided to learn, and mess up a lot of otherwise pretty works, because it would be worth it in the end. I'm still learning but I've learned so much already.

For example a lot of colorist societies draw pale skin far too desaturated. If you compare actual skin to the skin in anime, nearly all Asians that aren't photoshopped or wearing make up/bleaching look so much darker. Bleached paper being what we draw on and light skin being the presumed default in our culture has made white people (and others) way too comfortable doing the bare minimum in coloring skin. You don't still use the yellow crayon for blonde hair so why do you still use the very light peach/tan as the default skin tone? You're not even coloring light skin right let alone approaching properly drawing dark skin right.

I'm so fucking tired of every company doing this when I learned how to do better in middle school. Get out of your fucking comfort zone and draw diversely, or you're a coward and you're not doing anything to combat your culturally inherited racism.

Most DC artists are good at drawing 1 or 2 skin tones, maybe 3. There are so many more undertones and shades than that. I'm not counting rainbow colors. If you want Damian to be paler than his mother to reflect his mixed heritage that's totally fine! But it should be darker than Bruce's and Jon's. I've compared them and paid attention to the shadows being cast and he's really not darker than Jon and only rarely darker than Bruce because they drew Bruce especially pale.

I want you to understand that removing melanin from a character is erasure of their identity and actively harmful. There's a broad range of skin tones that the son of Talia and Bruce might have but choosing the lightest possible option is favoring white skin over dark skin, not realism. Just because you've seen more light skinned mixed kids doesn't mean there aren't darker skinned ones. The light skinned ones get more attention on social media and commercially because of social bias + algorithms + intentional racism. Most people who are colorist think that they're not racist because they're representing nonwhite people not bothering to notice that the people they represent have the most european features and light skin in their group. Yes those people are oppressed too but you're not fixing anything by only showing racially ambiguous people.

Mariner on star trek is a relevant example from animation. Both her parents have dark skin but she has much lighter skin because she's a main character. Stop it. Stop it. Don't think just because you see something highlighted a lot that it's the most common thing that's so dumb. How many mixed people do you think you see that you assume aren't mixed? There's confirmation bias at play.

I just wish I could beam this message into everyone's thick fucking skulls. Dark skin is beautiful. My number one coloring tip for any artist is this: don't be afraid to go too dark. You'll ruin the contrast and legibility and dynamic if you keep everything light and mid tones.

If you go too dark, you can filter it later.

I hate the argument "there are plenty of mixed people who dadadadada" stop. there are such a variety of people in numbers you literally cannot fathom with your human brain. You cannot picture all of the people that look exactly like whatever it is you're saying is more uncommon. Race is made the fuck up but its impact and cultural significance is real as hell. Genetics are so fucking diverse. I know a biologically related pair of siblings, one super tall dark skinned black dude and one super short freckled white girl, they have the same parents you cannot tell that they are related if you're thinking that mixed race children are like taking the skin tones and mixing them like paint.

Colorism is physically dangerous. People will assume that a mixed race child is being kidnapped by their parent because they so look different to them.

Damian could look the spitting image of Talia, I can tell you that with 100% certainty. He also could look the spitting image of Bruce, or Thomas Wayne, or Martha, or Ra's. All we know is that he's Arab, Chinese and white, he has black hair and green eyes, and he's short and good looking. Taking that and making the most european looking version of that guy as possible is fucking racist. I'm so serious.

If you want to do your part to combat racism and make a society where everyone can get attention and be seen as beautiful regardless of skin tone, then draw Damian with dark skin.

If you don't want to do that.... I don't understand you. Learn empathy, it will be useful to you.

[noeou]

𝐅𝐀𝐂𝐄𝐋𝐄𝐒𝐒 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄.

a celebrity au. a part of your collaboration is the inevitable photoshoot to kick it all off.

includes: leona kingscholar, jamil viper, and azul ashengrotto. ( x gn! reader. )

contains: fluff! no prior relation/strangers to lovers. sort of suggestive, but not too much.

more like this: masterlist. part two.

sincerely noe , foreshadowing? forshadowing <3 (if all goes well.) im sorry for my long, long break. i miss you all :)

leona kingscholar.

oh, how much you hate arrogant bastards.

maybe it was his effortless charisma that got to you, probably, but you wanted to punch him in the face. turn this mature photoshoot to a hospital one real quick. he's very handsy in front of the cameras (not in a weird way), but you're fine with it. it just means he's within kicking distance at any given moment.

the photographer was having a field day with the tension between the two of you. like i said, the concept was more of a mature one. maybe it was because you're both faces of rivaling luxury brands.

takes every chance he gets to annoy you, tugging your hair or pinching your cheeks. you're constantly glaring at his smug face in most of the photos.

you do that pose where he sit between you legs on a couch. you sit on top of the back, him on the couch itself. he rests his arms on your legs and you squish his face, more aggressively than necessary, (payback, but they don't have to know that.)

jamil viper.

it was a collaboration with his band. originally, the fans liked you with a more popular member, but their minds were quickly changed. you spent most of your time talking to him or staring.

it was a school band vibe, yearbook photos and 'classroom' candids.

he avoided you whenever he could, most of your interactions occurred on your own time because of this. when you had the chance to ask him why, though, he just mumbled about needing to focus and that was that.

very much you trying to get a reaction from him but it only having that effect on you, not so much him.

in one of the photos you're sitting on a desk, leaning forward with a mic in your hand. you use it to lift the band member's gaze to yours. the flustered look on your face at his compliance was genuine.

azul ashengrotto.

you and azul were the main leads for a new romance drama. its release was a hit and the only things fan could talk about (aside from the show itself) was your chemistry, this photoshoot was only more proof of that.

its concept was cooking and took place in a kitchen setting. the high budget allowed the two of you to actually attempt at cooking something and they'd take candids for 'realism.' you were also vlogging it on the side.

azul wasn't only nice to work with on set but also off. he's invited you and some of your (close) coworkers to his home where he cooked for you all, it made this shoot feel more natural and less awkward.

something that you learned while working together is how shy azul actually is. whenever you looked up, meeting azul's concentrated face, you made sure to wash your hands and reach for your camera. don't get me started on his malfunctions to follow.

while azul's distracted, you get a camera person's attention in secret. you place a stool behind him and stand up on it, reaching to hug him from behind but instead pulling his lips up in a smile. your attention fully on him as you whispered, "smile.."

[ofmermaidstories]

I LOVE HEARING YOU TALK ABOUT STARDEW

If you don't mind me asking, how often do you play stardew valley? do you play at night? with a cup of tea?

please! i am dying to talk about it!!! i tend to play games in solid, obsessed blocks. so i’ve been playing every day for the last couple of weeks, now, but before that it’d been months and months since i touched it last. i’ll play whenever! whenever i have time, or throughout the day if it’s a lazy one. i like to play in stretches, and i consider it a treat to, so i’ll often have a snack ready or a drink (sometimes that cuppa you mentioned, often a juice box tho bc im like, five, lmao). i only have two saves!! my first one, delilah, where i didn’t know what i was doing and got bored of, really quickly—and my current one, my second one! it uses my real name, lmao, which tbh i’m not sure i like—it’s always jarring when the other characters say things to me. 💀 we’re currently in winter, in year five. the farm is called Sea Dreams, and it’s a beach property. i completely ignored the warnings about it not being for beginners lmfao, but i quite like it! beyond the romanticism of being on the beach of this like, inland sea cove, i like that the sand means only a fraction of the land is actually good for proper farming. i use the proper soil, the real soil, for my seasonal crops and then let patches of trees grow throughout the rest of the farm. my fruit trees are near the bat cave; in front of my house i grow small plots of flowers. and then by the shore i keep the animals. i’ve fenced them so they get trees and the pond and the sea as well; if i’m spending the day on the farm i’ll sometimes hear the plop! of the ducks, gliding onto the cove’s waters. they always look so contented. 🥹 if i’m there in the evenings, when it’s time for them to turn into the barn or the coop, i’ll stand on the shore and wait for them to drift back—they’re always last in, on those days.

i have a single fish pond, so far, towards the south of the property—it’s filled with sturgeon and from their eggs i make caviar. i make goats cheese and bread and mayonnaise and at the end of every season i harvest the flowers that grew and ride into town on my horse, grover, and hand them out. in the warm months my farm is covered in grass, everywhere! on the last day of autumn i cut it all down, for hay. my greenhouse is on a little island of it’s own, with grandpa’s shrine behind it: inside i grow more flowers, and fruit trees, and strawberries, blueberries, ancient fruit, starfruit. i hope to get a second mango sapling at some point, to grow in the greenhouse—my first one is now planted among my peach trees, waiting for it’s first summer.

fairy roses are my favourite flower. every autumn, during the stardew fair, i always include a pink one, one of my best, in my grange display for the competition. this year my setup included my best goats cheese; my best, aged wine. my best peach and my best orange! caviar, my fairy rose, a bottle of truffle oil and a jar of fairy rose honey, and then lastly, a tulip from spring, lavender-dawn in colour.

(i always win, and i always feel so smug about it. i hate pierre so much lmao, he’s such a dick.)

hmm, what else can i tell you? i’ve only just made it to the skull caverns! they stress me out so bad. 💀 recently tho (like, today, lmfao), i found my first dinosaur egg! and my first two prismatic shards—i saved the first shard in a chest in my barn, and with the other got a sword. the dinosaur egg is currently incubating! i’m so excited for it to live among my chickens and my ducks and my rabbits. 🥹

i really, really like the magic realism that’s steeped into the valley. beyond the atmosphere of the game (the freedom of leaving behind a life that was stifling you, and finding a home in the valley you’d never even dared dreamed of, before) the magic of the world is like, the number one factor in me wanting to write a AU for it. i like—things like the fairy stones. An old miner's song suggests these are made from the bones of ancient fairies. i like things like finding the burnished copper helmets of the dwarves; i like that we can wear one. i like that sometimes, in the night, there’s a rustle of wings and the next morning when you step outside there’s an owl statue, nestled somewhere on your farm like it’s been there for centuries. there’s a junimo hut in the secret, wooded area of pine trees on my farm. they’re too far from the crops to appear, but sometimes when i ride past in the dusk, just when it’s getting dark, you can hear the flicker of flames—the open doorway to their little home glowing. there’s also a secret altar to yoba, amid the trees; the dull steel of the sign of the vessel hidden away against the dark green. there’s just so much to it! i feel like you could dig deep, go deep, literally deep in the mines, and still not understand the world. and it makes me want to write that, lmao. the whole game just makes me want to write! just the world of it—waking up at six am, every morning. learning how to make something of the land before you, how to grow things, how to care for things, animals. walking into town to buy seeds. galloping into town, or down to the forest. one of my favourite touches, in the game, is how sometimes there’ll be a flock of birds on the path, pecking at something—and when you come along they all take flight, all together. and there’s a moment, every time, where you’re in the middle of it, the the beat of the wings—running or riding with them, almost. that’s what i wanna write about. the ride into town, slipping from the horse, breathless, in front of the general store or the saloon. i haven’t married anyone in my save, yet; i can’t decide on who i want to live with. so many of them are sweethearts. i like elliot a lot, recently. he wrote a romance novel for me. 🥺 but originally i wanted to date alex—i love his grandparents. on the last day of autumn i’ll take my fairy roses into town for his grandmother, and for jasmine. but saying that sebastian’s also grown on me; as has haley. sometimes i think i’ll just ask krobus, deep in his sewer, to move in with me instead—but i have an empty nursery in my house and sometimes i wonder if it’d be fun to have someone to have kids with.

(but then i swing back and forth on it—it creeps me out that the kids never age. 🥹 eternal toddlers, stumbling around the house. maybe i’ll have them just to see what it’s like, and then go to the witch’s hut to turn them into doves and let them go.)

if i wrote a stardew valley AU for my hero, i think it’d be just as hard to pick an endgame in-fic. do we pick izuku, and his rabbits? or bakugou and his explosions, up in the quarry? shouto, following us from the city, trying to leave behind the massive corporation that’s eating the world up that he’s set to inherit? idk! anyways. that’s off-topic. 🥹 do you play, anon??? what’s your favourite part? what’s your farm like???? do you like to have a cuppa in hand, when you settle in to play?

[solar-serpent]

Hey, gals 💅🏻 I learned this cool numerology trick that was later mixed up with Tarot + Astrology and ✨boom✨ the whole thing was remastered. I wanna offer this as my next seasonal service? Yes, but I don't want to keep the secret from my colleague readers and inquiring minds. I tested this method with some volunteers and they could identify with everything I interpreted for them.

Firstly, you got to calculate your life path number. It's done by reducing each component of your birthday to a single digit. I'm going to use mine as an example. It's June 22, 1996, and it's going to look like this: 6+2+2+1+9+9+6 = 35. Then, it's reduced to 3+5=8.

2023's essential number is 7 (I reduced it to one digit by adding 2+0+2+3=7).

It's time to add your and 2023' number to obtain a single digit. 8+7=15. Stop right there. Take note of this number as it will be helpful later. It speaks about your outter or superficial themes of this year.

Now, reduce it. 1+5=6.

It's not a normal numerology reading, thus we're not looking up for the original meaning of life path number 6. We're going to pay attention to whose major arcane this number belongs to.

6 is the lovers.

The lovers card is associated to Gemini and it's ruled by Mercury. Now, let's locate which houses Gemini and Mercury are as they will be more active this year. These placements are your new sidekicks in other words.

15 is not to be forgotten for this example. 15 corresponds to the devil card, whose astrology association is Capricorn. Capri's daddy is Saturn, so we're paying attention to where those are in your natal chart.

To sum up, if you're life path number 8, you should look up for Capricorn, Saturn, Gemini and Mercury in your chart, as the will tell you which energy could be in your favor or detrimental to your 2023 journey. I don't know how all path number 8' chart looks like 🥴, so I'm going to leave a basic description of the energies displaying an important role in your life this year.

Life path number 8's mini reading for 2023: the need for order would be exalted. Old structures would crash down and quickly be replaced by new ones. Cut out temptations as you allowed them to gain too much importance in your life, keeping your attention away from your real objectives. Your indecision lies in the fact you got too comfortable and getting back to work feels like a pain in the ass. Take idealism out along with the trash, and let realism stays instead, please.

[emersonfreepress]

You previously mentioned that we will be able to play as the child of immigrant parents. But how will you handle where the family comes from? Because let's be real: a kid whose parents come from Sweden or Germany won't get the same type of reactions as one whose family come from Mexico or Iran.

And that's even assuming the family are ethnically from those countries and not, say, people who went from one country to another to escape civil war or poverty or whatever, then came to the USA. Which is very detailed and nitpicking, I know, but I am very curious about this particular route.

Would it be right to assume MC's whose family have immigrant backgrounds would have it set, like how MC's family in non-immigrant route have certain set characteristics (upper middle class, how they came to their vices that caused current economic issues etc.)?

I haven't decided on exactly how I want to do it as far as accommodating backgrounds; as in, the choice scene isn't written or coded yet. But I really love what C.C. Hill @when-life-gives-you-lemons-if did in Insert Rich Family Name when it comes to customizing the family's background and plan to do something similar. (I highly recommend that game btw; and anything else CC writes tbh) Opening up a country of origin choice for immigrant MCs, however, means that I'm definitely reversing my decision to exclude skin tone customization. The game doesn't delve into things like colorism and or specific ethnic perspectives because I'm one person and just can't write all that 😅 but continent and country of origin will be a separate choice from things like appearance customization.

There are set characteristics of the second-gen MC's past but they don't differ wildly from the local background. Since the parents are characters with set personalities that I actually feature in scenes and dialogue, though, the immigrant backstory still needs to follow roughly the same beats as the local one. Your parents still lucked into money and spent it quickly and unwisely.

I know what you mean by the reactions that different migrant groups garner from people in real life, especially as the kid of African immigrants, but the setting I'm writing isn't like that. That's super unrealistic for a town like Emerson in real life — but it's a fiction and the story I'm telling isn't about facing or overcoming discrimination. If I was writing a version of Emerson that had a historical past actually typical of the United States, so many things, so many, would not exist as they are and I'd be writing a completely different story. The story I have written is just like... inappropriate honestly, for a setting like a realistic Emerson. I would not care to write about some high school kids at the prep school, I would much rather explore the politics and criminal underbelly of the adult world -- if I was writing this realistically.

To some degree, there are darker, more realistic aspects of Emerson as a setting (like blacklisting and what discrimination in Emerson even looks like) but that won't be explored until Book 2 because the MC will be an adult finally navigating life with the other adults. But this Book and this story are about the very insular perspective of a privileged kid from a weird fictional town. You could almost call a teenage MC an unreliable narrator, regardless of background, because they have lucked out in not experiencing much personal hardship. It doesn't mean my world doesn't acknowledge or have these things; literal case and points being Gabe and Kile. The MC is ignorant to a lot of what they haven't experienced and is written that way — and the characters who have had vastly different and harsher experiences also have their own limitations in perspective.

What you're describing just isn't what I'm exploring and xenophobia is not the sort of thing I'd want to inject half-assed for realism's sake or drop as some form of flavor text. I used to have a variable that let players choose if their last name gets frequently mispronounced because to me it's a funny thing that I relate to my immigrant experience. But I scrapped It because at the end of the day, it's just coding a micro-aggression that does literally nothing for the story or character development. Realistic discrimination doesn't enhance the story because I didn't create a story based in a realistic world. ...I think that sentence might sum it up, yeah.

I get that people don't have access to my notes or unpublished work and I don't presume that you know my background! But I'm confident I know what I'm doing with the option — and if it sucks, y'all better tell me (!!) and I'll have the whole rest of development to improve it.

[pooklet]

Get to know you: Sims Style

I was tagged by @pockethamster and @furbyq-sims so here we goooo.

What’s your favorite Sims death?

In general: the satellite, cuz of the piano replacement that I have. It is also one of the most efficient ways to cull townies.

Specific deaths that have happened to my sims: Tiara dying in a toddler potty. No death in my game has ever/will ever be funnier.

Alpha CC Semi-realism or Maxis Match?

Semi-realism. Maybe it's cuz I started playing when that was the common style, but maxis match just looks very ... flat to me? Very papery. I've seen it done in a really fun, cartoon-y style by some creators, but that seems to be the minority and most of it seems to hew very neutral/natural toned and I am not about that lol. Even IRL, I like to surround myself with bright, colorful stuff.

Do you cheat your sims weight?

Like, keep them thin? lmao no. I let their personality determine whether they exercise, but that has nothing to do with them being fat, as far as I'm concerned. I use a lot of fat bodyshapes because I'm fat myself and I like to have a lot of variety in my game. I don't have any system for deciding whether I use the maxis default body or a custom shape, I just go with what looks right to me.

Do you move objects?

Are there people who don't?

Favorite Mod?

Hm, either ACR v2 or Walk Through Blocks. I like my sims to be able to make as many autonomous decisions as possible, and navigate the spaces that I cram full of clutter.

First Expansion/Game Pack/Stuff Pack?

In the Sims 1 the first expansion I got was Hot Date. I played TS2 from release, so my first expansion was University.

Do you pronounce live mode like aLIVE or LIVing?

Alive.

Who’s your favorite sim that you’ve made?

I mean, it has to be Mawreen, right? If only for the chaos that she's sown.

Have you made a simself?

Yeah a few throughout the years, and I haven't played them in ages. Mostly I just use them for silly little pics with @skulldilocks's selfsim.

Which is your favorite EA hair color?

One of the custom ones, I guess! I don't remember, I have all the EA hairs hidden lol.

Favorite EA hair?

I don't have one, really. Maybe some of the natural black hairstyles converted from TS4 but I couldn't name specific meshes.

Favorite life stage?

Adult! I made a custom aging mod so I can go through the other stages relatively quickly. The way my game is set up, they unlock all their traits and wants once they're an adult, and I like to see who they are as a fully realized person, so that's the most fun for me.

Are you a builder or are you in it for the gameplay?

Gameplay. I have a lot of fun making houses based on real floorplans that I find, but it's mostly just stage dressing for the little freaks that inhabit them.

Are you a CC creator?

Yeh.

Do you have any Simblr friends or a Sim Squad?

I mean, @skulldilocks obvs. People don't approach me much so there's only a few ppl that I talk to regularly like @furbyq-sims and @lilithpleasant. I am not really the "squad" type.

Do you have any sims merch?

This is a real thing?

Do you have a YouTube for sims?

Nope! I would never stream gameplay, the way I play isn't interesting. Lots of pausing and carefully adjusting angles to take pictures, getting distracted by other stuff, random crashes, etc. And editing that footage into something watachable would take ages. My play style lends itself better to picture entries, so I use Dreamwidth.

How has your “Sims style” changed throughout your years of playing?

More colors, more aliens, more [[JAM FACTORY]] lore.

Who’s your favorite CC creator?

@skulldilocks no question! I love watching her create anything for any game or craft. She's so talented. It doesn't matter if she's making sims cc or custom houses for Skyrim or doll clothes or anything else, she's my biggest inspiration.

How long have you had Simblr?

2010, babeyyyy.

How do you edit your pictures?

I have a tutorial here. I need to update it because I use different actions now, but most of the actual information there is still accurate.

What expansion/gamepack is your favorite?

I want to say pets because I love cats so very much, but in terms of actual content, probablyyyy FreeTime? I like anything that makes sims more unique and the hobby system is a lot of fun!

I tag: @skulldilocks, @lilithpleasant, @krabbysims, @monilisasims, @goatskickin and @simmer-until-tender

[bluishfrog]

As an artist and survivor of art school, the best advice I can give you is more to look at the broad scope of art and not hyperfocus on thing.

Don't throw yourself right into realism, because that can be very daunting, difficult, and could burn you out to art altogether. Instead, give yourself a healthy balance of "studying" the art and artists you enjoy, playing with references, and experimenting with style.

I say "studying" loosely so you don't feel like, "oh I have a painting of the Mona Lisa due at midnight."

As someone who does more traditional work and went from illustrator to fine artist (though I will forever and always be an illustrator because cartoons and comics are in my blood), I think it can be easy to feel like you HAVE to have one distinct style because of how the digital art space online presents itself.

Don't lock yourself into one thing, especially when you are learning.

Don't be afraid to make art you think is "bad" or "ugly," because that art is important and shows how you are pushing your boundaries in a healthy way.

Now, for the actual art part, I suggest starting with the very basic skeleton: shapes. Everything is built up of shapes. Find the art or references you like and think about how you can break it up into simple shapes. As you abstract references to their simplest forms, you'll grow that pattern recognition and begin to know how to rebuild with more complex shapes. I cannot stress enough how understanding shapes and shape relationships is probably one of the most important aspects to drawing.

Cartoons and comics are amazing, and your art is fantastic! I can't wait to see you grow and honestly I have so much I could share with art and honing in those skills. Feel free to reach out to me if you ever want help or just to talk! :]

Thank you, avery, for your extensive ask! I love getting to hear the many artists in this space talk about their experiences and share their knowledge. For someone like me, who's complete artistic career is drawing in this fandom, it's so amazing to get to profit of artists who have such a variety of skills!

I definitely have the tendency to want too much too quickly, so preventing burnout when it comes to my art is something I have to pay attention to. Very easy to get lost in my own head about things... But when I started, I told myself that first and foremost, I want to practice being inexperienced at something and that if I have the guts to share something that I am not yet good at, I am actually exceeding my own expectations. So far, I am doing quite well with that strategy (not to say it's always easy, that would be a lie).

Yes! I want to practice my shapes! Both my 'seeing shapes' and 'drawing shapes' skills. (Unfortunately for my own sanity, I love drawing humans most which... hard shapes. But if I start with just singular body parts, I might not immediately start swearing like a sailor :)

And thank you, it means a lot that you enjoy my art :D I might come back to your offer for help / to talk!

[lescarbille]

You know what tonight I'm in a very special mood so I just share extract of every Landoscar & Carcar WIP/Pieces of stories I have on my computer and that I will post someday.

Pt. 1 / Pt. 2

How to court an Omega in 81 days | Carloscar | Regency AU | Long OS

Oscar is on the balcony, his delicate hands playing with the wisteria surrounding the marble. He looks ethereal under the dim light of chandeliers, stars, and moon. The smell of citrus and chocolate lingers in the air, betraying what he hates most about himself ; He's an Omega. An Omega who dreams of travelling and escaping the life that his family has built for him.  Omegas don't have many choices, they show up at court, get married, and start a family. The luckiest know love, the saddest know life of tasteless monotony, the most tragic pray for the death of their spouses.  Oscar expected to pray to be widowed as quickly as possible, and Carlos is convinced.  He must be cursed because he fell in love with the only Omega who would refuse to marry a Prince.  The Diamond of the season. The Omega who shone on the crown of his social events for this year and whom everyone was so eager to court. Carlos fell for him, and the aftermath is painful.  I won't get married. The court can say whatever they want, my means of surviving is being an old maid or whatever they decide to call me. I'd rather be a scandal than a trophy for a disgusting Alpha. “What are you doing here, Carlos?” he asks annoyingly, without the slightest ounce of politeness towards his title. “I thought you were courting Charles Leclerc.” “Never.”

Bloody Poppy | Landoscar | Hunger Games AU | Unsure about long OS or long story

They are in an arena. The air is stifling. Seventeen are already dead. Lando killed three of them. They're covered in mud, blood, and sweat, they're starving and yet Oscar looks at him like he's capable of catching the moon, the stars, the sun, and everything else in this fucking universe from lunatics.  He may have succumbed to madness.  Lando too.  He wants to kiss him. The possibilities of what action to take before dying are slim, but damn, kissing Oscar Piastri is at the top.

Every Dead Man Should Tell Some Tales (link) | Landoscar & Lestappen | Dark Magic Realism AU | very long story

Lando screams and cries. Lando struggles. His feet whip the air, he lifts his wrists under the crushing weight of the steel handcuffs. He feels the cold body behind him. He feels the lifeless corpse.  Hot tears roll down his cheeks as he shouts.  He yells an incessant stream of words. He screams Oscar's name. He continues to cry out even when his voice fades.  Oscar. Oscar. Oscar.  Will he never have the chance to tell Oscar the truth?  “I still have the rings.” This simple sentence sums up a simple thought. A simple and terrible thought that he wants to deny. He can't deny it when he hears Death walking down the hall. He'll die here. Maybe he will have the opportunity to tell him in another world? No. He will go to Hell. Lando has his place down there. He will go to hell with these regrets, his screams and this fucking sentence that hides the only truth that ever mattered: “I still have the rings”.

Guide to ‘I Accidentally Acquired a Personal Demon’ by Lando Norris | Landoscar | OS

“I am Oscarus, your personal demon.” Lando blinks several times, he looks at his front door, at the red candles on the kitchen table, and again at the boy—no, the demon—in front of him. Oscarus is taller than him, with a pale skin star dotted with moles, pretty brown eyes and the fluffy hair of a Prince Charming. He looks like a Prince Charming. Does Disney have a connection with the devil? Bad question, obviously, capitalism.  “My personal demon?” “That’s what the terms of the contract you made with the Underworld say…” "The contract? The contract I made with…” “The Underworld,” Oscar finishes.  Lando nods. He's going to kill George. George accidentally made him contract with the Underworld. Lando wanted a boyfriend, not a personal demon. A demon that doesn't look like a demon... “Are you sure you’re a demon and not an angel, Oscar?” "Oscarus." “Because I asked for a boyfriend.” “I don’t practice sex slavery.” “Cool, me neither Osc.” What a shame. "This is Oscarus."

It's Never Over in Vegas | Landoscar | Sequel to Is It Over Now? | OS

Oscar loses the 2025 Las Vegas grand prix.  Oscar loses.  His ears ring as the modest “P2” his race engineer tells him, it sticks in his throat. One more lap and he would have passed Arthur, one more lap and the blue velvet box would have been opened.  Better than Pandora, he would have poured all the happiness into his universe, because he made a promise.  And if I win in Vegas next year, I'll be the type of guy who buys an engagement ring He already has the ring. He does not have the victory. He did not win, he did not win what for him was the most important race of the year.

Your Drew Stars around My Scars | Carlandoscar triangle | Folklore love triangle | Long OS or Short Multiple chapter story

Lando erases the stars that he drew with a black marker on the white soles of his Converse. It takes him an intense moment of reflection to realize that his pen is red and that the stars give the impression of bleeding. Awesome. They correlate with his heart.  Carlos cheated on him.  Carlos cheated on him during the summer.  Carlos cheated on him over the summer with a boy named Oscar Piastri.

Dance around the cursed lake | Landoscar | Black swan AU | Long OS or Short Multiple chapter story

Oscar and Lando shouldn't be enemies. White Swan and Black Swan. They are both cursed. Oscar is waiting for a kiss of sincere love to be freed from the Swan Lake curse Swan. Lando just wants to escape the influence of the dark wizard. They are not free, but they should be.  They are not meant to be enemies, but they have to be.  Neither can live as long as the other survives.

[roguemonsterfucker]

You'll see me talking about Astride more than most other upcoming games because it seems like Astride is the only one that will be catering to a lot of my wants and needs in a horse game.

It's going to be a single player story game, BUT with a very easy to use multiplayer feature where your friends can come visit your personal game and help you out with chores, do competitions together, and just ride around in the world together.

PLUS they've promised the ability to trade horses with friends. I'll be able to breed horses in my game and send them to a friend's game. This, by extension, really means that horses aren't trapped in a single save file. If I want to start a new game, or have multiple games for different purposes, I in theory should be able to trade the horses between those games as needed.

The horse trading plus the ability to easily visit other players without being forced into a multiplayer experience is a huge part of why I'm excited for this. My family love playing games together, but some games don't allow for it at all, some games make multiplayer very complicated to do, and some games force us onto a server with many other people.

Also, as far as upcoming games are concerned, the actual appearance of the horses is quite good! A game called Unbridled is going with a style that's aiming to be realistic and... uh... doesn't look great to me. Too much detail in the texture. It hurts my eyes. Then there's Tales of Rein Ravine which unfortunately will be single player (though I'm still excited for it), but it's going for a VERY stylized look. Which isn't a bad thing! But I just like Astride better as it's struck a balance between stylized and realism. Not too much realistic detail, but just enough that the horses feel real.

Some aspects of Astride's gameplay are unclear. They had a huge list of planned features but after the backlash of their Early Access release, they deleted it as to not create expectations. I expect it to have a similar gameplay loop to Ranch of Rivershine. Actually, I hope that it is structured like Ranch of Rivershine! I love RoR, but the controls are 😬

But I love how RoR lets you buy, train, and sell horses for a profit. Or catch them or breed them. I hope Astride allows for that because I like to roleplay as a horse trainer lol. I also like how in RoR, you clean stalls and brush the horses daily. It makes me feel productive and immerses me into the world. I know some folks don't like stuff like that, but I do lol.

I am very excited for the realistic genetics planned to be in Astride. Y'all know how obsessive I get over horse genetics. 😅

But I think mainly, I just desperately want a game with pretty graphics where I can go on trail rides with my family. The only game we've been able to really do that has been RDO and that's... uh... Well, it's not exactly peaceful.

Technically we can go on peaceful trail rides in Horse Isle 3, but it doesn't exactly meet the "pretty graphics" requirement. Like, I don't mind sprinting through the world of HI3 and seeing all the biomes very quickly as I'm running to catch horses or collect treasure. But it's not a game that's conducive to stopping to admire the virtual roses. The world just is so big and empty and there's nothing pretty to look at. At a glance, it can look okay, but don't take the time to really take it all in because you won't like what you see. 😬

So yeah. All my hopes and dreams are resting on Astride.

Let's hope they don't fuck it all up.

[ikamigami]

Regarding Sun's mental issues

I know that there are people who are looking at Sun's situation optimistically but I have to add a grain of salt, I mean a little bit of realism (you can call this view more pessimistic if that's what will make you feel better).

So I saw that some people think that Sun's state got better... which is far from truth. They also think that Sun is doing fine as Moon's and Earth's leader... but they're forgetting about the fact that he has to be the leader. Even if he may not want to be, he has to be because a) Earth is completely new in the Daycare and b) Moon doesn't remember anything. Sun doesn't have any choice in that matter. Like unfortunately usually. It's such a common thing in Sun's life that Sun probably just goes with the flow. Things just happen and Sun adapts himself to the situation... while completely disregarding his own mental health.

I can guarantee you that Sun is barely living right now. If I'm being honest Sun is probably putting up a brave facade for New Moon's and Earth's sake! I doubt he's feeling great or even just better. He's repressing grief after Lunar's death, mind you! Sun just barely keeps going.

I hope that people will realise that what's going on with Sun right now can't end well for him. He won't save the day. His mental health is deteriorating more and more. He's ignoring his own needs and issues again! He doesn't talk about his problems and feelings again! Hallucinations didn't disappear completely because it doesn't work like that. Earth helped him twice but it wasn't enough. She didn't magically healed Sun's broken mind. Because it doesn't work like that. Sun is still broken.

And he's only getting worse because others don't know where the problem truly lays. And unfortunately neither Earth nor Moon don't try to talk things out with Sun. Even if they should! Sun won't open up on his own because he doesn't want to be a burden to them!

I wanted to clarify that. And I'll repeat once again. Sun won't save the day. He's the one who needs saving. Sun is in such poor state of mind and yet people seem to ignore it.

Same goes for people who think that Sun's grown up and he matured. Technically, yes. But how Sun matured? At what cost he's grown up like others state? Yet again, Sun had to "mature". I put that in quotation marks because becoming mature the way Sun did is very unhealthy. He was mostly forced to make really hard decisions such as "should I expell Eclipse from my head or not", "should I shot Bloodmoon in order to protect myself and my family or not", "should I take drastic measures to protect those I love or not" and Sun often had to make those decisions quickly. He's more traumatised than anything else...

Sun can't solve his problems on his own because he has such issues which are too much for him to deal with them alone.

And I'm still afraid that Sun will end up harming himself badly or he'll just straight up try to kill himself. I can't shake this awful feeling I have whenever I think about what future lays ahead of Sun.

I hope that everything is written somewhat coherently. My thoughts are jumbled all over the place. And I hope that people will finally realise that Sun needs so much more help and therapy than he's already gotten. Earth just barely scratched the surface of Sun's issues. So please, please! I beg you! Stop expecting that Sun will heal over time and only time, alone without any help because it won't work in this case due to the poor mental state Sun is in.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

JR: I want to start with kindness. So much of your writing is centered around it, including how many of us struggle with it. Why is kindness important to you?

GS: One of the first images I received of Jesus was this idea of somebody who was so aware of where he was and so selfless that he could intuit what was needed in a given situation to make it better. When I was younger, it hit me that that would be a superpower if I could do that.

Then I got drafted into doing my daughter's sixth grade graduation speech. And I thought, Well, what do I really know as an old fart? It was not much, actually. Except when I scanned back over my life, I had a couple of regrets. They almost all had to do with not being kind enough, which for me often meant being preoccupied with something else or being anxious or being too insecure to step up and do what somewhere in my body I knew was right.

I shared that with the sixth graders, and a few years later gave a version of that to the Syracuse group. At that point, I wouldn't have said that I was that interested in kindness. But you make a speech like that and it gets attention. Suddenly you're The Kindness Person.

For me, it's the practice of trying to believe that the person on the other side is just as real as you are. You happen to be seeing things through these eyes. But theoretically, you could flip around and see them through the other person's eyes, and it would be the same universe.

That has a lot of moral implications, but it also has aesthetic implications. Meaning that story is like a snow globe that you can walk around and go, “Oh, if I imagined these events from this point of view, it would look like this. If I change the perspective, it looks like that.” In the end, the holographic view of the story would be infused with total compassion because you'd know every angle and they would all seem completely reasonable.

JR: Speaking of the snow globe: So many of your characters are trying to be and do good. And it’s really complicated. What feels like doing good in one moment can change in the next based on something as simple as the character walks into a different room. Or we move into another character’s equally convincing POV that opposes or contradicts the one we were just immersed in. Is good something concrete and definable? Is there an Ultimate Truth to life?

GS: When you say, “Here's the situation,” and the reader goes, “Oh, yeah, I get it.” And then you switch, whether it's in that perspective or in another one, there's that moment of disorientation where the reader goes, “Okay, I thought there was just one truth. Now there's at least two. Might there be even more?” This is something I really love about Chekhov: you keep waiting for him to weigh in, to put his finger on the scales, but he doesn't. He's really good at making eight or four or whatever different equally weighted scales.

The ultimate moral work of fiction is to show us how quickly and facilely we judge. Then, if it's a good one, the story teaches you that you can keep several ideas going at once. You can even have several simultaneous moral judgments going at once. To me, that's the highest form of it....

GS:

Kindness doesn't mean niceness. Ultimately, I think it means realism. I always use the example of somebody goes into a coffee shop, and the barista has been crying. Okay, what's the kind thing to do? Well, we don't actually know, because I didn't give you enough information. Even when you're standing there, you don't have enough information. Then it becomes a referendum on how might one decide? And that has something to do with what's going on in your mind before you walk into a coffee shop. If you're thinking I'm such a great, generous teacher of kindness, and then that person is the crying, you’re going to leap in whether you should or not.

I think there's a natural beneficence that rises in us, but the problem is, we don't always know the truth of that situation. A lot of what we think is the truth is our mind supplying some bullshit and we react to that rather than the actual situation. So to be kind might be exactly equal to being so quiet minded that you see clearly, and then your natural goodness will just rise up. But that's all theory.

JR: So beautifully put. One of the biggest complications is that one crying barista might want her tears acknowledged, and the other one might want them ignored.

GS: That’s exactly right. I was walking through O'Hare a couple months ago, and I saw a young woman coming the other way just weeping. I thought, I could either be the obnoxious old guy interfering in a private moment. Or she might be on the very edge where somebody's got to say something to her. I couldn't tell.

That’s where I think it’s good to look at your preset. Why do I want to rush over to her and reassure her? We each have a sort of ambient preset – for me, it’s a mild saviour complex – that might interfere with what the actual moment is telling us. In other words, I was in a particular place when I saw her. And maybe that was a good impulse. Or maybe it wasn't. It’s literally that beautiful phrase, my heart went out to her. So that's an ongoing truth--and that's just somebody walking by in an airport. But what to DO about it? That’s the question. So this leads us to the question of awareness, and of how fully the dataset that is “this moment” is coming through to us.

https://janeratcliffe.substack.com/.../the-kindness...

[thanks Rebecca Solnit]

[5sosfanfictioncatalogue]

Bisexual!Michael Masterlist

but then i hear u calling (there u are) (ao3) - orphan_account michael/luke N/R, 933

Summary: michael and luke have always been the closest. friendly kisses lasting no longer than 3 seconds are shared frequently between the duo- calum and ashton watching from a distance, almost admiring their friendship. until it wasn't a friendship anymore.

How You Get the Girl (ao3) - 1loulu5 michael/calum, michael/ofc T, 2k

Summary: “Wh… What does ‘castrate’ mean?” Michael sounded perplexed.

Calum laughed, “It means I’ll cut your balls off.”

“Oh-”

~~~

Michael calls Calum, his ex for the past 4 years, for relationship advice.

Not Just a Stupid Game (ao3) - coffeemuke michael/luke E, 2k

Summary: A game of truth or dare leads to Michael following through on a dare.

Paint Me - @daydadahlias (cornflowerblue (daydadahlias)) luke/ashton, michael/crystal E, 17k

Summary: “Holy shit, hold on a minute,” Calum says, “is that who we’re supposed to be drawing?”

“I can’t draw him,” Michael gawks, “I’m not a Goddamn renaissance painter.”

Or, the one where Luke is an art student practicing realism for a month and Ashton is the nude model in his portrait class.

Promise (ao3) - boomercal calum/ashton, sierra/luke, michael/crystal, calum/ofc M, 115k

Summary: Live music photographer Calum does one favour for a friend (filling in last minute for a show), and his life changes for good. Finding his muse, world-famous pop/rock sensation Ashton Irwin. He thinks once the shows are over, he can pack it in and forget all about it, but a Google search and a phone call set him up on a North American tour where he'll see the man every day... Too bad his Google search revealed the man of his every fantasy has a purity pact with God. So what's a..promiscuous young man to do? Repress it? Sure, that'll work.

Tangled in a Triangle (ao3) - orsumeuphoria michael/crystal/ashton E, 9k

Summary: “You ever have him like this, Crys?” Ashton asks. Crystal doesn’t say anything, but she must shake her head because Ashton continues, “Shame. I think you’d like it. He’s so pretty on his knees.” Michael keens. “C’mere.”

Crystal’s immaculate sneakers appear right behind Ashton’s boots.

The next command he gets isn’t spoken. Ashton only has to tap the base of his jaw for Michael to look up.

The image of both Ashton and Crystal towering over him, Ashton smiling softly and Crystal looking intrigued, is one he burns into his memory.

“Hi, dove,” Ashton murmurs softly, “Fucking missed you.”

The Blower's Daughter (ao3) - MyMy michael/calum, luke/ashton M, 13k (WIP)

Summary: “Did you need something else?” Michael inquires politely a little confused himself.

“I was wondering if I could get your number actually?” The stranger asks biting his lip into his mouth quickly.

“Oh sure!” Michael replies happily. He reaches around the register to the side facing the customer and feels around for the little stack of cards with the shop info on it and the logo embossed in solid black.

“Here this has the shop number right here.” Michael points to the tiny row of numbers on the card. “So if you need anything don’t be afraid to call, okay? We can do special orders as well so anything music related we’ll try our best to get it for you!”

The Gayest Thing I've Ever Done (ao3) - coffeemuke michael/luke, calum/ashton E, 1k

Summary: Band bonding crosses the line between normal and weird, and it's Luke's fault. But the boys don't seem to mind.

The Posse's Origin (ao3) - Jay_isnotokay calum/ashton, michael/ashton E, 6k

Summary: "...I've been apart of the princess posse for a few weeks now and I still don't how you two got 'initated' in the first place." Luke said.

"Alright, LuLu, have I got a story for you."

~

Or Luke wants to know how the posse started and, well, they tell him.

up to your mouth, feeling it out (ao3) - orphan_account michael/luke, luke/ashton E, 9k

Summary: Ashton's the one who suggested it; after all, he would know how well Luke would do in the industry, since he spent most Friday nights with his best friend's lips around his cock. Luke, on the other hand, didn't know he would end up fluffing for a record-breaking pornstar who is like, really really hot, and definitely his type.

or, Luke is broke and has a talented mouth (and a tongue piercing).

your string of lights is still bright to me (ao3) - merlypops michael/calum E, 81k

Summary: Michael is struggling to be the father his daughters need. Until he meets Calum again.

[unproductive-software-blog]

Contact (DS) Review

Hi, I'm Suoly, and I review "Hardcore" video games for people with limited time and money.

TLDRFAQS:

Should I play this game?

No. It's a 3/10 game that manages to feel extremely time-wasting despite actually being pretty short.

Now stick around if you want to learn what I love about it. I have played Contact so that you don't have to.

Contact is a semi-turn-based fully-touch-controlled action-RPG from Grasshopper Manufacture, developers of Killer7, No More Heroes, and my personal favorite game series, The Silver Case. While most of Grasshopper's other games are known for being extreme and violent, Contact is a reletively quiet game very clearly intended for children. That said, it still feels like a Grasshopper game in a few important ways. Most-notably is the fact that you start nearly every session in the main character's bedroom, having just woken up. I love how their games go the extra distance to put you in the main character's shoes. This is also enforced by the games very colloquial and real-sounding dialogue.

Contact is also the most Earthbound-like game I have ever played outside of the Mother series itself. While nearly every modern 2D RPG not set in a generic high-fantasy world seems to get the "Earthbound-Inspired" label applied to it, Contact actually carries forward a lot of the more specific elements of Earthbound that it's contemporaries tend to abandon in favor of delivering on their own unique aesthetics. Contact is a humorous RPG, yes, but it's humor comes not from sheer absurdity, but from the distinctly Earthboundian combination of realism and game logic.

Take the game's fourth level (oh yeah, it's a level-based RPG like SMTV) for example. It's a desert area. It takes two in-game days of travel by boat to get there, during which time you... don't really do anything but sleep and wait. Before stepping off the ship, you're told that it's extremely hot out and that this island is a big tourist destination. You then make your way through the white-hot dunes, listening to this music that conveys a sense of the natural danger and beauty of the area. Eventually you reach town and find out that while this island may seem like a paradise to the tourists, the people who actually work here are struggling to survive, and live in near-constant fear of the corporate overlords who practically own the place. It's all the more powerful for being missable, as RPG sociology tends to be.

Then you go into a pyramid and find hieroglyphics that look inexplicably like the game's UI, and fight aliens in an alternate dimension inside the pyramid's tip.

Your reward is a power cell that might just help you get back to your home planet. You're not here to save this messed up world, you're just a kidnapped child trying to get home.

I just love it. That's what I mean by Earthboundian: you're a kid on a wacky cartoon adventure in a world full of adult problems outside your control.

Also, you can fix a girl's car and she'll take off her clothes. If you put them on, you unlock fire magic. Somehow this is required to solve the mystery of the UI hieroglyphs.

So yeah, it's obtuse, but in the charming (if utterly outdated) way classic adventure games were. Unfortunately, Contact is not an adventure game. It's the RPG with the worst RPG combat I've ever experienced post-NES.

The combat system is similar to .hack's, yet with even fewer options and only one party member. There's nothing to do but blow your skills right away, or save them up since they take forever to charge (like 1 every 3 normal battles). Other than that you're watching your character auto-attack the enemy and using a healing item outside turn order when his hp is low. Sometimes you can dodge an atack by running away quickly, but only when it's made really obvious that you're expected to. There's no skill to it.

Much like in a From Soft game, most battles can be completely avoided by simply running past them, and you don't really need to grind them to beat the bosses anyway, but playing that way makes time spent in dungeons feel even more time-wasting, like you're just fast-forwarding through the ads to get to the cutscene at the end.

In a world full of 10/10 games, there's just no reason to put up with poor gameplay for somewhat interesting writing anymore. There are so many games that nail it in both areas.

On the flipside, FF7 Rebirth takes it's time to a much greater extent, but manages to fill its world with so many unique encounters and thematic setpieces that what would feel like open-world-box-checking in other games, but end up feeling like THE REAL GAME. I much prefer this approach, a game which uses all its systems to the fullest and creates a great flow of storytelling through play, rather than a game with good dialogue and aesthetics that lets you mostly circumvent its boring gameplay. RPGs can be fun!

[clytemnaestraes]

A Streetcar Named Desire: A Few Extracts

Tennessee Williams' play pulses with tension from start to end. Blanche DuBois is an emotional whirlwind of a character who fittingly inspires just as many emotions in the reader, ranging from loathing to pity. Having lost her family's estate but not her pretentious manner, Blanche arrives at her sister's doorstep. She looks down on Stella's "common" husband and their rented apartment. Her inflated sense of self-importance — at odds with the rough life she'd been forced to lead in her recent years — by turns grates and amuses.

You just came home in time for the funerals, Stella. And funerals are pretty compared to deaths. Funerals are quiet, but deaths — not always [...] even the old, sometimes, say, "Don't let me go." As if you were able to stop them! But funerals are quiet, with pretty flowers [...] unless you were at the bed when they cried out, "Hold me!" you'd never suspect there was the struggle for breath and bleeding.

Blanche deceives herself and the people around her to maintain her crumbling sense of identity. Her philosophy, in her own words, can be summed up as the following:

I don't want realism, I want magic! I misrepresent things [...] I don't tell the truth, I tell what ought to be the truth!

The playwright introduces his characters and sets the scene with glittering words. Of Stanley Kowalski, Blanche's brutish brother-in-law, he says:

Animal joy in his being is implicit in all his movements and attitudes [...] his love [for] his car, his radio, everything that is his, that bears the emblem of the gaudy seed-bearer.

An eventful night of poker is given the following introduction:

There is a picture of Van Gogh's of a billiard-parlour at night. The kitchen now suggests that sort of lurid nocturnal brilliance.

The Night Café by Van Gogh

Light and dark — and colour in general — is a powerful motif in Williams's work.

Stanley tosses a red-stained package of meat up at his wife, a clear symbol of his coarse nature. Blanche often wears white, symbolic of innocence and purity, because that's how she wants to be perceived by others (even though the truth is different, as is revealed later). She inhabits her own fantasy, and admits to creating illusions in order to survive. This revelation takes the form of a painful monologue:

I've run for protection, Stella, from under one leaky roof to another — because it was storm — all storm [...] People don't see you — men don't — don't even admit your existence unless they are making love to you. And you've got to have your existence admitted by someone, if you're going to have someone's protection. And so the soft people have got to — shimmer and glow — put a paper lantern over the light...

Blanche can hardly stand the sight of a naked light bulb; she immediately covers the one present in her sister's bedroom with a paper lantern. She herself cannot stand to be seen under a harsh, bright light, and prefers muted evening shades to mask her insecurities of advancing age and slipping beauty. She introduces herself to Mitch, a potential suitor, in the following manner:

It's a French name. [DuBois] means woods and Blanche means white, so the two together mean white woods. Like an orchard in spring! You can remember it by that.

Here we have a woman who's in the autumn of her life, but one who seemingly cannot let go of memories of spring — and it is these memories she wants to be remembered by, this light she wants to be seen in.

We are granted a brief moment of incandescence before all goes dark in Blanche's life — Mitch, a friend of Stanley's, recognises her need for companionship. They both need somebody, he says, and Blanche lights up.

Sometimes — there's God — so quickly!

This spontaneous exclamation captures a poignant moment, one in which Blanche dares to hope for a future away from the abusive, rage-filled Stanley.

Blanche and Stanley's earliest interactions can be seen as a study in the intersection of classism and sexism. But before long, it becomes clear that Stanley is an unmitigated brute and a poor excuse of a human being. Readers watch in mounting horror as his violence escalates. It starts with him smashing things and striking his pregnant wife, and ends with a stomach-churning scene of him carrying an unconscious Blanche to his bed while his wife is in labour at the hospital.

After witnessing the first of Stanley's many outbursts, Blanche delivers an impassioned plea to her sister. She begs Stella to break away from her "beastly" husband with "stone age"-like sensibilities.

In this dark march toward whatever it is we're approaching... Don't hang back with the brutes!

Eunice, the upstairs neighbour, tells Blanche that it was usual for Stella and Stanley to run hot and cold, but we as readers recognise the patterns of clear abuse perpetrated by Stanley, to which both Stella and Blanche fall victim.

Stella implicitly admits that lust is holding their marriage together, to which Blanche responds:

What you are talking about is brutal desire — just — Desire! — the name of that rattletrap streetcar [that] brought me here.

Stanley tells his wife that he has uncovered Blanche's lurid past. Of the exposition that follows, it is hard to separate truth from fiction. Mitch breaks up with Blanche, and doesn't show up for her birthday dinner. Says Blanche:

Oh, those pretty little candles! You ought to save them for the baby's birthdays [...] I hope that his eyes are going to be like candles [...] His auntie knows candles aren't safe, that candles burn out in little boys' and girls' eyes, or wind blows them out after that happens, electric light-bulbs go on and you see too plainly...

In the final scene, Blanche is led away by a doctor and his assistant to an asylum, as the men continue play poker in the kitchen.