#But mass effect made space pretty

[beckiboos]

Gonna rant about starfield so if you like the game just dont read this it’s not for you.

Gave starfield another go, lasted a couple hours this time got to the planet with the city on but…

It’s just so boring.

And grey

And fuzzy?

And bg3 on ultra looks stunning on my pc, ultra settings on starfield looks like a bit sharper grey boringness. And runs like a potato?

I don’t think this game is playable tbh. Also another game where you pointlessly make a character to never see it again… Maybe I’m still obsessed with bg3 but Larian is just really showing up how LAZY Bethesda has gotten

[kuromi-hoemie]

i can't believe i used all my tags on this. i have MORE TO SAY. honorable mentions i will not elaborate on: pikmin, runescape, OG animal crossing.

the reason for all my tags is because there's a difference between "most fun" and "most important" and feel like if they're important u should at least say why :3

[felassan]

All companions are pansexual!!!

Game is rated M, will contain nudity. [source]

Full article:

"In a new interview with The Veilguard game director Corinne Busche, we've confirmed that yes, you will be able to romance any companion you want, regardless of your character's gender or race. It's a bit of a surprise for fans, considering that in previous Dragon Age games, the romanceable characters had different sexual orientations. Some were pansexual, sure, but others were heterosexual, others were only attracted to the same sex, and some could only be romanced if you were a certain race (Dragon Age: Inquisition's Solas, for example, could only be romanced by female elves). But Busche pushes back on the idea that The Veilguard's companions are "playersexual," a term used to describe games where NPCs are specifically only attracted to the player character. She says she's seen playersexual "done in a number of games," and "it can be really off-putting where these characters are adapting to who you, the player, are." Rather, Busche insists that they're all specifically pansexual, and that might come through in what you learn about their backstories. "Their past experiences or partners, they'll reference them and indeed who they'll become romantic with," Busche tells IGN. "For instance, we saw Harding. I might be playing a straight male character flirting with her, but I choose not to pursue a romance. She might get together with Taash. So my perception, my identity has no bearing on their identities and that comes through really strongly." When asked if that means it won't take long for romance to become an option in The Veilguard, Busche confirms that you'll be able to start flirting with everyone pretty early, as you recruit all seven companions throughout the first act. But, she clarifies, "it's not until the later parts of the game where you really commit to romance and it gets pretty spicy.""

---

"Speaking of spicy... Of course, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a BioWare game, and games from the studio — specifically those in the Mass Effect and Dragon Age series — are known to have some fairly explicit sex scenes. Busche confirms that The Veilguard will be no different, particularly towards the end of the game: "Of course, we are an M-rated game," she says. "We do have nudity." There's also some obvious parallels to be made between The Veilguard and last year's critical darling Baldur's Gate 3. The latter became known not only for its deep romances (like The Veilguard, Baldur's Gate 3 player characters can romance any companion regardless of gender or race), but also for its sex scenes, including one involving a Wild-Shaping Druid that went pretty viral. Busche isn't afraid to admit that she has played Baldur's Gate 3, and loved it, as she's an "an RPG fan through and through": "The more character-driven party-based RPGs with deep emotional connection, the better." "What I love about the two games is I think they live side by side in a really interesting way," she continues. "They're very different games, but those emotional connections and how the narratives hook you, I think there's space for both." Specifically in regards to the sex scenes and how The Veilguard will handle theirs differently, Busche says some of Baldur's Gate 3's scenes were "shocking and comical in some ways, and I would say I loved that." "Our companions, we want them to be relatable and fully realized. So they can get spicy, but in a way that I think people will actually relate to," she says. Basically: no bear sex. Busche goes on to say that how sexually explicit the scenes are, too, will vary between characters. "Some of them are more spicy than others," she reveals. "Just like real life, our companions have such diverse personalities. Some of them are more physical, more aggressive, and some of them are more... we have a gentleman necromancer, for instance, that is more intimate and sensual." Our interview with Busche comes as BioWare continues to roll out information about the highly anticipated Dragon Age sequel, with a cinematic trailer having dropped at the Xbox Showcase over the weekend. Dragon Age: The Veilguard will debut sometime this fall."

[source]

[cdlum]

I just wanted to say I think your art style is awesome! I was wondering if you had any tutorials on how you draw anatomy in your style (hips and legs especially)? Sorry if there's already one posted and I just didn't see it 🥲. Happy New Year :>

thanks for the kind words. i tend to draw people pretty stylized and then some so a good bit of artistic licence gets used. these tips are just what i use so feel free to take them with a grain of salt. with anatomy in particular you can kind of talk in circles because human/animal bodies are that complex so ill just zone in on the points you specified. here's a little image with a bunch of pointers:

the above image condenses a lot of the points I'd make, but basically the key parts are to start with the bare essentials and build up that complexity. using a line of action is a good way to get a quick, rough start. you draw a line out in the general direction of the pose and do your best to adhere to it to give the pose a sense of flow.

you can also draw smaller, thumbnail versions that throw a lot of caution to the wind but capture the basic energy of what you're going for. even having a tiny little stick figure version of your idea can make for a good guideline of where to take it forward.

when it comes to actual limbs, you wanna consider how they integrate and work together, kind of like how chains do. you can see on some of the parts of pear i've drawn out these wireframes to kind of portray how the mass of her legs works in a three dimensional space. for aspects like the waist/hips, i use that X technique i highlight above a lot, particularly for the lower torso. a lot of the times, even when drawing a character totally naked, imagining them wearing things like skintight underwear can help a lot to guide you in the right direction.

its also a good idea to consider things like gravity and weight to a degree. humans are essentially big meat sacks and gravity is always pulling down on that, but theres all kinds of aspects that effect that, such as character build or clothing. pear technically isn't naked in this, but i've tried to imagine her as such and take that into account.

if you are drawing digitally, don't be afraid to take advantage of the convenience you get with that workflow. you can retry and iterate on things a lot faster that pen and paper, and do things that aren't really feasible at all when it comes to editing and modifying your existing work. things like resizing certain bodyparts, instantly flipping the canvas, or using selection tools to completely adjust the positions of parts of your drawing. to give you an example heres a timelapse with all the little edits i made just to this demo drawing:

you don't have to use these techniques linearly, either. sometimes ill have a really solid idea for a piece in my head, and go back to basics with certain elements if they’re not coming out right or i just want to brush them up a bit more. some of the tutorial-y parts i added in i didn't actually use during the drawing but often do use so they're there just for demonstration. not every drawing i do starts as building blocks or a really basic version, often ill just start with a face and build it out from there.

i always encourage liberally using references (this can include yourself) and trying out stuff like life drawing or looking at things like existing photographs of real people/places/things if you can, the more you use learning material the better you'll draw up a mental inventory in your head that you can rely on more and more. some of these tips are things i've learned from other artists over the years (the chin one especially i remember seeing a tutorial about lol), so this is a lot of knowledge i've amassed from other sources over time myself. there are plenty of times ill use all sorts of reference material and its all in service of arriving at the final destination as smoothly as possible. learn by doing, as they say. hope this helps!

[thecreaturecodex]

Sangubrax, the Smile in the Shadows

"Nightmare--Revenge" © ArtStation user Midnight, accessed at their gallery here

[Sponsored by @tar-baphon, who wanted a CR 15 herald, suitable for greater planar ally spells, for Nyarlathotep, specifically in the Bloody Tongue mask. The Bloody Tongue is one of the widest influences of the Call of Cthulhu game on greater views of the Mythos; Nyarlathotep was not associated with being a tentacle monster before that point, and was usually depicted as being mostly human, as he appears in Lovecraft. Hence, my feeling it was appropriate to make this herald appear pretty humanoid. The epithet and CR were provided for me, but I was allowed free reign otherwise.]

Sangubrax, the Smile in the Shadows CR 15 CE Outsider (extraplanar) This humanoid creature appears to be a flayed knight made of blood and gore. There is a visor covering where there should be eyes, and his face is split in a mad ear to ear grin. His arms end not in hands, but in baroque and lethal weapons. He moves with liquid grace.

Sangubrax is the Smile In the Shadows, a supernatural murderer with a penchant for targeting nobility, royalty, the powerful and influential. He is one of the Heralds of Nyarlathotep, being devoted specifically to the Mask known as the Bloody Tongue. The Bloody Tongue seeks to destabilize societies through sacrificial murders, and Sangubrax is called upon to strike at reformers, benevolent leaders, and anyone who might try to make a city, province or nation safer and more supporting of its citizens.

Sangubrax is a consummate assassin, but he has a penchant for the theatrical. Murders he commits vary in tune with the societal importance of the target. A beggar that gets in his way will merely have his throat slit, but a monarch will be murdered in broad daylight with much pomp and ceremony. His arms can become all manner of weaponry, but he prefers sword-like blades, the better to spill plenty of blood. Creatures he strikes bleed more and more until their entire life comes gushing out, and he has an extensible, chameleon-like tongue for dragging fleeing victims closer and ensuring they cannot even magically escape.

The Smile in the Shadows has a mocking, sardonic personality, even to his summoners. He believes that mortals are fundamentally incapable of ruling themselves, and that the return of the Old Gods will be a time of glorious and violent anarchy. He serves in the Prehistoric Temple in Leng, acting as bodyguard and majordomo for the High Priest Not to Be Described. Although he performs such duties loyally, he is always excited to be summoned in order to commit murder and mayhem on another plane.

Being a semi-liquid creature, Sangubrax has no set height, but weighs 200 pounds. Although he has no eyes, he can see perfectly well.

Sangubrax CR 15 XP 51,200 CE Medium outsider (chaos, evil, extraplanar) Init +7; Senses lifesense 60 ft., Perception +28, see in darkness Aura frightful presence (60 ft., Will DC 25)

Defense AC 30, touch 18, flat-footed 30 (+7 Dex, +1 dodge, +12 natural) hp 225 (18d10+126) Fort +13, Ref +18, Will +18 DR 15/lawful or good; Immune bleed, curses, death effects, disease, poison; SR 26 Defensive Abilities amorphous, evasion, improved uncanny dodge

Offense Speed 30 ft., fly 30 ft. (perfect) Melee 2 morphic weapons +24 (2d10+6/19-20 plus exponential bleed), tongue +19 touch (pull plus no escape) Ranged morphic weapon +24 (2d10+6/19-20 plus exponential bleed) Space 5 ft.; Reach 10 ft. (30 ft. with tongue) Special Attacks pull (10 ft.), sneak attack +4d6 Spell-like Abilities CL 18th, concentration +24 At will—deeper darkness, detect good, detect law, invisibility, waves of blood (DC 19, CMB +25) 3/day—cruel jaunt, mass fester (DC 22), quickened true strike, empowered vampiric touch 1/day—decapitate (DC 22), greater shadow evocation (DC 24), regenerate

Statistics Str 23, Dex 24, Con 25, Int 20, Wis 25, Cha 22 Base Atk +18; CMB +22; CMD 40 Feats Combat Expertise, Combat Reflexes, Dodge, Empower SLA (vampiric touch), Improved Critical (morphic weaponry), Mobility, Quicken SLA (true strike), Spring Attack, Whirlwind Attack Skills Acrobatics +28, Bluff +27, Escape Artist +36, Fly +33, Intimidate +27, Knowledge (nobility) +23, Knowledge (planes) +26, Perception +28, Sense Motive +28, Stealth +36, Survival +28; Racial Modifiers +8 Escape Artist, +8 Stealth Languages Aklo, Abyssal, Common, Protean, Shadowtongue SQ compression

Ecology Environment any land or underground (Leng) Organization unique Treasure incidental

Special Abilities Exponential Bleed (Su) Whenever Sangubrax hits a creature with a morphic weapon, it deals 1 point of bleed damage. If it hits that creature again, the bleed damage doubles, to a maximum of 16 points of bleed a round for 5 hits. This doubling effect occurs even if the creature stops bleeding, such as through a Heal check or healing magic, but expires 24 hours after the last time Sangubrax struck it. In an area of antimagic or similar effect, Sangubrax’s morphic weaponry still deals 1 point of bleed damage. Morphic Weapons (Ex) Sangubrax can manipulate his body to mimic a wide array of potent weaponry, or revert to having hands, as a swift action. While the weapons may look different, they are considered natural weapons and they all do the same amount of damage. Morphic weapons deal bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage, and are treated as magic for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction. Sangubrax can also attack with a morphic weapon by hurling a portion of his body as a thrown weapon with a range increment of 60 feet (he swiftly regrows thrown portions of its body after using this attack, while the hurled portion melts away into a bloodstain after dealing damage to a target). No Escape (Su) A creature touched by Sangubrax’s tongue must succeed a DC 24 Will save or be affected by both a slow and dimensional anchor spell that lasts for 1 minute. The save DC is Charisma based.

[persephoneggsy]

so i did this a while back, finally remembered it, and now i'm posting it

Mass Effect x Dragon Age AU

I did one of these already, sort of, for ME: Andromeda, but this one is set in the Milky Way.

Elaborations below:

Merrill is a quarian who was exiled from the Migrant Fleet. She's looking for a way not to destroy the geth, but to bring them back under quarian control, thinking they're too valuable a resource to just get rid of. Unfortunately, this made many quarians view her as dangerous, and she was exiled for the crime of experimental geth research. Making Merrill a quarian was the first choice I did for this AU, I think it fits really well.

Aveline is an asari. I'd considered krogan or turian, or simply keeping her human, but in the end I went with asari mostly because Aveline always struck me as condescending in the same way many asari are, lol. She's a commando who later moved to the Citadel to join C-SEC.

Isabela is a turian. She's a barefaced turian, meaning she has no association to a colony. Instead of following the typical turian tradition of proudly serving in the Hierarchy's military, Isabela instead ran off to become a space pirate, specializing in smuggling. She frequents the bars around Omega and has earned herself a fearsome reputation among the mercenaries.

Bethany remains a human; she grew up on a colony world with her siblings, and had a relatively peaceful childhood, despite the Alliance constantly badgering her parents to send her and her older sister to their biotic training program.

Marian, also a human, eventually ran away from home to become a mercenary. She resented her father for forbidding her and her siblings from joining the Alliance - not because she was particularly patriotic, but she felt like her father's grudge against the Alliance prevented her and her siblings from receiving the best training possible. Her powerful biotics made her both an asset and a target, and she soon caught the eye of a certain Council Spectre...

Fenris is a drell. He was raised under the Compact, an agreement between the drell and the hanar, and his purpose was to become a bodyguard... And then his training group was attacked by batarian slavers and he was taken captive. For many years, Fenris suffered under the batarians' rule, until he finally managed to escape. Unwilling to return home, he instead roams the galaxy, taking out as many batarian slaving operations as he can.

Anders is a human who escaped from a biotic testing facility run by Cerberus. Though this left him with a grudge against Cerberus, he also hates the Alliance, whom he sees as no better and will also use biotic children as weapons. He dreams of establishing a safe haven for biotics, and is willing to go to increasingly drastic measures to see that dream become a reality.

Varric is a volus. Unlike his business-minded brother, Varric does not spend his days negotiating trade agreements or doing finance consultations. Spending his days at the Afterlife bar on Omega, he's an information broker, and a pretty damn good one at that. With his specially crafted weapon Bianca, he's not too bad in a fight, either.

Carver, much like his older sister, left home to seek out his own path, and ended up joining the Alliance against his parents' wishes. He thrived in the military, quickly climbing the ranks due to his strength and competency. He's being primed for N7 training under the wathcful eye of Spectre Sebastian Vael.

Sebastian is a human, and a Council Spectre (I'm imagining this AU as a sort of nebulous period where humanity isn't as looked down upon as they were at the start of ME1, and there are a fair number of human Spectres running around). A wild child in his youth, his parents sent him to the Alliance to straighten him out, and to their relief, it worked like a charm. He specializes in covert missions and favors sniper rifles and tech powers.

[vvallent1ne]

Make u Mine

sebastian drabbles + scenarios

pt 2 of Taking What’s Not Yours is taking longer than expected but is halfway done ☺️ but i felt guilty for starving you all so here, take these. go delulu :)))

inspired songs are listed below each one!

“I wanna feel the rush, I wanna taste the crush, I wanna get you goin’. I wanna lay you down, I wanna string you up, I wanna make you mine.”

Imagine the insurmountable tension between you and Sebastian before you got serious with each other. The teasing remarks, the longing glances, the lingering touches. You can’t help but admit that your libido automatically raised when entering through his vent. Your adrenaline spiked, your dopamine rose through the roof, and worst of all, you couldn’t rub off that love-drunk smirk from your face. You felt intoxicated in his presence—under the influence of some unknown force. It caused you to loosen up, to release your muscles of their pinched, at-the-ready position. But most importantly, it let you relax—he let you relax. His dorky smile, his quirky mannerisms, and his enchanting voice created a safe space of sanctuary around the two of you. It occurred to you in some rushing, unexpected thought wave, that you didn’t want him to make anyone else feel that way. Not the entities. Not the other expendables. Nobody. You knew you sounded selfish—downright possessive—you knew, yet you couldn’t help but let the notion sour your mood. You wanted him to be yours. Just yours.

inspired song: Make You Mine - Madison Beer

“Break my heart and start a fire, you got me overnight, just let me be close to you.” + “Isn’t it just so pretty to think that all along there was some invisible string tying you to me?”

From the moment you squeezed your body through that uncomfortably small vent, you knew that you were in trouble. And whenever he began to talk, whenever he looked at you, you felt some unknown gravitational pull towards him. His voice had to be laced with some kind of addicting drug… the sound of it alone had you hooked from the first syllable. And now you couldn’t quit. But there was just one small problem—he didn’t like close proximity. It felt like he was rejecting this pull, fighting it from invading his space. Why? Couldn’t he tell it was fate pulling you two together? You understood his apprehension. You mean, you were a convicted prisoner. But maybe… maybe that’s the reason why you met him. Almost like a domino, or a butterfly effect. Everything you’ve done in the past has led you straight to him, and him to you. He just needs to clear the suspicion-filled fog from his eyes and let you in!

(i’m now realizing i made you sound delusional.)

Inspired songs: Close To You - Gracie Abrams , invisible string - Taylor Swift

“I break down and he’s pulling me in. In a world of boys, he’s a gentleman.”

You were hurt. Badly. Your odds seemed stacked against you from the very beginning. Eyefestatian, the Good People, the turrets, even the puddles of void mass were out to get you. But you managed to make it to your safe haven, Sebastian’s shop. You were practically limping through the vent, dragging yourself and promising that it will all be over soon. Exiting the vent after what felt like an eternity, your gaze first landed on Sebastian. You were quick enough to see the usually peppy smile drop to a concerned frown. He bombarded you with questions, as per usual. He fussed over you like an angry mother. All you could do was sit there and sulk in your shame. He was right, after all, you should have been more careful. You realized then that Sebastian must have been more worried over you than yourself. He began to tend to your wounds, and batted away your hand filled with your scrounged up data, stating that it was ‘on the house’. But you knew better than that—Sebastian doesn’t give deals to just anyone. You smirked at this as he finished you up. You were the only expendable worth losing a medkit for.

Inspired song: “Slut!” - Taylor Swift

pt 2 is COMINGGG yall i promise 😞😞 school just started and im already stressed istg.

anyways lmk if u guys want any specific scenarios in the meantime !!

[hbystuff]

Process breakdown #1

Here is a breakdown of the butterfly animation. This was originally posted as a twitter thread, but a real blog post seems to be a much better format for it.

Step 1: Static Drawing

I've long wanted to experiment with Bokeh effect in pixel art as a way to avoid drawing background. It ended up being a lot more challenging than just a normal background 😂. Still an interesting experiment nonetheless and I might use it for some other stuff in the future.

Step 2: Rough Animation

I traced the static drawing with a contrasting colour, then roughly sketched the other frames. Seeing it in motion made it clear to me that the form was very obviously incorrect, but I thought I'd adjust as I go.

Step 3: Refined Animation

Before I got to this point, I naively tried to put in the colour. I quickly realized making the "veins" look consistent would be very hard without guides. So I looked up pictures of actual Morpho butterflies to study the wings in detail. Also made the shapes (mostly) correct and doubled the frame count once I was happy with the shapes.

Step 4: Colours

This was the most fun part. I conceptualized the wings as two blue tinted, matte, textured mirrors rotating in 3D space. When two mirrors come together, they start reflecting each other. The closer they get, the less the lighting from the surrounding world contribute to the colours you see. Eventually, nearly no light from the outside world make into the gap and all you see is dark blue/black.

It started looking almost like mirrors as I figured out the rough movements of the reflections; then a shimmering mess of colours as I threw in more details from the static drawing. The key trick to making the complex colours look consistent was to pay attention to every "partition" of the wings to make sure the dark colours creep in and out smoothly.

I also gradually filled in the eye spots and details on the backside of the wings, not sure if many people noticed them but I was pretty happy with how they looked.

Step 5: Shadow

A big part of realism comes from how a moving object affects the lighting around it. In this case: the shadow on the flower. This is a rough version of the shadows as I worked on it. Wasn't too concerned about making it look 100% correct, since the wings probably catch all the attention anyway.

Step 6: Final Touches

I spaced out the movements so it didn't feel quite so frantic. Instead of using the last frame as the resting frame, I used the second last, and only briefly showed the last frame at the begging and end of the motion to add a bit of realism (although in reality, butterfly wings probably don't have enough mass for that to happen, but hey, 🤷‍♀️).

Also spent some time to reduce the palette down by merging similar looking colours. Also reused the darker, subtler yellow in the background to create the illusion of more flowers out of focus.

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #60 – Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World by Henry Grabar

This is a book I heard about because the cranky old communist who runs the local daily paper recommended it in some editorial I’ve long since forgotten the actual point of. Which is generally a very high-risk way to get book recommendations, but in this case it worked out! Though I came into this as the friendliest possible audience for the arguments Grabar is trying to make, so I’m genuinely not that sure how convincing a work it is for a less sympathetic reader. It is at least full of fun and somewhat memorable anecdotes.

The book is about, well, (almost) exactly what it says on the tin – the economics and politics and logistics of parking infrastructure in American cities. Specifically, how it is an all-consuming, economy-warping, environment-destroying, city-killing cancer that is the primary causes of decaying urban cores and the lack of affordable housing in gentrifying neighborhoods. The book is loosely organized, with each different chapter approaching the question of and ills caused by parking from a slightly different angle, or considering the history and psychology that has made it such a mighty force, or showing case studies of how different places have started fixing it.

The two main thrusts of the book are a) parking as an un- (which is to say privately-) regulated privilege and entitlement which the great mass of the American public expects to be provided for free (or for an at-most nominal fee) wherever they happen to want to go and b) parking as possibly the least efficient use of developed real estate in the world, and one that absolutely dominates most American cities.

The latter is a bit less interesting to me, just because it’s broadly things I either already knew or could have pretty quickly puzzled out from what I do. It’s still quite well-presented, and quite rage-inducing – the number of square miles of space set aside for the sole use of free parking on every urban street, the eye-watering amount of money cities spend and give up in revenue to subsidize driving and parking, the hundreds of thousands of units of housing whose economics don’t pencil out because of mandatory parking minimums or that are killed by neighbors and ‘community engagement’ out of (ostensible) concern over their effect on parking availability in the neighborhood, and so on. It’s all well-told, but none of it’s exactly groundbreaking (which Grabar is entirely forthright about, to be clear. A large chunk of the book is combination synopsis and advertisement for the older and more more rigorous The High Cost of Free Parking, also cited as one of the main reference texts).

The former is much more interesting reading for me, just because (as a lifelong and involuntary non-driver) the psychology of it is just a bit foreign to me. The sheer fact that so much parking is both free and unregulated means that instead of market pricing or government permitting all manner of fascinatingly dysfunctional private systems to allocate and ration it out develop instead. Fist fights and murders over stolen parking spots, the self-proclaimed vigilantes patrolling condo parking lots for anyone overstaying their welcome, outright criminal conspiracies and organized violence between ice cream truck companies over poaching each others most lucrative routes – many less morbid and attention-getting things too, to be fair, but it’s still all just fascinating. And if ‘explains the world’ is a bit much, does function as an excellent window into a great many neuroses and dysfunctions of American public life.

One of the points the book repeatedly hammers home is that ‘parking shortages’ are, except in a few extremely select neighborhoods, basically a myth. The parking is almost always there – the average American city has more free or subsidized parking spaces and lots than are filled (at least) 360 days of the year. Drivers just expect parking that is simultaneously no more than a couple blocks from their destination, available the moment they pull up, and (almost) free. Garages go half empty while thousands of road-miles are driven every month circling blocks looking for free spots – terrible for the climate, for the roads being driven on, and for traffic and the utility of driving through the city in the first place. Reducing or eliminating free curbside parking (either charging market-clearing rates, or using the real estate for loading zones or patio seating or any of a thousand other things that serve more people in a period than the same amount of parking) thus often makes traffic better, not worse.

This is very much a book written by a journalist rather than an academic, for both good and ill – not that it doesn’t seem densely researched or well-cited (the endnotes run north of 50 pages), but there’s definitely a prioritization of being approachable and readable over being detailed or rigorous. Hence every chapter having at least one and usually several interviews or deeply characterized anecdotes there to be case studies and examples. Sometimes this anecdotes are incredibly interesting and something I’d probably read a book entirely devoted to – the above mentioned New York City ice cream truck feuds, or the fascinatingly blatant and eye-popping amount of corruption around parking ticketing and violations also in NYC, or how the city of Chicago sold the right to operate all its parking meters through the end of the century to Morgan Stanley – but just as (if not more) often it’s just a few pages sketching a sympathetic portrait and life story of someone suffering the travails of some aspect of parking infrastructure so the reader will have someone to empathize with as the problem is described. A trick that does start t get old the more often it’s repeated.

The book’s long digressions into history were (perhaps unsurprisingly) more interesting for me than the contemporary anecdotes. Partially just because the evolution of things like the car garage and how public streets are conceived of is always interesting to learn more about, and partially because of just how long we have at this point known about things like ‘induced demand’ and the various morbid inefficiencies of car-first, -only and -always culture. Literally generations! It's bleak.

Though having said that, this was funnily enough one of the only works of nonfiction I can remember reading in a long, long time that ended on a positive note in a way that didn’t sound like transparent cope. As is mandatory in all works of pop-sociology, -economics or -poli-sci, this one also ends in a chapter or two of examples of Doing It Right and ways society can fix itself going forward. Grabar just actually weaves together a narrative through most of the book of a slowly-increasing pushback and growing political coalitions who are (in the book’s framing) more interested in cheaper housing and more usable public space than traffic jams and parking lots. The COVID lockdowns and sudden need for as much outdoor space as possible – leading to parking lots being repurposed as church pews, curbside parking as patio seating, and a dozen other things – serve as a case in point. The book ends reiterating the point that the USA’s most desirable and expensive neighbourhoods are very often the ones that are dense and walkable enough (and/or sufficiently well-served by public transit) to comfortably live in without owning a car, and the confident belief that such neighbourhoods are only going to grow more common.

All that said, Grabar’s actually much more sympathetic to the pro-car, pro-parking viewpoint than most authors or pundits I have seen make similar points are. Sometimes to a mildly cringe-inducing ‘no don’t run, I promise I’m normal like you!’ way, being entirely honest. But then, one can at least hope that it helps the book actually function as a persuasive text instead of so much elegant preaching to the choir.

[cherri-balms]

♡﹕𝐍𝐄𝐗𝐓, 𝐍𝐄𝐗𝐓! — PROLOGUE

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A/N﹕YAY I FINALLY FINISHED THE PROLOGUE FOR MY FIRST SERIES!

This is the first full fledged fanfic I have written in a long time, I hope anyone who finds this finds it enjoyable, I had a fun time writing this prologue chapter and I currently have around a 10-12 chapter vision for this series as it stands, but if this proves to be something you guys like I will be happy to extend the series! I do plan to create a tag list, if you would like to be added shoot me a DM and I will add you to the list! As always any replies will be made through our main acc @caravan-mad!

This prologue pretty much gives most if not all the information about the reader aside from important plot details. I wanted the reader's demon form and time period to be as ambiguous as possible and limit the use of Y/N, the reader in this story has allegories to butterflies.

Not all chapters will have warnings nor does this one, however the full fic will contain dark content and will be under the dead dove do not eat tag.

Some content will include but are not limited to: Unhealthy relationship dynamics, N.SFW, Unrequited love, Yandere themes, Dubcon, and pretty much any tag youd find listed in Hazbin Hotel tbh

𝐄 × 𝐌/𝐅 × 𝟐.𝟔𝐤 × 𝐎𝐧𝐠𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠 × 𝐀𝐎𝟑

♡﹕Bored at work performing repetitive choreography and pleasing faceless demons, you find yourself reminiscing on life, death, and limbo.

♫ envy baby ~ ♫

“Lights clear? Sounds clear?” 

“We’ve been fucking over this Steven! We’ll know it’s clear when they finally stop tuning our shit-” 

“Anne chill, we still have six minutes till airing. Don’t waste all your energy on the roadie.” 

“That crowd doesn’t seem to be getting any quieter does it…” The little imp’s observations were now only being met by eyerolls and silent treatment by the two drummer girls as the completed instruments silenced in countdown. 

Lights crew above, sounds crew from behind, and effects team surround. The way every single backstage member of your cast would run and scurry around you to get their various tasks done always made you think of little mice, rats even, so worked up making sure everything was in perfect position before those curtains had a chance to stop separating you, from them.

It was cute enough to make you laugh as though you were still a highschool girl.

“Broadcasting live in 60 seconds!” Dark blue scene lighting begins to fade your entire surrounding to a pitch black, and among doing so freezes your little mice into statues all around. Only the tiniest crack in the fabric ahead illuminated the space with a sharp vertical line down the curves of the figure that stands as the adorning center piece of this particular attraction. Roaring bass brings about a quake to the stage beneath your feet, queuing time for you to give your puppies a treat.

“Awwwe~ Did we leave you waiting long?” The volume of pure passionate devotion always rang to your ears louder than any electrical speaker could achieve. 

The wave of the new future adorned in electrical inventions was something you’ve always been prepared to face; why even in the faint blur of the overworld it was all the grown ups could ever yap enough of! No, that wasn’t where that bitter taste came from.

In the full truth of things, you just never knew you’d stick around long enough to bear full witness to its infection of mankind.

Oh come on. Who are we kidding right now?

“Hi. I wanna people save, all right? ”

You’ve never been more liberated.

“You’re in m-my way!!”

Your eyes have but a second to adjust to the flood of bright neon before life hits play once again. The choreography you, and and the other 4 devils fanned out beside you have programmed into your bodies for the past months flow across the stage with ease. among the camera men you can make out the mass of waving pen lights stirred ablaze after the long anticipation, oh how you love they always use the color dearest to your heart…

“The tightrope falls, broken by others”

Once you felt the rushing high of the stage the first time around tolerance for it subsided immediately after. You’ve seen the looks on those poor saps down in the front row, each one hyper fixated on every movement you make wishing they could be you, or be up here with you.

And of course, you all flash them bright smiles, longing gazes and praise them with verses of purity more fitting for the angelic souls looming up above. Customer service is the utmost desired, as they say!

“What a lady, she’s gonna jump

towards the light and shatter humiliatingly”

Actually, can you even remember when your first performance was? How old were you even? All of this came from a cheap shot of gaining a few quick pennies back in the day. Landing yourself a handsome and rich husband with the filth you wore on your back was the first childhood dream you found dead on arrival, but what you were cursed in status you were blessed with the cuteness that made kittens hiss in envy. To say you had “the voice of a goddess” would mayhaps be a bit too presumptuous, but who were you to refute the compliment when it came your way?

Well, maybe trying to parse through finding the day your career debuted or took off was a fool's errand, but the moment it ended certainly still remains as a burned film stuck to your mind. You stopped caring about the “Oh woes me~ what did I do to deserve this~” a long time ago. Still, the punishment you received in death far exceeded what you ever did to earn in your eyes, more so than your sentencing of eternal damnation.

“High and without care I’m lonely, lonely”

Right on que, as always every time you reach exactly 32 seconds into your first song the intrusive memory flashes the same images of the past over your current reality it almost feels as if you were stuck suffering that fate again each time.

You wish there was more to say on the matter of your demise, but there’s only a brief two second window between staring down some heckling loud mouth making a scene in the crowd and a bomb beneath the stage going off before your soul is falling down under the earth’s crust as a blazing comet onto the asphalt below.

And two days before your 21st birthday too are you serious?! UN-Fucking believable!

“From their idle words, the clown becomes a prisoner”

The only thing you wanted to do was scream in the immense burning agony you were suffering until the whole world knew the kind of pain you were in, but each time you cried not even a croak could get past your scorched throat

Even after the blazes subsided and your charred cocoon was all that was left behind, the inferno decided your vocal chords were going to be its payment.

…. That was it?

This was your payout…

And after all that work…

“It’s the same love as always, no way I’d have regrets”

Surreal didn’t even begin to describe what became of the following weeks, months, you haven’t a clue. The construct of night and day seemed to mean jack in the bizzare wonderland of maddness holding you, only so much telling what shade of putrid red in the sky was darker than the same shade of fucking red from two hours ago! What a productive way to spend your newfound endless time!

Every aspect of this place made you absolutely sick, enough so to have you still praying you just were drugged and having the worst trip of your fucking life, but the horror in maddness is the consistency that lies between the lines. You’re certain that damned illuminated “WELCOME TO HELL!” sign and the stranger you befriended in the mirror was that line that made you finally cave.

“Hey, it's a amazing.”

Honestly, you couldn’t say what specifically led you into the epiphany you had, all of a sudden one day you heard a sudden snapping sound in your conscience, and like that everything made sense to you. Why your life was snuffed before you could emerge from your cocoon, why your makers deemed this your new home, and why that bomb taking your life just wasn’t enough to deem your afterlife a hell.

There was a certain liberation that came with hell that you were never going to get being the glowing little diamond you were in human society, through terrorism, cannibalism and bloodshed one thing would remain a constant throughout devil society. No one would ever give a damn about anything.

Hell became your fucking playground by the time your first extermination came around, and keeping on the move while broke as shit was a cakewalk this time around, but your first encounter with an overlord after catching your foot in the grave in the casino humbled your inflating ego. Chaos for society did not necessarily mean chaos without hierarchy, and going without a voice to call your own put you at an extreme disadvantage.

“LA-LA-LA!”

The crescendo of the opener is right around the corner, for the leading front and center of your group your vocals and choreography had primarily remained reserved for backup. The primary color of lights among the crowd made the obvious clear with who the majority of these demons were here to see, your manager was aware of this more than anyone else.

Your fans tended to be aware of this for a majority of your shows, your parts in particular tended to stand out even as mere background vocals.

“I’m ready for this this lover baby! 

My garden of love is in danger from a drawing hand. 

Truly, this this lover’s crazy! 

In the garden of harm, the bud of a human is a lie-ai-a!”

Sinners rejoice once the solo everyone was edging towards drops with the bass of the loudspeakers and the flares of the strobes above. The pitches your vocals were now capable of hitting and the frequency you were able to synthesize between notes wasn’t just inhuman, it was impossible for any singer whose notes carried on oxygen.

Your manager always made it a note in the writing room or when creating your setlists that overfeeding wolves with delicious treats would dull the taste over time, your solo singles often did well enough to prove this didn’t need to always be the case, but whenever it came to the business decisions you always put your full trust in him. Where you are standing right now is more than enough proof in your eyes that he knew exactly where and when to move his pawns, and in doing so he turned you into a valiant queen.

“Ah! I love you and even things about you I probably shouldn’t love 

I love you too much, on a count of one and two 

Lie-lie loving you, such words 

and doing such things, you’re in m-my way!”

Survival was of the least of your concerns after so much time had passed, but survival was all you could find yourself able to do in your forced retirement. Where you yearn for character in sound you were able to temporarily find when turning to radio, but living vicariously only quenches so much before greed starts cozying up within.

Plausible excuses for your laziness were wearing thinner by the day, even the last sane smolder of human morality trying to keep itself sparked wanted nothing more than to argue you weren’t supposed to be living to the fullest in hell, but the mute silence in your throat was beginning to phase your memory of the voice your inner conscience called its own too, and you'd sooner go mad trying than wither away again a fucking waste.

“Here comes the love maniac who never misses,

Stack up all the whining,

Fall in a high-fi love lie-ai-a!”

Overlords were still beings that had you nauseous upon first glance, your first meeting of one of these overlords had you vowing to never end up in the claws of one again, should you find yourself in a deal you can’t unbind yourself out of. Pride stuck thick to the roof of your mouth and there was nothing more you wanted to do than stick to your morals and prove use on your own, but reality had pelted you with stones throughout your entire afterlife.

You were going to need to write out a loan before you’d find yourself with any ounce of power to call your own, not like you didn’t have options for whom to choose! Even so, you needed to keep a steady head and an even sharper nose. In your ponderance you'd come to realize there was only really one option for you to go to this whole time. Maybe that gambling kitty taught you a valuable lesson on staking bets in the long run.

“Copy their acting and keep the truth hidden

Stacking three and lonely, lonely 

You’re surely a clown, a prisoner”

A bet on the future was what you were going to stake it all on.

“Copy their acting and keep the truth hidden

Stacking three and lonely, lonely 

You’re surely a clown, a prisoner”

Everything about how the world operated changed so rapidly from the days walking in the sunlight to your eternal party in the redlight, the wave of the future had finally hit with the promise for a solution to everyones problems. There couldn’t have been any better timing, if technology was going to be the way of the future, who's to say you couldn’t prove what was achievable? Like that, you had your sales pitch. The hardest part on your end was complete.

“Hey, it's a amazing.

LA-LA-LA!”

“So you were a singer in life and lost your voice in death, and just what the fuck made you think I was the man to go to for this?” Those were the magic words you were waiting for, with his composure shaken it wasn’t long before he was the one asking the questions and allowing the ball to move into your court. Your fingers dance on the illuminated tablet laying on the table once again before you flip it over toward his direction.

~Have your inventions not made it to that level of advancement yet?

Hook, line, and sinker. You had a hunch a passive aggressive challenge toward the ego would be what ultimately won you over with any overlord you chose, but the speed in which he stood from his desk and held out his hand, it felt almost too easy.

“If it’s a new voice you wish to invest in, consider your stocks opened, Monarch!” Finally…

“I’m ready for this this lover baby! 

My garden of love is in danger from a drawing hand.”

“Now for what you have to offer me,” You don’t care. “I hope you weren’t planning on extorting me out of a generous gift and then making the big bucks with it, hm?” These overlords just love to hear themselves go on.

“Truly, this this lover’s crazy! 

In the garden of harm, the bud of a human is a lie-ai-a!”

“I suppose I could just issue a royalty for your voice, after all you wouldn’t be making a sound without my tech. Lucky for you, I’ve been having fleeting thoughts of entering the music industry. So why not invest in each other instead~”

“Ah I love you and even things about you I probably shouldn’t love 

I love you too much, on a count of one and two”

Being owned by an overlord in the end wasn’t so bad, or maybe this is the fated “stockholm syndrome” everyone seems to be crying about these days. Either way, the biggest price you had to pay in the end was just having someone else do all the “business” part in show business.

Naive maybe, but rosey eyed you weren't. For all that he’s done you still fail to see how your end of the deal has in any way repaid what’s given, which can only lead to one thing down the line. You were going to have to give him your everything.

… Yet, how could you find yourself ungrateful to someone who fulfilled your afterlife dream and still continued to provide for you?

“Lie-lie loving you, such words and even such things, they’re in m-my way!”

The audience went absolutely ballistic at the final group pose signifying the end of your opening set, some of the really hardcore fans in the front row you swore passed out the second eye contact was made.

Yet when you turn your chin upward to the VIP section after performing your tricks so well, all you’re met with is a turned back and a schmoozed up producer instead of a tasty bone.

“Thank each and every one of you for coming to see us tonight!!” No, you only wanted him to come out to see you.

Only you.

Hey, Vox?

Can you just turn your stupid flat head this way?

[xomakara]

Crash Landing

SUMMARY | You meet Jungwoo in a space station and you both instantly hit it off. PAIRING | Jungwoo/Reader GENRE | space theme au, smut with little (?) plot, unprotected sex (wrap it up everyone!), oral sex (both male/female receiving/giving), general perversion RATING | Mature LENGTH | 6,466 words AUTHOR’S NOTE | Debating on making a part 2 or like a space theme series or something. Like I don’t think I’ve delved deep enough into the space lore haha. Was it weird to have that space/alien fight in the middle of the chapter? No idea. I’ve played to  much Mass Effect lately so I was kind of, sort of, inspired to write this.

What do ya’ll think? A part 2 or like a series? Maybe a different pairing? IDK lol.

You open your eyes and stared at the white interior of the suite you inhabited. All white with no colors...how boring. You let out a sigh and swung your feet over the bed, not having slept for nearly two days straight. Even after a nap of a few hours, you were still very tired.

You walked towards the door of your room, the automatic door opening when you reached it. As you stepped out of your suite, you peered down the halls of the space station that you were residing in until your next mission could be scheduled. Nothing interesting ever happened on board this station; people came and went, making it their home base while they completed various missions all over the galaxy, but most didn't even spend more than a week here before they were off again. It was just an orbital station that housed different ships when they weren't traveling around.

However, when people came here, they usually came to be seen by many other space travelers and scientists as well as rich merchants who wanted to conduct business deals in private areas and who had lots of money to do so. For these reasons, it was quite crowded.

"Maybe I'll go stop by the bar and see if there's any exciting events happening." You thought aloud to yourself as you made your way through the corridors towards the main lobby.

You continued walking until you entered the main room where the bar stood. Although you hadn't been able to spot anything remotely interesting, you hoped that maybe you'd find something tonight. You walked up to the counter and ordered a drink, the bartender knowing exactly what you wanted since he had served you before and already knew your preferences. He soon handed you your drink, leaning against the counter as his co-worker manned the bar.

"Anything interesting happened? Do you know?" You asked the bartender, noticing his gaze shift from you to the wall behind him, likely looking for news. The bartender chuckled lightly and shook his head.

"Nothing really. We have a couple of freighter pilots from one of the smaller colonies arriving later today to sign paperwork, but other than that, nothing much is going on here."

You nodded in understanding, sitting down at a nearby table as you began sipping on your drink. A feeling of boredom consumed you once again as you sat there, your thoughts drifting away into a distant land. After a short time, the bartender placed another drink in front of you.

"Thanks." You said, smiling slightly at the bartender as you took another sip of your drink. You began wondering about something and looked around the room. Not seeing anyone that might help, you spoke out loud. "Hey..."

The bartender immediately turned his attention back to you and smiled. "Yeah?"

"I'm wondering...do you have any other information that might be useful? I came for adventure and just being stuck in Neo Station for too long is making me a little stir crazy."

"Hmm, what kind of adventures are you wanting to get into?" The bartender curiously asked.

"Oh, just some sort of excitement. Anything would do, really." You said cheerfully. "Do you happen to know of anyone that might have a job for me? I am an experienced fighter and strategist. I can pretty much take on any mission if it comes to it."

"Not that I know. But maybe one of the merchants might know." The bartender said. "Oh, Neo Security might have some jobs if you're inclined to get into those sorts of things. They don't pay much, though."

"I'm not so worried about the pay," you laughed as you made your way out of the bar. "It's all about the adventure and experience!"

You quickly made your way outside, stepping onto the walkway towards the large window of the station. Before you got to the window however, you stopped, gazing out into space for a moment, admiring how beautiful it truly was. All of the stars, planets, nebulas and countless other galaxies stretched far out beyond the reaches of human sight, each individual one unique in its own way. It was amazing to think that each star system contained life forms, from tiny single cell organisms to the huge, multi-planeted species like yourselves.

The possibilities seemed endless.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" A male voice said next to you.

You looked up to see a very handsome male looking out the large window with you. You blushed softly as you gazed upon him, instantly becoming more attracted to him than you were to most others, although you tried your best to hide it. You smiled at him and spoke. "Yes, it is beautiful. So vast. I feel like I've only scratched the surface of everything that's out there."

He smiled at you, nodding. "Indeed. Humans will never fully understand how large our universe actually is, and I don't believe we'll ever reach it. But I guess that's why we should appreciate it as much as we can now."

You both stared out into space, listening to the noises coming from the station filled with human and alien species alike. After a minute or two, you turned back to face him. "I'm Y/N, by the way."

"Jungwoo. Nice to meet you, Y/N." Jungwoo said, extending his hand towards you.

You smiled at him and took his hand in yours. "Likewise, Jungwoo."

"So, what are you doing out here alone, Y/N?" Jungwoo questioned.

You shrugged and sighed, not meeting Jungwoo's eyes. "I'm bored and haven't done anything interesting lately."

"Really? What kinds of things do you normally do?" Jungwoo inquired.

"Well, normally I would go exploring a new planet and look for animals and plant life that humans have yet to discover. All the while, making sure humanity is safe and keeping the peace. Unfortunately, since my ship is in maintenance right now, there aren't many places to go." You replied sadly. "And I have no idea where my crew went."

Jungwoo nodded in understanding, a smile on his face. "I understand completely. My crew always has trouble finding places to explore whenever we visit a new planet, either because we're restricted or we just simply run out of places to look."

"That's why I love exploration. You just never know what you're going to find, do you?" You grinned widely.

Jungwoo grinned back at you and shook his head. "No, you don't. That's what makes it fun!"

After exchanging pleasantries, you and Jungwoo spent the rest of the night talking about your hobbies and interests, trying to make conversation and pass the time until your ship was repaired. At the end of the evening, Jungwoo gave you his number in case you needed a companion or company on future excursions.

"Thank you for talking with me tonight, Jungwoo. It really helped pass the time." You said happily, giving him a kiss on the cheek.

He grabbed your wrist gently, stopping you from leaving. "Let me ask you something first." He stated firmly.

You frowned and furrowed your eyebrows. "Okay. What is it?"

Jungwoo ran his thumb along the inside of your wrist. "Are you just as attracted to me as I am to you? Because if you are, then maybe this night doesn't have to end right here."

Your heart skipped a beat and your breath caught in your throat. Your mind began racing with a million different possibilities, many of them leading to unspeakable sexual encounters between the two of you. You felt the heat rise in your cheeks and Jungwoo noticed.

"Y/N?" He inquired, giving you a warm smile.

You nodded slowly, unable to speak. Jungwoo leaned closer, closing the gap between your lips. With a soft moan escaping your mouth, your lips parted slightly and Jungwoo slid his tongue across your lips, gently stroking it before you slowly opened your mouth. His tongue darted into your mouth, exploring every inch, as you kissed him back eagerly.

Jungwoo pulled away, grinning widely. "So? Are you just as attracted to me as I am to you?"

You looked at him, a coy grin forming on your face. "I think you know the answer to that question, Jungwoo."

"Good." He whispered softly. "Because you are extremely attractive."

A blush appeared on your face, making you become flushed as Jungwoo slowly backed away, running his fingers through his hair as he looked at you with lustful eyes. No one else was around but you grabbed his hand and led him towards your suite.

"Where are we going?" Jungwoo whispered as he followed you closely, still clutching your hand tightly.

"You'll see in a minute." You replied as you led him towards your suite.

When you got inside, you pushed Jungwoo against the nearest wall, kissing him passionately as you unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it off of him. Once you got it removed, you glanced at his chest and gasped softly.

"What is it?" He breathed softly, looking down at you.

You gazed up at him and whispered, "I love your body."

Jungwoo smirked and bit down gently on your bottom lip. "Has it been awhile since you had someone?"

"A long ass while," You moaned as his fingers trailed down your sides. "My squadmates not included. They never satisfied me sexually, which is a big part of what drives me to seek companionship elsewhere."

Jungwoo chuckled as he bent down to kiss you. "If you want, I could make sure you were completely satisfied. In fact, I guarantee it."

You smiled seductively at him, sliding your hands up his arms. "Can you?"

"You bet I can. Just give me permission." Jungwoo gazed down at you.

You smiled, leaning forward and pressing your lips against his, softly kissing him back. You pulled back after a few moments and nibbled on his lower lip. Jungwoo growled softly, wrapping his arms around you and pulling you closer. You melted into him as he wrapped his arms around you tightly, guiding you backwards until your knees hit the bed.

You looked into his dark brown eyes and moved your lips over his. His kisses were gentle at first, but as they grew deeper, his kisses became passionate and urgent, wanting to devour your entire body. You responded, running your hands up and down his chest as he explored your body with his. You moaned softly as his hands slid underneath your shirt and caressed your bare skin. You looked into his eyes as he continued touching you, watching the passion growing within them. As his touches became bolder, your breathing became heavier. When he finally pulled your shirt off, you groaned loudly, your hands going to the buttons of his pants.

Once you had them undone, you reached inside and found his hardened member. He moaned in pleasure as you stroked him slowly, gently squeezing and moving his shaft around. Jungwoo closed his eyes, enjoying the sensations you were giving him. When he opened his eyes again, he saw that you were staring into his eyes intently. You lowered your head, pressing your lips against his erect penis, licking the tip of it gently. He moaned deeply as you did this. He grabbed your head and brought you closer, encouraging you to continue.

As you licked and sucked on him more aggressively, he let out a small whimper, tugging on your hair roughly. You moaned, continuing to work his penis with your hand, sucking harder on him. His moans grew louder and more intense as he pressed himself even harder into your mouth. Finally, when he couldn't take anymore, he pulled away, painting your face with his cum.

You licked his cum off of your lips, grinning as you watched his facial expressions. "Did I satisfy you?" You asked slyly.

"Oh god yes," He gasped, moving down your body to help discard the rest of your clothes. "And now it's your turn to be satisfied..."

"How was your rest, captain?" Haechan, your engineer, asked as he checked the equipment around you.

"Fine, thanks." You replied. "I finally managed to sleep after those two grueling days of not sleeping at all. How about you?"

Haechan shrugged. "I slept alright, I suppose. I was still tossing and turning a bit, but I managed to fall asleep eventually."

"At least you managed to sleep!" Renjun, your pilot and navigator, called from the cockpit. "Me, I was just laying there staring at the ceiling and trying to count sheep. Tried to stay awake all day yesterday, but I failed miserably. There's nothing worse than being extremely exhausted and then not being able to sleep at all!"

"Tell me about it." Winwin, your medic, added as he tried to stifle a yawn. "As soon as I try to sleep, my mind starts racing with ideas and worries and I can't get rid of them. I've been waking up every hour or so and laying awake for awhile, only to finally drift off to sleep again after a few hours."

Everyone paused in their work for a brief moment to discuss how they all slept. It was nice to hear that everyone else was struggling with similar issues. At least you weren't alone. You let out a small chuckle, watching as Haechan and Renjun bickered quietly.

"Where's the rest of the team?" You inquired, looking around. Everyone else seemed busy with their duties and you couldn't see anyone else.

"They went to collect some cargo." Winwin replied, reading off a holographic screen that displayed the list of supplies that they needed to gather. "I think Mark and Jaehyun went to get some weapons and armor while Doyoung and Taeyong went to collect medical supplies. Johnny went to stock up on food."

"And Jaemin? Where is he?" You asked.

Haechan chuckled, shaking his head. "Weird kid doesn't seem interested in helping us gather supplies. Seems like he wants to go take care of something else first. Maybe he found a cute little animal he wants to bring back."

Everyone chuckled at this.

"If that's the case, then I hope it isn't a rat or something." Renjun said, pointing his finger at Haechan. "I'm tired of him always bringing back rodents and bugs as pets."

You let out a sigh. "Hey, as long as he doesn't shoot me and his squadmates in the back, I don't care. Let the weird kids do whatever they want, as long as they're helpful. Don't worry, we won't hold it against them."

Everyone slowly nodded their heads and resumed their tasks, which included cleaning and setting up various supplies in preparation for the upcoming expedition. You let out a sigh of relief as you worked alongside your crewmates. At least everything was getting done. As you finished organizing the rest of the supplies, you sent a message to everyone.

"Alright guys, we're almost ready. Everything seems to be set up and in order. Should be going out soon. Crew, keep an eye out for anything suspicious or unusual, okay? Squad, arm yourself with your weaponry and be prepared for battle."

You heard a series of responses throughout the ship, everyone agreeing to your instructions and telling you they were ready for the task ahead.

Finally, you heard your squadmate and science officer, Doyoung, reply. "We're ready, captain! Weapons are loaded and all equipment is operational. We're waiting on everyone else to finish gathering supplies before we leave."

With everyone on board, you gave the signal to launch the vessel, and it began floating upwards into space. Once it had cleared the station, you gave the command to accelerate and left the station behind.

You were mindlessly walking around your ship, performing maintenance and such when you heard someone call your name. Looking up, you saw Johnny, one of your squadmates and your second-in-command, standing at the door to the bridge, wearing a wide grin on his face. "So I heard that you met someone new yesterday. Any details?"

You chuckled at his teasing and shook your head. "Who's asking?"

"You met someone?" Mark, another squadmate and everythingman, asked as he joined Johnny in the doorway. "I thought you were staying in your suite all day?"

"I stopped by the bar last night and met this guy." You explained, walking into the bridge. "Why are you all suddenly curious about who I met? Scared that I might run off with him or something?"

"And leave this wonderful crew behind? No way." Taeyong, the cook and cultural advisor, chimed in. "Come on, tell us about this mysterious man. Did ya'll fuck?"

"Oh come on, none of you will even admit to being jealous that I may have met someone else?" You said, rolling your eyes.

Jaehyun, a squadmate and quartermaster, immediately shook his head and held up his hands in protest. "Not me! Honest! Of course I'd be happy for you if you met someone."

Renjun glared at Jaehyun. "Says the guy that always wants to fuck Y/N after a mission."

Haechan raised an eyebrow and smiled at Renjun. "And you know this because..."

"I have eyes and ears." Renjun scoffed. "Jaehyun's always sniffing around Y/N after missions, so naturally I've seen and heard quite a bit."

You rubbed your temples. You were the only female amongst a crew and squad of horny males. It was a wonder any of you could maintain a level head at all times. Fortunately, you hadn't encountered too many difficulties with your relationships. Sure, you've slept with some of your squadmates, but you've never gotten emotionally attached to anyone.

Not yet, anyway.

You looked around the bridge, watching your crew and squadmates interact with each other. They were all so friendly and caring, despite their varying backgrounds and personalities. You had originally been afraid of interacting with the rest of your crew, considering your coveted status as a Neo operative and the constant scrutiny that came along with it. However, it seemed like none of that mattered to the others. They welcomed you with open arms, accepting you for who you were. And you were glad for that. You didn't need any special treatment. Just to be treated as an equal, and you felt like they did just that. You wouldn't trade these people for anything.

"Hey," you said softly, causing everyone to turn and look at you. "You guys are the best crew and squad that I could ever ask for. I wouldn't trade you guys or run off with any other team for the world. We've been through a lot of shit together, and I couldn't imagine doing this without you."

A smile broke across all of their faces, their smiles growing wider as they watched you continue speaking.

"And even though we haven't known each other very long, you've become family to me. And I'm thankful that you're willing to put up with me and my bullshit."

"The amount of trouble you put us through," Jaemin, another squadmate and technician, laughed, holding his stomach. "But hey, we're used to it by now."

Johnny punched Jaemin in the shoulder playfully. "And you love every second of it."

Everyone continued laughing and joking with each other as you made your way over to the main console to start checking on all the systems on the ship. The others joined you as you inspected and ran tests on various components, making sure everything was working properly. While you were focused on monitoring the systems, a notification appeared on the holographic display next to you.

"Captain, one of our sensors detected something out of the ordinary coming from the surface of the planet below." Haechan called out. "It looks like the coordinates for a shuttle bay. Something strange is definitely going on."

You stood up and walked towards the viewport. All the other members of your crew gathered around you, curiously watching as you peered down onto the planet below.

"There's no doubt about it." You muttered. "Something's wrong down there."

You watched intently as you saw the faint outline of a spaceship hovering above the shuttle bay. You could barely make out what the thing was; it was far away and it was hard to distinguish. But you knew exactly what it was. You were intimately familiar with every spaceship design that existed within the Alliance.

This wasn't one of the Alliance ships. It wasn't even close. You had no idea where this thing had come from, but there was no doubt that it wasn't friendly. A shiver passed through your body, causing you to lean closer to the viewing window.

"Renjun, take us closer to the shuttle bay." You ordered. "Get us as close as possible without getting shot down."

"Copy that, captain." He responded.

"Doyoung and Taeyong, initiate the ships defense. Make sure we aren't caught off guard." You added.

"On it." Doyoung confirmed.

"Haechan, begin a scan on the area. Find out what we're dealing with."

"Got it." Haechan responded.

"Winwin, standby unless needed." You instructed your medic. You turned back to the rest of your crew. "The rest of you, loadout all weapons and equipment. Arm yourselves and get ready for battle. Squad, let's go find ourselves some answers."

Your orders were quickly carried out, and you and your team silently headed out of the room and down the hallway to the hangar deck. When you reached the bottom floor, you opened the large doors and stepped outside, followed by the rest of your squad. You and your squadmates took up defensive positions as you scanned the area with your visors.

It was then that you spotted several black dots moving around in the distance. They seemed to be approaching the shuttle bay and were probably heading inside.

"Scans indicate that there are four lifeforms nearby." Doyoung reported. "Two of them appear to be armed with standard rifles and pistols, the other two are carrying automatic assault rifles. No idea what they are."

You glanced over at your squad. Their expressions were grim. Not only were you uncertain about whether these beings would be friendly, but you weren't even entirely sure how dangerous they were.

"Alright everyone," you began. "Standby and be alert. We'll figure this out as fast as we can. In the meantime, just stay quiet and wait for my commands."

They all nodded their heads in understanding and stood perfectly still, waiting for further instruction.

As the black dots approached, you began taking careful steps backwards. They seemed harmless enough, but you were not taking any chances. One wrong move and it could lead to disaster. Fortunately, the other members of your squad stayed alert and were able to act accordingly. When the black dots were close enough, a series of bullets zipped past you, narrowly missing you. Without hesitation, the aliens fired back, riddling the surface of your ship with blaster bolts.

"Fuck!" Mark cursed loudly. "These things aren't fucking around!"

"Mark, Jaehyun! To the left! Johnny, Jaemin! To the right! Come on, move!" You yelled. Your squad instantly complied and moved swiftly, ducking and weaving between the different sets of walls, leaving the invaders exposed. A few more shots rang out, tearing apart pieces of the hull and a couple of windows. You were lucky that your shields absorbed most of the damage, otherwise it could have been catastrophic.

"Okay, let's move. Squad, split up and cover all sides. We don't want these guys sneaking up on us while we're spread out."

"On it, captain!" Both Jaemin and Jaehyun acknowledged. As the squad split up, you moved towards the closest wall and crouched down, allowing your bulk to shield you from any stray blaster bolts. After listening closely, you determined that the enemy was on the other side of the building, trying to figure out where you and your crew were hiding.

You grabbed a grenade launcher and waited for your comrades to return to their posts before setting off towards the closest wall. You slowly peeked over the top of the building, your eyes trained on the other side. Several of the black dots were crouching behind the outer walls, apparently looking for you. However, the rest of them were either huddled together or stood alone in small groups, watching the building, almost as if they expected you to come out of hiding.

Taking careful aim, you lobbed the grenade towards the building where the majority of the black dots were located. You threw it as hard as you could and prayed that it would do some damage. When the grenade exploded, all hell broke loose. Dozens of blasts rang out, and several of the black dots went flying into the air. Before you could even react, the others dropped their guns and tried to flee, but were intercepted by your teammates. You witnessed some fierce hand-to-hand combat, with everyone involved using every weapon at their disposal.

Several aliens got thrown around and pinned to the ground, but soon enough, you and your team managed to hold the line and stop the attack. When it was all over, you breathed a sigh of relief and gazed around, assessing the damage. You were surprised that your squad managed to defeat so many enemies so easily. You guessed that these aliens were only the tip of the iceberg, and that it would be impossible to hold off such a large number of foes without help.

After collecting your thoughts, you radioed Renjun and the rest of your squad. "Alright guys, the fight is over. Everyone get some rest and reload your weapons. Let's keep a low profile until the coast is clear."

All of your orders were immediately obeyed, and your entire crew headed back inside to get some much needed rest. You checked your gun again, ensuring that it was fully loaded and that your grenade launcher was still operational. Despite the fact that your squad held the enemy off easily, you were certain that it was only a matter of time before they regrouped and tried to attack again. At least this time they won't have the element of surprise.

Hopefully.

“Finally back in Neo Station!” Mark called out as he walked off the ship. “I’m gonna take a long ass nap in the barracks until the next mission.”

After hours of killing aliens and avoiding being killed by alien weaponry, your squad was finally back on Neo Station. You were eager to check on the status of your ship, and see if any of the damages made on the ship could be repaired. It seemed like a good idea to have an experienced mechanic inspect the ship once the adrenaline wore off. Luckily, Haechan and Jaemin were able to examine your ship and give you a report on what repairs might be necessary.

Renjun groaned, stretching his limbs. “Same. I’m gonna try to get some sleep.”

“You’ve been cranky man.” Haechan laughed as he joined the two. “Sleep will do us good.”

“I’m heading to med bay to stock up on supplies.” Winwin muttered and turned to Doyoung. “Care to join me? The science wards are near there.”

“Sure.” Doyoung replied and headed in the same direction as Winwin.

“I’m gonna go hang out in the mess hall.” Taeyong ran off, leaving you with Jaehyun and Johnny. Jaemin seemed to have run off somewhere else.

“Weird guy.” Johnny commented as he watched the younger guy’s fading back.

“Leave the weird kids alone,” you playfully smacked Johnny’s arm. You looked at both him and Jaehyun. “What have you guys got planned?”

“Actually, we were hoping you might want to join us.” Jaehyun said with a smile.

“Really?” you questioned.

“Yeah.” Jaehyun smiled. “Let’s go have some fun, captain.”

"Lead the way."

You followed Jaehyun and Johnny towards a club that was filled with men and exotic female dancers of humans and alien species. There was a long bar at the front of the club that was decorated with dozens of drink bottles, and was surrounded by several seating areas, including couches and chairs. Some men sat alone in one of the booths, drinking themselves silly.

“A gentleman’s club?” You gave Jaehyun a look. “Really?”

“Of course it is! This is Neo Station after all. What did you expect?” Jaehyun teased.

“Some people prefer more subtle entertainment.”

Jaehyun rolled his eyes. “Subtle entertainment? Like the night you met someone new?”

You rolled your eyes. “I meant drinking in a lounge or at the bar. Not a gentleman’s club.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Johnny asked. “This place is amazing!”

“If you say so.” You shrugged. “I should’ve gone with Taeyong to the mess hall…”

“Come on! I’ll buy you drinks all night!” Jaehyun insisted. “And girls! Lots and lots of girls!”

“You two can have the girls.” You looked around the club. “But I see some eye candy calling my name.”

Johnny looked in the same direction you were looking, a smirk on his face. “Ahhhh, so that’s your new friend? He’s handsome but not as handsome as me.”

Jaehyun raised an eyebrow before letting out a laugh. “We’re not going to see you in the next few days, are we?”

“Nope!” You nodded. “I’m gonna have fun tonight.”

Both Jaehyun and Johnny smirked at each other. “Have fun and use protection, captain.”

The two of them waved goodbye as you made your way through the crowd. When you finally found him, you noticed that he had already settled himself into a seat. The sight of you drew his attention, and he grinned widely when he saw you approach.

“Y/N,” Jungwoo greeted you as you sat beside him. He placed his hand on yours. “Weird place for you to show up at.”

You nodded over to your squad mates as they were watching a sexy alien woman dance seductively for the crowd. “My squadmates dragged me out here.”

“Not exactly your scene, is it?” Jungwoo asked as he slid a finger along the palm of your hand.

“As hot as the dancers are, they’re not my cup of tea.” You placed a hand on his knee. “You’re more my type.”

He smiled mischievously. “Had to come back for more, huh?”

You let out a laugh, slowly moving in closer to him. “It looks like it.”

He leaned in and gently kissed you. His lips were warm and inviting, which caused goosebumps to rise all over your body. You could feel yourself getting lost in the kiss, forgetting about everything else around you. He pulled away slightly and whispered in your ear. “Wanna get out of here?”

Your breath caught in your throat. “Oh god, yes.”

You led Jungwoo out of the club and into a nearby alleyway. It took several minutes to get there, and during that time, you continued kissing him fervently, enjoying every second of his embrace. When you reached the alleyway, you wrapped your arms around him tightly, causing him to chuckle.

“Don’t worry, no one’s coming.” He told you.

You paused for a moment. “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.” He replied with a grin.

Before you knew it, Jungwoo pushed you against the wall and pressed his lips against yours. You could taste his minty breath as he started to explore your mouth, slipping his tongue inside of your mouth to stroke against yours. You felt him push his hands under your shirt, running them up and down your bare stomach.

“Fuck, Y/N.” He moaned softly as he continued exploring your mouth. “You’re so beautiful.”

You couldn’t help but shiver at his words. Jungwoo was definitely a very handsome man, but hearing those words from him was making you weak in the knees. He stopped kissing you momentarily and looked deep into your eyes. “Let's head back to my place so that I can take care of you."

His tone left no room for argument. You simply nodded and allowed him to guide you out of the alley. You enjoyed the walk to his suite, mostly because it gave you time to calm your racing heart and regain your composure. Once you arrived at his suite, Jungwoo grabbed your hand and led you inside.

"You have a nice suite." You looked around the living area. It wasn't as luxurious as some of the places you've seen on Earth, but it was decent enough for an officer.

"Thanks." He smiled as he moved forward to wrap his arms around you. "It's nothing compared to your suite though. Nothing but the best for one of the best captains I know."

"I never told you that I was a captain...”

“Of course you never told me…” He leaned in close and kissed you again. “Didn't need to. I just know how great of a person you are.”

You melted at his words. The sexual tension between you and Jungwoo was practically combustible, and it wasn't hard to tell that he was just as attracted to you.

“How great?” You asked softly as he pushed you against the wall.

“Beyond great.” He nipped at your lower lip, causing you to whimper.

“Then prove it.” You whispered as he slipped his hand under your bra.

Jungwoo's lips traveled down your neck as he slowly unclasped your bra. Your skin felt like fire as he gently caressed your nipples.

“Fuck.” Jungwoo whispered. “I love these tits of yours.”

He ran his hands down your breasts, squeezing them softly. You moaned softly, allowing him to continue playing with your breasts.

He lifted your top up, exposing your bare stomach. His eyes lit up at the sight of your toned abs. With quick movements, he slipped off your top, sending your lacy black bra flying across the room. Jungwoo gazed down at your naked chest. His fingers traced their way down to your stomach, where he traced your abdomen with his fingertips. His touch sent chills throughout your entire body.

He lifted you to the countertop and slowly lowered his lips to your belly button. His tongue flicked against your sensitive skin, causing you to moan even louder. Jungwoo didn't stop there. He continued trailing kisses down your stomach, his hands at the band of your pants. With light tugging motions, he managed to pull them off of you. They fell onto the floor with a thud, leaving you sitting in only your panties. Jungwoo stood up straight and gave you another admiring look.

“Like what you see?” You questioned playfully.

“God damn, you're fucking gorgeous.” He growled as he ripped off his own clothes before dropping to his knees in front of you.

With quick movements, he spread your legs open and positioned himself between them. He tugged on your panties, pulling them down until they were pooled at your ankles.

“Now taste me,” You ordered as you grabbed hold of his hair and guided his face to your pussy.

He quickly obliged. His tongue snaked its way into your dripping pussy, causing you to let out a loud moan. His tongue moved in circles, swirling around your clit and flicking lightly against it. He paid extra attention to your sensitive spot, pleasuring you to the fullest.

When he felt that you were ready to cum, he brought his face back up to your clit. Using his fingers, he circled it lightly while rubbing it against your clit. You began to thrash your head back and forth, unable to contain your orgasm any longer. You screamed loudly as you came, sending vibrations through Jungwoo's head. He buried his face into your pussy as you cried out in pleasure.

After a few moments, he pulled his head from your pussy and quickly wiped his face with a napkin. “Fuck, I need to be inside you right now.”

He positioned himself between your legs and pushed himself inside of you. You groaned as you adjusted to his size.

“You’re so tight.” He panted as he held himself up by bracing his hands on the countertop underneath you. “Fucking tight.”

He continued thrusting slowly inside of you. You closed your eyes and concentrated on feeling every inch of his dick move within you.

“Does it feel good?” He asked after a minute of continuous thrusting.

“Oh my god, yes!” You moaned. “Keep doing that. Fuck, don’t stop.”

Jungwoo let out a small laugh. “There will be plenty more if you keep begging like that.”

He slowly increased his pace, allowing you to enjoy every second of his large cock penetrating your tight pussy. Soon enough, he picked up the pace again, increasing his speed.

“Do you feel good, Jungwoo?” You asked, your voice barely above a whisper.

“Feelings mutual.” He gasped as he pounded harder and faster inside of you.

You bit your lip as he pounded his dick into you. It felt so good having his cock slide in and out of your pussy. His hips moved forcefully, driving his cock deeper inside of you. You bit your lip again, trying to fight off your impending orgasm.

“Cum for me, Y/N. Cum on my dick.” He grunted.

You obeyed his command without hesitation. “Fuck! Jungwoo!”

Your body shook violently as your orgasm swept through you. Your entire body tightened, causing you to scream out in ecstasy. Jungwoo moaned as he drove himself even deeper into you, continuing his powerful thrusts.

As you recovered from your orgasm, you opened your eyes and saw Jungwoo looking back at you with lust filled eyes. He began licking his lips as his gaze shifted from your eyes to your lips.

“Want to go again?” You whispered, knowing that you had more energy than before.

He smirked and nodded his head. “Why not?”

He lifted you from the countertop and carried you into the bedroom. Once he laid you down on the bed, he crawled on top of you.

“You’re looking at me funny. What? Did I do something wrong?” You asked innocently.

“Would your squad mates kill me if I said that I wanted to join you on your adventures?” He asked.

“What makes you think that?” You asked back, wrapping your arms around his neck.

“I really like you, Y/N and I want to keep seeing you. But it’s hard when we’re different missions and all that. That means no contact for weeks or months at a time.”

“So, what do you say? Will you let me tag along with you?” He wrapped his arms around you and pressed his lips against yours.

“I would really love that.” You returned the kiss and closed your eyes. “But I have one condition.”

“Name it.” He grinned.

“That you fuck me in every position you possibly can.”

He laughed. “Let’s crash land on the nearest inhabitable planet. I’m ready to make your dreams come true.”

[sol-consort]

Not to be graphic but do you think Krogan penis' look like those dragon dildos? Like, is Wrex just packing monstrously? Thoughts?

Please be as graphic as your heart desires. In fact, let's theorise with the whole class on which bad dragon dildos fit the biology of the Mass Effect alien species the closest!

Smut below - linked pictures

Korgans

They are 100% packing monsters down there. Have you seen the size of korgans? I mean, they have heat cycles. There is a possibility they actually knot and have to wait a while, in order for their cock to go soft before pulling out.

Candidate one

A thick head that pops into place, an even thicker shaft that quickly narrows down at the end to make you "swallow" the thing whole in a semi-locking mechanism. It's harder for it to slip out that way, like a plug...a very long and big one.

I like the detail of the blunt spikes on the pubic area. They might feel good to grind against. The subtle ridges at the underside, those must feel amazing sliding against your walls, the bumps increasing and becoming more prominent the deeper it goes.

Humans definitely feel tighter to them. It's borderline painful for krogans. Luckily, the pain and pleasure wires in their brains are usually crossed. There's a noticeable raise below your stomach, where their cock is bulging out. literally making a space for itself amidst your organs and forcing your body to adjust to it. Korgans do get a slight ego boost from it, the humans are so easy to fill out and are as tight as a fist.

-

Turians

Candidate one

While the size is more comfortable and similar to humans, albet slightly bigger and more curved, the shape and function differ a lot.

The upper half is smooth with a very saturated neon-like colour, slightly florescent in the dark—cum too—rather than there being a defined "head" with a urethral orifice, the whole upper half is responsible for semen distribution. Basically, the whole upper half gets wet with pre-cum the more turned on they get, leaking everywhere. Purposely evolved to become self-lubricant and as smooth as possible to slide in seamlessly with no preparation required. It's also the most sensitive part. They can practically feel it kiss the entrance to your womb/rectum with each thrust.

The lower half is made out of many curves wrapping in around themselves. You feel every vein and large bump the more it slides inside. It's a completely different experience than taking the upper half, which should've prepared you for this by now. It clogs your entrance fully, preventing any cum from flowing out.

That's because...well, they cum in noticeably much larger quantities, made to overflow your insides. That's why burying their cock down to the hilt is so important no matter how intimidating it might seem to take in, their instincts won't let them finish unless they're fully inside you, it's etched into their biology.

Sleeping with humans to them is... hmmm.

In the nicest way possible, if turians had our equivalent of "high-end expensive sex dolls," it would be human shaped. Extremely fetishized, kinda? We are soft, very soft in their opinion. It's not just our lack of metallic plates, but the fact that our bodies are filled out in all the right areas. The way they can see our hips curve upwards into our waist, how they can grab a fistful of a human's ass and just squeeze, the plump thighs, the tender soft chest and completely bare and uncovered stomach.

Even a human's cock looks "pretty" in their opinion. Carefully with their claws with it, preferring to wrap their long together around it and squeeze.

We look like we were made to be fucked, as if our whole evaluationary purpose was to be bred.

The final nail in the coffin was them finding out that human insides are somehow ten times as soft as their outside. Turians can fit their entire tongue in there—the taste is strangely sweet to them despite being deathly allergic to literally every other thing in humans. It's like finding a flower with the most poisonous petals yet containing the sweetest necter in its centre.

The more a turian sleeps with a human, the higher the risk of them getting addicted to human sex. You're pliable and pliant. You don't fight back when they pin you. Turian sex is usually more rough. There is a whole lot great deal of teeth, claws, and other stuff involved. Blood is not out of the question sometimes. A battle for dominance.

But humans just...surrender immediately. At least they interpret our enthusiasm in bed as that. The eagerness to obey, the desperation to be fucked, begging for the turian cum and grinding back against them, meeting them halfway through every thrust. It's their wildest dreams come true, what's a wet dream to most turians is a reality with every human.

-

Drell

So, a fun fact about their skin! It's covered in millions and millions of tiny scales, giving it the illusion of seeming smooth. It probably feels more on the rougher side.

Which is why I think this is fitting

Candidate one

It's firm to the touch rather than fleshy. You can feel each one of the hundred tiny bumps lining its underside. The head is round and thick, a little tricky to get inside. But once it's in, everything else slides in smoothly, perfectly slotting into place.

It makes your insides adjust to its shape, not the other way around. It almost feels like a fully solid object. The scales gliding against your walls, scrubbing them in the best way possible. No amount of wetness will make its shape any less prominent, practically moulding your insides to memorise every curve and bump.

The scales grow towards the base, resulting in them flourishing out whenever the cock is sliding out, making it easier to thrust in than thrust out, the round head staying inside at all times.

The human body barely recognises the drell cock as a reproductive organ. Your brain's natural reaction is to attempt and push it out, even if you try and suppress it.

Resulting in a semi-spasming motion, the constant involuntary contrast and release of your wall muscles against the drell cock is absolutely driving them crazy, they have to fight an early orgasm each time. You try to explain that you can't control it.

While an oral ingestion of any drell fluids may cause hallucinations, that process becomes much faster with their cock inside you, analy or else, humans are slowly lulled into a state of intoxication which may manifest in euphoria, arousal and haziness.

I'd like to think that their cum is an aphrodisiac to humans, each time they finish inside you, the urge to get fucked again becomes stronger and stronger. harmless human/drell sex can easily spiral into the dangerous territory, hours melting into one another, your body overstimulating their cock constantly, while you're pumped full of aphrodisiacs.

While the rough feeling of their cock is amazing at the moment—partly thanks to your brain swimming in happy chemicals—it will leave you sore for days afterwards. The inside of your thighs are reddish and agitated from being brushed back and forth against the drell scales for so many hours, your insides feel like they're on fire, you can barely sit down without wincing.

There are two ways to remedy this:

A week full of rest, medical ointments, oils and painkillers

Let them fuck you & cum inside you again

Because sleeping with them again will completely wash away all feelings of discomfort as the cycle is reset. If you want a middle ground, a kiss or two, maybe even eating you out will be more than enough to get rid of the symptoms without digging yourself into a deeper hole.

To drell, sleeping with humans is extremely pleasant. Much like the turians' experience, everything in that section also applies to them. Drell bodies are made to account for all of these things in their drell partners... but humans are literally defenceless. Your body has no option but to take it. Not only that, but it's confused to what the thing pushing into them is that it's alien in every sense of the world.

Watching you try your hardest to take their cock inside and resist the intoxication each time, nursing a hangover and a sore body the next week. It fills them with immense guilt, which manifests into actual physical pain for them because that's how their emotions work. It's unbearable. That's why most drell avoid penetration when sleeping with humans, despite how being inside you is the closest to heaven they've ever felt.

[five-rivers]

Pollfic continuation from here!

Yes, it looked just like the candle symbol from the visitor badges.  Why–?

Sharp pain spiked along his shoulder blades and spine, then diluted into an almost comfortable stretching, growing sensation.  A similar, but smaller sensation centered on his eyes and temples.

“Danny?  Danny, are you alright?  Oh, you should have taken the health monitor, I knew it–”

Danny waved off their concerns with a few hand symbols, and tried to assess what was happening to his body.

He had experienced many changes during his exploration of the Infinite Realms, but this one felt weirdly brutal.  Maybe because it wasn’t a place applying the changes, or the influence of a particularly powerful ghost, but a kind of magical symbol?  

That was something he’d have to explore later.  

For now, he at least had a theory as to where these ghosts came from.  Taking all their strange traits together, they seemed to be a combination of the five ‘aids’ given to visitors.  Maybe the first of them were people who’d gotten lost too often, and then they learned how to reproduce the changes in others?

Danny, panting slightly, got to his feet, his new wings and antennae twitching uncomfortably.  The main wings were large enough that they brushed the bottom and sides of the sphere while folded, and the secondary set of wings had long, twisty tails, like a luna moth (thank you, Sam, for the childhood bug phase).  Meanwhile, his antennae were large, feathery, and picking up sensations his brain wasn’t entirely equipped to handle, although his core was doing a good job of it.  

Also… was he smaller?  Again?  

Not the time.  But, someday, he would figure out what force of nature always made him tiny, and then they’d be having words.

Danny had to leave before another symbol was drawn on the ice.  It was starting to look like the quill, and he did not want to be soft and fluffy.  

Even if the light it was made of looked very entrancing…

Stop that.  

He raised his hand and spelled out a word.

-NAVIGATE-

“What do you mean, navigate?”

“He means when he gets out, Jack.  He must not be able to see very well.”

Danny could actually see just fine, but that was probably going to be part of the problem, if he was going to be attracted to light like a moth.  He needed his parents to keep him on track.

With that sorted out, he put his hands on the ice (and it was harder to get the angle he wanted, gosh darn it, so his arms probably were shorter), focused, pulled on the deep well of cold energy inside him… even if the term ‘cold energy’ still made the nascent scientist inside him cringe… shut up, it was a useful way to think about it…

The sphere shattered in a wave of ice and force, and Danny picked a direction at random.  Well, almost random.  At first, he veered towards the brightest light source, but remembered himself (and realized that the brightest light source was the people) at the last minute.  

“Wall!” shouted his parents, and he banked.  

“There’s a hallway at your ten o’clock,” said Mom.  He turned, and, yes, he could see a square of… not darkness.  There was too much light going through it.  It must be a pretty common route into and out of this larger space.  

Danny took it anyway.  Simply speaking, there was no way he was going to be able to effectively hide.  He was leaving a literal trail of light as he moved.  The ghosts here would be able to follow him without any trouble.  What he needed was speed, so he could get out of here and find library members who would, hopefully, know how to deal with this, before any pursuers caught up with him.  

He felt telekinesis reach out to him and try to power through his aura, but he he threw off the grasp.  

There was that, too.  He had to stay out of range of their mass telekinesis.  

“If my readings are right–” started Dad.  

“No,” said Mom.  There was a ripping noise.  “Turn right, sweetie!”

“There should be a staircase or something similar–”

“They’re trying to cut you off,” said Mom.  “Left, now right again.”

“Might have to double back–”

“There’s no way.  Keep going, Danny.”

“See if I can find another one–”

Unexpectedly, a ghost popped up in front of Danny.  Far enough away that he could easily avoid them, but that light!  The brightness of the symbol they held in their hands!  It was so… so…

[if-loki-was-a-fox]

having started watching Wild Life, my autistic ass is now trying to assign the wildcards to tma entities

the snails are easy, they're obviously hunt, but i'm not so sure about the others. the changing sizes in the first episode is kinda giving spiral? possibly flesh. and i think the food switching in the second one could be corruption? mainly based on the hunger/starvation/various poisoning effects

you're the only other person i've seen talk about both so uh. d'you have any thoughts?

- 🦴

(I have so many thoughts, this post is about to spiral so far out of control 'cus I love musing on stuff—)

I was actually thinking about this exactly while watching the latest episodes! The snails had initially struck me as corruption, being slimy little bug-adjacent creatures, but that's so purely aesthetic that the moment you see them in action it's just incredibly clear that they're just straight up The Hunt, as clear cut as it could possibly be tbh.

Maybe a bit of The End with the whole instant kill thing, the invincibility/immortality of the snails, and the kind of inevitability of the snails getting you eventually

The other two are definitely a lot harder

Session 2's gimmick of not being able to eat food / having to eat blocks, with it's themes of eating, kinda reminds me of a lot of Flesh statements in first thought tbh, but without any actual meat (and in fact, meat being the one thing they solidly can't eat) it just doesn't seem to follow through on more than a shallow level. Though maybe from the more fandom angle with the gore-ish-ness of teeth cracking on stone, and how bloody swallowing your own sword incorrectly would be, that kinda fits Flesh

Thinking on the actual energy of that gimmick as it played out in the videos, with the huge change and upset to normalcy that leads to catastrophic results and mass panic, I almost want to say it has some Extinction vibes, but without the "man made"/"we brought this upon ourselves" aspect I'm not sure it quite works out

The Corruption idea I don't think I would have thought of on my own, but it makes some sense too. The whole idea of food making you sick, or of all the other ill affects from just trying not to starve/die, the variety of ways you're almost guaranteed to get poisoned and hurt before you figure out something actually edible..

Corruption and Buried are also both fun to consider with the imagery of having to eat dirt and the like. Buried doesn't have any other relevance tho as far as I can think

Rhyme's suggested The Stranger, as it's solidly an example of the familiar being made unfamiliar, but most manifestations of The Stranger play very heavily on it being other people that are strange and weird, in my observations, so I'm not sure if it's quite right

Spiral also works well with the familiar being bad incomprehensible tho I think. The gimmick doesn't make them doubt reality, but it does rely a lot on them being confused and no longer being able to understand and rely on what should be such a basic backbone to reality (eating food makes you less hungry). A lot of the fear and panic on that session comes from that I think, the logic of world not working the way it should, which fits Spiral fairly well

Session 1 I honestly don't know about. The size changing mechanic didn't strike as much fear into everyone as the other two, which makes it a bit harder to categorize what fear it does cause

Maybe The Buried at times, because there were concerns about getting too big in spaces that were too small

Or The Vast, because of the whole "too big" idea in and of itself, and how getting too big could theoretically play into fear of heights (though it didn't much actually do so in the videos). It also had several incidents of falling to deaths, which is pretty fitting for The Vast. Vast feels like the most aesthetically fitting tho, with heights and sizes being pretty big things with it

Spiral and Flesh definitely make sense too though, playing off of the idea of your very self changing. Constantly shrinking and growing with only a certain level of control to it does kinda feel body-horror-ish, and the whole questioning if what even was changing and if their sizes were changing at the begining could also play into spiral ideas. The whole thing was a bit dream-like

Thinking about how the different fears can play into stuff is fun :]

[racefortheironthrone]

Kinda of random but what do you think of Alan's Moore comments about people liking comic book movies could lead into fascism? Seems like bitter old man territory but what do you think?

I think it's fair to say that fascism has been something of an obsession of Alan Moore's and a recurring although not omnipresent theme in many of his works.

While Miracleman is technically an expy of Captain Marvel, I would argue that the series is Moore's most extended commentary on Superman instead and especially the idea of the ubermensch. In Miracleman, our protagonist is initially thought to have been made into a superhero by a benevolent enlightened scientist, but eventually we learn that Miracleman is the product of an Operation Paperclip Nazi science project called the Zarathusa Project designed to create the literal Nietzschean Ubermensch, complete with a fixation on "blond gods" and a eugenicist breeding program. A superhero fight in the midle of London causes mass civilian casualties on the scale of an atomic bomb going off. Ultimately, Miracleman effectively overthrows Thatcher's government and rules as an enlightened despot before eventually leaving Earth for space.

Likewise, I think Watchmen is Moore's most extended commentary on masked vigilantism and thus on Batman. In Watchmen, the phenomenon of vigilantism is repeatedly associated with right-wing politics: Hooded Justice is a German circus strongman who has pro-Nazi politics; Captain Metropolis wanted his superhero teams to target "black unrest," "campus subversion," and "anti-war demos;" and the Comedian is a brutal nihilist who ultimately joins the U.S security state where he cheerfully follows orders to assassinate JFK and Woodward and Bernstein, commit atrocities in Vietnam, kill protesting hippies, etc. Finally, there's Rorschach, Moore's most famous mis-interpreted creation - Rorschach is a paranoid conspiracy theorist who's an anti-communist, anti-liberal, militant and militaristic nationalist, homophobe, misogynist, and avid follower of the John Birch Society-like New Frontiersman.

And then there's V for Vendetta, which I would argue is Moore's attempt to create a masked vigilante superhero with his own anarchist politics. In this story, the vigilante isn't a crimefighter but rather a revolutionary who seeks the overthrow of a fascist state and the creation of an anarchist utopia.

Moreover, his more recent comments about comic book movies being linked to fascism are arguably just part of his much longer-running commentary that superheroes as a concept are at the very least proto-fascist.

Having read a lot of Moore's work and interviews on the subject, I don't find his critique compelling. I think his definition of fascism is far too loose, I think his lens on the superhero genre is overly narrow, and I think his mode of analysis tends to neglect the vital area of historical context.

Definitions

So let's start with Moore's definition of fascism. I think Moore tends to really over-emphasize the whole idea of the Nietzschean ubermensch and the use of force to solve problems, and more recently he's been on this weird kick of saying that nostalgia and a childlike desire for easy solutions leads to fascism. I have several problems with this definition:

the first is that, as I've talked about in the past, fascism is a very complex historical phenomenon that can't be boiled down to a single idea, and in particular the idea of the ubermensch is a pretty small part of the German case (and even then how do you balance it against Nazism's more anti-individualistic aspects, like the mass party and the mass party organization).

the second is that the idea of a larger-than-life individual using physical prowess to solve problems is not unique to fascism. After all, during the 30s, you also had the Soviet Union promoting the heroic ideal of Stakhanovitism and the depiction of the heroic male factory worker in socialist realism. More importantly, the idea of a "larger-than-life individual using physical prowess to solve problems" is basically the same description for any number of literary figures from pulp cowboys to the Greek heroes of the Iliad and the Oddessy to the epic of Gilgamesh.

the third is that I think Moore's definition overlooks the actual drivers of the rise of contemporary fascism. Anti-semitism, racism, homophobia and transphobia, misogyny - all of these are real social and cultural forces that are actually motivating people to join the ranks of the alt-right, to commit massacres, to riot at the Capitol, and so forth. It is incredibly self-involved to think that superheroes and superhero movies are worth discussing in the same breath. At the end of the day, they're harmless entertainment compared to the real political issues that need to be tackled.

Moore's Model of Superheroes

Here's where I'm going to say something that's going to be a bit controversial - I don't think Alan Moore has read widely enough in the superhero genre to make an accurate assessment of its relationship to fascism. If we look at his comics work, and we look at his writings, and we look at his interviews, Moore's mental model of the superhero really only includes two figures, Superman as the representative of the superpowered ubermensch and Batman as the representative of the masked vigilante crimefighter. Notably, Moore hasn't really touched the last of the Big Three - Wonder Woman, a superhero with a strong legacy of radical left-wing politics. I do think we have to mention, given Moore's somewhat troubled history when it comes to issues of gender, that Moore's model of the superhero doesn't include any female superheroes (or for that matter, any superheroes of color or queer superheroes). (EDIT: I should clarify - Promethea is Moore's version of Wonder Woman, but she doesn't really come up in his discussions of fascism, and her thematic profile has more to do with Moore's interests in magic.)

And other than Captain Britain, Moore never worked with any Marvel character and basically ignores them.

To me, this is like having a career as a painter and never working with colors. Moore's model of the superhero leaves out the Fantastic Four and how their flawed psychologies revolutionized the industry and the whole idea of the superhero-as-explorer, it leaves out Spider-Man and the idea of the superhero-as-everyman whose central struggle is about work-life balance and altruism, and most importantly it leaves out the X-Men and the idea of the mutant metaphor.

If as a critic you're going to make grand pronouncements about something as morally evil as fascism, I think it really is incumbent on you to have read and analyzed widely rather than cherry-picking a couple of case studies. Especially if you have something of a tendency to mis-characterize those case studies by ignoring historical context.

Historical Context

So let's talk about Superman and Batman and their emergence in the 1930s. One vital bit of context is that the U.S experienced a significant crime wave in the 1920s and 1930s as Prohibition encouraged the rise of organized crime and then the Great Depression spurred the rise of kidnapping and bank robbery gangs. Moreover, municipal police forces tended to be wildly corrupt, accepting bribes from organized crime to let them operate with impunity, while not letting up in the slightest in their brutal oppression of workers and minorities.

In this context, I think the idea of vigilantism - while it has an undeniably racist legacy dating back to Reconstruction - is not purely a conservative phenomena. It's also an expression of a desire for help from somebody, anybody when the powers that be are of no help. And at the end of the day, unsanctioned use of force can equally be traced back to left-wing self-defense efforts from the Panthers back to the Communist Party's streetfighting corps to unions packing two-by-fours on the picket line - so I don't think we can simply equate punching a bad guy with racist lynch mobs and call it a day.

So let's talk about Superman and the ubermensch. I think Moore has a bad tendency to focus on his nightmare scenrio of a godlike being tyrannizing and destroying hapless humanity, while minimizing the actual ideas of Siegel and Shuster. He tends to take their use of the Nietzschean as a straighforward invocation instead of the clear subversion it was intended to be - rather than a blond god who imposed tyrannical rule with horrific violence, Siegel and Schuster made their Superman a dark-haired Moses allegory, who rather than solely fighting crime acted to stop wife-beaters, war profiteers, and save the life of death row inmates, and whose secret identity was of a crusading journalist who uncovered corrupt politicians.

To be fair, Alan Moore admits that Superman started out as "very much a New Deal American” - but because this kind of does near-fatal damage to his argument, he quickly minimizes that by saying that Superman got co-opted and thus it doesn't count. This is some No True Scotsman bullshit - Moore knows that his example just imploded so he tries to wriggle out of it by arguing that Superman sold out to the Man. If we go back to the actual historical evidence, we can see that at the outset of the Red Scare, the Superman radio show went on a crusade against the Klan, and throughout the conservative 1950s, Superman was used to propagandize liberal values of religious and racial equality:

So much for selling out.

On the other hand, Batman is a tougher case, given that his whole deal is being a masked vigilante who wages an unending war on crime to avenge his murdered parents. So is Batman an inherently fascist figure, a wealthy sadist who spends his time brutally beating the poor and the mentally ill when he could be using his riches to tackle social issues? I would argue that this version of Batman is actually pretty recent - very much a legacy of the work of Frank Miller and then the post-9/11 writings of Christopher Nolan, Johnathan Nolan, and David Goyer - and that there have been many different Batmen with very different thematic foci.

For example, the early Batman was as much a figure of horror as he was of superheroics - he fought Frankensteins and Draculas, he killed with silver bullets, etc. Then in the 40s and 50s, you got the much more cartoony and light-hearted Batman who pretty much exclusively fought equally oddball supervillains in such a heightened world of riddles and giant pennies and mechanical T-Rexes that I don't think you can particularly describe it as "crime-fighting." Then in the 1960s, you have the titanic influence of the Batman TV show, where Adam West as Batman was officially licensed by the Gotham P.D (so much for vigilantism) and extolled the virtues of constitutional due process and the Equal Pay Act in PSAs and episodes alike. You can call the 1966 Batman a lot of things, but fascist isn't one of them.

Conclusion

I want to emphasize at the end of the day that I'm a huge Alan Moore fan; I've read most of his vast bibliography, I find him a fascinating if very odd thinker and critic, I've even tried to read his mammoth novel Jerusalem (which is not easy reading, let me tell you). At the same time, it's important not to treat creators, even the very titans of the medium, as incapable of error. And in this case, I think Alan Moore is simply wrong about fascism and superheroes and people should really stop asking him about it, because I don't think he has anything new to say about it.

[i-am-worm]

(This is an old idea I had for Quarians here, I just think Tali looks adorable in this old pic, lol).

Today's inktober word is 'Nomadic' and this made me think about Quarians in the game Mass Effect. And to my self-imposed horror, I realized I never bothered uploading my ideas for what they looked like back in the day. I went through a phase like that. I did lots of stuff back in 2010 and never really uploaded it...Possibly for the best, as it looks pretty rough in places now, but I did want to share some of my ideas before I upload my more current version from today.

I did at least upload my concepts for the Volus and the Raloi though (two other unseen races in game, one is coved up, and the latter just mentioned in other media). You can see them here:

Quarians are masked aliens in game and back in the day, I had to have my graphic settings turned WAY down in order to play mass effect. Have my low graphic crunchy Shepard

Because of that, I never saw the two glowing eyes or slightly human nose bridge reflection you can see in a normal setting. So I had in mind an alien species that somewhat resembled the Geth - a race of AI the Quarians themselves made:

So I was picturing something with one eye, armour and maybe even mandibles? So here is my first go:

BUT later on, when I played Mass Effect 2 on a better pc, I was disappointed that you could see a bit of a human face. No matter- I could still work with this.

MORE BELOW so I don't clog up your feed with ancient quarian debates I should have posted a decade ago, lol.

So I got to playing around with ideas, using my old ones. I mean- Quarians are mentioned to be attractive to Turians and later Javik mentions that ancient Quarins looked attractive. And they look like this:

So definitely not very human....right?

One thing I also noticed was that male Quarians have a flat nose compared to females, almost like a muzzle. (screenshots are mine, the model I downloaded back in the day and can no longer find a source sadly)

And that made me think about the sci-fi trope of cat people.

Seriously, these are just some of the books on my bookshelf that contain sci-fi cat people, and that's the ones I could find off the top of my head:

It makes sense; Mass Effect is a bit of an amalgamation of sci-fi tropes into new ideas. You have the insect race (Turains), Warring tank race (Krogun), the classic 'Grays' (Salarians), Animal-like with tentacles (Hanar), The 'sexy human female but a colour' (Asari). etc. etc. yadda yadda.

So I sat down and tried to design something that sort of encompassed all these ideas, Geth-like, attractive to Turians, Javik and maybe even humans...and a little bit of space cat thrown in.

So this was my first idea that I meant to upload back in 2012.

I think I wasn't happy with the body and I had meant to come back to it. I had over the next few years dabble din other sketches, even going back to the drawing board on the face.

I think what stopped me was the things we learned from Mass Effect 3. If you romance the Quarian Tali, you can see a photo of her face!...

...they were purple humans.

LAME.

But recently, The legendary edition took the critique on board and revamped the picture to the one on the right. Now they look ...even MORE human.

EVEN MORE LAAAAME.

Utter disappointment. Now I always knew that if Bioware revealed the Quarian face they would disappoint some people, but this was such a missed opportunity to design something unique. Bioware did they that they were worried if it was too alien, it would be hard for cosplayers to dress up? But come on, cosplayers love a challenge and will overcome anything. We knew they had two eyes and a nose bridge, it didn't have to be too alien, just alien enough.

TALI RAGE.

BUT the best answer is to REJECT CANNON.

And in a moment I'll upload my more updated Quarian idea.