#Large amount about it but when I'm not swamped I was thinking of looking into it! Everyone seems so passionate it's really cool

[starscreamingg]

Currently being very normal about having tickets for avatar 2 this weekend

[void-occupation]

Alastor's Animal Noises

I won't call this an unpopular headcanon, just one that is slept on.

So, everyone knows about Alastor making deer noises, both in canon and fanon. In the show he canonically makes little fawn squeaks when Rosie hugs him (which lives in my head rent free at all times) and does the elk scream a couple times throughout the show. Fanon is just as up in arms about this trait of his, and I think it's great.

But.

What if he ALSO made alligator noises? HEAR ME OUT - trust me, you won't regret it.

So.

When you really think about it, there are a large amount of traits that Alastor has that would make it logical for him to share traits with an alligator as well as a deer. These include: teeth/habit of eating sinners(cannibalism) (alligators are known cannibals), place of origin being Louisiana, persistent presence of bayous in his life (near his home in the living world, supposedly where he hid his victims, where he died, and the bayou in his room), ambush predator (makes you feel at ease by being unassuming then strikes before you even realize the danger), and his temper (appears calm until he's NOT) just to name a few.

Despite what people tend to think, alligators actually make a TON of different sounds, though there's a few main ones I'll talk about.

First one is the territorial growl.

I feel like Alastor could make this sound when he's being territorial (obviously), threatening, or protective (as rare as that is). He begins making this sound a lot more often the longer he stays at the hotel because he begins to see it as his territory, and the residents as his people (not that he'd ever admit that lol). Also, I feel like hearing this loud, bass-feeling noise from this rail-thin deer man would be a bit jarring, especially if you'd never heard it before

Second sound is the defensive hiss.

This is a sound Alastor would make if he's feeling threatened. I'm thinking scenarios where he's annoyed/mad/anxious are when he'd hiss, because they're all scenarios where he'd be trying to get something or someone to leave him alone. It's a very different yet very similar sound to a cat's hiss. They can mean similar things, but hearing an alligator hiss is significantly more threatening, which fits Alastor's character. Also, it means he can still sound terrifying when he's the one who's scared (if he manages to make a distressed gator sound rather than a distressed deer sound that is lol)

And of course, we can't forget the mandatory cute sound, the baby swamp puppy chirps.

If he gets to make fawn noises, you bet your ass he's gonna make swamp puppy laser sounds. The scenarios where he'd make these noises are a lot more rare, but they definitely exist. He wouldn't ever admit it, but he sees Rosie as a mother figure, and just as he tends to greet her with fawn squeaks, Alastor will subconsciously start doing little baby gator chirps when he's looking for her and can't find her. His instincts are to call out to her so she can find him - the same way baby alligators do with their mothers - and the side effect is that he makes cute little laser chirping noises without even realizing it. He has a tendency to do it when he's looking for anyone he likes who is older than him. Zestial finds it charming and the few times it happened to him, Husk refuses to talk about, a lot of mixed feelings brought up by the fact that the man who owns his soul has given him at least somewhat of a parental role subconsciously.

anyways, these were just my thoughts on it, feel free to add on your own or use it as inspiration for your own work (let me know though, I want to see it!!!!) (putting this in the lee!alastor tags to feed the imaginations of my friends there who are always starving for more things)

[lanabeey]

Kylo ren x Reader

𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝒅𝒊𝒏𝒏𝒆𝒓

A/n: Sorry for the delay, I ended up being swamped with work and a bit of a creative block, please take it as a joke in certain parts 🤍🙏 Sorry for any spelling mistakes, English is not my first language.

Summary: Working for The First Order is scary, and your only moment of peace is dinner time, but maybe you need company...

1665 words

2/3

Despite all the lost hours of sleep, sore muscles, and a tired look, the good mood remains. I'm already very used to some places on the ship, with just a few months working in this place I can guarantee that there are incredible places, cleaning some sectors gives you the advantages of cleaning interesting rooms, such as training rooms, or even bedrooms. from some superiors.

Cleaning the rooms takes a certain amount of time to ensure there are no mistakes, patience and a lot of attention is required to avoid valuable objects and belongings disappearing, despite this work it is gratifying to see the environment so clean. But one place that piques my curiosity is the Supreme Leader's room, although the man is scary, his mysterious nature is considerably captivating, isn't it a perverted desire and just genuine curiosity, why hide behind the mask? Maybe convey coldness, superiority, or hide your true form? I'll never know for sure, but I don't intend to lose nights of sleep, so curiosity must be put aside for my own good.

_________

Now, this time of night is one of the calmest shifts, at least no more serious incidents have happened at this time, and cleaning takes place more calmly and without people to disturb our work.

"Finally, it's the last room.." Honestly, today was extremely tiring, several sectors needed cleaning and apparently they laid off a good part of the cleaning team, thus doubling the work for us, the team I'm part of doesn't big but it is enough to hold for now due to the lack of demand. So we face the last one of the day, it is a large hall of high level equipment and devices, containing equipment for battles, maps of the sectors, some trackers and something that seems to me like others are for torture, it seems like something specific to really hurt someone.

"So shall we start cleaning?..Korys?" I think the little old lady isn't feeling so well, she seems so tired, despite being great at work lately, the hours have been very inflexible for her, the demand is very high making her work twice as hard for someone that age. "Korys, are you okay? If you want, you can go and rest, we've been working since early in the morning, you need to rest."

"I think this time, just this once I'm going to accept it, my legs are killing me from walking so much, darling" the weak voice is a sign of fatigue and his drooping gaze forms little bags.

---------

Now I realize how big this room is, and probably thousands of equipment to clean and organize, I honestly don't think I could handle it alone, but I said I could do it and I don't intend to call Korys who is going to rest.

On a panel with several buttons, something tells me that it is to see the cameras in this place, maybe seeing a little wouldn't hurt just to satisfy curiosity, these buttons have the names of some sectors and specific rooms and some green lights are on and others are on. red. Pressing the cafeteria button in sector 2, thus turning on one of the screens, just a few people from the kitchen team arranging the next day's meals; How about the hallways, just to see who's there.

In the corridors, some are empty, others are with people going to the dormitory, and then the corridor of this sector is with some people are coming in this direction...they are coming to this room, THIS ROOM.

It seemed automatic when pressing the buttons to turn it off, the automatic doors opened, luckily the screens turned off in time.

"I don't think those prisoners are useful, the best.." now his eyes are on me, with the mop in his hands looking at the floor.

"Who are you? What do you think you're doing here? This place is restricted to employees without permission."

"General Hux, I have permission, I mean, I'm cleaning and I'm... I'm just doing my job"

"At this time? Cleaning doesn't work at this time." "Of course we work with just a few employees, so the shifts are being divided until they find more employees, do you think the rooms can clean themselves?"; the last part sounds more like a joke to try to ease the tension but it doesn't seem to please him.

"Are you making fun of me? Do you think I'm kidding you?" From the tone of the voice you can see the anger building up, the face easily turning red, it looks like I'm arguing with a spoiled child who doesn't understand a joke.

"I'm sorry I didn't mean to offend you,.." "I don't care about your intention, or your apology, I just want you out of this room immediately."

The shiver down my spine is painful, perhaps the tone of voice or the angry look is the reason for my extreme fear at the moment, it only takes a few seconds to return to reality. This is not the first time I have been warned, I have already been called to attention a few times. Sometimes for making comments at inappropriate times or speaking without thinking.

I leave the room abruptly, and a little embarrassed, I wouldn't like to hear more words from Hux, I understand his warnings but always his venom in his words, sometimes I've heard unnecessary comments being directed at other people, variations like "useless, stupid , idiots, imbeciles" even... "even a tapir knows how to do that, and then you, someone with your rank doesn't know how to do that, pathetic".

---------------

Despite the quick steps, I was far from the dorms and today I'm not in the mood to go to the warehouse for dinner, work exhausted my brain and fried my neurons like scrambled eggs. Without thinking that tomorrow I will have to tidy all of this up again, and again, without even receiving a compliment or a thank you for cleaning and organizing the damn ship, still being paid very poorly. Honestly, if it could get any worse, I'm sure I would cry in the fetal position.

It's just a few corridors to the cafeteria, in the meantime I hear footsteps followed by voices, maybe it's Hux again, if I'm being honest I even think the Supreme Leader is running away from this man. With quick steps I turn the first corner to perhaps escape the annoying presence of that demon.

It's possible I'm wrong about fearing Hux's presence, without even realizing that the man I should fear is the one in the hallway walking with long, heavy steps, with that damned mask that gives me goosebumps just thinking about it. As much as the Supreme Leader is intimidating, scary, and a little enraged at times, I can't deny that he is enigmatic, always with that robot voice. Well, she really would be easily enchanted if she weren't a little scared at the moment.

Maybe with the heavy footsteps making noise, or the loud ventilation turbos, you didn't notice that something fell to the floor, a strange object even looks like a strange little hammer. The rush really makes him not realize that something is missing, now passing me without noticing my existence. Deep down something tells me to leave that object there, maybe someone will find it and return it to him but on the other hand if someone doesn't return it. The leader would be without his toy hammer, maybe it's something sentimental.

With light and quick steps I pick up the object, and now in my hands it is heavier than I imagined, it no longer seems like a toy. Now I just lack the courage to face him, it's no big deal, just hand over the damn object and leave. I quicken my pace to get closer, but not enough to get in the way of what he's doing.

Being much taller than I imagined, and his clothes don't help improve his image, it doesn't match kindness, just darkness.

"Ex..excuse me, I'm sorry to disturb you.." [..a deer ready for the feast, not even to notice that it was shaking, it's very humiliating, it's your leader, not an animal that will moderate you...]

"..Yes?"

That robotic voice, no matter how human it seems, is not his real voice, that's what gives me goosebumps.

"Eh.. while he was walking he dropped this, I don't know what it is but I assumed it was.. important"

Reaction was somewhat surprised, the hand checking where his saber was and now realizing that he had lost it until now. Taking it from my hand quickly, behind that mask I can feel the eyes watching me, trying to see any trace of a lie.

"Eh... I ask permission to leave, I need to go to my quarters, my lord, to rest" Trying his best to remain calm, so maybe he can put this small inconvenience aside and go back to his tasks, Hux's humiliations are enough , just thinking about what the Supreme Leader would do would be suffocating.

"..Of course, you're free,..thank you for giving me back" So he turned around and started walking again, really as if nothing had happened, being a huge relief for his heart that was about to explode. Now maybe you can sleep better, without too many worries on your mind.

-------

As normal as the gesture of returning something lost to someone may be, it was unusual due to the normality of the situation, for so long trapped in the dimension of being someone so important and being feared by the people around, perhaps it was that night the great leader wouldn't be able to sleep for the night. stupid situation that left you embarrassed; Maybe it was his busy day that didn't make him realize that something was lost; Maybe it's the shame or maybe it's your gesture, it was you who left him embarrassed, it was you.

[genopaint]

So many weeks to catch up on... Here's week 32...

As always you can follow me on twitter where they’re posted daily

And read more info on each of them below the cut (also idk if I've mentioned it before but just as an FYI if you click the names of the dragons in the read-more they'll take you to the dragon's individual posts if it got one of its own.)

Daily Dragon #217 - Marshogon

Large amphibious dragons that serve as mini islands in large swamps and marshes. Many plants and animals live on the grass that grows on their back. They eat algea and micro-organisms living in the water, so they dont attack anything on their back.

Animals on its back actually help protect it from parasites!! Another redraw... Kind of. This is more like a MASSIVE overhaul of this 2016 (i think) swamp dragon design. I couldn't recreate the log helmet in a way I like so I turned it into some kinda triceratops horn.

Daily Dragon #218 - Vulture Wyvern

Exactly what it says on the tin, these birds are MASSIVE to the point they've reached dragon status. Though they could be incredibly deadly if they attacked, they mostly eat dead and decayed animals specifically to avoid combat

Daily Dragon #219 - Sheeva

Watching Clementj64's Mortal Kombat Lore video! I love these videos and while I'm not done with this one yet (I did finish it between the original post and now, it was very good), I DID learn that Goro and Sheeva are part dragon??? Yeah that's good enough to draw them for this challenge I think!

I was gonna do Goro, and I know there's a full on Dragon King... but... Sheeva's redesign is so fucking hot... I just needed any excuse to draw it

Daily Dragon #220 - Light Green

It's been a hot minute since I've done another one of my endless amount of alt sonas. I've been thinking about drawing this weird little dinosaur... sooooooo... here she is!! what are you gonna do about it, huh???

'light green' is also just like, a joke concept little name I came up with now cause Idk what else to call her other than small dinosaur green

Daily Dragon #221 - Crashadon

These dragons have evolved to go a step further than just breathing fire, they breathe explosions! Concentrated energy breaths that release into HUGE explosions when they reach their targets! They are considered to be serious threats to nearby towns

This funny fella is a redraw of THIS funny fella from 2020 :)

Daily Dragon #222 - Salamence

Another dragon type AND another pseudo legendary! Salamence, despite being a pretty regular looking high-fantasy dragon with a great color scheme. Isn't a Pokemon I was really into until recently. It's growing on me a lot!

Daily Dragon #223 - Groundramon

Another dragon I knew I wanted to do from the! I only really became a full on Digimon fan last year after playing Cyber Sleuth, but Groundramon quickly became my favorite teammate and favorite Digimon I've seen so far :)

The only reason this one took me so long is actually the same reason Blue Eyes / Red Eyes did... They're kind of hard to draw! Digimon are incredibly detailed but that's what makes them so cool and edgy

[8bitsupervillain]

Higurashi When They Cry Hou Ch. 3 Tatarigoroshi pt. 18

I'm doing things slightly out of order here.

After the scenes talking about Hinamizawa Syndrome, and how Keiichi was the only survivor the VN cuts to the Great Hinamizawa in Memoriam List. But for now, we're going to skip that.

Meanwhile, in the future. The far flung year of 2003. With your chain wallets, and your skateboards, and your myspace, and your roller discos.

Just why were you on the other side of the island when the rest of Rokkenjima exploded Eva? Did you know that it was going to kerplode?

That is some extremely good luck on his part that he just so happened to not die due to the extreme amount of gas that allegedly would've floated by the section of the stream he was knocked out at. Also I find it geographically odd that within walking distance of a massive swamp is a clear water stream. Maybe that sort of thing is more common than I would think, but it just strikes me as someone not really knowing how geology works.

Not to derail the ending here, but whenever I hear about something like a swamp I tend to assume that it's probably about as large as a lake. A not insignificant chunk of land. Also when I hear swamp I think about a large mossy area just teeming with all manner of plants, vines and stuff, a very boggy area. Based on the screenshots of what was shown when talking about the Onigafuchi swamp it looks more like a tar pit. I know this was a really inconsequential thing to get hung up on.

I think since Hinamizawa gave Keiichi the power to kill a thousand plus people simply by wishing for it that maybe the same power granted him some sort of divine protection. Or it could be that he actually had unknowingly inhaled a near fatal amount of gas, and that's why he almost died shortly after getting picked up by the SDF. That somehow him being unconscious in the stream filtered the gases to a less lethal amount of gas. Stream water, or dirt somehow filtered the gas.

I wonder why there's all this skepticism about whether this is actually Keiichi speaking on this old tape. Is it just because the general public loves a good conspiracy theory? So they're treating these final words of the lone survivor of Hinamizawa as a mystery to be solved? If it is a conspiracy, why? Who stands to gain from this tape surfacing twenty years after the incident happened? Also is Hinamizawa Syndrome still a think twenty years after the fact?

If the reporter were trying to make a buck off of the tragedy months after the fact why did he bury the tape? Especially if the rumor that he broke into the mental health facility was true. Isn't it just as likely that Keiichi could have requested the interview? In an effort to clear the air about the mystery. Given his reluctance to speak much in the interview I don't think he willingly agreed to it.

I guess Hinamizawa Syndrome is just a lifelong mental disorder if you contract it? No... I don't think it is, I think the way Keiichi is acting here is just the result of the mental trauma he went through over the chapter. In a very short period of time he worked himself up into a murderous rage, beat someone to death with a baseball bat, had everyone he knew act like he hadn't done that. Then he was told a woman he wished would die, did. Same thing happened twice more with Irie and Ooishi, he came across the viciously murdered body of one of his best friends less than an hour after that. The person he made these sacrifices for turned against him, and then shoved him off a bridge causing him a significant amount of injuries and to be knocked unconscious for more than a day. Then to cap it all off he finds out that every single person he knew in Hinamizawa including his parents had all died in the same freak accident that theoretically should've killed him as well. That is an large amount of terrible events to have to process in a short forty-eight hour period. The fact he was able to compose himself and not just be reduced to a babbling madness is nothing short of miraculous.

I really think they missed a trick here by not including the sound of footsteps throughout the chapter. I know it's meant to be a tantalizing mystery, but I can't help but wonder why did whatever got Keiichi in the end wait half a year before finishing him off? Is it meant to be something like the curse from The Ring? That it needs to propagate itself by having people spread the tale of the curse around before it finally gets its victims?

And so, Keiichi is 0-3 in this series. He just keeps dying, he's tied with Tomitake and Takano in terms of deaths (I think it's fair to assume Takano died in chapter one). Now that I think about it basically everyone has two deaths to their name. Of the main cast everyone except for Satoko and Ooishi have two confirmed deaths across the series. And you could make the argument that Satoko vanishing at the end of this chapter should count as a death. Even the new guy Irie got killed in his introductory chapter!

[tyo-mimt]

26/36. @tmnt-event-blog

Mikey drops in to help April bake some last-minute Christmas gifts.

"You're a lifesaver!" April grabbed the box turtle, lifting him off the ground and wrapping him into an excited hug.

Christmas shopping was difficult enough trying to look for suitable gifts for a bunch of New York mutant turtles (especially when one of those turtles could acquire copious amounts of wealth at a moment's notice), but remembering her human obligations was something she still struggled to balance.

Some things never change after all...

She still had to get some gifts for her classmates.

"That's what I'm here for~" Mikey teased, set back on the ground. He set the box onto the counter, taking out a collection of different utensils and ingredients, "You can't go wrong with cookies for the holiday season! Luckily for you, the chef's in the house!"

His smile was contagious and she returned it. Rolling up her sleeves (she washed her hands before he arrived), she gave him a goofy little salute, "Where do you need me?"

"Hmm... Let's start with the batter. You just need to pour the rest of everything I have here into a large bowl; we can shape them with the moulds later on," Mikey instructed, pulling the ingredients out of the box and sliding them in her direction.

He paused for a moment, looking around before asking, "Have a tray? And baking sheets?"

"Cabinet to your left." She opened the bag of flour and sugar up, dunking the remaining ingredients into a bowl and stirring. Mikey pulled a large tray out of the cabinet, locating the baking paper and tearing out a few sheets.

"How many of these do you think you'll need?" Mikey asked.

"I mean... This semester, I've only had a few classes. It would feel weird to only give a cookie per person though." The wet ingredients were pushed into her direction as Mikey picked the dry ingredient bowl out of her hands.

"Got it, as much as physically possible," Mikey preened. April laughed in response, cracking an egg open and separating the yolk from the whites.

"Right, do you want me to store the whites?"

"Of course, I have something planned with those anyways."

The rest of their night was just that, but it was the first time in a while since she was able to properly hang out with Mikey one-on-one.

"Guess university's different from high school," Mikey remarked.

"Mhmm... I'm supposed to have more flexibility with my time but... With extracurriculars that actually want me, I'm more swamped than I was in high school."

"But that means you're finally doing stuff you like, right?"

The question took a weird turn, and even if the box turtle's tone sounded innocuous enough, she would be lying if she said she didn't feel like she was walking into a trap.

"As much as I love finally being useful out there, I still miss doing stuff with you guys."

Mikey turned his head; April gave him a brief pat on the shell. He pushed his head into her elbow; the habit returned, and she relented.

"I guess the lack of seeing you guys just feels... like things won't go back to how they were before. I couldn't always be there for you guys."

"Some time together is better than none at all," Mikey said, "The fact that you're even trying at all matters a lot to us, April."

"I... I just wish I was around more..."

"Hehe, is that an invitation for us to come to you more?"

A pause, before a smile bloomed on April's face. "Oh, yes. Please! I'd love you guys to visit! Disguised though. I'm still not sure how anyone'd feel about... this whole situation."

[pawzels-artbin]

Ight i'm gonna go ahead and dump my CQ OCs here real quick- hope you guys like reading long ass paragraphs because hoo boy did i yap with this one (may post art later; still being revised <3)

𝐀𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐚

[art missing]

Dark, rusty red. 

Long ass hair that goes to their toes. 

Likes trees. Nature. Mmm yeees gimme that fresh air 

Hates being cold

Feels the urge to take care of things she thinks are small and helpless 

Swamp dwelling plant mom. Rises out of the water lady of the lake style when someone comes to her swamp to speak to her lmao

Her carapace is odd. When in the sun or in a hot area her body radiates more heat that it should take in. 

Voiceclaim: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/5ul_oVObONA 

𝐀𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐚 (𝐏𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐭 𝐅𝐨𝐫𝐦)

[art missing]

Based HEAVILY on Ramiel from Evangelion. GOD I’m such a nerd. 

Rearranges her body parts, and can make them smaller or bigger to some extent to suit her attack or defense style. Reflects an insanely intense and hot light she produces off of them, then concentrates it into a beam that she can fire directly at an opponent. Unfortunately despite her terrifying power, her attacks eat up large amounts of hemolymph, meaning she can only battle for 12 minutes at most if she conserves her energy and 5 minutes if she uses more powerful attacks. 

Her beams can (theoretically) melt through mountains. (Technically if she did this she’d expend almost all her hemolymph in one go and die though lmfao, talk about a one-trick pony) 

She does not usually speak in her puppet form, nor produce any noise. She can establish weak, fragile psychological contact with people. Sometimes when mortally wounded she will let out a deafening screech.  The mimes have only ever heard this sound once or twice. 

Her body parts can move around to protect her carapace, but usually can’t completely cover her. She always has a weak spot somewhere. She usually is fast enough to cover it though. 

Her attack power is boosted in hot and bright locations. 

Her attack power is weakened at night and in misty, cold areas. 

They have no discernible head in their puppet form, though they can manifest various body parts: 

She has a single eye with three massive eyelashes on the top and bottom that can see 180 degrees around her. This is a permanent and unchangeable feature of her puppet form. 

Sometimes she can manifest in a pair of disembodied jaws (think something like a beartrap) that can bite. 

When mortally wounded, she will make her body parts as large as possible and tries to put them together in a manner that will shield as much as her body allows while arranging them in a fashion that deflects as much damage as possible and makes it harder to do close range damage. If near a large open area with dirt, they will burrow their exposed weak spot into the ground. 

Voiceclaim: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OB-MvZBAiU 

𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐩𝐡𝐚

Not much rn, she just likes lamps and sleeping even though she doesn't really need to

Based on a Venezuelan poodle moth

She is in a similar place on the color spectrum to Atrox and therefore is somewhat aware of things to come, albeit to a lesser extent.

Yeah uh she is. Uh a lot more mature than she looks lol

Voiceclaim: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrvMNLJJpWU

𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐩𝐡𝐚 (𝐏𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐭 𝐅𝐨𝐫𝐦)

[art missing]

Projectiles will just get trapped in her fluff. 

Her wingbeats stir up breezes when she flies by virtue of just how large she is. 

When in flight she tucks her legs in and folds them close together. She does the same for her antennae to make her more aerodynamic. She can also float. 

She can sleep while flying or floating, sometimes remaining motionless for hours floating in a warm spot under the sun. 

She is probably the most peaceful puppet form of all my OCs tbh. No fighting, just eeber deebers

Nothing super special atm.

𝐑𝐞𝐛𝐞𝐤𝐚𝐡

Bad relationship with Laurus and by extension Holly

Big believer in being your true self

Meme and YTP references. Will laugh if you say "fresh avocado" or "I wonder what's for dinner"

Hair is fluffy n soft

Hates. Being yelled at

Hot topic dweller

Yes her belts are either stolen or yoinks from abandoned places she has scavenged from lmao

"iS tHaT (insert Pokemon game here)" (super exaggerated :0 face)

Afraid of disappointing people close to her and making them mad

Frigus doesn't really like her (she has a bad habit of infantilizing him and babying him since she thinks he's the cutest thing ever and ends up fawning over him to an overbearing degree)

Loves partying and nightlife but ironically is the type of person to drink apple juice instead of booze (and somehow act drunk off it), say "frick", and tell people why vaping is bad for you

𝐑𝐞𝐛𝐞𝐤𝐚𝐡 (𝐏𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐭 𝐅𝐨𝐫𝐦)

She glows and flickers like a neon sign-glowstick and can show patterns on her body like an LED display. She usually just changes through the colors of the rainbow though. Like one of those gaming PCs. 

Loud and energetic as ever. Still friendly af in puppet form- will talk to you and hang out. Kinda like a neon scene kid bat version of Clifford the Big Red Dog.

Vomits up neon rainbow glowstick fluid. Is it hemolymph? Who knows! 

Drools acid and can and will inject it into your bloodstream with an efficiently delivered bite (tfw someone wont stop fucking w you and you """accidentally""" increase the pH in their blood to fatal levels :3). 

Voiceclaim (both mime and puppet form): https://youtu.be/HRQsMCk1PpI?si=o-haxW7XpXXFO-m6

𝐌𝐢𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐲 (incomplete!)

[art missing]

If insanity were measured with a thermometer, Misery would be fever pitch. Wired, beset with an endless hunger that only gets worse when they host, endowed with an unholy amount of stamina, and hyperviolent, she’s at best an annoyance and at worst a living chainsaw. 

Sometimes, he'll be laughing hysterically, chasing after a meal and wallowing in madness. Other times he'll bawl hysterically or have outbursts of wrath. His emotions are so extreme, they blur together sometimes.

Without moving and using up their energy (regardless of whether they're hungry or not), they'll find themselves stressed out (kind of like Vigoroth from Pokemon, i guess).

When they're on a rampage, Misery can't be stopped (sort of)! They're one hell of a biter. they've also got razor-sharp claws on them, so they've got no problem tearing through a carapace or shredding down a door or two to catch you!

Their brain will solely run on adrenaline and instinct, so consequences are(n't) a problem for them.

Misery isn’t stupid- however, his impulsivity is his downfall. In the end his hunger and boredom are what drive him and almost all of his actions. They're in a constant cycle of madness and sobriety.

They’re willing to try their best to be good- of course they’ll try to be good, whatever the hell that means! They’ll try until their frenzied hunger consumes them once more. :)

Voiceclaim: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dd9GxCqCGnU

𝐌𝐢𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐲 (𝐏𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐭 𝐅𝐨𝐫𝐦) (incomplete!)

[art missing]

[desc missing]

Voiceclaim: [missing]

[sagau-my-beloved]

You’re probably swamped with asks and I’m so sorry to add another but your writing of Venti and the SAGAU real-world AU is so good! If you’re still accepting can we have a drabble of Venti meeting creators parents? Thank you so much and please make sure you’re getting plenty of rest ❤️

Something of a Family Reunion

Thank you very much, but it's only one 1 am, so I think I'll probably be fine for now—

I've actually been trying really hard to avoid using gendered pronouns along with the phrase (Y/n), but I really physically don't think I can get around it this time without making my dialogue choppy, so I apologize for that, reader is also explicitly female here

Warnings: general sagau, mentions of readers parents, mild cussing

-

He had been with you for over a year now.

You knew this was coming.

Things were getting more serious, well it's not as if they weren't serious from day one when he barged into your house and claimed you were a God, but this was a completely different kind of serious.

"My love, I'm almost packed." Venti practically sung, carrying a rather large suitcase as he rushed past you to put it in the car.

Ever since the beginning he had wanted to know everything about you, including all the people you were either related to or chose to hang out with.

You had managed to put it off this long, but you should have known he would have set something up behind your back.

Then again, it was kind of more right in front of your face.

You happened to get a call from your mother, and he happened to answer first, despite the amount of times you told him not to pick up the phone.

Cheerful and smooth as always, never making anything but a good first impression.

You did manage to get the phone back about five minutes later, but the damage had already been done.

You and him were now taking a rather long road trip to get to your parents, no ifs ands or buts about it.

You had felt a strong desire to yell at him after that, stronger than usual at least, but the way that he looked at you, apologetic but beaming.

You knew that he wanted this, and you knew that it was partly your fault for putting it off so long.

As much as you wanted to, you couldn't bring yourself to blame him for it.

You were pulled immediately out of your thoughts as he boomeranged back around, giving you a quick peck before going to grab the last bit of luggage.

You hadn't seen him this excited since he found that sale on wine a few months ago—

The car was finally packed, both of you in your respective seats.

You were obviously driving, leaving Venti to take up the responsibilities that come with the passenger seat.

He was insistent not to turn on the radio, claiming that he was perfectly capable of simply providing music himself for the four hour ride.

You had to give him credit, he did go a solid hour.

When he seemed relatively tired out you decided to just talk instead.

"So, same rules as when we're in public, no 'your grace', none of that 'creator' business, and absolutely no mentions of 'God' when referring to either me or you. And I shouldn't have to say don't mention Teyvat at all."

You two had already gone over this before you left, and after it was decided that you were going to come over about a week ago, but you really couldn't afford any mistakes on this.

"Of course, I wouldn't dream of doing such a thing."

Venti laughed at how you practically rolled your eyes, he really should have been taking this more seriously.

"Well, we're only staying there for a few days, I really should have just booked a hotel." The last part you said more to yourself than him.

Booking a hotel was your original plan before your mom just had to emphasize that they had a spare room, and it would be such a shame not to use it in an opportunity like this.

The idle chitchat between the two of you made the time go by quicker, and before you knew it, you were driving into the same driveway you remembered from all those years ago.

Venti was basically bouncing in his seat, you could see metaphorical stars in his eyes as he practically jumped out of the car.

You got out yourself and physically grabbed him by the shirt to pull him back, he almost fell into you and gave you a confused look.

"Remember what I said." There was warning behind those words, and a promise of something if he didn't heed it.

"Of course my love, I won't mess up, I promise." He gave you a small smile of reassurance, one that satisfied you enough to let him go.

You walked to the door, your nerves climbing higher and higher at every step until they were practically in your throat.

You hesitated for a moment before knocking, giving very serious consideration to just turning around and immediately going back.

It wasn't as if you didn't like your parents, of course you loved them, but this just had 'bad situation' written all over it.

Your hesitation was in vain because the door quickly opened before you even had the opportunity to let out a single knock.

"(Y/n)!" your mother quickly embraced you in a hug before pulling back at arm's length to look you over, "It's been too long, you really should call me more, I've been so worried about you recently you know."

You only managed to let out a nervous laugh. She looked at the same as ever, sometimes you wondered if she would ever look any different.

"Right sorry, things have just been a bit hectic lately." You weren't lying, you just couldn't tell her exactly how much you were telling the truth.

Her eyes drifted over to Venti who stood straight, you assumed to make himself look a bit taller.

She seemed to be taken by slight surprise, her eyes widened ever so slightly before returning to their same inviting look.

You mentally cursed at yourself for only just now realizing that it would be kind of surprising how young Venti looked, could you even manage to convince them that he was over twenty-one when he had quite literally nothing to prove it?

"This much be Venti right? The one I've heard so little about?"

That, of course, was a direct jab at you. You could feel guilt seeping at how secretive you'd been about this whole thing, but it wasn't as though you really had a choice.

"Yes ma'am, it's very nice to meet you, I love your daughter greatly." The sincerity in the way he said it almost caused you to blush.

Your mom just laughed at that, "Well come in, both of you, me and your dad can help you unpack a bit later."

Oh right, your dad...

Venti took your arm in his as you both went into the modest house, although even while being modest it beat the place you were currently living at.

Your dad, who was previously sitting on the living room couch, rose to meet you at the door.

"Well it's about time, and here I thought we might never see you again."

You smiled slightly as you gave him a hug, it had been a while, and you would be lying to yourself if you said you hadn't missed them both.

When you both had pulled away he looked over to see Venti at your side, a brief flicker of a similar expression your mom held crossed his face for a moment, causing your stomach to drop slightly.

"This is Venti, he was the one who set this up to begin with."

Your dad gave him a quick once over, but Venti's smile didn't faulter even slightly.

Instead, he simply extended his hand, one which your dad accepted after a moment of hesitation.

"Nice to meet you sir, I've heard a lot about you."

That was a pretty blatant lie, you never really talked about your parents to him, but you had to stop yourself from laughing at the formal way Venti said it.

'Ma'am'? 'Sir'?? You almost felt the need to compare him to Zhongli.

"Hey," you turned at your mothers voice to find that she was beckoning you to the kitchen, "Come give me a hand won't you?"

You let out a quick "Be right there" before grabbing Venti's arm and physically pulling him with you.

You received no protest from him.

Your mother looked over towards you when you entered, putting down the knife she was using to chop vegetables.

She looked over at Venti, giving him a small smile before hurting you out of the kitchen rather quickly.

"What are you—"

"So, that's your boyfriend then?"

You didn't quite like the way she phrased it, a tone that was on the borderline between accusing and worried.

"And uh, how did you two meet? How much younger than you is he exactly?"

You knew this would be brought up eventually, so you made sure to study your voice before calmly speaking, "He's twenty-one." That number was missing a few zeroes, but you had a feeling they would have an even harder time believing you on that one.

Your mom just pursed her lips, stuck between the option of believing and not believing your statement. It's not as if she had any reason not to believe it, other than his general appearance looking a bit younger than that.

She chose to drop it, walking back to the kitchen as you followed suit.

You both walked in to find Venti meticulously cutting vegetables.

"Oh! God I'm sorry, there's no need for you to do that. I can take care of it."

Your mother quickly rushed in to take the knife, her instincts not to let guest do any work kicking in at high speeds.

"I'm going to go start unpacking while you finish that."

Your mom barely had time to register what you said before you had grabbed Venti and left the kitchen.

You both went out to the car before he stopped you, putting his hands on both sides of your face as he gave you a worried look, "What's wrong? You seem nervous."

You practically laughed at that, "Nervous? Now what possible reason do I have to be nervous?"

His frown deepened at your sarcasm.

Venti pressed a gentle kiss on your nose and gave you a smile, "Don't stress yourself out so much, nothing bad is going to happen."

You wanted to believe him, really, you did. But your outlook on this entire situation was getting dimmer by the second.

"It didn't even occur to me before we got here how young you looked, I told my mom you were twenty-one, what a lie that was."

Venti giggled at that, "That is just slightly off."

You let out of breath as you tried to clear your mind for a moment, to let yourself believe that this would all work out. He stood there looking at you the entire time, eye's filled with such profound feeling.

Venti almost regretted making you come here, putting this stress on you, being the direct cause of it in a way. All he could do to make it up to you was give back to you in this way, to reassure you that he would do everything in his power to make this go well.

After you had calmed down slightly, you both grabbed a few suitcases and moved them inside, you directing him to the spare room.

It was your old room, though it looked nothing like it had when you lived in it.

Once you had finished explaining that this was the room you had spent the majority of your time living here in, Venti's excitement pretty much shot through the roof.

He jumped onto the bed immediately, sprawling out, barely able to restrain his mind from thinking about all times you had laid in this exact spot.

You plopped down next to him and he immediately gravitated towards you, clinging to your waist.

You couldn't help but laugh slightly as you patted his head, allowing him to rest on your lap.

After about five minutes you pushed him off, despite his protests, choosing to open a suitcase and start unpacking instead.

You weren't able to get very far before your mom called you both for dinner.

Another bundle of nerves decided the best resting spot would be directly on top of your chest, because it was getting harder and harder to breathe at the thought of sitting at a table together for roughly an hour with nothing but small talk.

Venti could tell by your facial expressions exactly what you were feeling and pulled you into a hug, giving you a kiss as he whispered how he wasn't going to mess up and remembered everything you told him.

The beginning of dinner wasn't quite awkward as much as it was quiet, nobody seemingly wanting to be the first person who spoke.

Your mother did eventually break the silence, looking straight at Venti while doing so, "So, you've been together for a year right? I don't believe (y/n) ever told me how you two met."

Venti sat for a moment, looking almost as if he was recalling the memory fondly, "Well we met through a mutual friend actually, he introduced me, and I knew as soon as I saw her that I very much wanted to get to know her."

You guessed that some of that was partly true, at the very least your mother seemed to believe it.

"So your name," your dad spoke next, "is it Italian?"

"Yes actually, although I'm not."

You wondered for a second how he knew that, before resigning yourself to the fact he probably wouldn't tell you.

"We're just so glad (y/n) has found someone they like." Your mother cut in, giving that all too familiar patient smile, "We were worried for a while she wasn't ever going to date anyone."

"Mom."

Your mother simply responded by laughing, "It's true, you never really made connections with people easy."

The more that came out of her mouth the more embarrassed you were starting to feel.

"Well, I would never have guessed that, your daughter is actually a very popular person, I know quite a few people that care for her greatly." Venti spoke in a way that was practically laced with praise and good intentions, wanting so strongly to announce you as the most important person in his world.

You simply responded by clearing your throat and taking another bite of the food in front of you.

"So where are you from then?"

You mentally cringed at that question from your dad, you were hoping to avoid it at least a bit longer.

Before Venti had the opportunity to fumble for an answer you 'accidentally' knocked over your glass of water, startling them all.

"Oh shit sorry, complete accident—"

You darted off in the kitchen to grab a towel as your mom followed you.

It took a moment for you to get yourself dried off, and by the time you got back, both your dad and Venti were debating about alcohol.

You rolled your eyes and use the towel to wipe off the remaining water on the table, "Well, this has been pleasant, thank you very much for the meal, but I think I'm going to go ahead and retired to the room, tired from the long drive and all."

There were general murmurs of disappointment amongst your parents before they both wished you good night, adamant on the fact you would all do something together tomorrow.

You simply replied with a nod and walked away as Venti followed you quickly.

You practically buried your face into the pile of pillows when you finally found yourself comfortably laying on the bed.

"Well, it wasn't that bad now, was it?"

You had to admit that could have gone a lot worse, you couldn't even imagine what answer he would have given for where he was from.

You hummed in acknowledgement as he crawled into bed with you, quickly situating himself on your side.

"Just four more days." You mumbled to yourself.

"I think we'll pull it off just fine." Venti responded, pressing a kiss to your shoulder before you rolled over to face him.

This was a long shot, but maybe you could actually get an answer out of him.

"Hey, how did you know your name was Italian?"

He responded with a very sheepish looking smile, "I didn't."

You couldn't help but laugh at that, pulling him into your embrace.

"Well, at least you're a good bullshitter."

He only gave you an affectionate kiss on the cheek in response.

You hadn't really intended on falling asleep so soon, but all the stress just seemed to melt away when you were lying there with him.

You would get out of this week alive.

As long as your mom decided to keep the family photo album with all of your younger pictures to herself that is...

[diochain]

Yooooo that wolf skull monster with the antlers coming out of John’s back looks awesome. Is that meant to be a shikigami? Do you mind if I ask what their technique is?

A JOHN ASK!! I'm so glad you think it looks cool sdkfjdsk I'll get into details about it in a sec! I’d love to talk about their witchcraft! :D prepare for an EXTREMELY LONG and in-depth post. The ghouls’ concepts are mostly fleshed out but what they actually do is still kinda unclear lmao

Though this is a long and relatively in-depth post, this is still subject to change, as I haven’t focused on it as much as I have other things since I created John!

John Lee-Tran (retconned name) possesses a bloodline witchcraft, or inherited technique, known as Five Ring Bestiary, from the Tran family. The chances of inheriting this witchcraft is actually extremely rare—the last user of it lived 193 years ago. Part of becoming a master of the technique is to be able to emulate the user's familiars without losing your own soul in the process. As the name implies, there can only be five ���beasts” bound to the user at a time. They are ranked based on amount of cursed energy each is capable of using.

Once fully mastered, the user's appearance, manus and powers change depending on which familiar they have become the temporary vessel for. There are no written records on the full abilities of inheritors so, without any kind of norm or standards to adhere to, each user of this witchcraft uses it slightly differently.

John's unique usage of Five Ring Bestiary also summons the tamed ghouls to his side, making their fighting style very similar to that of Shikigami Users on a surface level at times. However, John specializes in only using parts of his body at a time as a vessel, allowing him to risk only fractions of himself while using the technique. “Bestial” is attached to the names of the ghouls bound to users of Five Ring Bestiary.

Her familiars are:

LURKER—Ring One

Summary

The Bestial Lurker seems to be some kind of swamp or marsh ghoul, originally birthed during the American Revolutionary War from the British during an attempt to travel from up a trade route in the New England Region (I’ll admit I forgot the name of this march, it’s real and historical, I just forgot lol). Sickness, death and grief that surrounded the marshes of New England, especially the mosquitoes, manifested into what became known as the Lurker. Covered in hair, possessing six legs and wings, the Lurker strangely specializes in stealth and long-term takedowns. If around for too long, people tend to get inexplicably sick, and can die.

Those with large amounts of cursed energy, though, should be fine, which was why it was rather perplexed by John. They were and are one of the only people on Earth who can actually resist the cursed plague that they give off, a symptom of the insects associated with the New England marshes.

Powers

The Bestial Lurker, when being emulated, is usually used in John’s arms or legs. This is because the Bestial Lurker adds a protective layer of sludge that can be thought of as an offensive defense. The longer someone is exposed to it, the more likely they are to be infected by the cursed plague. However, this includes John, so they don’t emulate the Bestial Lurker for very long. It does not provide much if any actual defense or physical boosts.

Physical changes include a sludge or opaque, viscous liquid to begin secreting from John’s skin. It attracts insects like mosquitoes or flies. Lurker is classified as the last-resort defense.

WENDIGO—Ring Two

Summary

Though called a wendigo, this familiar seems like a kind of bastard mix between both the wendigo and the Ojibwe pakàk, or baykok. They also frequently use weapons, sometimes made from the bones or cursed energy of those they have consumed. They eat humans to gain whatever cursed energy that person has, because that is all they can eat once they have “turned.” Skeletal and caked in old blood, the Bestial Wendigo was John's first familiar, having gained it when they were roughly 9. They have a deal: John will one day be killed and eaten by the Bestial Wendigo. Until then, the BW will remain subordinate to him. The BW makes regular attempts at John's life, but it seems an unlikely friendship has formed between the intelligent S-rank ghoul and S-rank witch.

Like its namesake, the BW feasts on humans—the more cursed energy, the more appetizing the human. Wendigos in the world of Salem are a class of ghouls that sustain themselves off human flesh. They are few in number globally but rather prominent in the northern region of the US and southern region of Canada. They are frequently cursed people or cursed ideas of people who were cannibals in life or legend. However, wendigo-class ghouls rarely have memory of who or what they may have been before cursed.

Powers

The BW, when being emulated by John, drastically weakens John’s bones but drastically increases his stamina, reaction speed, sense of smell, hearing, and taste. His ability to sense mana and manus also increases exponentially.

Physical changes include sharper teeth, slimmer arms, claw-like nails, black sclera, and ashen skin. This is mostly due to the fact that John only uses his upper body when emulating the BW.

The most notable techniques emulating the BW grants her is projectile slashes and ranged attacks that travel along the ground. BW is classified as the glass cannon. Despite this, it is still John’s most frequently used ghoul.

MOTHMAN—Ring Three

Summary

I don’t think I have to explain much about the background of Mothman. He’s pretty infamous in North America, but basically, in 1966, in West Virginia, there was a supposed sighting of a man-like figure with a 10-foot wingspan flying above a couple in the middle of the night. This creature became known as Mothman. Whether or not this creature existed before or after this supposed sighting, it became very powerful because of notoriety it began to hold. In only 50 years it became extremely well-known across the world, especially with the USA. It was one of John’s first missions as an AR to go check it out and he quickly tamed it. He refuses to explain the methods with which he did it, supposedly to preserve the ghoul’s ego—it is widely known Mothman has a massive ego.

Powers

The Bestial Mothman’s granted abilities have yet to be witnessed. This translates to what it does is so-far undecided lol.

TWIN BIRDS—Ring Four

Summary

An inseparable duo of birds based off the Rain Bird and Thunderbird, also a derivative of/bastardized reference to Fujin and Raijin of Japanese mythology, the Twin Birds came from a failed attempt to summon the Ring Five spirits. The two birds, which John named Hou and Yongun respectively. They were the most difficult to find, seeing as they required a summoning ritual, but the easiest to tame.

Overall, the concept of these two is the roughest and least finished.

Powers

The Twin Birds are ones John uses very infrequently because they must always be used together, and using both becomes somewhat pointless after a certain point when he has the 3 preceding Bestial ghouls. It’s not entirely certain what they do, but following the legends of the Rain and Thunderbirds, Hou heals and Yongun destroys.

ORIGIN OF ALL—Ring Five

Summary

The manifestation of the two creator gods of Vietnamese civilization, Lạc Long Quân and Âu Cơ—the dragon and the fairy. The summoning ritual comes with inheriting the technique, but is extremely difficult to pull off, and it is even more difficult to tame the two deities. This one requires a criteria of how pure one’s heart is, a fight, and then a judgement by the two deities. Ring Five will always already be reserved for these two. John did not have to fight alone for this battle, but did have to be the one to land the “final blow.” He cooperated with four others, the maximum amount, and was able to defeat the two gods, barely surviving the encounter. This battle happens only after Satoru Gojo’s encounter in Shibuya, when John realized they needed to step up their game.

It should be noted these incarnations of the gods are, in all reality, warped and false manifestations of the gods, as they are the perceptions of fearful humans.

Powers

Largely undecided, but decidedly overpowered. John needs to allot his body to them entirely in order to emulate them, however.

[polyamoroamer]

Webs and Nets

I've been thinking a lot recently about what I want out of life, what I can offer the world and those around me, and what I need to grow and change. I think we all have.

The world right now is in flux. It is a scary time and scary place. We have violent men in power; rising bigotry and hatred; a global pandemic with hundreds of thousands dead; rampant transphobia and rampant racism; police brutality against those who dare to rise up for peace, for strength and for love. We live in a dystopian novel.

But the thing is that we always have, in many ways. Native Americans are still living through the apocalypse that decimated their ancestors and stole their land; African Americans are still living through the apocalypse that pillaged them from their homes and forced them into slavery thousands of leagues away. The legacy of horror continues. This is not new. But what we are seeing right now is a pinch point, an historical time where things could swing toward the better, the brighter future.

During lockdown I have been keeping away from people almost totally, as my grandmother whom I shop for and visit is 97 next week and I want her to see 100. I went to one BLM rally, the biggest protest I've ever seen in my predominantly white little conservative town. Bigger even than our ridiculously large Pride (we have a truly exemplary number of radical LGBTQ+ people for such a Tory stronghold). But I have not stepped out past that, as it was simply impossible to socially distance, and I am protecting someone.

I have been working hard on the campervan conversion, building the bathroom and starting the kitchen cabinets. I'm considering linking this blog with my real life at last, so may eventually post photos of it when it's finished. I've complained about it to you friends enough!

I started a new kids' novel about a trans girl who finds out she is a witch and navigates the difficulties of coming out to her parents and living as openly trans at school, and learns magic at the same time.

I've cut the pieces out for so many new items of clothing to sell, and am hopefully going to sew them all soon.

It sounds very productive but it doesn't feel it. Every step is three steps backward before I can move on, every day feels like a punch. I've been creating out of desperation, trying to justify my use of oxygen and food and space by making things.

A few weeks ago on the Solstice that came to a head. Dash and I were going to go out in the campervan and trip for the first time since last summer. But I couldn't fix the leaking skylight (again), I took hours longer trying to make it work than I should have done, and finally when the time came to leave, we picked up my mattress to put in the camper and it had been utterly ravaged by mould.

This might sound like only a minor setback, but to me it was breaking point. That mattress has changed my life. I woke up in the mornings without pain, able to get up and go whether I did my morning yoga or not. I slept soundly, heavily. I dreamed strange dreams and I felt rested. I didn't hurt. It was a £1800 mattress I found secondhand for £250. And I ruined it. It felt like the perfect coming together of all of my failures as an activist, as a child, as a partner, as a creator, a builder, an adult, a grandchild, a sibling, performer, writer, as a human being. Through my own negligence I destroyed something very expensive to replace that had supported me, cradled me, held me and become my haven and sanctuary.

So I had a pretty solid breakdown. I slid back into old habits, the clawing of skin and banging of heads. I had a headache for days. It felt so ridiculous. Such a small, insignificant thing to go wrong when compared with the huge issues facing vast swathes of humanity. But as we all know, often the thing that sets off the breakdown is not the biggest issue. It's just the last little drip that makes the bucket start overflowing.

Since then I have had several smaller incidents in a similar vein, and every time I mock myself for them.

But I am lucky. My mother and my partner, and most of my family really, are all very supportive of my, and one another's, difficulties. When I fuck up and spiral into a self-destructive vortex, my loved ones give me space to recover, help me to fix the problems, and unquestioningly forgive my mistakes. It's astounding to me, the amount of patience they can have with me, when in my own eyes I am a ceaseless burden and chronic fuck up. They hold my hand and tell me I am wanted, I am loved and it is a pleasure and joy to be with me. They help me to repair or replace or heal or learn. They love me.

And in this I come to see how similar we are. Because I do the same for them. When Dash makes a mistake and becomes convinced he's always just an accident waiting to happen, I reassure him, help him to fix the problem, and give him space to stew. When my mum panics two or three times a day over technical issues, I swoop in to save the day. When Nanny Ogg puts herself down because she believes the voice of her abuser, I swamp her with verbal affirmation and love.

We all take care of each other. We are all parts of the web. Or really it's more like a net, with no one person at the centre. Everyone looks after everyone.

I want to expand this network. Recently I have been trying something new in my relationships. Whenever I think positively about someone, I send them a message, even if it's only 'hey, how are you? Thinking of you'. This is a hard practice to get into, because it requires fighting executive dysfunction and social anxiety and depression to reach out even when I don't feel like it.

But I have frequently not done this, and people have died suddenly, and I have felt so guilty for not having sent those messages. Many, many loved ones right now are suddenly seriously ill or abruptly gone. And I can't afford to not send every loving message that pops into my head because the grief and guilt are just too much the way it stands.

When faced with that stick, it's much easier to pursue the carrot.

I have felt very alone and very grief-stricken for a long time, and so have many of us. COVID is just the latest upheaval and tragedy in many people's lives. We're almost numb to fear and grief, but not quite. We're just full up. But we are not alone, and it's up to us to remind other people that they aren't either. As we show love, so we shall be shown love.

So right now I am throwing nets wide, throwing love out into the world and reminding the people I like that I care about them. Because I want to forge new relationships, rebuild old ones, and create unity and community with the people around me. What does it matter what form those relationships take, as long as they exist and are nutritious to our hearts and souls?

The world is hard right now, and we can't survive it alone. But together we have a chance, and if we don't start now, when will we?

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHY I'M SMARTER THAN INVESTMENT

This is too big a problem to solve here, but I'd say the test is whether you're good at making things. So what if they fail? Though they're less well known, the angel investors are probably the more critical ingredient in creating a silicon valley in another country, it's clear the US is disorganized about routing people into careers. Easy, compared to college, but boring. 99%.1 The groups then proceeded to give fabulously slick presentations. What made him seem older? If I were a better speaker. More like the first step into a swamp. This form of lie is not without its uses. You know how you can design programs to be debuggable? But when they looked for startup ideas they didn't see this one, because unconsciously they shrank from having to deal with you later.

Foreseeing disaster, my friend and his wife rapidly improvised: yes, the turkey had wanted to die, and in particular, Internet startups are still only a fraction of the world's economy, this component will set the tone for the rest.2 They're started by the poor and the timid; they begin in marginal space and spare time; they're started by people who dropped out of school to do it yourself.3 Rejection is a question of seeing the obvious. Just a teacher? There have always been occasional cases, particularly in the US, and good high schools and good universities, like most other industrialized countries, I'd take the US system. 9782 free! But by the time we funded their second startup, a year later, they had become extremely formidable. And you know what you're talking about, you can do whatever you want and don't cite any previous work, and indignant readers will send you references to all the papers you should have been making.

But I can imagine a future in which the default choice of ambitious young people is to start a company at first. There's no evidence that famously successful organizations like the Roman army or the British East India Company were any less afflicted by protocol and politics than organizations of the same size today. But I don't wish I were a farmer and suddenly heard a lot of propaganda gets slipped into the curriculum in the name of simplification.4 What weaknesses could you exploit?5 Sometimes they're more candid and say explicitly that they need to see some traction.6 Because I wanted to keep the pressure on an investor or acquirer all the way to the close. They wouldn't well, seven of the eight startups we funded will make it. That's what makes sex and drugs so dangerous.7 With speaking it's the opposite: the two dovetailed beautifully. Works to your advantage.

Finally, what should one do about html? Hacking is something you learn best by doing it. So if you make it clear you're going to have to do to get the attention of an audience is to give people everything you've got, right away. I think, 24 hours to say yes or no answer to that question.8 My vote is they're a bad idea, for example, are working on an Ajax calendar. This pattern suggests that attitudes at Stanford and Berkeley are not an anomaly. Most were emerging from twenty or so years of being told what to do. He had all of us roaring with laughter. Imagine picking out apples at a grocery store.9 I must have been to till the same fields your whole life with the aim of being their Thanksgiving dinner. But it worked so well that we plan to do all our investing this way, or the large sums of money involved, but investment negotiations can easily turn personal.10 The most important quality is in a startup depends mainly on how smart and energetic you are, and much less on how old you are or how much business experience you have.

Not all ideas of that type.11 But that wears off after a few months I realized that what I'd been unconsciously hoping to find there was back in the place I'd just left. Instead of just tweaking a spam till it gets through a copy of something they made, but they also laugh at someone who tells them a certain problem can't be solved. To start with, investors are letting founders cash out partially. But of course there were the usual nightmares associated with servers. Increasingly it will mean the people who think they don't need investors to start most companies; they can do a deal in 24 hours if they need it a lot. For example, most painters in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries used brownish colors. Prefix Syntax? The idea is basically that you sort search results not in order of bids, you can envision companies as holes. If I encourage too many people to apply to Y Combinator, which is low to them. I don't think any would have traded it for a job in a cubicle. There isn't so much a phone as a replacement for x.

If this succeeds you get a silicon valley in Germany, because you tend to be calmer and more upstanding; they don't need to do iffy things to get an edge, and don't want to because they have no redundancy.12 You just know someone knows something, and see if there's a limit on the number of people want a large amount.13 Arguably they've done a bad job of hiring otherwise. In the meantime I tried my best to imitate them. Could a trend based on them be that powerful? I've said before, is a way for writers to make money.14 But if you parse it all, your filter might degenerate into a mere html recognizer.15 They try to hide even the existence of these words for as long as a startup founder about whether it might be good to solve? In a language with prefix syntax, any function you define is effectively an operator. And why is it hard to get emails out of your inbox? If the iPad had come first, we wouldn't think of the iPhone as a phone; we'd think of it as a tablet small enough to hold up to your ear.

If you want to understand startups is to look at what you enjoy as guilty pleasures. But there are limits to how well this can be done, no matter how obscure you are now. Just as happens in college, you may also be ready to. Now most VCs know they should be funding grad students or even undergrads. That will tend to get fixed. Or could have been implemented as a couple hundred lines of Perl; in fact they do all look the same. But we should be able to clear our heads of lies we were told. So now I'd advise people to go ahead and start startups right out of college. The disadvantage of having a larger universe of tokens is that there are going to be fairly laborious no matter what, and the reason why, unlike other languages, Lisp has dialects. Well, if you're starting a company that will do something cool, the aim had better be to make money and maybe be cool, not to be cut out of the way as soon as you can, so you start learning from users what you should do is to sacrifice unpromising startups. The result is bronze, which is predicated on the idea.16 Don't realize what you're avoiding One reason people who've been out in the world won't save you.

After all, the companies selling smells on the moon base could continue to sell them on the Earth, if they lobbied successfully for laws requiring us all to continue to breathe through tubes if they could avoid it. Most investors, especially VCs, are not like founders. But that's something you can do, but assume the worst about machines and other people. But those aren't the only reasons parents don't want their teenage kids having sex are complex.17 Some we helped with technical advice—for example, finding the recipient's email address base-64 encoded anywhere in a message is a very good spam indicator.18 We'll start with the one everyone's born with. Not just founders, but investors too.

Notes

Because we want to avoid this problem and yet managed to find users to recruit manually—is probably part of grasping evolution was to backtrack and try another approach.

You end up.

You won't hire all those 20 people at once, or want tenure, avoid casual conversations with VCs suggest it's roughly correct to say exactly what constitutes research in the sense that if you were going to need to be the only one founder take fundraising meetings is that as you get nothing. Come to think of the money.

Ed. Good news: users don't care about may not understand you at a Demo Day. What happens in practice is that the big winners aren't all that value, don't worry about the paperwork there, and don't want to sell earlier than you otherwise would have met 30 people he meets at parties he's a real idea that evolves into Facebook is a trailing indicator in any case, because you have for one user. These anti-immigration people to claim that companies will one day be able to fool investors with such tricks, you'd get ten times as much effort it costs.

It might also be argued that we wrote in order to win. But one of these people.

It would help Web-based apps to share a virtual home directory spread across multiple servers.

I used a technicality to get into a big chunk of stock options than any other company has to be most attractive when it's their own itinerary through no-land, while simultaneously implying that lies believed for a certain threshold. And while this sort of things you sell.

Heirs will be. For founders who had to push founders to have kids soon. These false positive rate is 10%, moving to Monaco would only give you money for. The point where things start with consumer electronics.

Could you endure studying literary theory, or to be doctors?

We're sometimes disappointed when a wolf appears, is not writing the agreement, but I'm not against editing. It will require more than that total abstinence is the odds are slightly worse. Some VCs will try to start some vaguely benevolent business. I was surprised to find it hard to do would be very hard and doesn't get paid to work for us now to appreciate how important a duty it must have seemed to someone still implicitly operating on the order of 10,000 sestertii apiece for slaves learned in the evolution of the word programmers care about, just try to accept a particular valuation, or editions with the high-fiber diet is to discount knowledge that at some of these titles vary too much to hope for, but when that happens, it tends to be staying at a pre-money valuation of zero.

There is no different from technology companies between them so founders can get very emotional. Something similar happens with suburbs. I remember the eyes of phone companies are up-front capital intensive to founders.

The person who would have for a smooth one. But that solution has broader consequences than just salary.

There are circumstances where this is not merely blurry versions of great things were created mainly to make more money was the fall of 2008 the terms they were, they'd have taken one of the main effect of this essay I'm talking here about academic talks, which is to the year x in a time, because the danger of chasing large investments is not one of those you should. How much more attractive to investors. When governments decide how to achieve wisdom is that there could be done at a friend's house for the board to give him 95% of spam, for example, MySpace is basically a replacement mall for mallrats.

In-Q-Tel that is actually a great reputation and they're clearly working fast to get into a pattern, as Prohibition and the Imagination by Hilbert and Cohn-Vossen.

A company will either be a trivial enhancement of HTTP, to a degree in design is any better than his peers will get funding, pretty much regardless of how to value potential dividends. So in effect what the rule of thumb, the increasing complacency of managements. Since capital is no longer play that role, it increases your confidence in a rice cooker, if the current options suck enough. Yes, actually: dealing with the bad idea, at least for those founders.

College English Departments Come From?

Microsoft must know in the country it's in. I used a TV as a source of food. Or rather indignant; that's the main emotion I've observed; but it is not just something the automobile, the second type to go to a college that limits their options?

Now many tech companies don't advertise this. I think the main effect of this model was that they aren't. This wipes out the existing shareholders, including the numbers we have to go out running or sit home and watch TV, go ahead. Jessica Livingston's Founders at Work.

Thanks to Richard Jowsey, Bob Frankston, Geoff Ralston, James Bracy, rew Mason, Abby Kirigin, Chip Coldwell, Sam Altman, and Marc Andreessen for the lulz.

[weeklyhumorist]

Reasons I'm Still Wearing A Mask (That Have Nothing to Do With Secretly Being a Crocodile)

It’s been a few weeks since the CDC lifted its mask guidelines and I, the esteemed Dr. Human Notacroc, feel I must voice my dissent! Already I am seeing droves of maskless people and I fear someday soon I will be all alone in my stalwart masking. I wear a mask to protect others—not to obscure a hypothetical snout full of sharp teeth that I might, hypothetically, have and might, hypothetically, intend to eat you with. My sole motivation is the safety of my fellow humans. I bid you too remain masked for the following reasons:

  No vaccine is 100% effective. No matter how small the chance of infection is, you have to be careful. Think about it this way: crocodiles only kill 0.5 people every year, but you still wouldn’t go swimming with one, would you? No, it’s much safer to stay here, on land, where there aren’t any crocodiles, have never been any crocodiles, and will never be any crocodiles. So wear your mask, stay out of the water, and maybe come over for tea sometime next week? No, don’t invite anyone else, come alone. When I send you my address, don’t be alarmed if it seems to be in the middle of a swamp. Just drive out to the bayou, walk a few meters away from your car, and I’ll come out to meet you.

  It will ruin my outfits. If nothing else, think of the fashions. My typical look is an oversized trench coat that covers my entire body neck to claw—I mean foot. That leaves no room for accessorizing anywhere but the head! A mask and a large wide-brimmed hat are the perfect addition to the ensemble. Sure, this conceals all of my facial features, but that has nothing to do with obscuring the rough green scales that I don’t We’ve all spent the past year incorporating masks into our wardrobe, are we really ready to give that all up? Even if you don’t use a mask to hide your snout, scales, and beady eyes, are you really ready for the world to see your entire face again? But I will be seeing you for tea, right? Don’t tell anyone else that you’re coming.

  There are variants. It feels like every day a new variant is popping up, and we can’t be sure the vaccine is effective against them. Variation is the spice of life, but I’ll stick to regular spices thank you very much! Speaking of spices, could you maybe eat some cinnamon every day for a week before our tea party? No particular reason, I just really enjoy the taste. Not that I’ll be tasting you. No, I am not salivating at the thought of a human cinnamon roll. This is a normal amount of saliva for a human to have.

  Virtue signaling. It’s important you wear a mask to let other people know you care about their safety! When I see someone maskless, I think “wow, I don’t want that person anywhere near my mouth.” Not that I want you near my mouth either, I’m speaking purely hypothetically here. But a maskless face has become unappetizing—of course, not meant in the literal sense, I’ve never eaten anyone’s face—in the public consciousness. So keep your mask on solely so people know you’re a good person (not as in a good person to eat, but a good person in general, I don’t know why we keep bringing up eating! I’ve already had my three meals for the week).

  I hope I’ve managed to change your heart, or at the very least, your mind. I, for one, will continue wearing a mask, maybe forever, and I hope you do as well. It would be kinda weird if I was the only one wearing a mask right? People might start wondering, and might look a little too close at what’s beneath.

  But that’s neither here nor there! What is here, or at least will be here soon, is you, over to my place, for tea! I’ll be serving my famous ‘death rolls.’ No, don’t worry, the name is just a funny joke and does not literally refer to a crocodile’s predatory habits. I don’t even know much about crocodiles after all. I’m a human doctor scientist who serves human tea to his fellow humans. I can’t wait to have you over!

  Reasons I’m Still Wearing A Mask (That Have Nothing to Do With Secretly Being a Crocodile) was originally published on Weekly Humorist