#Sell Pixel Watch

[thebigphonestore]

SMART CASH- UNLOCK VALUE WHEN YOU SELL PIXEL WATCH

Unlocking Value: How to Sell Google Pixel Watch Quickly

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Your Reliable Electronic Upgrade Partner

You can easily traverse the world of technology with The Big Phone Store as your dependable companion. Whether you're selling, trading in, or upgrading your equipment, our website ensures a safe and comfortable transaction. Visit Sell Google Pixel Watch for more information. The Big Phone Store UK keeps you up to current on technology!

[riminiscensce]

Poor Ajaw bro😭

He will definitely go to you to snitch on Kinich, and while at it, he’ll throw in some make-believe stories that makes Kinich sound like a horrible person.

“Kinich said he’ll feed me to the saurian mountain king!”

“Kinich was going to throw me at the desert!”

“Kinich wanted to sell me to criminals!”

The only thing that makes his claim believable to you is how he was cutely trying to wipe his tears with his tiny, pixelated hands.

And one more thing to make you believe him even more:

“I-I just wanted to hang out with him, I had no one to play with and I thought that m-maybe we could’ve spent some time together as friends…”

That was an obvious lie, he would never say that.

But it works well enough to persuade you to talk some senses into Kinich.

The saurian hunter doesn’t even know what happened when you came barging into his place telling him to apologize to Ajaw, and you weren’t at all pleased to see him.

Then Kinich finds out Ajaw lied about him.

“I didn’t do anything he said—“

“Are you saying Ajaw is a liar?”

“Yes,”

“Hey!” Ajaw growled, but quickly clearing his throat to get back into his act. “I mean—It really happened!”

Then Ajaw decided to pull off one of his secret moves to persuade you:

“D-Don’t you trust me?” The dragon frowns, dots of tears still in the corner of his eyes while clutching onto your clothes like a little kid. “I-It was so scary…! I keep getting nightmares about it and—“

Then he continues to sob on your shoulder, saying how he can’t even bring himself to tell the full story at how terrified he is.

He felt an immense wave of success when you start to comfort him.

When you weren’t looking, Ajaw would sneak a glance at Kinich, quietly laughing at how helpless he has gotten.

And Kinich felt intensely mocked by it.

But before he could do anything else, you left with Ajaw, telling him that he’ll stay with you until Kinich can bring himself to apologize.

As the hunter continues to watch you baby Ajaw from afar, the dragon would always grab any chances he gets to rub it in Kinich’s face.

It was sweet revenge.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

AI art has no anti-cooption immune system

TONIGHT (July 20), I'm appearing in CHICAGO at Exile in Bookville.

One thing Myspace had going for it: it was exuberantly ugly. The decision to let users with no design training loose on a highly customizable user-interface led to a proliferation of Myspace pages that vibrated with personality.

The ugliness of Myspace wasn't just exciting in a kind of outsider/folk-art way (though it was that). Myspace's ugliness was an anti-cooption force-field, because corporate designers and art-directors would, by and large, rather break their fingers and gouge out their eyes than produce pages that looked like that.

In this regard, Myspace was the heir to successive generations of "design democratization" that gave amateur communities, especially countercultural ones, a space to operate in where authentic community members could be easily distinguished between parasitic commercializers.

The immediate predecessors to Myspace's ugliness-as-a-feature were the web, and desktop publishing. Between the img tag, imagemaps, the blink tag, animated GIFs, and the million ways that you could weird a page with tables and padding, the early web was positively bursting with individual personality. The early web balanced in an equilibrium between the plunder-friendliness of "view source" and the topsy-turvy design imperatives of web-based layout, which confounded both print designers (no fixed fonts! RGB colorspaces! dithering!) and even multimedia designers who'd cut their teeth on Hypercard and CD ROMs (no fixed layout!).

Before the web came desktop publishing, the million tractor-feed ransom notes combining Broderbund Print Shop fonts, joystick-edited pixel-art, and a cohort of enthusiasts ranging from punk zinesters to community newsletter publishers. As this work proliferated on coffee-shop counters and telephone poles, it was visibly, obviously distinct from the work produced by "real" designers – that is, designers who'd been a) trained and b) paid by a corporation to employ that training.

All of this matters, and not just for aesthetic reasons. Communities – especially countercultural ones – are where our society's creative ferment starts. Getting your start in the trenches of the counterculture wars is no proof against being co-opted later (indeed, many of the designers who cut their teeth desktop publishing weird zines went on to pull their hair and roll their eyes at the incredible fuggliness of the web). But without that zone of noncommercial, antiestablishment, communitarian low weirdness, design and culture would stagnate.

I started thinking about this 25 years ago, the first time I met William Gibson. I'd been assigned by the Globe and Mail to interview him for the launch of All Tomorrow's Parties:

https://craphound.com/nonfic/transcript.html

One of the questions I asked was about his famous aphorism, "The street finds its own use for things." Given how quickly each post-punk tendency had been absorbed by commercial culture, couldn't we say that "Madison Avenue finds its own use for the street"? His answer started me down a quarter-century of thinking and writing about this subject:

I worry about what we'll do in the future, [about the instantaneous co-opting of pop culture]. Where is our new stuff going to come from? What we're doing pop culturally is like burning the rain forest. The biodiversity of pop culture is really, really in danger. I didn't see it coming until a few years ago, but looking back it's very apparent.

I watch a sort of primitive form of the recommodification machine around my friends and myself in sixties, and it took about two years for this clumsy mechanism to get and try to sell us The Monkees.

In 1977, it took about eight months for a slightly faster more refined mechanism to put punk in the window of Holt Renfrew. It's gotten faster ever since. The scene in Seattle that Nirvana came from: as soon as it had a label, it was on the runways of Paris.

Ugliness, transgressiveness and shock all represent an incoherent, grasping attempt to keep the world out of your demimonde – not just normies and squares, but also and especially enthusiastic marketers who want to figure out how to sell stuff to you, and use you to sell stuff to normies and squares.

I think this is what drove a lot of people to 4chan (remember, before 4chan was famous for incubating neofascism, it was the birthplace of Anonymous): its shock culture, combined with a strong cultural norm of anonymity, made for a difficult-to-digest, thoroughly spiky morsel that resisted recommodification (for a while).

All of this brings me to AI art (or AI "art"). In his essay on the "eerieness" of AI art, Henry Farrell quotes Mark Fisher's "The Weird and the Eerie":

https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/large-language-models-are-uncanny

"Eeriness" here is defined as "when there is something present where there should be nothing, or is there is nothing present when there should be something." AI is eerie because it produces the seeming of intent, without any intender:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/13/spooky-action-at-a-close-up/#invisible-hand

When we contemplate "authentic" countercultural work – ransom-note DTP, the weird old web, seizure-inducing Myspace GIFs – it is arresting because the personality of the human entity responsible for it shines through. We might be able to recognize where that person ganked their source-viewed HTML or pixel-optimized GIF, but we can also make inferences about the emotional meaning of those choices. To see that work is to connect to a mind. That mind might not necessarily belong to someone you want to be friends with or ever meet in person, but it is unmistakably another person, and you can't help but learn something about yourself from the way that their work makes you feel.

This is why corporate work is so often called "soulless." The point of corporate art is to dress the artificial person of the corporation in the stolen skins of the humans it uses as its substrate. Corporations are potentially immortal, artificial colony organisms. They maintain the pretense of personality, but they have no mind, only action that is the crescendo of an orchestra of improvised instruments played by hundreds or thousands of employees and a handful of executives who are often working directly against one another:

https://locusmag.com/2022/03/cory-doctorow-vertically-challenged/

The corporation is – as Charlie Stross has it – the "slow AI" that is slowly converting our planet to the long-prophesied grey goo (or, more prosaically, wildfire ashes and boiled oceans). The real thing that is signified by CEOs' professed fears of runaway AI is runaway corporations. As Ted Chiang says, the experience of being nominally in charge of a corporation that refuses to do what you tell it to is the kind of thing that will give you nightmares about autonomous AI turning on its masters:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way

The job of corporate designers is to find the signifiers of authenticity and dress up the corporate entity's robotic imperatives in this stolen flesh. Everything about AI is done in service to this goal: the chatbots that replace customer service reps are meant to both perfectly mimic a real, competent corporate representative while also hewing perfectly to corporate policy, without ever betraying the real human frailties that none of us can escape.

In the same way, the shillbots that pretend to be corporate superfans online are supposed to perfectly amplify the corporate message, the slow AI's conception of its own virtues, without injecting their own off-script, potentially cringey enthusiasms.

The Hollywood writers' strike was, at root, about the studio execs' dream that they could convert the "insights" of focus groups and audience research into a perfect script, without having to go through a phalanx of lippy screenwriters who insisted on explaining why they think your idea is stupid. "Hey, nerd, make me another ET, except make the hero a dog, and set it on Mars" is exactly how you prompt an AI:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/20/everything-made-by-an-ai-is-in-the-public-domain/

Corporate design's job is to produce the seeming of intention without any intender. The "personality" we're meant to sense when we encounter corporate design isn't the designer's, nor the art director's, nor even the CEO's. The "personality" is meant to be the slow AI's, but a corporation doesn't have a personality.

In his 2018 short story "Noon in the antilibrary," Karl Schroeder describes an "antilibrary" as an endlessly deep anaerobic lagoon of generative botshit:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/08/18/104097/noon-in-the-antilibrary/

The antilibrary is a generative AI system that can produce entire librarys’-worth of fake books with fake authors, fake citations by other fake experts with their own fake books and biographies and fake social media accounts, on-demand and instantly. It was speculation in 2018; it’s possible now. Creating an antilibrary is just a matter of investing in a sufficient number of graphics cards and electricity.

https://kschroeder.substack.com/p/after-the-internet

Reading Karl's reflections on the antilibrary crystallized something for me that I've been thinking about for a quarter-century, since I interviewed Gibson at the Penguin offices in north Toronto. It snapped something into place that I've trying to fit since encountering Henry's thoughts on the "eeriness" of AI work and the intent without an intender.

It made me realize why I dislike AI art so much, on a deep, aesthetic level. The point of an image generator is to buffer the intention of the prompter (which might be genuinely creative and bursting with personality) in layers of automated decision-making that flense the final product of any hint of the mind that caused its creation.

The most febrile, deeply weird and authentic prompts of the most excluded outsiders produce images that feel the same as the corporate AI illustrations that project the illusion of personality from the immortal, transhuman colony organism that is the limited liability corporation.

AI art is born coopted. Even the 4chan equivalent of AI – the deeply transgressive and immoral nonconsensual pornography – feels no different from the "official" AI porn churned out by "real" pornographers. "Shrimp Jesus" and other SEO-optimized Facebook slop is so uncanny because it is simultaneously "weird" ("that which does not belong") and yet it belongs in the same aesthetic bucket of the most anodyne Corporate Memphis ephemera:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Memphis

We call it "generative" but AI art can't generate the kind of turnover that aerates the aesthetic soil. An artform that can't be transgressive is sterile, stillborn, a dead end.

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/20/ransom-note-force-field/#antilibraries

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

--

Jake (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1970s_fanzines_(21224199545).jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[macabr3-barbi3]

Entanglement (Sub Vox x Reader)

A request from the lovely @jurijyuu for a tentacle malfunction Sub Vox 💕📺

Tags: Restraints; Light Bondage; Sub Vox; Teasing; Begging; Dom/sub Undertones; Tentacles? Sort of? are Vox's cable/wire things tentacles? the world may never know

💙❤️💙❤️💙

Who could have guessed that trying to do something nice for his doll could have resulted in something like this?

Vox had been waiting for you to finish up with Velvette for the shoot that was happening this evening. He knew after hours of the fucked up poses that Vel forced you into to get the perfect shot you would be sore- she had had you hanging by your knees from the fucking chandelier on one occasion, insisting that the slight sway to the fixture would result it a cool shot from your camera (it did; that wasn’t the point). Her favorite photographer, Velvette was always fucking stealing your free time away from him. It was good for business, but bad for his plan of simply keeping you naked in his room at all times for easy access.

He had been laying in the bed, lazily stroking himself just in case you showed up, when the idea struck him to run you a hot bath and light some candles around the room. It shouldn't have been too much longer before you arrived so the candles wouldn’t burn out, and you always enjoyed it when he ‘set the mood,’ whatever that meant. He could probably sell you on fucking before your bath, too- even more deep aches and sweet bruises for the hot water to soothe.

He was too lazy to get up though, so he had snaked out a few of his cables from the back of his head, long and prehensile, a few pairs of them diving into the various drawers in the room searching for the candles and matches and two slithering across the floor towards the bathroom. Had he thought to check the floor for water from his shower a few hours prior before sending two very much electrical tentacles into the room he might have had better luck.

Currently though, his luck was shit. The water found its way into his wires and shorted them out, electrical current traveling all the way through to the base and fucking up the other cables as well; they whipped and snapped across the room in wide arcs and twisting wriggles, and his attempts to grab them from the air and cease the destruction to his room only resulted in his wrists getting tangled up in the mess.

So here Vox had been for the last fifteen minutes or so, restrained by his wrists in the bed and still achingly, frustratingly hard. His cables didn’t so much as twitch when he tries to send some power to them to reverse the entanglement, or when he tugged his arms a bit. His cock does though, and isn’t that something interesting that he doesn’t want to think about right now.

And then like an angel, there’s the sound of the door opening and you coming home. “Baby,” he shouts from the bedroom, and he hears the telltale thump of your camera bag on the kitchen counter. “I could use your help in here!”

“What did you do now? If you cracked your screen off the stand again-” Your voice trails off when you enter the room and see him- he’s sure he looks fucking ridiculous, spread out like he is, and he feels the spread of pink pixels over his screen in a blush.

“I was trying to do something nice for you,” he says, “and got some water in my wires. Everything went haywire, and, well, now I’m here. Be a doll and help me get loose?”

The way you’re watching him is a little disconcerting- not bad by any means, he loved having your eyes on him, just a little unusual. You slide your jacket off your shoulders and toss it on the armchair, sliding your hair out of its bun that you wear to keep your hair out of your eyes while you work. When you go for the button on your jeans he clears his throat.

“I appreciate the strip tease, sweetheart, but there’s more pressing matters at hand here.” He lifts his wrists in demonstration, the wires brushing his skin in a way that makes him suck in a harsh breath, dick twitching in his boxers. “Come on, help me.”

You work your jeans and panties down your legs, his eyes trailing the whole way before settling on the space between your legs. Then your shirt comes off, perfect tits on display as you do a rotation, let him take in the visual of your body in front of him before running your hands down your skin and back up- one hand plucks at a nipple while the other dips down between your legs.

Vox’s mouth is hanging open, pixelated lines of drool coming off his mouth as he watches you, cock throbbing out of his reach. He tugs at his makeshift restraints, a little breathless when it sends a bolt of arousal through his body- seriously, what the fuck? “I am in no mood to be teased right now,” he tells you, but the words are a little reedy and almost whimpered. He clears his throat and tries again- “Seriously, help me.”

You come closer to the bed, climb onto it and settle yourself between his legs. “Come on, Voxxy,” you murmur, and the low, dangerous tone to your voice goes straight to his straining erection despite the use of that fucking nickname that he hated. “Tied up all pretty for me and not even going to say ‘please?’ That’s not how you get what you want.” Your hands run up his calves, up his thighs, and your thumbs brush into the dip of his pelvic bone. Your touch sends electricity crackling through him, static sparking between his antennae. “That’s what you always say anyway- you wouldn’t want to be a hypocrite, would you?” You drag the waistband of his boxers down, and he’s half-mortified when his hips automatically cant up to make it easier for you, his dick slapping heavy onto his abdomen when it springs free.

“What the fuck are you doing?” He can feel the manic grin on his face- confused by the turn of events, by his sweet, perfect doll not simply doing what you were told and, what? Trying to get him to beg? As if- even if it was hot as fuck (and it was, Christ). “Baby, I- ohhhh, fuck-” 

Your head ducked down to lick a stripe up his cock, tongue curling around the head- his hips buck up, try to sink into the wet cavern of your mouth but you pull back with a soft smile. “Say please.”

“Fuck you.” Vox says this affectionately- he was the one in control in the bedroom, this was cute and all, but he wouldn’t plead with you for it.

“Not with that attitude, you won’t be,” you snap back with a wicked grin on your face. And you’re gone again, bent over to lick and suck at the hard length of him with your ass in the air, just the way that he likes.

Again, when he tries to thrust into your mouth you pull off, and he tugs uselessly at his restraints, head falling back against the pillows when you bring a hand up to cup his balls, thumb running gently over the sensitive skin. “Haah- you’re going to fucking kill me.” He’s a little embarrassed by that whiny moan that had escaped him, but you’re not even looking at his face, head resting on his thigh to gaze lovingly at his fucking dick while you stroke and kiss and generally tease him.

Vox thinks he might be losing his mind, just a little. But fuck does he want it, want to lose himself in the wet heat of your mouth, sink deep into your slick cunt and watch you bounce in his lap. He could still do that with his hands restrained, right? He wouldn’t be able to grip your hips the way he wanted to, or get his fingers on your clit and revel in the way that always made you clench tighter around him- but he could make do if you wouldn’t release him.

And there’s the thought that does him in- that maybe you wouldn’t let him go, would keep him tied to the bed with his own goddamn wires to tease him endlessly, unable to do anything about it himself, evidently unable to convince you to do anything for him. He was at your mercy here, the thought making him dizzy with arousal and an unprompted whine falling from his lips when he notices you working your fingers between your legs while you finally let the head of his cock slip past your lips, suction on the tip that makes him see stars.

“P-please,” he breathes out, and you release him with a pop, such excitement lighting up your eyes that he wishes he had given in sooner- you were so beautiful when you were pleased and excited, what would you look like when he gave in to you like this?

You move up the bed, legs on either side of his, and slide your drenched folds against the length of him. Leaning down so your face is next to his, you press a deep kiss to his mouth, slipping your tongue alongside his before you pull back and whisper, “again.” Your hands press into Vox’s chest as you slot him against you, rub the head of his prick against your clit and groan in ecstasy.

His hips jerk at the sensation. “Please, baby,” he says darkly, “let me fuck you.”

“Hmm, not quite what I’m looking for.” You lift off of him, slide back and out of reach again. “Try again?”

“What? Come on, I can’t-” He pulls at his restraints again, and the way your eyes go half-lidded at the sight gets the message through. “You wanna keep me trussed up, is that it?”

“Is it so wrong for the photographer to want to keep a pretty picture on display?” Your fingers twitch between your pretty thighs, grinding tiny circles into your clit while you wait for him to give you what you want. “I wish I hadn’t left my camera in the kitchen; I would love a shot like this. I’d have to get some different lighting…” Your hips stop moving for a moment as you look around the room. “Maybe candlelight would work? I think that would cast a nice glow on your skin, so pretty- fuck, should I go get my camera?”

“No!” The word breaks past the dam of his lips when you use one of his own tricks against him- the threat of ending the pleasure when you’re so fucked out and cock drunk, on the brink of cumming. “No no no, doll, don’t leave- fuck, please, alright? Please touch me, fuck me, ride my cock. I’m fucking begging, I need it-”

A shudder rolls through your body, and finally, finally you sink down on him, a slow, delicious slide that has his fingers clenching uselessly where they’re held, wishing he could hold you, dig his claws in like he usually did.

“I didn’t say stop,” you moan, watching him through narrowed eyes. “Come on, Voxxy, tell me what you want.”

“I want you to stop fucking t͖͖̠̬͛ḛ̡̰̳͓̥ͬ͋ͪͧa͔͔̜̗̦ͩ̅̎s̨̞̞̰͎͎̪̩͕̈́̀ͯ̍ͧͅi̧̻̻͉̜͑ͪ̾͟n̫̫̘̗͕̲̲̎ͥg̬̬̱ͩ͋͟͟ me-” Your hips slow and Vox bites his tongue, rephrasing- and this time, to his chagrin, the stream of words doesn’t fucking stop. “Please, baby, don’t stop- f̰̰̯͕͊̃̊͞͞͞ụ̴̴̾̀͟͡c̨̨̣̮̝̈́̔ͯ̀͂k̼̼̞̦̞̼̔, so fucking good, I w-want- I wanna cum, please, keep going, you f-feel so f̰̰̯͕͊̃̊͞͞͞ụ̴̴̾̀͟͡c̨̨̣̮̝̈́̔ͯ̀͂k̼̼̞̦̞̼̔i̧̻̻͉̜͑ͪ̾͟n̫̫̘̗͕̲̲̎ͥg̬̬̱ͩ͋͟͟ g̬̬̱ͩ͋͟͟o͙͙̙̘̙ͤͫ͞o͙͙̙̘̙ͤͫ͞d̶̵̯̯̼̘ͨ̓-” An honest to God whimper comes out of him, so invested in both of you cumming that he can’t even find the sense in him to be embarrassed by what was happening. His screen is glitching out, his vision broken when he goes full static every couple of seconds, but the glimpses he’s getting in between of you with your head thrown back are going to fuel his jerk-off sessions when he can’t spend the night with you for the rest of his afterlife. You felt fucking perfect around him, your swollen pussy walls squeezing him just right as you rode him.

“Say please,” you command, fingers working between your legs, the back of your hand brushing against his abdomen and causing the muscles to flutter under you. “Ask me to make you cum- ask for permission and I’ll let you cum in me-”

And didn’t that just sound like the perfect end to the evening? He doesn’t even question it, couldn’t stop his traitorous tongue if he tried. “Please, doll, oh my fucking- please please p͔͔͚͉̬̋ͩ̾͗l͖͖̰̝ͭ̀͘ḛ̡̰̳͓̥ͬ͋ͪͧa͔͔̜̗̦ͩ̅̎s̨̞̞̰͎͎̪̩͕̈́̀ͯ̍ͧͅḛ̡̰̳͓̥ͬ͋ͪͧ, p͔͔͚͉̬̋ͩ̾͗l͖͖̰̝ͭ̀͘ḛ̡̰̳͓̥ͬ͋ͪͧa͔͔̜̗̦ͩ̅̎s̨̞̞̰͎͎̪̩͕̈́̀ͯ̍ͧͅḛ̡̰̳͓̥ͬ͋ͪͧ, let me do it, cum with me-” He feels the tension in his entire body, from his suspended arms to the tips of his goddamn toes- he might actually fully fucking short out, he thinks deliriously, processors overloading in his brain at the sights and sounds and the feel of you sucking him into your greedy body. “- p͔͔͚͉̬̋ͩ̾͗l͖͖̰̝ͭ̀͘ḛ̡̰̳͓̥ͬ͋ͪͧa͔͔̜̗̦ͩ̅̎s̨̞̞̰͎͎̪̩͕̈́̀ͯ̍ͧͅḛ̡̰̳͓̥ͬ͋ͪͧ let me, baby- oh f̰̰̯͕͊̃̊͞͞͞ụ̴̴̾̀͟͡c̨̨̣̮̝̈́̔ͯ̀͂k̼̼̞̦̞̼̔, I’m gonna-”

You hit the peak of your orgasms together, your body jerking in his lap like you’ve been electrocuted while your cunt wrings him like a fucking towel, tensing and rippling around his cock as he spills into the slickness, long pulses of cum as far inside of you as he can get and its not enough- he can never be close enough to you to feel complete so he settles for filling you with everything he has to give.

Vox doesn’t black out, but its a near thing- the explosion of sudden voltage to his circuits actually jump-starts the core of his cable tentacles and they spring to life, his wrists finally coming free and falling to the bed so he’s spread out like some fucked up crucifixion. They’re numb, he realizes, but before he can get to doing anything about that you shift, reaching for them and massaging feeling back into his limbs. There’s some light bruising, but nothing crazy, not any worse than you had whenever the pair of you occasionally delved into bondage. 

The heavy breathing of you both evens out, and you bring his hands to your mouth to press light kisses to them. When you’re satisfied you release him, and his arms wrap around your back. You press a gentle kiss to his screen and rest your head on his chest. 

“You know,” you mutter into his skin, “technically I didn’t give you permission to cum. That’s gotta count for… something. I’m not sure what.”

He snorts into your hair. “Doesn’t count for shit. You cheated, waiting until I was right on the brink to say that shit.”

You hum, and snuggle closer. “You liked it though? Maybe a repeat in the future?”

His instinct was to say no, but he couldn’t deny that he had enjoyed it- you were a dangerous force in control, something he would maybe have to mention to Velvette so she would let you direct your own goddamn shoots. “We’ll talk about it,” he settles on, still a tad embarrassed by his reaction to the whole thing. “I do think you should have to draw the bath now, though- for both of us, since I think you rode me so hard my thighs have bruises.”

“Oh fuck off,” you laugh into his chest, but you still roll off of him and disappear into the bathroom- the sound of running water fills the room while Vox tries to remember how to make his legs work.

“I better not see that camera in here, either!” He shouts, and your responding giggle brings a smile to his face.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/56081230

[emptymasks]

After weeks of drawing, my Supernatural stickers and badges are done and for sale on my Etsy shop! There are far too many characters to have drawn them all, but hopefully at least some of your favourites are here. It was strange given how many years it's been since I first watched the show to be only just now drawing some of these characters for the first time.

Characters available: Abaddon, Adam Milligan, Amara / The Darkness, Anael / Sister Jo, Anna Milton, Arthur Ketch, Ash, Balthazar, Bela Talbot, Belphegor, Benny Lafitte, Billie, Bobby Singer, Cain, Castiel, Charlie Bradbury, Chuck Shirley / God, Claire Novak, Crowley / Fergus MacLeod, Dean Winchester, Demon Dean, Death, Donna Hanscum, Eileen Leahy, Ellen Harvelle, Gabriel, Gadreel, Garth Fitzgerald IV, Jack Kline, Jessica Moore, Jo Harvelle, Jody Mills, Kaia Nieves, Kevin Tran, Lilith, Lucifer, Mary Winchester, Meg / Meg Masters, Michael, Nick, Raphael, Rowena MacLeod, Ruby, Sam Winchester, Samandriel, Tessa.

I also have designed my first standee! It's of Sam/Lucifer from 'The End' episode and is available for pre-order, there's 24 for sale and I'm unsure if they'll ever get a restock as I'm crossing my fingers to just sell those first 24.

I can’t link to my Etsy without risking Tumblr hiding the post from tag search results, but the link is in my pinned post, my carrd, I’m emptymasks on Etsy. Reblogs help support artists more than likes ❤️

[ID: Individual pixel art chibi drawings of 52 characters from Supernatural that are available as chibi stickers drawn with a pixel brush. These drawings are also available as badges where they are placed inside circles to show what they will look like as physical button badges, some of them with plain colour backgrounds and some with 1-3 different pride flags as examples of how you can customise the backgrounds.]

[changingplumbob]

How will the Yorks react to my plan to host a bachelorette challenge?

Deanna - Potential bachelorette Joey - Deanna's aromantic yet allosexual older brother Artemisia - Deanna's younger sister, has the evil trait Devin - 2 time Starlight Accolade winner for her acting career and Deanna's older sister Luna - Devin's wife, Deanna's sister in law Aaron - Deanna's pa (father) Calista - Deanna's ma (mother) Alfred & Rilian Villareal - Deanna's nephews

Joey: I assume you all know why I have gathered you here this evening

Artemisia: You contracted a WTD

Joey: What? No, we don't have the mods

Aaron: Look if you got someone pregnant we don't need all these theatrics

Devin: Excuse me pa? We always need theatrics

Joey: I didn't get anyone pregnant. This isn't about me, it's about Deanna

Deanna: Very funny

Joey: The watcher and I have decided you should star in a bachelorette challenge

Luna: Oh I love watching those! They're so romantic

Devin: Oh can I host? Please let me host!

Aaron: Cara your sister hasn't said yes to it

Joey: Let me give you my pitch. Tartosa is a perfect background for love. We invite a dozen or so ladies to come and get to know you Deanna, really know you. I think it could be a happily ever after for you

Deanna: I have university Joey

Devin: You have time between terms right? Oh please say yes De, my friend Norah would love to come help direct

Deanna: Aren't these things normally rather straight coded

Joey: In some dimensions, yes. But we live in a great world where homophobia is next to non existent

Devin: Except for Luna's dad, but he's not here now so its fine

Alfred & Rilian: RIP Jacques

Luna: *laughing* Wait- When did they learn to do that?

Artemisia: Ahhhh, Joey was talking

Joey: The point is we, the watcher and I, are bound to be able to find some women or non binary individuals who fit your tastes De. And we can get some family based challenges for them to compete in for extra time with you. Or get other celebrities or local businesses to feature

Calista: Oh we should ask the owners of Postres de Alegría! Maybe then I'll actually be able to get some of their pastries when I show up

Aaron: Tesoro you know if you want the raspberry tart you have to get there before midday. They can't not sell just because you might feel like a treat after your shift

Joey: If not Bob could help out, or he might know some people in Brindleton Bay who have niche interests we could use for a challenge or two

Aaron: I don't know that I like the idea of one of my bambina's pixel parts being on TV

Deanna: Yeah I second that opinion

Joey: We won't actually show any nudity, relax. Now Devin you can be host but I will obviously need to talk to any other watchers. Our watcher thinks it would be fun if they had some input about what skills their contestants would work on. If they don't she'll still need to know like orientations and official stuff

Luna: *sighs* Now you believe in multiple watchers?

Aaron: Joey has just always been rather devout

Deanna: I guess I am single...

Joey: You are

Deanna: And I'm definitely over Paris

Joey: Yes

Deanna: Reece will have to be allowed to do something or he'll pout

Joey: I can sort something. So, will you do it?

Deanna: Sure. I mean who doesn't want true love right?

I'm going to do it *internal screaming*! I'm going to start working on an intro post and some graphics so people know what the submissions need. Submissions will be open until Christmas but I'll push it out a week if needed. Ideally I would love to have households of six at a time, so I'll put slots up in groups of six as people show interest. I don't want to start off with 12 or 18 etc slots if I'll only get four sims. I'm realising a lot of my planning will need to know how many sims there are so I'll be opening up soon to help my brain.

Introductions, hosted by Devin, won't begin until mid January when most people are back from New Years holidays. So yeah, I was actually so nervous writing this all out, I need to calm down. Here's some basic Deanna info I'll put elsewhere to get the cogs in brains turning. This third child of an Italian family is studying physics with hopes of being an engineer but her main aspiration in life is Mansion Baron. She's a lesbian but I checked in game and sims with that orientation are able to flirt/form romantic attachments to non-binary people as well as cis or trans females.

[jymwahuwu]

Jing Yuan is the kind who likes to customize you and him in the game world, and arranges you to marry him… 🫣💕

CW: yandere, non-con (in game), harassment, customizing your avatar without your consent and doing lewd things, forced marriage

Every era has some retro trends. The so-called trend is the waves on the beach, changing but repeating.

General Jing Yuan needs to pay attention to the business trends in Xianzhou, and found that many adults in Xianzhou have bought a game console. It was an electronic pet game console that was popular in various galaxies hundreds of years ago, and it has been packaged by capital and sold in a new form now. The game company uses new technology and beautiful pixel art compared to previous consoles, and targets adults. Virtual pets are fully customizable, and players can feed, care for, and even talk to them (of course, no voice, just text and options, but pets respond based on player-customizable personalities and stats). The selling point of this console is porn, with the ability to choose the level of sexual encounters and orgasms of pets in the simulated universe (lots of free and randomized sex events).

Jing Yuan immediately ordered his assistant to buy one. It was an exquisite game console with the cartoon designs of fluffy kittens and birds that the general wanted. He couldn't wait to customize… you, using technology to customize a virtual pet in the game that is exactly like you in reality. You stand on the grass in pixel art style, looking at him with a pout. He customizes your character and stats, and starts the game. He's obsessed with your little pixel figure sleeping and being fed by him in the game world. You are really adorable when you sleep in the clouds. Your little pixel avatar eating your favorite food at the restaurant. It's just that he can't accept you being groped by tentacles and other mysterious alien species in the virtual universe.

So, he customized a small avatar of Jing Yuan and lived in your home. The General watches with satisfaction as your virtual pixel avatar gets fucked by tiny Jing Yuan, rocking your waist back and forth and sobbing, with white seeds all over your face and private parts. You look exhausted and have a lot of orgasms… <3 Begging little Jing Yuan to stop doing this. In the restaurant, your avatar also can't enjoy the food because his avatar keeps groping you under the table. You even had a little wedding in the game! Your avatar keeps pleading with text messages not to get married, but gets rejected. How can you be so cute… <3

One night, you received a mysterious game video from a general who harassed you. You click and watch in bewilderment to see a tiny avatar very similar to you being fingered and nipple stimulated, and the one doing it is an avatar similar to Jing Yuan!! They are doing lewd things with the cutest art. You are flustered and crying, how can that person do such a thing in the game world without your consent. Jing Yuan even sent this for you to watch…?

"hey baby, they work so hard. let's get married as early as possible just like them<3"

[blackbirds-on-the-marsh]

Heads up folks, tumblr’s got a new flashing ad.

[ID: a screenshot of an ad sponsored by WordAds, with the title “When I learned to sell books…” and the subheading “Young authors are outselling old authors with this sales training course. Watch this free video sample!” End ID.]

Below this is an ad that on tablet covers the whole screen, and is nothing but blurry, grainy flashing colors. It not only flashes in waves of colors, but large pixels of different colors pop in and out. On my tablet, it took me about eight or nine scrolls to get past.

[twstthing]

[Bake Bread] 1/2

Minecraft Single Player! Yuu AU

Summary: Yuu baked(?) bread for Azul.

Part 2/2

Yuu has insanely fast-growing wheat on their farm located at Ramshackle grounds. Azul has been so, so shifty about wanting to own the property, but he has continuously and fabulously failed at acquiring it.

But what kind of business man is Azul to give up on such an opportunity? Wheat can take up to 2/3rds of the year to grow, but the wheat this abnormal student plants takes approximately 1 and a half days to be completely grown! Not only that, it is beautifully, so beautifully consistent in its quality.

Yes, sure, there are PLENTY of magic agriculture brands that sell amazingly consistent produce, but this wheat? This wheat is terrifyingly accurate to the industry standard. Azul had to confirm to his two associates that no, he was in fact not tripping balls ("You are MALDING over overrated grass, Azul. You sound just like Jade.")

Just to confirm that he wasn't insane, he had gotten his hands on some legally obtained samples of the wheat (He politely asked for a bundle of wheat from Yuu with a contract where he promised to not commercialize nor generate defamation/slander associated with Yuurmom because of the wheat.) and had Jade take it to his Science Club to study it.

Even according to that Heartsyabul Clover, he was thoroughly impressed at the remarkably consistent quality of the wheat.

Trey had kindly indulged Jade's questions about the wheat, explaining one of the most business-booming, profit-generating, game-breaking facts about this produce

This wheat does not expire.

It doesn't expire? Are you kidding? No preservatives, no drying processes, no water rot, none? None at all?

As Clover explains, "Uhh, yeah. It doesn't go bad even when carried around for months. Yuu gifted me some, but I don't exactly know how to process wheat into flour, so it's been sitting in the pantry for some time now. I've been wanting to put it to use though, so this week I'll be meeting with Deuce, Epel, and Jack to help me process it."

So yeah, Azul is definitely NOT crazy for losing his mind over this farm that Yuu has going on. If he can have Yuu make a contract with him to exclusively sell their harvests to Mostro Lounge, he'd be booming! Fast crops, no preservatives, no need to watch for shelf life, do you even understand what kind of miracle crop this student has?!

When Azul comes knocking at Yuu's door once more, he is greeted with the expected presence of the Ramshackle Housewarden, but also a basket of... Flatly stacked pixelated bread?

"Why, Yuu, I wasn't aware you enjoy my company so much!"

"Come in. Bread, eat."

Azul is slightly surprised by the sudden hospitality, but accepts it to see if he can further his advances in getting his hands on those crops.

Upon being seated in the common room, Yuu takes one of the breads from the basket and begins to eat it in their really loud and strange way. Crumbs are flying everywhere, yet not one speck actually makes it onto the couch or floor. Azul wishes he could forget the way Yuu tried to eat the food at Mostro Lounge for the first time.

Jade sets the plate down, and gives a simple smile, "Please enjoy your food." Deuce and Ace usher various forms of a curt "Thanks." before digging in, but Yuu continues to stare at the plate in front of them. Ace raises an eyebrow, but before he got to make a snarky comment, Yuu grabs their Sirloin Steak with Mushroom Sauce and Stir-Fried Vegetables with their bare hand and proceeds to begin ripping at it.

Ripping is not a strong enough word to describe their eating process, Yuu's mouth was barely open yet there were steak shreds and mushroom sauce flying everywhere. The two little card soldiers were trying to fend themselves from the food splatter onslaught, Jade was collapsed to his knees trying to hold in his laughter, Floyd dropped the food he was supposed to serve in opt of releasing howling laughter, and Azul felt like crawling into a ditch.

.. Maybe this was a more prominent memory for Azul than he initially thought.

But! Azul has persisted through worse, really strange eating mannerisms do not compare to the Leech's impulsive personalities. Therefore, this is nothing.

"So, Housewarden, how do you fare? I can see that this place has recently been cleaned well, was that your doing?"

The sounds of disconcertingly loud bread munching fill the room for a solid 4 seconds. Yuu is staring straight at Azul, and Azul stares back. Azul dully notes that their pupils are square-shaped. He's aware of slit eyes and horizontally slit eyes, as evidenced by goat beastfolk, but he's unsure if a person with square pupils is simply born like that or had an extreme cosmetic surgery.

Yuu audibly gulps and burps after finishing their loaf, the bread vanishing from their hand with the blink of an eye.

There are a lot of things running through Azul's mind right now, but his goal was not forgotten. Get closer with Yuu, get that wheat, make business boom. Thus, he slightly extends his hand out to the basket of pixelated bread that is stacked upon each other like cards, "Mind if I have some?"

Yuu nods, so Azul reaches out with his gloved hand to take one of the reasonably sized hard-as-rock pixelated loaves of bread.

He goes in with two hands to rip the bread in half, but finds that it is rock solid. Of course it is. It is a physical slab of a pixelated graphic of a loaf of bread. Azul feels a bit stupid. ("Of course you are, normie! You should've expected that!")

Despite the failed first attempt, Azul tries to rip at it once more with more force. Fingertips pressed into the slab, he pulls his arms away from each other horizontally in a final attempt.

rrrip

Rip? Azul looks at the now split pieces of bread in his hands, and the previous rock-solid pixelated graphic has turned into actual bread.

Azul blinks. He looks at the basket of bread, and the pixel graphic was still there stacked neatly. Bringing his arms back, he observes the bread in his hands that looks to be an ordinary, warm, freshly baked loaf of bread that bore no resemblance to what he initially held in his hands prior to tearing it.

"You ever eat bread before?"

Azul nearly whips his head up to look at Yuu, who's unconcerning gaze never left him.

Pushing up his glasses, Azul speaks, "I assure you I know of bread, Housewarden. I was simply wondering.."

There are a lot of questions Azul wants to ask, those related and unrelated to the current situation, but he pulls through and selects a question that would give him more insight to the Housewarden's stranger properties.

"I was thinking about how you made this. It's still fresh and warm after all. I didn't know the oven in here was operable, no offense to you and your skilled craftsmanship."

Yuu shrugs, "Just 3 wheat, bread made."

Azul blinks.

"Do you mean 3 pounds of wheat? That's quite a lot of crop to process."

"No. 3 wheat makes 1 bread."

Azul Ashengrotto is one of the youngest genius businessmen to enter the world. His thorough work and sound words carry his reputation as smoothly as sea currents, letting all know of his benevolence and charm. However, such skill was not born from nothing. The young man had persisted through harder times, fought his way to the top, wrangling only the best of deals and people to keep his position rising, an experienced businessman as he is no stranger to challenge.

However, interacting with this abnormal Housewarden has somehow managed to shake the reality and logic of such a esteemed man more than thrice.

".. Do you mind explaining what that means, Housewarden? I feel that you might be referring to a unit of measurement from your home, which I'm unfortunately not familiar with."

Continued in Part 2

[i2rizz]

Atlanta Lock AU Pt.3

Fandom: Blue lock

Characters: atlanta lock!Nagi x reader

Im having way too much fun w this AU

------------‐---------------------------------------

The first time you heard about Nagi’s “hustle,” you were lounging in his makeshift office, which, in reality, was just the couch in the back room of O Block’s bodega. You were halfway through a soda (that probably wasn’t paid for) when Nagi, with his usual lazy energy, leaned over to show you his latest "business venture."

“Got a new plan,” Nagi muttered, tapping on his phone with that sleepy intensity he always had when it came to his latest schemes.

You glanced up, not surprised but mildly concerned. “Okay, hit me. What is it this time? Stealing cars? Reselling sneakers?”

Nagi shrugged, unfazed by your skepticism. “Nope. Something easier.”

You raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Let me guess—digital ramen?”

“Better,” he said, a hint of smugness creeping into his voice. “NFTs.”

You blinked at him. “NFTs?”

“Yeah,” Nagi said, not really explaining but still flipping his phone around to show you a badly photoshopped graphic. It was a pixelated image of a brick, with the words “EXCLUSIVE GANG NFT” plastered across it. “Art. But, like...gangster art.”

You stared at it for a long beat. “This is a joke, right?”

“Nope,” Nagi replied, popping a Pocky stick into his mouth and leaning back as though he just invented the next big thing.

“People are gonna pay for this?” you asked, half-laughing, half-dying inside.

“Mm-hmm,” Nagi said lazily. “It’s a status thing. Only a few available. Like limited edition.”

You shook your head. “Okay, but...where are you even gonna sell them?”

Reo appeared from behind the shelves, holding a stack of flyers. “I got the marketing down,” he said, flashing a grin that screamed “I’m ready to make this an empire.”

Somehow, against all logic and reason, Nagi’s “gang NFT” scheme started to take off.

It all started when Reo started printing flyers that were handed out in random alleyways, on street corners, and honestly, anywhere people gathered in O Block. The flyer promised “Exclusive Gang NFT Drops” with a link to Nagi’s barely functional website. And to your absolute disbelief, people actually started buying them.

“See?” Nagi said as he showed you his phone, where the sales notifications kept popping up. “Easy money.”

“But... it’s just a picture of a brick,” you said, still not sure if you were in a fever dream.

“It’s a rare brick,” he deadpanned. “You wouldn’t understand.”

You groaned, but to be fair, there were actual sales happening. Nagi’s “gang art” was going viral within O Block, which meant he was making enough cash to fund his endless supply of snacks.

As the days passed, things started getting too crazy. Not just the sales, but the sudden influx of people trying to resell their “Nagi NFTs” for triple the price. It started to get out of hand, and that’s when things got tense.

One evening, you were sitting outside, watching the usual chaos of O Block unfold in front of you, when Reo came running over, looking like he’d just seen a ghost.

“Nagi, bro,” Reo said, out of breath. “People are flipping your NFTs for crazy prices. The whole block’s buying in. We might’ve started a real trend.”

Nagi blinked slowly. “So... they’re all dumb?”

Reo didn’t even answer. “There’s a bidding war going on for your NFTs. Everyone wants a piece. You need to act fast before someone catches on that this is... well, just a scam.”

Nagi didn’t seem phased at all. “Nah, we’re fine. I’m in too deep to care now. Just keep selling.”

But as the “gangster NFTs” started circulating beyond O Block, the word got out. And as you would expect, other “gangs” started trying to get in on the action. Nagi didn’t even realize he’d become part of a much bigger problem until he was suddenly dealing with rival groups, trying to snatch up his idea for themselves.

“That’s it, Nagi,” you said, standing in the middle of O Block one evening as a few guys from other areas tried to buy out the rights to his NFTs. “This is too much. They’re gonna think we’re messing with them. You need to stop.”

But Nagi just yawned, unfazed by the growing tension. “Nah. We’ve got this.”

He was completely out of touch with reality—until it all went south.

Everything came crashing down one night when a local rival gang, who had been watching Nagi’s “NFT empire” rise, decided to “invite” him to a little chat about copyright and street-level royalties.

You were right beside him when the whole situation turned ugly. A couple of guys walked up to him in the middle of a street corner, all muscle and attitude.

“You’re the one with the NFTs, huh?” one of them asked, crossing his arms.

Nagi didn’t even look up from his phone. “Yeah, that’s me.”

“You know, that’s our turf, right?” another guy said, taking a step forward. “We don’t like you messing with our territory.”

Nagi’s reply was a nonchalant shrug. “It’s just art, man. Chill.”

“Art?” The guy sneered. “You’re making money off of our turf, and you think it’s just ‘art’? You got some nerve.”

You could see it escalating, but Nagi wasn’t even remotely worried. “Well, too bad. You can’t stop the hustle.”

And just like that, the situation flipped into full-blown chaos. The other gang made a move to intimidate him, but Nagi just lazily sidestepped them, clearly not phased by the tension. You, however, weren’t in the mood to get caught in the crossfire.

“Let’s go, Nagi,” you said, pulling on his sleeve. “This isn’t worth it.”

Nagi gave you a sidelong glance, looking completely unbothered. “You’re right. I can just make more NFTs tomorrow.”

The next day, you found Nagi lounging on his couch, no worse for wear. He had somehow managed to avoid any real damage, and his “NFT empire” had taken a hit, but he didn’t care. He was already onto his next lazy plan.

“Well, that was an adventure,” you sighed, sitting down next to him. “So, what now?”

“Eh, I think I’ll stick to real art next time,” he said, yawning. “Maybe a picture of a pizza or something.”

You couldn’t help but laugh, shaking your head. “You’re unbelievable.”

“Yep. And I’m still making money. Wanna help me with the next one?”

You groaned, slapping his arm. “No way. I’m done with your schemes, Nagi.”

“Too late,” he grinned. “We’re partners.”

You rolled your eyes, knowing that somehow, you were already too deep in his world to back out now.

------------‐---------------------------------------

[purpleqilinwrites]

old rose.

a/n: i had this written a while back, and i almost forgot to post! here's my piece for the pixel café network's secret santa. a special gift for the lovely kandy @kandyshoppe!!! ❤ happy holidays! sending you a virtual steaming hot mug of cocoa with marshmallows and all your fave toppings!!! i hope the winter season has been treating you so well so far. sending you good vibes only for the rest of the season, and i hope it overflows even into the whole of next year!!!

fandom: haikyuu!!

character: aone takanobu

genre: fluff

info: established relationship (aone is your boyfriend); post-time skip

warnings: -

synopsis: you were stuck on what to get aone for the holidays.

word count: 1.9k

Aone Takanobu

Aone, for all his overwhelmingly positive characteristics, had one glaring weakness: he was quite impossible to shop for.

This was your first holiday season as a couple, and somehow, you felt the need to give him a gift that was better than all the gifts you've ever given him combined. You realised that this winter would just be one winter in the many you'd have with him by your side, but realising something was different from acting on it.

You found yourself browsing the outlet mall again after work, idling in front of aisles and aisles of things on sale. From after a quickly scarfed down dinner to the time the retail workers would politely ask you to leave, you loitered about a plethora of stores selling different things and hoped that there would be that one thing in particular that stood out to you as the best gift ever.

Aone was a very self-sufficient man, and you loved that about him. He always bought multiples of every product he used, even going so far as to shop in anticipation of needing a replacement to make sure that he never ran out of anything. His place was always clean and organised, even when you dropped by unannounced because your grandmother made some food and you wanted to share it with him. There was always sufficient food in the fridge and ingredients in the pantry, and nothing expired in his place under his watchful eye.

You loved that he took such good care of himself, and that his care extended to you too. But it made it all the more difficult to shop for him, because there was really nothing that he had need of. You'd offer to pay his rent for the next month or two for a gift, but you knew he wouldn't accept it.

After spending hours scratching your head and mumbling to yourself while window shopping, you decided to go to Aone's friends for advice.

Futakuchi pointed at you like a bully did in those old American coming-of-age movies and began cackling when you asked him, having caught him refilling his water bottle during a break. You had it in mind to stomp on his apparently brand new volleyball shoes before he stopped his witchy laughing fit long enough to say, "Big guy'll like anything you give, dummy! You're like made of gold or something to him." It tickled you to have Futakuchi's vote of confidence, but it wasn't what you were looking for. What would be a good thing to get Aone for the holidays was still very much a mystery.

You would've asked Moniwa who was there to watch VC Date's practice match with another of the prefecture's municipal teams, but his partner – or were they already engaged? You'd have to prod Futakuchi a bit to find out. – was sitting with him. They seemed to be enjoying listening to Moniwa explain every move made by the players on the court, so you refrained. Kamasaki arrived sometime after the match had started, but he was too busy exchanging quips and shoulder shoves with Futakuchi after the game for you to cut in.

"I got it! Why don't you make something for Aone-kun?" Nametsu slapped you on the back lightly when she spoke, and you looked up from the amigurumi you were crocheting.

She threw you an encouraging look, holding up both her thumbs to drive the point home. Something in your brain paused at her suggestion. Your eyes went from her to the almost-complete project in your hands and then back to her. Her smile never faltered in the time it took for her words to register.

"He's not a plushie kinda guy. But—" The vibrant colour of the pink afghan you recently blocked grabbed your attention when you turned your head to face Nametsu properly. You secured the working yarn of the amigurumi in your hands with a stitch marker from the coffee table, before you lifted the corner of your pink afghan. "One of these would be nice, wouldn't it?!"

She nodded vigorously, smoothing both her palms across the cabled pattern of the afghan as it lay prettily across the back of your couch. "He'd love it so much!" she said. "Bet he'd love it even more if you made him one that matches."

The next time you could leave work a little earlier, you rushed to the local yarn store on the other side of town. When you got there and found that there wasn't any more of that specific shade of pink in the yarn you used for your own afghan, you deflated slightly. The colour code was the same, but the batch code wasn't. All you had was a picture on your phone for reference, but you were sure that the difference in shades would be more obvious in person.

Sighing, you wandered the aisles of the store. Running your fingers over some of the fancy hand-dyed and hand-spun wool skeins in the corner with the premium yarns definitely cheered you up a bit. With your heart settled and your wallet ready, you ventured back to the section that held yarns with price tags that wouldn't break the bank and make a nice afghan for Aone.

He was careful about washing his woollen winter garments, so you didn't have to pick a superwash yarn. He also didn't get cold easily, so you didn't have to pick a 100% wool yarn. The large row of sale bins drew you away from the wool yarns at standard price. Within these bins, you were pleased to find several discounted bags of pink cotton and wool blend yarn in a shade that was more old rose than your preferred Barbie pink. The muted pink would work beautifully on his beige sectional!

You got to work on Aone's afghan immediately after locking the door and toeing off your shoes. Crocheting occupied the bulk of your free time after work and even on the weekends, and you felt a panic come over you when you started noticing shops putting up Santa Claus and reindeer-themed décor.

There was a pang of guilt in your chest each time you had to tell him that you couldn't meet him when asked on the day of, simply because you already had plans to rush home and continue working on the afghan. You didn't want your gift to get between you and your boyfriend, but with the way time was rushing past, you really, really wanted to finish it as soon as you could. It was already getting to mid-December before you knew it.

Nobu ❤ >>> If you're very busy with work, I can meet you where you are. It's been a while since we had a meal together. I miss you.

It dawned on you then that this must be the reason for the Crocheter's Curse: devoting so much time to the project that the intended recipient felt forgotten. You didn't expect to let it get this bad—

Nobu ❤ <<< i miss you too, pookie!!! really!!! ❤❤❤ i'm really sorry that i've been unavailable lately. let's meet for dinner at that restaurant you like this friday! my treat!!!

The day of the holiday dinner was upon you just as you removed the afghan you crocheted for Aone from your makeshift blocking board. It was the miracle you needed for the season that your gift was completed, washed and blocked on time. You admired it for a minute before you folded it into a thick rectangle for easier packing and wrapping.

Now all you had to do was to give it to him!

You were riding the high of both a met deadline and a completed project despite the string of recent sleepless nights. Until you arrived at his place and felt yourself sink into his sofa, you were confident you'd be awake enough to witness Aone's reaction. The decorative pillows were newly fluffed. Judging from the sweet orange scent that hung in the air, the sofa slipcovers, among other things, were freshly laundered too. These sensations worked together to make your wakefulness all the more easy to slip away.

Aone's head whipped around to your direction when he heard the sound of your palm colliding with your cheek. He washed and dried his hands before he stepped out of the kitchen and sat by you on the sofa. Taking your face into his hands, he examined the sight before him. "You haven't been sleeping well," he said.

The words to let him know that nothing was wrong and that you were feeling alright sat on the tip of your tongue. But you couldn't get them out when he was stroking his thumbs over your cheekbones so sweetly. The motion was so soothing that it was lulling you to sleep even if your eyes were still wide open and you desperately needed to blink. "Would you like to take a nap? It'll be a while before dinner's ready."

Shaking your head, you patted him on the thigh as a means of reassuring him. Aone's upper lip jutted out almost imperceptibly at your action, and you laughed. "I'm alright, really! I was just working on your gift these days. I didn't want to give it late, is all!"

His little pout deepened into a recognisable frown. You jumped up a little in your seat, placing both your hands on his chest and rubbing small circles about his collarbones to assuage his concern. "Ah, it's no big deal! I'm not sleep-deprived. We don't celebrate the holidays in my family but I know your family does, so I just wanted to do things right!"

Aone closed the distance between your face and his with a series of light kisses, and you closed your eyes at the first touch on your lips. When he was satisfied for the moment, he pressed his forehead to yours. "I'm very grateful. But you didn't have to do anything at all. I will never be disappointed by you, or by your gift."

Your heart positively swelled at his words. "But I wanted to do things right! You deserve it," you said. "I wanted this first gift to be extra special, is all."

The two of you shared a few more whispers and kisses before you pulled away, giddy with excitement and extremely eager to hand him his gift. You walked to the sideboard by the entryway where you left the afghan and returned to his side by the sofa.

"For you, Nobu!" You pushed the wrapped box into his waiting hands, bouncing on the heels of your feet in anticipation. "Will you open it for me, please?"

He nodded, thanking you in a hushed tone that you could only describe as reverent. Your palms began to sweat, even if you knew you didn't have to be nervous about his reaction. You put all your love into each stitch.

The stick-on bow and the wrapping paper came off, and next was the lid of the box.

You would never have predicted the love-struck gasp that escaped him once the lid was off. The wonder in his eyes was clear as day, his hands appreciatively tracing the cabled pattern lines of the afghan, still folded neatly within the box. "Do you like it?" you asked, though the answer was quite clear. You just wanted to hear Aone say it.

"I love it," he said, leaning over to brush an appreciative kiss in your hair. "This is the best gift. Thank you."

[videogames-i-wish-were-real]

Videogames I wish were real #85

Oh to live in play a pixel art Pokemon farming sim. You have a cute lil house you can decorate to your liking. Every day you get to take care of your berries and apricorns. You get to feed and pet and take care of your pokemon. There's minigames where you get to bath them or play stuff like hide and seek or tag or tic-tac-toe or with them. You can pick one pokemon to follow you around. When you reach a high enough friendship level with one pokemon they'll sometimes bring you gifts and you can ask them to help you with some chores around the house or the farm. You use the wool you get from Mareeps and Wooloos to knit sweaters and socks and blankets. You make cheese and butter with the milk you get from Miltank. Once you progress enough in the game you get to open a cute lil store in the town where you sell all your homemade wares to the townspeople and also items to visiting trainers such as the pokeballs you make from apricorns. Every couple of months you turn on your tv and hear about a ten year old saving the world and half the time you know the kid because they've been to your store. Sometimes you'll find wild pokemon you can approach and befriend. No combat mechanics, you feed the pokemon or pet them or offer them shinies and they usually leave you alone except sometimes they'll follow you home. The cute lil town you live in has a ton of festivities and charming npcs. You can ask npcs to be your (platonic or not) roommates, you can marry npcs, you can have kids or adopt them (without being on a relationship) or stay single. There's no limit to how many pokemon beds you can place inside your house. You can place pokebeds, food and water bowls anywhere in the world. You can also fish and dive and mine and forage. If you leave a bunch of berries in an ancient hidden shrine to Groudon/Kyogre you can ensure that the next day is rainy or extra sunny. One time you ran into Palkia and Dialga and offered them some really tasty pokepuffs so now you have the gods of space and time at your beck and call and you can basically time travel and teleport as long as you give them treats first. You like to stay up late on the nights when the tv says there's going to be Minior showers to watch the colorful falling stars with your pokemon cuddled at your side. Life is good.

Similar games that actually exist: Stardew Valley, Pokemon, Moonstone Island, Ooblets, Monster Harvest, Critter Crops, Ova Magica

[princess-of-the-corner]

Sorry but "Not mean just rude" AU musing regarding Lady Wfi:

When Nino rounded the corner, he was surprised to bump into Adrien who seemed just as surprised to bump into him. Evidently they'd both been stomping in a state.

It was Adrien who recovered first though, normally placid expression marred by real anger.

"Nino, what is this I ear about your & Alya breaking into Chloe's locker?"

"Dude, you're seriously mad about that!? Chloe got Alya suspended over it!"

Surprisingly, Adrien just folded his arms, expression unchanged, "I'm amazed she didn't push for expulsion."

"Are you playing me right now man?" He'd thought Adrien was cool, much cooler than this!

"Why wouldn't she?" Before Nino could speak, Adrien let out a deep, pained breath, "Look, Nino. Dude. Chloe & I have been having reporters, strangers, co-workers and 'friends' doing everything from breaking into our homes, going through our trash, selling literally 'anything' we might have once worn online and even try to plant things just to make a story. So like..."

Nino only realized now that Adrien didn't have his arms folded, he was hugging himself, and doing so tighter.

"So yeah, I'm not at all angry with Chloe for snapping when two of her classmates, one of whom is a reporter broke into her locker. Or that the principle just told her to get over it. Why shouldn't we be mad?"

Nino had, had something to say, none exactly a bullet pointed list, but a strong general vibe and through line about horrible behavior and how much it hurt others.

Unfortunately, even as he opened his mouth, a single digit raised as if to begin counting off he found no sounds coming out.

He tried again, Adrien's eyebrow arching up as he watched Nino try & fail to form words.

"You... Yeah I guess its fair you're upset man."

"And Chloe, I'm just angry on her behalf, she's the one who's got reason to be upset."

"She didn't seem upset-" Nino cut himself off as Adrien started hugging himself again and looking ready to run. "But hey, what do I know? We don't talk."

"We all get upset differently, Chloe... She can't explain things to you like I just did, or barely can and I... I'm not good at being angry, Chloe usually did that for both of us. Its always been like that, we look out for each other."

Anger tabled for the moment, Nino was, honestly stumbling around in the dark, this was the most Adrien had ever said about himself that seemed so... Vulnerable.

Well, on purpose at least. The boy did not realize just how messed up some of the stuff he thought was normal was, and this only drove the point further home.

Shrugging, Nino floated a thought the blonde's way, "Chloe's not a famous model, did she really get as much attention as you?"

"Her dads in politics and she's around celebrities all the time, and actually had a public profile. Plus, she did model with me for a year or so, but then her baby fat came off at twelve so she had to stop."

"Stop?" Nino was pretty sure most models wanted to be skinny right?

Adrien shrugged, "Dad said she was too razor edged and gaunt to appeal to anyone and her mother said she looked like a shrew and should stop wasting pixels. So yeah, she stopped."

Adrien said that with the same banal tone he always delivered these little nuggets or negging nightmares with.

It left Nino with little more to add than an, "I... See..."

'What the hell is wrong with these people?' It certainly put some things in a slightly different light. Slightly.

"So, I did my part, why am I meant to be upset for Alya & not angry at you both?" Adrien asked, this time his tone was more searching and genuinely flummoxed.

"You're asking?"

"I am, we're friends, and I want to give you the benefit of the doubt, and its like I said. Chloe's the fighter, I'm the chatty one," he said with a slightly forced smirk.

YEAH GET THEIR ASSES.

Like I love Alya and Nino but GOD they were in the wrong this episode.

[blazehedgehog]

Why do newer pokemon look so offputting? Older games had tons of diverse designs but newer ones look unfinished/not well thought out.

They might be. I dunno. There's a lot people have said about Game Freak's competency at handling the Pokemon franchise and how they've added too many new Pokemon to some of these games and are basically running the well dry on good ideas.

But I also just see it as, like, an extension of the Mighty No. 9 problem. I remember when we were still all starry-eyed and hopeful about Mighty No. 9, Inafune revealed the design and mentioned it had "increased detail to suit HD displays."

So he's got all these colors and patterns and grooves and slots, when Mega Man was basically just a kid in his pajamas and three solid colors:

Light blue, dark blue, and skin tone. That's it. That's all you needed.

And Inafune further explained that was because Mega Man had to be this tiny little 24x24 NES sprite. I'd have to look it up, but it wouldn't surprise me if the sprite came first. I know it definitely did with Mario.

So this is like designing a character with the rawest, most basic building blocks you can get. You are not adapting the above character art into this sprite. Instead, you are making a character that has arms that are a separate color from his body, you are giving him pants to denote where his waist is, and you give him the biggest eyes on earth just so people can tell that's his face.

You have the smallest canvas imaginable and have to make sure people can understand they are not only looking at the shape of a human, but watching it animate in various different poses, all when it's run through somebody's crusty old RF patch cable on their 12" CRT TV:

Whereas, in theory, Mighty No. 9 is going to be played at its native resolution in crystal clarity on a 40" flat panel display, potentially allowing you to see and understand a lot more detail.

So now we circle back to Pokemon, and a lot of those first Pokemon look like this:

They had a box, 56x56 pixels wide, just over double the size of NES Mega Man, and four colors of grey to work with. When viewed on a Gameboy screen, these monsters weren't even two inches tall. Those limitations meant they still had to keep things simple.

Whereas now, increased resolutions and screen clarity allows designs like these:

Now the point I'm trying to make here is that simplicity and limitations give birth to clear, highly focused designs created to be instantly identifiable and recognizable at any distance or resolution. More detail does not necessarily make for a stronger character. You can absolutely get caught up in adding detail to compensate for a bad character design.

...At the same time, let's play devil's advocate here. Pokemon is a very different creature now than it was 25 years ago. A single new Pokemon design probably goes through this huge insane iteration process where all kinds of departments touch and approve the design so it can appear in the anime, it can appear in spinoffs, it can appear in merchandise, so on and so forth. We're miles away from the days where one guy comes up with all the Pokemon just because he thinks it would be funny to have a fat duck with a headache.

Maybe as much as anything, you could blame the increasingly complex production machine on why these Pokemon look like this. After all, even by the second generation of Pokemon games, they were constantly chasing the dragon of trying to find "the next Pikachu."

Everything has to be polished and smoothed down, while also showing the increased capabilities of the hardware, while also staying appealing to Pokemon's core demographics (there are multiples), while also being something they can sell toys and shirts and hats of, while also being noticeably new and different from existing Pokemon, so on and so forth, on and on and on again.

Having so many Pokemon in each new game probably gives them some leeway to experiment, but I'm sure some of these characters get beaten with creative hammers in the search of their next superstar.

On top of whatever qualms people might have with the state of Game Freak as it stands today.

[dokidokitsuna]

...I just remembered I wanted to make my own statement on the AI thing. ^^;

So you've probably heard, but in case you haven't: Tumblr just sold out everyone's data to the AI trash compactors, they probably did it long before they gave us the option to opt out, and even if you do opt out they're probably still taking and using your work anyway (telling people to opt out instead of actually asking for their permission is already scummy business practice, but when it comes to AI it's functionally meaningless. :/ It's always "well, we're telling them not to use these people's data and we're hoping they'll be nice and go along with it" with no regulations or consequences if they decide to just steal everything indiscriminately...)

Despite that, I am not leaving Tumblr anytime soon. I'm looking into other sites*, but at this moment in time, I have nowhere else to go. ^^; Besides, I still like it here. When I left DeviantArt I was already getting sick of the place, having my art stolen regularly by "fans" and paradoxically getting less and less interest in my work over time. By the time the devs turned the website into eye-blinding slop with Eclipse, I was more than ready to move on.

But I still enjoy using Tumblr. I like writing long text posts that no one would bother to read anywhere else, I like answering asks, and I like the unique sense of humor and style among the users here. ^^ It would take a lot to force me out.

Also, I can take a little solace in the fact that AI-bros do not value "low-quality" art like mine. ^^; If messy cel-shaded sketches with visible pixels ever become popular, then I'll worry, but for now I think it's highly unlikely that anyone will want to wholesale regurgitate my art. If anything, I think prioritizing it in their datasets would only make them worse...and on that note, if you do have "high quality" detailed/painterly/semi-realistic art that would be targeted, I'd recommend 'poisoning' it with Nightshade/Glaze. Although I heard a rumor a while back that AI is "building immunity" to Nightshade and already learning to work around it, but I'm really hoping that was just a wishful lie from the trash compactors themselves. I haven't heard it repeated since then, so I think it's still worth a shot. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So anyway, like the post I reblogged said, I think the best thing we can do now is to make it clear that WE DON'T WANT AI ART. We don't care how easy it'll be to instantly generate thousands of hours of mindless 'content' to look at; we don't want it. Since regulation is lagging so far behind (wanna know why Disney's copyright hounds didn't shut this down on sight? Most likely, they're hoping to profit from it down the line) the only way to fight this right now is with individual litigation and consumer demand.

Don't support projects made with AI**; don't hate-watch them or spotlight them. Focus your energy on the millions of human artists who are still here, and need your support now more than ever.

*I've heard people mention moving to Twitter and/or Artstation: fam, you're jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. ^^;;; IIRC, Arstation was one of the FIRST art sites to start flirting with AI, and Twitter has been selling off its users' data for several months already. Go there if you must, but don't go under the impression that it's "safer".

**Please keep a cool head when discussing AI art, and keep in mind that it used to mean something other than "mass theft". Artists have and still do create AI tools that are built on limited data sets with permission/compensation, that are used to aid them in their work and encourage human artistry (Vocaloids and DAW's, for instance) rather than stamp it out. Until a specific word evolves into popular use for exploitative AI, we're kinda stuck with this confusion, so remember to get the facts before you speak out.

P.S. Praying every night that this is a dumb fad that will soon die and go to the same hell as NFTs. >_< Praying every morning that the influx of AI art into its own datasets will eventually corrupt itself and make it useless. >_< >_< Praying every afternoon for both at once! >_< >_< >_< Like to charge, reblog to cast, all that

[tezuze]

So, I didn’t make any art for Odaiba day because I’m a procrastinator, but I thought I’d tell my story of how I got into Digimon because I think it’s kinda funny and personally I like reading stuff like that so I thought at least one person might get a kick out of it.

Obviously gonna put this below the cut because it's a lil long

I had very very passing awareness of digimon before getting into it, like I knew Agumon but didn’t know its name, and I watched part of a random episode as a kid and didn’t like that they talked for some reason, and that’s as far as my knowledge went. But I had a friend who really liked digimon and really wanted me to get into it.

My first real experience was that friend showing me episode 4 of adventure and I was very alarmed that Biyomon was a digimon and not a Chocobo like I thought.

The episode didn’t really sell the series to me, so I didn’t touch the franchise for another couple of years. I gained more passing knowledge through my friend and loved random digimon I thought were funny, mostly Togemon and Bakemon which I lovingly referred to as the “punching cactus” and “teethy ghost”, respectively.

Cut to my friend finds a V-pet at our local game store, so I bought one too because I always wanted a Tomogachi and thought it’d be fun to make our guys fight.

I loved my little guy! I thought little pixel Pagumon and Garurumon were so cute but had no idea what they actually looked like!

Later still, I had an itch to play a monster collector but wasn’t interested in replaying any of the Pokémon games I already owned, so my friend offered to borrow their copy of Next Order. I thought I’d give it a shot especially since I liked some of the V-pet guys.

Oh boy was that a learning curve. The only other monster collector I played was Pokémon so digimon not being exactly like Pokémon confused my small brain. (Wait, so digimon can evolve into whatever, but they also can’t?) (They have canon evolution lines but they also don’t?) (Turuiemon was just made but Lopmon has been around forever??) (MY SWEET PUNCHING CACTUS EVOLVES INTO A WOMAN WHAT.)

Anyway I enjoyed the game but didn’t really interact with the series much, until my friend and I were bored and threw adventure on in the background because I was like “Oh I know some digimon, it’d be cute to see them animated!”

I did think adventure was cute, but didn’t give it much credit at the time. It wasn’t until we moved on to 02 and I was actively sobbing at the end of Ken’s arc that I was like “Wait what, this is actually good????” And insisted we watch every installment of the franchise.

And now we cut to modern day, I’m sitting with my same friend, sweating and violently scribbling on my tablet with a deranged look in my eye, and they’re asking if I’m drawing Ruli’s friends again.

Oh yeah, and happy Odaiba day!!!!

As always I would love to hear everyone else's stories of how they got into Digimon if you would like to share!!