#Which sucks because most of my sales came from there

[persephinae]

i need people to understand two things or more can be true

100k-500k is middle class

the above is STILL a lot of fucking money, more so when you're in abject poverty. that IS rich compared to when you're in poverty

The middle class has actually shrunk down and is smaller than what you think

Those in abject poverty is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyy bigger than what you think

there are more people in poverty than people living comfortably

and i see it every day in my notes - people working 2-3 jobs and exhausted, people who don't have a savings because their jobs suck ass, people who can't afford good food because they have to make their dollar stretch

i've been in poverty and people who have never been poor do not fucking understand how mentally, soul crushing, awful and exhausting it is.

I was LUCKY and able to claw my way out of poverty into lower lower middle class, save money while I lived with my parents, and now I'm able to help my family if they need anything, but a lot of people never get that lucky break

i need you to understand that when you're poor you wear clothes and shoes until there's holes in them. You buy clothes and shoes at garage sales and ebay. You make the cheapest, crappiest food known to mankind because that's all you can afford - IF you can afford it. A lot of people work at jobs and still go fucking hungry. I had to work at a catholic charity one year and I answered the phone. It broke my fucking heart and had me crying to hear men calling us thinking we were the United Way, their voices breaking and crying as they tried to find food for their families.

When you're in poverty you juggle which utilities you can afford or not, but you never want your water to be shut off because then you can't bathe or have drinking water or toilets. I used to go to school with a girl who was in poverty worse than my family, the school laughed at her and called her "cat litter" because she smelled so bad. <- she had her water shut off and couldn't bathe or wash her clothes properly. (I hope she's doing better in life)

YOU. DON'T. UNDERSTAND. POVERTY.

and shame on that commenter above who claimed they had been poor. When you're that fucking poor you fucking REMEMBER where you came from and you do everything you can to make sure no one else suffered like you did. Also rich people will never accept you or let you escape the fact that you were poor. I've lived this.

I'm not rich but if I was ripped apart by people working 3 jobs and starving I'd be like "that's fair. I get it."

Everyone above sounds like they've never been poor and I'll tell you what you sound like - rich people. Rich people say the exact same thing because they don't want anyone to disrupt their money.

Yes, the middle class is not Billionaire rich, but I need people to really fucking understand poverty and WHY poverty stricken people feel that way. Income disparity is THAT fucking bad.

and when the revolution comes it won't be from middle class people wasting time with leftist infighting who never actually go out and support their community - it will be from the people with nothing left to lose because everything was already taken.

trying to explain to tumblr that the Middle Class in not their enemy

[petersasteria]

Omg TMI! - G Dragon/Kwon Jiyong

Pairing: senior barista!Jiyong x new barista!fem!reader Summary: your customers are weird as fuck

A/N: this can be read as a sequel to my other fic, but it can also be a stand alone fic hihi

It was a quiet morning when you arrived in front of the closed cafe. It was a weekend and you knew a lot of people would come in today. When you got there, Youngbae was already there. You could tell he got there extra early because he was sitting on the sidewalk, his knees to his chest, arms folded, and his head resting on top of his folded arms.

"Hey, Youngbae." You greeted.

He looked up at you and nodded, "Hey, Y/N!" He stood up and brushed off the dirt on his pants and grabbed his bag from the ground. You and Youngbae started talking until Jiyong came, muttering something under his breath.

"Jiyong?" You and Youngbae were surprised to see him. "Aren't you supposed to be on a day off?" You asked him.

"Yeah, but our manager decided to quit and now I'm promoted as manager. Fuckin' hell." Jiyong said as he unlocked the door.

All of you went in and started doing your opening routine. Jiyong was at the back, busy opening the office just like how he was trained. Halfway through your opening procedure, Youngbae approached you and said, "Hey, can we switch? I suck at displaying pastries."

"Sure! I suck at opening the espresso bar and cold beverage station anyway. I'm slow with it." You said as you took the plastic gloves from Youngbae. Both of you opened your stations as Jiyong walked out of the back office while wearing his apron.

"It's the weekend, so both of you will have to open tills. Y/N, you'll be planted on the main till and Youngbae, you're on the other one. Daesung will come in five minutes and we have a trainee today. His name is Seunghyun. Be nice to him, okay? He's Daesung's trainee and it's his first day. Let's make him feel welcome." Jiyong said quickly as he read the deployment.

Both of you nodded and put your game face on. Daesung came in and Seunghyun walked not too long after. He was tall and he seemed nervous just like you were on your first day.

A few minutes later, you guys were open. A swarm of people came in which was wild because it was just 8am. You didn't know what it was, but most of the customers that you transacted were weird. As in, TMI kind of weird.

"Thank you for being so kind, sweetie. I hope my daughter-in-law is as kind as you. She's a monster! I hope my son will come to his senses and leave her."

"I need a caffeine fix because I heard it'll help in increasing sex drive. My man's coming home soon."

"I'm on my first date today, so I'm pretty excited! I hope I get laid today."

The last one was overheard by Youngbae and he choked on his own saliva, causing you to stop yourself from laughing.

You could tell it was already annoying Jiyong because after tiring himself out to make drinks, he'd see you yapping away to customers. Sometimes, he'd say stuff loudly for customers to get the hint.

"Y/N, we haven't got all day."

"Y/N, Daesung would really like to teach Seunghyun how to make drinks, please."

You were so pressured. Youngbae wasn't getting called out because he was quick and all the drinks he sends, get done quickly. You were kind of amused because Seunghyun was quickly catching up even though he was still a trainee. He now has your speed in making drinks and it's his first day.

It stayed like that the whole day, but Jiyong chose to deal with it later. It's his first day as manager after all.

By the time it was near closing time, all of you got the go signal from Jiyong to start pre-closing. Youngbae was already retired from his till, so he can start washing dishes after counting his sales.

Just then, five customers came in and you heard Daesung crack his knuckles and said, "Alright, let's do this."

Seunghyun stretched his back and said, "Ready when you are."

You sighed to yourself and said, "Just remember, we're about to close anyway."

You smiled and greeted the customers. You punched their orders as Seunghyun and Daesung made their drinks. Jiyong and Youngbae soon joined them because the second customer ordered 25 drinks and 10 pastries to-go. As if that wasn't enough, the third customer ordered 35 drinks to-go and 20 pastries to-go.

However, that didn't phase the guys you were on duty with. The barista lineup was strong. Jiyong, the helpful manager, was busy warming the pastries and lovingly packing them up to standard. Youngbae was a master at the cold beverage station as he made all the iced shaken drinks and ice blended ones simultaneously. Seunghyun, already a master at the espresso bar area, was busy making the espresso based drinks. Daesung, proud of his trainee, was busy packing everyone's order and putting the finishing touches of the drinks Youngbae and Daesung are making.

By the time the last customer fell in line, all of you were too tired to speak. Seeing as he was the last one, Jiyong started wiping the pastry case, Youngbae wiped the counter of the cold beverage station, Daesung replenished all the paper bags and straws, and Seunghyun was organizing the espresso bar's fridge.

"Hi, welcome to Rise and Shine Cafe!" You greeted with a warm smile. Old people always made your heart warm.

That was about to change, though.

"Hi, Y/N!" He greeted, reading your name plate. "I'm Brian, and I'd like to order a simple hot americano, please. Make it the biggest size. How many shots does it have?"

"For the biggest size, we have 4 shots of espresso."

"Could you add two more, please? I want to stay up late and be energized." Brian said with a huge smile on his face, causing you to smile too as you punched his order.

"Looks like you're going to be busy, huh?" You smiled, making conversation.

Turns out, that was the wrong move.

"Yes, I'll be busy actually! You see, I have this lady lover of mine coming over and she's younger than me and I need my energy and stamina to keep up because we'll be doing it all night." Brian said proudly.

All of you stared at him in shock. Seunghyun, who was making Brian's drink, looked very uncomfortable. He couldn't believe that he was unintentionally helping this man build up stamina and energy to have sex. It felt wrong.

"W-Wow! Well, hope you have...fun!" You said, clearly uncomfortable. Jiyong didn't know what to say. He knew he should interfere because he's the manager, but he was too stunned to speak.

"Oh, thank you! Hey, you kind of look like her. I actually think you're the same age. How old are you?" Brian asked, innocently.

"Um, sorry, sir. She won't be answering that. That's private information." Jiyong said defensively, but in a polite way. He knew that old people forgot about boundaries and all that.

"Oh, I'm very sorry. I didn't mean to offend you!" Brian said as he paid for his drink. "I'm just really excited because I'll see her again. I lost my wife a long time ago and I'm finally happy."

"Aww, that's really sweet." Jiyong smiled, hoping that the conversation would end because he would really like to close up shop now.

"Thank you!" Brian said, "I really like that she accepts me as an old man. I'm not as young as I used to be and because of my age, I can't really move that much, so my girlfriend stays on top and she's so good at it. Usually, I like to please, but I've just discovered that position and it's my new favorite! Besides, it feels better."

"He got that one right." Jiyong muttered as he started closing the pastry area. Youngbae, Daesung, and Seunghyun looked at him wide eyed.

"I also like it when she sits on my face! When she climaxes, I take it all like how I drink my milk. I love milk." Brian said happily.

All you could do was smile and nod. Daesung personally brought him his drink so he could leave, not wanting to hear anymore.

"Here's your drink, sir! We wouldn't want you to lose your energy by walking to the handoff area. So, I'm handing it to you. You need all the stamina and energy you need." Daesung said with a bit of urgency in his voice, causing Jiyong to hold back laughter.

"Oh, thank you for being so considerate! I'll come back here next time!" Brian smiled and waved before leaving.

All of you smiled and waved too and Seunghyun muttered, "Please don't."

When the cafe closed, all of you went your separate ways. Jiyong, however, stayed with you because you lived in the same apartment building.

"So, girls on top, huh?" You teased. His face turned red and said, "Dang, I didn't think you'd hear that."

"Oh, I did, but I gotta serve our customer." You laughed.

"I have a preference, okay!" He held his hands up as you both continued walking.

"Well, it does feel good." You confessed and he nodded.

"See? You agree!" Jiyong chuckled. "We could try it some time."

You knew he was teasing, but you couldn't help the blush forming on your cheeks, "Maybe next time when you're not my boss anymore."

"Nobody needs to know." He shrugged playfully.

"That's true." You played along as both of you neared your apartment building. "Well, I won't tell if you won't." You said.

"You're serious?" He asked, and you nodded.

"Yeah. It's called 'personal life' for a reason." You winked as you entered the building. "Hurry up or I'll change my mind!" You called out.

"Hold on a second!" He said as he ran after you.

-

A/N: hope y'all liked it!!

permanent taglist: @redhoodedtoad @billiesiousji @hayd3n8 @sherrayyyyy @nbjch05 @ldydeath @wcnderlnds @infinetlyforgotten @emmiesoverthemoon @breakmeoff @sayugarper @gdinthehouseee

jiyong taglist: @loveesiren @aizshallnotbefound

[andy-wm]

AYS Behind the scenes: behind the paywall

Now that the Disney+ episodes are complete (sob), my attention is firmly fixed on my mailbox as I wait impatiently for the AYS photobook and QR code.

I was always going to buy the Jikook photobook, even though I doubt there will be much we haven't already seen in the episodes. But the inclusion of the QR code was the clincher.

I must admit, Hybe locking up the behind the scenes for AYS was not on my bingo sheet.

Making behind/additional clips available on Bangtan TV would have been more in line with their regular MO. We don't generally have to pay for what really amounts to outtakes.

Okay, yes, we have to pay for behind cuts of Run BTS, but the actual episodes are free. With everything else the behind clips are included when you buy the series (I'm thinking of BV, ITS, and concert boxed sets).

In fact I can't think of any other time a behind/ bonus clip hasn't been available to fans who pay for the main content.

Maybe it is because Hybe was only contracted to deliver 8 episodes to Disney+ and the price was fixed. Maybe they saw an easy way to make the series more profitable.

We know they will take any opportunity to lighten our wallets.

But I think there's more to it

Let's talk business:

If Hybe wanted to make money from this, having the sale point directly on Weverse would make more sense. That way anyone could buy it any time without having to buy the photobook as well. Even if they charged just a few $$ for these extra clips, the return could be substantial over time. Long tail products can be very lucrative and Hybe clearly knows this - they have heaps of old footage for sale on Weverse. Since they're hosting the content already, it makes sense to keep that 'buy now' button active and let the dollars trickle in.

So why reduce the potential pool of buyers? Why limit this to those who buy the photobook??

Well, let's consider who is going to buy the photobook?

Who is going to fork out US$28 plus postage for a keepsake of these two on their third honeymoon?

I doubt OT7 ARMYs would buy it. Even ARMYs who bias JM or JK - if they aren't part of the SGMB they probably don't want it either.

Solos sure as hell don't want it - they are probably wishing the whole thing never happened... sucks to be them haha

Who really wants to see these two living their best lives together?

We do!

And by we, I mean Jikook supporters.

People who want to see more of this:

and this

And this

We are the people who will buy this photobook (and probably never look at it more than once, let's be honest)

But let's get back to the topic at hand....

The photobook/behind combo seems like a chicken/egg situation to me.

Which came first - as a concept - the photobook or the behind clips?

Did they decide to offer a photobook, and then think of adding the extra footage to make it more appealing?

Or vice versa?

Did they decide to make the behind clips, and think of the photobook afterwards?

Hard to say, since behind clips have always been a thing and recently Hybe is putting out photobooks for everything.

But I think I have a fair idea

Consider the price point for this photobook - it's the same price as most of the others produced recently: +-US$28.

AYS photobook & behind is the same price as the Photo-Folios, Tae's Type 1 (magazine version) photobook, and the Beyond The Stage photobook

🗣 So they aren't charging any extra for the behind footage?

No, they aren't. They're basically giving it to the buyers of the photobook as a gift.

🗣 Could they be making money off it?

Yes, the could.

Long tail, remember?

Looking at the profit-making potential, it makes WAY more sense for Hybe to offer the behind footage on Weverse for a few meagre dollars and... wait for their ship to come in...

See what I did there? hahahhaha (laughing by myself)

They really aren't making any money off this!

how unlike Hybe...

So why go to the effort of setting up QR codes and putting it behind a paywall? It costs money to host content this way. They are in fact SPENDING money to bring us this footage.

Not only through the hosting costs there are also production costs to consider.

Wouldn't it make more sense to just freely share it with ARMY via Bangtan TV? Or not release it at all?

Yes, it would...

So there's only one logical answer...

Hybe has chosen to make the content available - but also make it just that little bit more difficult to access.

This whole exercise seems to be about releasing additional footage without releasing it to the general public. It's being shared specifically with those of us who support them.

Does that mean we'll see slightly more personal content?

Maybe it's a little more revealing of their undeniable bond and their hot chemistry...?

Whatever they contain, these behind clips are definitely for a limited audience - and purposefully so.

The only reason for it, that I can think of, is to safeguard Jimin and Jungkook from too much scrutiny and criticism - from within the fandom (unfortunately) and outside of it.

We will find out in a few days I guess.

In the meantime, I'm camped out by my mailbox

[mrsshabana]

♡ 𝐌𝐲 𝐆𝐲𝐮𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐨 𝐂𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 ♡

I decided to take pictures of my collection since so many people asked! This is everything I've collected over the past two years. I'll give links for items that are still easily available. Also, please excuse how terrible these photos look. It took me over 3 hours to get everything out and take these photos, I was pretty tired and I was trying to figure out how to do it. I decided it'd be easiest to separate everything by type. And for some categories, I separate Gyutaro and Daki. The majority of these items are official merchandise, but I will make a note for items that are not official. (∩｀-´)⊃━☆ﾟ.*･｡ﾟ

𝐅𝐢𝐠𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐬

These are all of the large figures that I have! There was a new one that was recently released in Japan, and once I get it shipped I'll make a review about it. I got all of these figures from BigBadToyStore. Most of them are still available and a few are even on sale right now. I'd highly recommend their website! Out of all of these figures, I'd have to say the large one in the middle with Gyutaro using his blood demon art is my favorite.

𝐆𝐊 𝐅𝐢𝐠𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐬

These are the garage kit figures that I own! None of these figures are official. The one on the right can be found super cheap on Amazon. I got this one from a good friend of mine. I'd say for how large it is it's definitely worth the price. The two on the left I got myself for my birthday. The one with the lantern even lights up, and it's definitely my favorite. You can still buy these, but only on eBay. The prices skyrocketed after I purchased mine, so I honestly can't recommend anyone buying them. They are just way too expensive now in my opinion. But here are the links anyway if you are still interested. Gyutaro lantern statue & Human Gyutaro and Ume

𝐒𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐅𝐢𝐠𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐬

And here are the rest of the Gyutaro figures! I believe this is all of the ones that are currently released (except for the new one I mentioned earlier). A few of these are also available on BigBadToyStore. The one on the top left is one of my favorite items that I own. I've never seen him sold outside of Japan which sucks because he's absolutely adorable. The top middle one is really cool too because he comes with changeable arms and you can pose him in different ways - this one is also on sale on BigBadToyStore's website.

Here are the Daki/Ume figures! Most of these came in pairs with the Gyutaro figures so that's why I have a lot of these too. Again, most of these can be found on BigBadToyStore's website.

𝐏𝐥𝐮𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐞𝐬

Gyutaro plushies!! I don't know about you, but I am so obsessed with Gyutaro plushies. They make me so unexplainably happy. To be honest, all of them are my favorite haha. But if I had to choose, I'd say the teddy bear in the back. I also really love the Kitty Gyutaro on the left. The kitty Gyu, and the other Gyu doll on the right are not official. The one on the right was a gift from a close friend, it was custom made on Etsy. The Kitty Gyu was actually available on eBay (they are sold out now, but might restock later). I got mine elsewhere though. The human Gyu plush is also available on BigBadToyStore's website along with the Ume one. The little grabby Gyu's in the front right are some of my favorites too. I'll just clip them onto my laptop while I'm writing or drawing. I bought them from Amiami, they are out of stock now but I have seen them occasionally go on sale again.

And here are the Daki/Ume plushies! I got a few of them from AmiAmi with the Gyu ones, so they might come back up for sale eventually.

𝐀𝐜𝐫𝐲𝐥𝐢𝐜 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐬

Sorry for the terrible photo, I tried my best to fit all of these into one picture. I didn't include the demon gathering diorama because that thing is way too big. It's so hard to pick a favorite for these ones. I love the holiday ones and the world tour one the most. Surprisingly these aren't often available outside of Japan. I have seen a few come up on eBay but they are usually overpriced. There are a few ones that I wanted to talk about because they are unique. Like the acrylic stand of the actor who played Gyutaro in the live-action play. I thought it was really cool that they made a stand for that. Also, the one where Gyutaro is seen fighting Tengen, it's hard to see in the photo but it has a lot of components to it that make it look 3D!

𝐊𝐞𝐲𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬

I love love love the Gytutaro keychains! There's a lot here so I won't ramble too much about them. My favorites are the kitty one on the top row, and the 2nd and 3rd one on the bottom row. Like look how cute he looks on his stomach like that, I swear that's the cutest pose I've seen them make for him. The kitty Gyu keychain was actually the first Gyutaro item I've ever bought! You might be able to find some of these on Mercari or on eBay.

And here are the Daki/Ume ones!

𝐏𝐢𝐧𝐬

I used to have an ita bag that I would fill with these pins! But it got really dirty, so if you have any you can recommend let me know 👀 Anyway here are the enamel pins. The only one that is still available is the large FiGPiN one. It's limited edition and they only made 1,000 of them. It was for an event in New York I think? Anyway, here is a link to where you can purchase one on eBay.

And here are the other pins. I don't have as many of these because they stopped fitting in my ita bag, but I'd totally get more if I had a large bag to fit them in.

𝐌𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐞𝐨𝐮𝐬

Ok so I had a ton of miscellaneous items, so this will be the biggest section. Some of my favorite items are here like the ring, necklace, and perfume. Apparently, the perfume is illegal to ship outside of Japan because it's flammable so I have no idea how I got it. But I got it as a gift in 2023. The ring is definitely one of my favorite items though, I've had it for a really long time now and I love the pattern on it. It's hard to see in the photo but one ring has a motif matching his spots and the other one matching his ribbons. If you want to see my full post on the ring and perfume I'll link them here. Ring & Perfume.

More miscellaneous items. The only one I'll comment on is that pink little box in the middle. It's a gachapon and it's actually functional too. It's the cutest little thing. I also really like the pens too, the little chibi drawings on the front are adorable.

These are just a bunch of random cloth items I have. My favorites are the Gyutaro tote bag and the Gyutaro underwear. Yes, I said underwear... yes it is official... I'll make a separate post about it another day 😭 On the right is some Tengen toilet paper, no that isn't official. It has a funny story behind it I promise. So one day my little brother asks me, "Which character from Demon Slayer do you want to eat shit?" I said Tengen of course, and months later he gave me this for my birthday. I freaking love my brother 😭

I had to make a separate photo for this one since it was so big. This is a towel with all of the upper moons on it. I really love the art for this and I think it's just so beautiful.

Shikishi boards! I love collecting these because they have official art of Gyutaro that we don't get to see anywhere else!

More shikishi boards! He looks so handsome, right? 🤭

Just some photos (idk why they sell these) and coasters from the Ufotable Cafe in Japan.

More miscellaneous stuff. The graded card in the middle was also a birthday present from my brother. 💚

A folder and some stickers!

Finally, these are the last things. These are large items so instead of taking photos of them I just made a collage. They are luncheon mats and mat cases from the Ufotable Cafe. There is also a double-sided pillow, I use this every day in my gaming chair to support my back!

𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐤 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐦�� 𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧!

This is my entire collection! I may have forgot about one or two items but this is the majority of it. I also have shirts but maybe I will show those another day. (Maybe in a face reveal?) I hope you enjoyed seeing how my adhd brain hoards everything with Gyutaro on it.

I'm sorry I wasn't able to provide more links for these items as most of them sold out long ago. They are focusing on making merch for the Hantengu clones now, so Gyutaro item releases have slowed down a lot.

But if/when any new items come out I will be sure to share them! If you made it all the way through my collection, you're awesome! And I'd love to hear which thing was your favorite 💚 ✧( ु•⌄• )◞◟( •⌄• ू )✧

[donnerpartyofone]

Today sucked so much shit except for one like 45 minute opening, it's probably not even worth getting into most of it, but I will just make this one detail emblematic of the whole thing:

There's this apple-cheeked blonde boy who comes into the cafe occasionally, I bet he's around 11 years old but very babyish, dorky, and precious. Not in a charming way but I've been trying to sympathize. Often he arrives on rollerblades with full padding and a helmet and everything, and he's sort of big and really unsteady and will lean with his hands and/or face pressed against the glass of the pastry case, which I really want him to not do but I'm afraid if I make him stop he'll fall down and kill himself. He'll order a couple of treats and he's inevitably really awkward with cash and he can't figure out the sales tax, and sometimes I let him get away with it because I just really want him to leave. Anyway this morning I opened the shop even though I have a strict rule of NO TUESDAYS EVER (as I often have a complicated event to manage, like I did today) because my single mom manager was behind on her schoolwork and that's legit. So this turned out to be the morning that the little rollerblading Dutch boy came in with his mother. He ordered a vegan muffin, but after she paid for it he realized what flavor it was (blackberry) and started wailing with insane grief. He threw something loud on the floor and flung his entire body violently onto one of the benches and continued to howl and bellow in this very elaborate and mannered fashion until the mom finally extracted him from the store -- which she wasn't doing nearly enough about, in my estimation. Neither of them was remotely embarrassed enough about any of this. So the gift of today is that now I just hate that kid, and his family, and I dont have to burden my imagination with reasons to be forgiving of him. But also, that experience was pretty descriptive of my whole entire fucking day.

[ilikekidsshows]

Am I putting miraculous on a higher standart than I should when I say "I expect this show to have the same interesting and complex story like cardcaptor sakua or shugo chara"? Two of magical girl anime I know that has their love interest having active role than just a support like tuxedo Kamen from sailor moon who rarely join the fight. Especially shugo chara because miraculous is more similar in the aspect of abused cat boy as love interest and also has massive supporting cast. Neither of the anime I mentioned use tagline like girl power or anything though.

---

The thing about Miraculous is that it was also not sold as a “girl power” show. Astruc just started to claim the people criticizing his show hate when girls win and lead. It seems to be a bad case of the creator and publisher not agreeing on what this story is. Because, apparently he doesn't want to use the secondary lead he was told to put in to appeal to a wider audience. Only, he also claims it was the suits who didn't think Adrien could carry an episode so ‘Lies’ was really difficult to get, despite Adrien carrying episodes in the early seasons, like ‘Copy Cat’ and the Christmas Special the suits wanted so badly Astruc had to give them two. Like, is Adrien seen as an appealing character by the people paying for this show or not? Is Astruc suffering from having to write a character he didn’t want or being denied the freedom to write him? We'll never know the truth when Astruc is telling us because he’ll say whatever he thinks will make him look better on each day. “Oh, I never wanted him in a major role. The marketing did that against my wishes!” or “Oh, I really had to push to have a single episode focus on him because the suits didn't think he'd appeal to the audience (because Marinette is so much more appealing, you see).”

The “girlpower” approach is something Astruc himself is only kind of pandering to when he talks about how cool and awesome Marinette is while for other kid characters his usual comments are “I didn't even write that/that wasn't my idea”, and the show’s defenders love to use “girlpower” and “girlboss” as buzzwords, until it became too obvious that Marinette kinda sucks, so now the word of the hour is “girlfailure”. The fandom are the ones using the buzzwords. I don't think Astruc would straight-up promise the audience a girlboss protagonist, but, like, he would totally take credit for it if someone tweeted something like “Marinette is such a cool girlboss!” at him. 

At this point I'm convinced Miraculous is making its money off branded shit like shampoos and bedsheets with the cast slapped on them because I still don't see any variety in the not-Kwami Miraculous toys sold in my country. It's still the crappy action figures where the Marinette one doesn't have eyebrows and the Adrien one doesn't have Plagg that came out years and years ago. There's no way this garbage is selling that well, it reeks of overflow product they're too cheap to put on sale to get rid of. But the store I get milk from frequently has different Miraculous coloring books and bedsheets. And it makes sense that the toys aren't selling, since the show constantly fails to showcase any of the non-Marinette characters the toys are made out of.

I know the Digimon anime had the toy company gave them a list of which Digimon they wanted featured in the show, and the Tamers season went even further by them demanding video game characters and the official card game be featured in the show, but, generally, the writers were able to work with it, and Tamers' approach to their limitations created one of the most fondly-remembered Digimon seasons. I'm saying maybe the writers have too much freedom when it comes to Miraculous and they should be given a list of characters to feature so that we can get better toys than "Marinette with the other characters' Miraculouses".

[blackwoolncrown]

The issue w literacy is like this...

I have a friend who grew up poor. Neither of their parents completed college. Both his parents are what I would say is 'proper' literate by which I mean they *can* read any common book you'd find for sale in a Barnes and Noble. But...

I'm very close w their family and once in conversation it came out that their father, only semi jokingly, admitted he kind of didn't trust me because I can parse legalese.

My friend themselves can hardly understand talking to legal professionals because they speak in casual legalese. I can't always get through legalese in Spanish because I'm not fully literate in it. Even while I can understand most of the words, it's hard at times to maintain the clauses and meaning of entire sentences so I can't reliably make correct legal decisions without a friend to translate, when it comes to legal contracts.

Literacy is the block here.

-------

Part of what can make reading difficult at higher levels is how much data you have to crunch just to get through a sentence- you kind of have to be able to 'hold' 15, 20, 30 bits of meaning at once so you can understand the sentences- it doesn't go word by word.

This is why there are people who can read at a 5th grade level but get 'tired' or confused when trying to read a college level paper, medical text, legalese or excessively flowery or 'outdated' writing. You have to hold a lot more data in your mind at once, remembering it all while adding the next few sentence fragments and clauses, and draw meaning from it as a whole in order to understand what's being said.

So you can be phonetically literate but illiterate at higher levels---- AND THAT'S WHERE ALL THE IMPORTANT INFORMATION IS BEING KEPT.

It was hurtful when my friends dad expressed a gut distrust of me for understanding legalese-- which he associated with upper class people he couldn't trust--- especially when being able to parse legalese would have been especially helpful to him as a lower class citizen whom the government intentionally fucks over by hiding information in code.

Language is code. It's all code. This shit has levels to it.

Two of my hyperfixations are religious/spiritual texts and scientific texts. For the same reason-- both of these hold incredible information about the world, much of it extremely empowering to the reader. But both of them require decoding!

For thousands of years, secrets about how to manipulate and understand the world we live in has been hidden from people- intentionally mind you- via encoding them in a way that requires higher or specific types of literacy.

Medical literacy is also a specifically low these days which SUCKS especially bc we live-- if you live in the US specifically-- in an age where we can no longer rely on our government to assess and apply scientific information for us beneficially, or even communicate it to us clearly.

However, studies and such are (at least for now) still available-- but the average person cannot read a single medical paper correctly nor do the cross-reference research correctly in order to apply this information in any meaningful way. Because in that realm they are illiterate.

People should be way less fucking concerned about trying to maintain a reading participation badge for audiobooks and more concerned with how much information they may or may not have access to because of a lack of literacy.

[sekahni]

To All the Fandoms I've Loved Before

Throughout my life, I've regularly participated in fandom—from enjoying art and AMVs/edits to writing fanfiction for Naruto, Supernatural, One Piece, and more. So, it's safe to say that I have a lot of experience watching the highs and lows of different fandoms.

And, trust me, I know the sting of finishing a series and learning that a ship I've loved for years hasn't been made canon. The frustration when a character I love dies. How a story deviated from what I hoped. It sucks! However, I also remember the hysteria too. Happening again and again. The malicious attacks and inappropriate conduct. Over and over.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, here are some examples:

SasuSaku blogs were flooded with threatening messages after Sasuke and Sakura were confirmed to be a couple

Kikyo stans were harassed out of forums, YT comment sections, etc., simply because they might've preferred her character over Kagome's

Genevieve Padalecki and Danneel Ackles endured a barrage of online attacks, bullying, and threats because they married Jared Padalecki (Sam Winchester) and Jensen Ackles (Dean Winchester)

Amanda Abbington, Martin Freeman's ex-wife, faced similar attacks after she was cast as Mary Morstan in BBC's Sherlock—simply because some fans believed she was "getting in the way" of Johnlock

Prior to the Vox Machina animated series, when the campaign was still streaming, many people within the Criticial Role fandom villified Marisha Ray for her relationship with Matthew Mercer, wherein she became the victim of excessive online harassment and bullying

Laura Bailey portrayed Abby Anderson in the Last of Us II, a character who is highly controversial amongst fans. As such, Laura was subjected to mass online harassment and death threats. It was so bad, ign reported that HBO has increased security around Abby's live-action actress, Kaitlyn Dever.

Some Klance and Allurance stans routinely trolled and harassed each other—inciting such extreme inter-fandom conflict online that their "war" spilled into non-ship related content, discouraging others from interacting with the Voltron fandom entirely

Matt Smith faced unfair online criticism at the time of his casting, simply because he was the follow-up act to David Tennant's iconic Tenth Doctor—only for Matt Smith's iteration to be one of the most beloved incarnations ever

The frequent and ongoing racism POC cosplayers face every fucking day—slurs, threats, and more

The Cassandra Clare fandom came for the throats of anyone who had fair and justified criticism of both CC and her work—particularly around copyright infringement

The same thing can be said about the Sarah J. Maas fandom

2010s Tumblr blogs falsely accused John Green of pedophilia because he wrote contemporary romance YA—harassing him for months on Tumblr, and practically driving him off the platform

Marvel fans spread rumors about Brie Larson, accusing her of being an "arrogant racist" because they didn't like her or the MCU's depiction of Carol Danvers

Legend of Korra stans are still targets of misogynistic and racist rhetoric online—both here on Tumblr and on TikTok

The Durarara!! discourse of the 2010s was so fucked up, so vile, people disengaged from the series and the fandom entirely. This affected sales and the second season, which never really gained the traction it deserved because of how insufferable and toxic Durarara!! fans proved to be during the original run of the first season—I mean, people were harassing cosplayers at events! That's how bad it was

I could go on—and on, and on, until this post is nothing but a harrowing list of how people can't seem to behave themselves.

And, these behaviours need to fucking stop.

So, to reiterate what I've said on another post, but targeted towards a wider audience:

Your feelings of disappointment do not give you the right to harass others online

Your feelings of frustration do not give you the right to harass and bully actors, creators, and writers ever—online or otherwise

Your ugly biases will never justify viciously attacking women, POC, queer people, disabled people, and fat people in fandom spaces

You're entitled to feel your feelings and have your opinions. You're allowed to express your disappointment online and within your own community. But don't go around attacking others because of said feelings—this concept really isn't that hard to grasp. And in the same vein, don't incite conflict with fans who are disappointed to gloat about your "victories." Neither of these actions are productive and simply contribute to the growing toxicity in fandom spaces.

The only exception to this, of course, is if you're racist, ableist, fatphobic, homophobic, transphobic, etc. Cause if you're any of those things, you're disgusting and block me right the fuck now. This blog is NOT a safe space for you.

Sincerely,

A jaded fan, sick of the toxicity

[chronically-ghosted]

the only thing we have to fuck is fear itself

rating: 18+

pairing: max phillips x f!reader

word count: 5309

summary: You get drunk at a happy hour and tell Max to his face you don’t find him scary at all. He takes that personally.

warnings/tags: drinking, like two seconds of scary vibes, smut, (secret) established relationship, work hard, play hard, have secret sex with your coworker even harder

a/n: I’m so sorry to FDR for butchering his quote for the sake of a title, but i like to think that horny bastard would have loved my smut.

🤍AO3 Link 🤍 Masterlist 🤍 Get notified when I post new works!

Despite working at a place that was quite literally soul-sucking, your coworkers could throw one hell of a happy-hour. 

There wasn’t a bartender in a ten mile radius from the office who didn’t know you all by name, didn’t shout a greeting over the tightly-packed house the instant you walked in. Rarely was it just a single crew member at the bars – you often got accused of moving in a pack like a five-headed hydra that could drink double its own weight in liquor, beer, and frosés – and being only two-fifths human, the Monster Squad was an alcoholic force to be reckoned with.

Maybe because you actively promoted unity amongst the species, like poster children for positive and “non-toxic human-demon relationships” HR kept encouraging in their Monday-Funday email blasts, but your little group was something of a legend in the area. You thought any notoriety was more likely due more to your faces plastered all over the bars’ trivia night winner boards, but in the office, people tended to stare. Trish, a siren from Santa Barbara, loved the attention, said it was good for her skin – gave her a “dewy” look. Nita, the only other human in your group besides you, disagreed with Ken (a quarter leprechaun on his mother’s side) when Ken claimed the whispering came from the sheer volume of nonsense that started around 4PM in the office on Fridays and continued until you all left the office. Ken was of the belief that the notoriety was actually infamy – to which he was promptly booed and had to buy the next round. 

And yet, to yourself, to the quiet conversations you had in the bathroom mirror after two long island ice teas and whatever was in what the centaur bartender at Lucky’s called an “Ass Whooping”, you suspected there might be another reason the Monster Squad even had a name at all. Within your own fields, each of you were respectable – Ken and Trish were both heads of marketing and Nita oversaw a considerable team of engineers, with you of course a department leader over in legal – one member of your group was, let’s say, more well-known. 

Well-known because he was the flashiest, the loudest, and certainly the most demonic of you all: Max Phillips, VP of sales, money-maker extraordinaire, and a fan-favorite amongst your Overlords, the rest of the sales team, and anyone with working and interested sex organs in the near vicinity. 

To your complete and utter annoyance.

You don’t quite remember how you all came together, who brought who into the group, and when it was unanimously decided that you’d stop snatching up office workers like limes at $5 margarita night after Trish, but it was Max who kept you together, who set up the group chat (somehow mysteriously gathering all of your phone numbers after a very late night), who bullied anyone who responded to his weekly “winner winner liquid dinner” texts every Friday morning with a tepid maybe into coming out that night. He already seemed to know half of the bartenders in the city, all of whom were happy to send over a free round of tequila shots as a “thank you to Max’s friends”. While you’d never look a gift vampire in the mouth, you were suspicious of his influence. Was that vampire hypnosis real? Did he have a pack of lesser, baby vamps to send out to tenderize the hunting grounds?

One thing’s for sure, he definitely didn’t scare them into it. 

“Has Halloween, like, changed for anyone else?” Nita grouched over her second Sangria Spritzer two hours into another fantabulous happy hour at Heel Clicks. The four of you were huddled into your comically small booth up on the landing near the back bar – of course there were other seats available but this had the best view, the closest access to your favorite bartender, and at some point, the shoulder-to-shoulder proximity served as a way to counteract the tipsy swaying. 

Trish leaned around Ken, her beautiful blue eyes sparkling with curiosity. 

“What do you mean?”

“I dunno,” Nita shrugged hopelessly. “It used to be one of my favorite holidays when I was a kid. I loved the candy, the costumes – all of it. But I really liked being scared the most.”

Ken sorted into his old-fashioned. “Well, if you’re still scared of things you were as a kid, Nit, I think you’ve got a bigger problem than seasonal preference.”

She elbows him and he knocks into Trish.

“Not like that . . . but, like, monster movies aren’t really scary anymore? I mean, I used to watch Ginger Snaps religiously around Halloween, but, uh, now that I know an actual werewolf and he’s the nicest little old man in accounting, I dunno . . . it’s just not the same.” 

“Sorry to burst your bubble on monsters,” Ken shrugged. “But I personally cannot relate. As a member of the Free Folk, my people have always been welcomed, seen as bringers of good will towards man.”

“You know there’s eight movies where a leprechaun murders literally dozens of teenagers, right?” You turned to Ken over Nita, your entire right buttcheek hanging off the edge of the booth. 

“Oh, yeah, baby Jennifer Aniston,” Trish mused, thinking. “If that’s what your uncle looks like, Ken, then I posit Halloween is still fucking creepy.”

“Halloween is definitely creepy and it sucks.” Your ringleader has returned with electric-green jello shots. Max Phillips carried a tray with one hand, his immaculate blue jacket gone to display firm forearms underneath his white, rolled-back sleeves. “Bunch up, kiddies, Daddy’s back with treats.” 

Half the group groaned, the other squealed in delight.

Max hip-bumped you, his ravenous cologne immediately making you think unwise thoughts, as he pushed his way onto the bench absolutely not made for this many people. He looked back at you as he passed out the drinks.

“Now why are we all in agreement that Halloween is a lame holiday?” 

“Nita claims that because she personally knows a werewolf – Ned, right? – she’s not scared of monster movies anymore.”

Max scoffed. “Well, there’s your problem right there. Werewolves were never scary to begin with.”

“What monster movies have you been watching?” Nita gaped at him. “Maybe it’s bad representation, but all the movie werewolves can tear you to shreds!”

Ken nodded solemnly. “This is why affirmative action is so important.” 

Trish smacked him over the back of the head. 

“So, what?” Max continued, crunching up the jello in its plastic cup. “Now that you know me, a vampire, you think all Dracula movies give blood-suckers a bad rap?”

“No, being a human-sized mosquito with too much hair gel is doing that all on its own.” You smirked, dead-eyed, at him. Behind you, Ken and Trish snorted so hard they almost spilled their drinks. 

Max narrowed his eyes at you, in a look he only gave you when you wouldn’t let him ease around legal loopholes “for the good of the business”. Only Nita seemed to be oblivious. 

“That’s a good point, Max.” She thoughtfully stirred her jello with her pinky, unsticking it from the sides of her cup. “I mean, I guess I never watched that many vampire movies to begin with.”

Max broke his heated staring contest with you to look around at Nita, elbow pressing up into your chest as he leaned forward on the table. “I can promise you, doll face, vampires have been and always will be more terrifying and lethal than werewolves.”

“Not the argument I think you want to make, mate,” Ken murmured as you shifted yourself to face Max entirely. 

“Oh, yeah? Enlighten us all –,”

“Nope,” Trish called down the row, “we’re taking this shot before you two get into it again.”

“To Ned!” Ken yelled. 

“To Ned!” 

Plastic crunched, tongues slurped, as jello ungracefully slipped into every open mouth down the bench. You licked your lip, tip of your tongue green. Max watched the movement out of the corner of his eye. 

“So, enlighten us, Max, why should we be so afraid of you?” 

Max grinned out the side of his mouth. “One, I’ve seen more bite out of a pomeranian than one of those Tribbles. And two, whatever-wolves can only get it up once a month. I’m all monster, all the time, baby.”

At this, everyone groaned.

“Dollar to the Dick Jar!” Trish smacked her hand on the table.

“Here, here!”

Max pouted as he took a dollar out of his wallet and slammed it into the center of the table, payment towards tips or the bill or whoever suffered the most due to The Dick. 

“Face it, buzz,” you shrugged as he put his wallet away. “You’re just not scary any more, if you ever were.”

“Is that right?” 

Fuck, you were in a lot of trouble. Beneath the table, his thigh soaked yours in heat. 

“That’s right.”

“You know what is really scary?” Ken muttered, digging around in his crushed up for the last remnants of jello. “Kelpies.”

“Ah – yes! They’ve got sloppy fangs covered in algae!”

“Hey – that’s my cousin you’re talking about!”

Heel Clicks was hands down one of your favorite bars in the area. Devoted to the local music scene in the area, the vibe was a mix of old 70s rock bands, modern steel, and whatever justified lots of mounted horns and hairy cow-skin stools. The drinks were great, seasonal too, and there was always live music on the patio out back. In a twist that you found particularly cool, the old rum-runners tunnels had been converted to comfortably spacious bathrooms in the basement. Behind the solid oak door, the noises from the above bar are nearly entirely muffled, making the slow descent to the bathroom something of an out-of-body experience when you’ve had a few and the sudden silence is almost an echo. 

Plus, these fucking stairs are a death trap. 

You embarrassingly clutched at the railing, the wooden stairs at far too sharp an angle even if you were sober as a judge, much less at a Monster Squad happy hour. 

Stupid Max and his stupid drinks and his –

What was that?

You stand up right on the third to last step, listening. 

In the half darkness in front of you, there are three paths available. To the left, employee storage, the lights above the door flickering, the sign reading “do not enter” pulsating in and out of visibility. To your right, another door, maybe an exit. Always unmarked and always locked every time your drunken curiosity got the better of you. 

And across from the stairs were the bathrooms, left women, right for men.

God, what year is it? Shouldn’t it all just be gender-neutral? You think to yourself, a tad bit more aggressive than you’d usually oppose the gender binary – primarily to wash out the rising concern at the back of your neck.

You are alone down here. It’s obvious. It’s not like there’s that many places for some dastardly villain to hide. Four shut doors and three hallways. Unless some maniac was curled up under the stairs, you are the only person in the basement. 

At least, the only person you can see. 

You don’t realize how sweaty your hands are until you try to continue your way down the stairs. You take a step and nearly slip, the eyes you know are on you somehow laughing. 

One blinking light. No where for anything to hide, so why are you so nervous? You are an adult woman, for god’s sakes. You make it to the floor, the most likely candidate for your demise behind you and –

The stairs creaked. 

The empty stairs that you just walked down creaked and you nearly leap across the hallway to put space between you. Heart in your throat, you make the monumentally stupid decision and call out, “hello? Is anyone there?”

As if the serial killer was just going to announce himself, give up the whole element of surprise.

Blinking through the bleary haze of too many drinks, you take out your phone and flip on the light. A white beam chases back the encroaching darkness, a frantic worried ghost peering through the gloom. And yet, like you consciously know, there’s nothing there. But the darkness feels heavier, the eerie distant noise from the bar above so quiet and removed the sound is more of a memory – the idea of what comfort and community should sound like. But it’s not. It’s too far gone – if anything were to happen, it’d be hours before they found you. If they did at all. 

“Oh my god,” you scold yourself, squeezing your eyes shut. “Get a fucking grip and go pee and then go back up those fucking stairs and –,”

Okay, that was definitely breathing.

Breathing, right behind you. Ragged, hungry, disembodied breathing, in your ear and your heart ricochets into your chest. Your own breath turns short, choppy, panic swelling into your ears, over your fingers. You think you might drop your phone, your fingers are so numb from fear, so you clutch tighter, the trembling throwing white light across the paneled wood in a craze. 

Be rational, this is crazy, there is nothing down here! 

The stairs snarl again and you squeak, all but bolting for the women’s bathroom, desperate to put at least some space between you and those fucking stairs, put some boundaries between –

The door is locked. When the fuck is this door ever locked?

Panic recedes to overwhelming rage because fuck, fuck, fuck, now you’re trapped in here – you can’t go back to the stairs – you rattle the handle, shaking the door against its lock –

“Fucking let me in!”

The light above the exit door goes out. And then the other. You throw all of your weight against the bathroom door. You claw at the handle, begging it to give way. 

Fuck, fuck, fuck – you can hear the darkness breathing –

No, speaking – it’s saying something, chanting, mocking, calling out – calling out your name –

The door suddenly unlocks and you stumble forward – into something solid –

Its hands grab you and like a fucking fool, you played right into its trap. 

It turns you, throws you up against the tile wall, its claws around your shoulders, cold tile against your cheek and you whimper. Whimper when you feel the soft pin-prick of fangs against the back of your neck – fuck, this is how it ends?? – and –

“Got you.” 

That voice.

That condescending, snide, bratty, little –

You elbow the solid body behind you and Max lets out a puff of air, staggering back. You whip around, nearly snarling in his smirking, beautiful face. The bathroom is dark, black tiled walls and floors with a faux-wooden sink and dim lights across the top of the mirror. In the flushed orange light, his eyelashes encourage thick shadows under his eyes and in the collar of his throat. If it wasn’t for that insufferable smile, he’d look painted from thin brush strokes and heavy scarlet paint. 

Caravaggio, eat your heart out. 

“Max, what the fuck was that?” 

He rolls his eyes, rubbing the spot on his chest where you hit him, at the top of his ribcage. “Oh, c’mon, it was just some fun. Saw you sneak off after you got Nita’s drink and thought I’d mess with you just a bit.”

You sigh, willing your heart to slow down, throwing your gaze to the ceiling and dropping your head against the tile.

“God, you asshole, I thought I was gonna die.” You swallow and move your hair out of your face. “You scared the shit out of me.”

“I what?”

“You scared –,”

That smile, the crack of fangs across his mouth, widens, the bottom of his lip rolling back over the cut of his teeth, those brown eyes melting into a warm, obscene black, as he meets you hip first against the wall. 

His hands climb over your waist, as though daring you to hit him again, and your thigh muscles tighten. Your hands instinctively trace the exposed skin left by his opened collar at the dip of his throat when he comes closer, chest pressing up against yours, nose against your temple. 

Fuck, it shouldn’t be this easy for him. You sigh through your nose, eyes rolling shut, when he nips at your cheek.

“I think you were supposed to be mad at me.”

“I am,” you groan. “I’m livid. I’m enraged. I’m –,”

His thumb brushes your ribs – not tickling, not entirely touching, but just reminding. Reminding of the force behind his touch, behind his teeth. 

“Baby girl,” he chuckles softly, the sound running down your neck like rain, “you’re melting in my arms.” 

“This doesn’t mean I’m scared of you.” You focus on the softness of his hair between your fingers, the heat of the back of his neck beneath the pads of your fingertips – resolutely ignoring the radiating scent of his cologne coming from up under his collar. More than once had he come across you in his apartment bathroom, sniffing that bottle like some dopey perv looking for a quick fix. Of course, instead of admonishing you, he bent you over his sink and fucked the daylights out of you, his wrists singing with the smell of that cologne. Now he wore it to work wherever he wanted something from you, particularly to overlook some pesky lines of legalise. 

In the hallowed darkness of the bar’s bathroom, he drops a single kiss just below your jaw, inches beneath your ear. He grumbles when your pulse there quickens, and again his fangs find a curve of skin to press against – a reminder. 

Always reminding, always lurking, a threat without a promise.

And he knows exactly what that does to you. 

You release a full body shudder when his hands drop lower, guiding you back against the wall, fingers rounding around your thighs. Like interlocking pieces, your bodies slide together, your arms curling around his neck, the heat of his chest branding yours as it forces you against the wall. You’re breathing all wrong again, but for different reasons this time. You catch a flash of the ink-well darkness of his eyes when he nuzzles out of your neck to admire the mess he has made of your skirt.

“Can I fuck you in this or is this thing too tight?” He asks, like he specifically didn’t get on his hands and knees and beg you to wear that gray pencil skirt only twelve hours earlier. 

You lean up, snagging his bottom lip between your teeth, kissing him roughly and showing him he’s not the only one with a little bite. He groans softly, one hand curling into your hair at the base of your skull, and he licks you, from the front of your lips up to the valley of your mouth. He tastes like the sweetness of his whiskey n’ coke, his tongue rubbing the flexing muscle of yours, the sharpness of your molars. You could spend hours just sucking on his plush mouth. 

Maybe he did scare you. Maybe he should have scared you more, the threat of anyone discovering your relationship a real danger to both of your careers. Maybe it should have scared you, how little you cared about any of that when he palmed your breast over your shirt. 

You inhaled over his mouth, popping off his lips with a moan, his hand cupping you roughly as he dove in to suck marks on your neck. Every moment that passes, you feel your skin ratcheting up with heat, blood almost hot. He thumbs your perk nipple through your shirt and you arch your chest, his massive palm nearly cupping your ribs to your spine.

“Max, either you figure out how to fuck me in this skirt or you owe me a new one.”

“You want me to rip it off you?” He slurs, eyelids heavy, his thigh slides in between your knees, the fabric preventing him from going higher, to the place where you both need him. You groan in frustration and his hands squeeze your hips at the sound. “Tell me fast, baby, because I can’t–,”

“For the love of – just fucking lift it up–,” His hands fumble over yours as your fingers curl under the hem, his own want making that brilliant mind for numbers almost stupid. His warm fingers overwhelm your own as they push your skirt up your waist, and then dig around the line of your pantyhose. 

“Jesus Christ, are you trying to Fort Knox me out of your pussy? Why are there so many layers?” 

You hiss at him as you slide out of your heels and shove your nylons to the ground, hopping on one leg to take them off your feet. “It’s like you’ve never undressed me before.” 

Freed of the chaos of your underthings, Max’s hands rush to his belt, the clinking of the metal sending shivers down your back and straight up your cunt. He doesn’t notice because he’s obsessively watching your thighs. “I’ve never undressed you with our coworkers a floor above us and probably becoming increasingly suspicious about where the fuck we are–,” 

You take him by the back of the neck, hand clenching around the starch white of his shoulder. He comes to you, zipper digging into your hip bone as he pulls you up off your feet. For once that chatty mouth is quiet, open and wet with desire as he takes in your flushed face, the blood pumping under your tits. Max is nothing if not almost supernaturally consumed by the look, feel, texture, and taste of your tits. 

The look on his face is one of those reasons you tend to throw caution to the wind, why your heart almost feels too big for your chest, whenever he’s around. 

He hooks an arm around your low back, tilting your hips forward. You feel the heat of his cock somewhere below you and it takes all of your strength not to grind down. 

“Max –,” he’s not even inside of you and you’re already begging. You bite down on his ear to stifle whatever was rising up your throat. 

“Hang on, baby, I gotta make sure you . . .”

Using your shoulders as counterbalance, he holds himself up against the wet warmth of your cunt, breath stuttering as he rubs the head of his cock against your slick folds. That bratty aloofness is gone; he wants to sink so, so deep into you.

“Fuck, baby, I didn’t even get you ready – but you’re already so wet –,”

You don’t resist grinding down now and he knocks his shoulders forward, needing movement, but fighting against the urge to buck up into you, gasping from the feeling of your cunt. 

“Please, Max, just –,”

“Yeah, I know, baby, okay, just, I gotta . . .” 

He angles himself and you arch your back, unable to watch with the mess of your skirt around your waist, but he finds it, finds your opening, the place he loves to mark, and without any warning, thrusts his length up into you. 

The stretch, the surprise, the ear-ringing split between being empty and then stuffed so full – you can’t help but moan so loudly, you sing to the ceiling. For a moment, your bodies hum with the stillness, the blood in your cunt pulsating around him, you claw at his broad shoulders, need him closer, needing that smell of him that haunts your empty bed as far inside of you as his cock is. His hips stutter and he presses one hand against the tile by your ribs, teeth clenched against the sensation. 

“When I fuck you, every time feels like the first time. Every goddamn time.” 

It’s not particularly the confession it could be, but you shake your head, clearing it of anything stupid like feelings for Max Phillips, your chin brushing his jaw, his nose against your ear. 

“Then do it,” you whine. “Just fuck me, Max.”

With a groan that could be mistaken for a snarl, he lifts you both up right, pushing your hips down and spreading yourself over him. You lock your ankles around his back a second before he pulls out halfway, then to jerk back in with such force and precision your eyes roll to the back of your head. He sets a pace that has pleasure weaving a tight drum just under your stomach. Each sweaty thrust fires sparks up your spine. He really is so fucking good at this. 

This is the release you need, you both need. Sure, it’s an after-effect of having a high-powered job, but it’s also more than that. Max fucking you is unfortunately very often the highlight of your day. He knows what you need, how you need it – how hard to drive his cock into you, it makes you tongue-tied and dizzy. The fast pump of his cock, how it feels to split you apart over and over again, the back zipper of your skirt digging into your back – it’s too fucking good.

“Don’t know where you get off giving me orders,” he grunts, the pounding of his hips into yours rapidly shoving you up your ascension. The slapping, wet noise in the empty room is obscene. “I’m a fucking VP, little girl, and I–,”

You tense your muscles around his cock and he fumbles, his knees buckling momentarily. 

“Do not fucking bring up the org chart right now,” you hiss, your own edge yanked away when he stills. “I’m almost there–,” 

Quicker than he’s been all night, Max lunges forward, mouth open and teeth bare. He bites your neck and then he bites you. 

Fangs puncture your skin, not deep, but enough that your body is thrown into a messy coil of nerves and adrenaline. It knows you could die like this, even if you’ve only ever called the vampire a mosquito to his face, and triggering a self-preservation instinct, your body trembles from the sudden blast of sensation.

Your pupils dilate further than they were, your skin becomes overly aware of every drop of sweat, every flutter of hair, every rub of flesh – and your fucking nerve-endings feel like static, as if brushed by lightning. 

Pleasure so-white hot it almost burns roars up your spine, slick coating his cock inside you, and you cry out. Wail in his ear. Begging him to make it better. To give you your release. The feel of his cock pounding up inside your now-overly ripe cunt brings tears to your eyes.

“Oh, fuck – fuck, fuck, fuck – Max, p-please –,”

“Can you handle it if I touch you?”

You shake your head. “Yes, yes, please, touch me.” 

“You can’t keep screaming like that,” he scolds you breathlessly, the punch of his hips bouncing you against his cheek. For all his vampire stamina, the flush of exertion across his cheeks is truly staggering and a triumph for your ego. Flecks of blood dot his mouth. “Someone’s going to come looking.” 

“I don’t care,” you groan, angling your hips to take more of him. His hand not on your back cups under your knee, tugging it higher up his torso. His pace is relentless, overwhelming – with his weight on top of you, and his cock up under you, inside you, you’re consumed by Max Phillips. “Whatever you do, d-don’t stop. Don’t stop.” 

“You scared I’m gonna?”

“Yes,” you whine. You can feel your heart pounding out its shape into your ribs. 

“Good girl. And good girls get to fucking come.”

Balancing your increasingly limp body, he holds you up right, his hand snaking beneath your skirt, between the sweat of your thighs and his torso, and –

He thumbs that buzzing bundle of nerves, “come for me, baby”, and you do. You come screaming, the tension snapping, vision sparkling with stars, and you are shoved over the edge. You don’t know you’re wailing his name until he comes too, all concern for getting caught seemingly gone as he begs you to continue as he fills you up with his pearly, gooey cum:

“That’s right, say my name. Say my fucking name, sweetheart.” 

His hips thrust weakly, some instinct choking him until he makes sure every drop of him stays in you. You’re going to be dripping for hours. 

His skin is fire-hot beneath his starched white shirt. You’ll be thinking about that for days afterward when you see him in the hallways of the office. 

This is what scares you the most. When you realize it's over and neither one of you want it to be. 

Shaking from exertion, Max slowly sets you down, unwinding your legs from his waist, your ankles trembling against the cold tile. You couldn’t imagine putting your nylons back on, the thought of that pressure against the curve of your lower stomach while you are so full of his cum practically unbearable. 

He lifts his head from your neck, eyes intentionally avoiding you as he inspects where he bit you, breath coming in ragged, long gasps. Sweat darkens the hair at his temple and that post-fuck blush is staggeringly gorgeous on him. He pricks his thumb on the sharp edge of his fangs and with a scarlet bead balanced on his thumb, he smears his blood against the puncture wounds, like someone would wipe dirt away from a loved one’s skin. 

It doesn’t really hurt, but the effects leave your neck tingling. You’d never say this out loud, but you fucking loved when he did that. 

He steps away without looking at you, giving you time to adjust your skirt, your hair in the mirror. You help him straighten his collar because it’s not like he can use the mirror to check himself.

He grins, the flush fading far too rapidly from his cheeks. 

“What are you going to tell them?” You nod to the stairs on the other side of the wall. “This can’t look good for us.” 

“You got attacked by a werewolf on the way to the bathroom. I saved you.” 

“Thought you said werewolves weren’t scary.”

He shakes his head, smirking, then presses a kiss to your temple. “Just said I was the bigger monster between the two of us.” 

“My hero.” You turn your head until his lips drink in yours. 

It is dangerous, your feelings for him. 

He taps you on the butt, pulling away. The lines around his eyes do an excellent job of masking the hurt in the brownness of his eyes. 

“Gimme five, then you come up. Can’t have you looking so completely debauched.”

He kisses you again, betraying whatever amounted to “cool and collected” he attempted for, and without another word, he slides out the door. 

His smell lingers in the air long after he does. The throbbing of your cunt also serves as a fantastically bitter reminder.

You go back to the mirror because yes, you could not have been more obvious if you were wearing a sign that said, “hi, yes, I did just get my back blown out.” You try to fold your hair around your ears at least a dozen times before pulling it back in what you hope to be a casual pony-tail. You toss your nylons into the trash can, pleading that the “oh, I tore them in the bathroom” excuse might hold an ounce of water. 

You think about what’s waiting for you a floor up and your stomach clenches. 

Fucking Max could upset the dynamics of your little group, your little Monster Squad. Whatever the stupid office bylines were, your happy-hour social group is one of the bright spots in your life, especially while working at a place run by those bastard Overlords. 

And Max knew that. He didn’t want to risk your long-term happiness for his short-term. 

Max didn’t scare you because he was a monster.

He scared you precisely because he wasn’t.

You open the bathroom door and return to the world. 

[prikarin]

Regarding Killer Trait Updates

Hello, everyone!

It's been a good minute since my last Killer Trait update, hasn't it?

A lot of people have been asking me about Killer Trait updates and when the full-game will be released so, after a lot of thought, I decided to make this post.

Here's the thing: my Patreon hasn't been doing well. It hasn't been doing well for several months now. While the decline started after Where Winter Crows Go's release in November of last year, it's gotten progressively worse from February 2024 onwards. And because of this I'm going to have to pause my billing for my current patrons from August onwards—at least until I have something new to post.

It'd be a lie if I said this didn't affect me, I'm only human after all, but I'm also well aware that Patreon is a tough thing to maintain in a way that's consistent and interesting.

Unfortunately, since I live in Argentina, my only real way to get funds for my games is through Patreon, donations on Ko-Fi and sales and donations on Itchio. While it definitely helps that I hire some people from Argentina for certain art related things (so I pay them in Argentine Pesos), most of the people I commission are from overseas, so it's always a must to be able to pay them in USD.

And that's the issue: since I don't have that much money anymore and I can't commission people as often... this inevitably delays my progress on both Killer Trait and Potion Pleasing (DEMO out now!) indefinitely. It's sucks for me too, but it's the reality: making games costs money.

As I mentioned in a previous post, Killer Trait will have re-designs for most of the characters (not counting Carl because his design was originally my own) since the ones in the DEMO were stock sprites I bought from an artist, not my own designs. And I want these characters to be 100% my own, which is why I decided to have them re-designed. I've talked about this in the past in more detail when I decided to have Crowe re-designed, you can find that post HERE.

Of course, for these new character sheets (with the exception of Oz's, which has already been finished) and the new sprites, I need game funds in order to commission the artist. Even after the sprites are done, there are a couple of backgrounds—the characters' rooms—that I'd like to have originally made (especially since the ones I bought from Minikle are very limiting and don't really fit with the characters' personalities). And this doesn't even account for CGs, which I'll probably have to postpone for a while because the sprites and the backgrounds are way more important.

Some might be thinking "What about Where Winter Crows Go?". While I was lucky that WWCG's first demo was so well received, I still spent a whole lot of money from my own pocket to make it. I bought a lot of assets and, when I got a few donations, I commissioned a few artists to help me. WWCG was NEVER a game made with only free resources.

Making the art book for WWCG was a way I found to get a little of that investment back, but I'm well aware that I'll never get all the money that I spent back. And that's okay! To this day, I don't regret having invested my money to make WWCG because it gave me a lot of experience, perspective and made me learn a lot.

Be that as it may, however, I can't realistically make the rest of my games free. As I mentioned before, game development is expensive in both money AND time. Without funds, it's a given that things are going to be delayed.

So... where does that leave things?

Well, after pondering on it for a while, I came to the conclusion that I'm not really ready for a crowdfunding campaign right now. Those are extremely hard and ALSO cost money to advertise well and make sure everything's in order. So... the temporary solution I arrived at is setting goals on Ko-Fi! 

How would this work? Basically, I would set a monetary goal of the amount of money needed for a certain asset in a certain game that needs to be made. For example: sprites & character sheets in Killer Trait. Once that goal is met, I'll commission the person in question so they can start working on it! After that, I'll set the next goal and so on 💪

I'm thinking of setting the first Ko-Fi goal once August starts. And from there... I'll see how it goes! If things don't go well, I'm also considering making Where Winter Crows Go paid for a while—don't worry, I would make an announcement first—because I honestly have no more ways of getting game funds for Killer Trait and Potion Pleasing and, as mentioned before, making games is really expensive (and I'm only one person).

Thank you so much for reading until the end and I hope you have an amazing day!

[maggiemacabre]

SiIvaGunner SmashUp! Behind the scenes and post-mortem

Hello folks and welcome to my new Tumblr blog. I don't know how much I'm going to actually use this thing in the future but I figure if I need it, it's here. As you can probably tell by the title, today's subject will be none other than my most recent "work", the SiIvaGunner SmashUp!

The idea of a SiIvaGunner take on the concept of "Royal Rumble but full of stupid contestants" was in my head for a while, but the motivation to do it wasn't in place until I found Dead Meat's Horror Royal Rumble in August or September of 2023. The Jerma Rumbles and Vinewrestle were definitely also influences on the idea, but the Horror Royal Rumble was the impetus, and played a part in influencing some creative choices featured in the SmashUp (more on that later).

After running the idea by the team and the rest of backroom, I picked up WWE 2K23 (which fortuitously was on sale that weekend) and got to work. Going in, I had next to no idea of the ins and outs of pro wrestling, which meant that I had to do a lot of research into things like the wrestlers themselves, moves, terminology, different match types, general historical stuff, how shows are actually presented, etc. This put me in a very, very deep rabbit hole which I have still not crawled out of. I even went to two house shows!

Making the wrestlers was the first step and by far took the longest amount of time out of anything, since this was the first show of its kind on the channel and required the creation of 34 unique wrestlers. Some of them were easier than others (lookin' at you AMUNO), but others such as Ninomae Ina'nis took days to complete due to the amount of detail they required. This also isn't including wrestlers who were made that got cut; some of these exclusions include Bottom G, who was left out because Andrew Tate sucks, Elly from Touhou Project, who was replaced by Sumireko, and Wood Man, who was left out for lore reasons and replaced with 8-Bit Beast in a somewhat 11th hour decision. Maybe next year?

The decision to make Hot Cross Buns and Raft Ride into women also spawned from this period. Hot Cross Buns was made first and was originally meant to show up in the Grand Rumble, but after some time I ended up deciding to move her to her own match, which became a Women's World Champion match because lol. I had to use mods to make the men and women able to fight each other, so theoretically Raft Ride could have been a man, but women are awesome.

Being an egotistical maniac, I also included some references to things I'd worked on in the past. Totino's Stadium, the arena where the match takes place, was first mentioned in the FUMO JAM ad from the DJ Professor K Day stream, and Nu Grandiose City is the city where Woodyana is from in Woodyana Stones: Raider Made of Lost Bark. Also I guess this is why Elvira was included? LOL. Fun fact: The footage of "Totino's Stadium" is actually of Gazprom Arena in Russia.

Since I was involved with the channel's MAGFest panel in 2024, I was able to announce the show months in advance, although I'm not sure how many people actually paid attention at the time. Getting a logo ready between finishing CCC and MAG was a bit tight, but thankfully it was able to be done on time, and on top of that I was able to make the big card poster thing on my own. I actually designed it to be printed, and I proposed making it a sold item, although that idea was rejected. I also came up with the date during this period, choosing the day right before the WWE Hall of Fame show, and while things got a bit close to the wire, it was luckily able to make the date and time without a hitch in the end.

After all the wrestlers were made, it was time to record and edit. I was a bit worried about my laptop overheating while doing so, but I was able to get good quality 60 FPS 1080p footage recorded without any hitches other than some human error on my end. While the controversial ending of the Grand Rumble wasn't what I had in mind, I ended up leaving it as-is for time reasons and also because it felt like a funny troll ending. Which it was! Editing was not quite as smooth since I had to go through all the footage and edit it together into a cohesive product. WWE games don't allow you to cut to entrances during a Royal Rumble, which meant that I had to record and edit those in myself. The method I ended up using resembled the one from the Dead Meat rumble mentioned earlier with cuts to the audience as the buzzer rings, although I'd like to believe I did a better job than they did with their 2024 entrances where they awkwardly cut around shots of the ring. This is also where the fun facts come from, as they are actually covering up the nameplates that show up as an alternative to cutting to the entrances.

After editing was done I got some other team members to do commentary. Thankfully I was able to get someone with wrestling knowledge, which definitely added a dimension of realism and legitimacy to the project. I don't know if I can say who the announcers are because of leaks, but if you haven't figured it out, Randall Shields is a Smash Bros. reference. Also it was the first contribution to SiIvaGunner that had "Randall" made in about half a decade. What a return!

The premiere of the project was electric. Seeing over 1.3K people tune in and get hype over something I made was incredible and made my week, if not month. I did feel a little bad about the reaction when Dream came in (💀), but other than that it was awesome. And don't worry, he won't return.

In the end, I had a lot of fun with the project and it was awesome seeing everything pay off. I want to thank everyone who helped, including the artists who designed the logos and the people who did commentary. It couldn't have come together without help and assistance from everyone, and I hope that this becomes the first in a series of similar videos.

[jimmythejiver]

@softness-and-shattering

Okay so... I used to be a crayon collector as one of the few expenses I had as a kid besides ponybeads for crafting that wasn't taking paper and tape to make paper dolls and boxes and scraps to make dioramas. That was when I lived with my parents and was struggling middle class. At some point my older brother went to college and I inherited his prismacolor collection from highschool. In highschool I'd supplement this collection with stolen stubs from art class that was thrown in a general tub for class projects. Most of the colors were reds, black, white, peach and brown tones, but I got a lilac and an imperial violet that you could never find in stores without buying a complete set again. I cherished those and still have them, here they are with a parma violet from bro's old set I widdled down over time in twenty years:

Every so often I'd be lucky to replace a pencil here and there, but the prices would jump up. Recessions and living check to rent moving out of parents meant no major set replacements for years. I made do, used my pencils in a way where I'd have to cycle through other colors to not rely on favorite tones too much. I'd wonder why none ever showed up at thrift stores like cheap color pencils and crayons tend to. I even stopped drawing for years because of the pressure of surviving tbh. I focused on learning to write and set down my visual ability because I just don't have a grasp at anatomy and the three dimension anyway and landscapes do use up a lot of color.

Eventually my brother was burned out, he was harrassed by our boss who tried to pit us against each other and legal stuff I don't want to get into here. We ended up back home at my parents to fight this asshole and retreat because our rent landlord also became unbearable, which is another story for another time. Back home my disability income didn't go up much and it went into paying expenses and no rainy day saving or escape money was possible and I ended up Pop's unpaid laborer when it came to home improvement crap. Brother tried to make other jobs work after losing his ten year stable job to work with asshole who preyed upon us, but couldn't keep them for various reasons on top of managing a toxic family life. He published a book (it started as a way to encourage me to go write when I was sitting at home wasting away between soul sucking house repairs) and did some editor freelancing afterwards. Needless to say one by one members of my family die, my mom in 2016, my oldest brother (who I haven't gotten into because he's why I left my family in the first place as soon as I could at 18) in 2020, my father (Pop) in 2023 and that is just immediate family, though my extended relatives aren't going to step in unless I denounce and detransition either. My future is uncertain.

My grandma can't take me in long without violating her rent conditions and she hides our cat among her own and hopes the other tenants make no fuss, my surviving brother is now in an estate dispute with my sister (another reason I needed to leave my family) who had brought a bunch of friends (more like people she thinks she can ingratiate to do things for her but are looking to rip her off), into father's house where they robbed whatever they could carry and stowaway and proceeded to trash the house... We never evict sister, but brother has to play bad guy to get her to get them out. There's a longer story in getting it put up for sale while we fix father's money pit he left us. The sale pays off what Pop owed on the remortgage and getting money pit some actual work put into it, but it's gutted with no floors, no heating and drywall everywhere and winter is fast approaching...

Meanwhile our surviving stuff was either incorporated into grandma's apartment or sitting unsecure on moneypit property. My prisma's and clay were at grandma's where I could occasionally have downtime to draw landscapes or character designs for a book I'm too stressed to write on a laptop I can't access often. It is at this point my long distance boyfriend and cowriter on a long-winded fanfiction series and I couldn't maintain constant contact and we've not really been able to fix that since unfortunately. I have this phone prepaid a year in advanced to go crazy watching the news or some bullshit discourse on tumblr. I can see I'm going crazy, even my friend halfway around the world politely calls me out. My situation makes me wallow further in everyone else's I can't change, like a distraction because if I dare admit I'm living in chaos then I'd have to answer for myself and now I can't answer for myself why I can't help anyone else and the vicious circle.

One of the bleak things of existing without a consistent roof over your head is constantly 'shopping' to be somewhere because loitering is discouraged. Who can shop when you have no where to put your stuff? I'm often at the craft stores (Michael's and Joanne's but never Hobby Lobby fuck them), usually as an excuse to pick up yarn for my grandma, maybe I can replace a pencil here and there now that some money is coming in that isn't going towards the pit, my collection is over twenty years old and widdled down. I notice they never restock lilac and lavender, it is driving me crazy. All the sudden they stock amethyst and orchid, wtf? I go online to find out they discontinued them in 2022 because whatever they used to make the pigment they no longer have access to. I do however go down a rabbit hole of prismacolor's history, from being manufactured in the United States, to Berol in United Kingdom to Canada when I was growing up (where my old Sanford set comes from) to now being manufactured in Mexico under Newell. I find that there are plenty of discontinued colors through the years since it debuted in the 30s, but nobody has a definitive list or dates, just missing numbers, as each color has one. Also the quality has gotten more breakable over time which I can attest to. Also people at thrift stores purportedly throw them out unlike crayons which explains why I never see them in my hunts. Thanks... I'd have loved the stubs y'all. I use those!

Which brings me to last spring, we had gotten the final floors installed. Family friend who was helping with the moneypit comes back from vacation, undermines our plans to move grandma's furniture in. Grandma already put in her notice to move in with us. Friend's wife starts a huge fight. It comes out that this whole collaborative project was some game of chicken where they hoped we'd sink so much money in we'd panic and sell the house to them. They ghost. House isn't done, but is livable.

Meanwhile I've been on the search for lilac pencils (had to let lavender go because I at least have an intact one from before discontinuation) on ebay and etsy to no avail, overcharged or old pictures on new listing, color not guaranteed. I try alternative markets like mercari and other places, one of them is a website for dollmaking, where you can buy supplies and parts to make dolls. They have a lilac listing, we e-mail them, they can send it. We try another place, they get back to us in a rant about the discontinuation and being a small business being fucked over, etc. We get another e-mail back from a kid's art supply store, but we don't get back to them soon enough unfortunately because an overstock website claims to have 26 lilac pencils! We shoot our shot.

This all happens as we wait and wait to move ours and grandma's stuff into new place. I'm now the owner of 27 lilac prisma pencils:

Postscript:

In my research on Mexican manufacturing of prismacolor I find out that not only do they make the Premier that I buy and the Scholar (think similar to Crayola branded color pencils in terms of quality, I have some random ones), but they have a midgrade set they don't import us called Juniors for kids who want nicer but affordable pencils and they have a color called Lavanda and I found import listing on Amazon, but I don't buy them. Months later I am at an Ollie's over a county away and find these:

[taralen]

Title: E-Mail Guy's first day lol

HEY EVERY !! ITS HIM! N0 BUDDIES FAVORITE [[E-MAIL GUY!!!]] 

Well, well, here is my first ever DELTARUNE fanart! I've loved this game since it first came out, and while on disability, I played Chapter 2 and loved it even more than Chapter 1. This guy captured my [[HeartShapeObject]] the moment he popped out of the trash. He's officially my favorite character ever made (yes, I am dead serious about this.) I REALLY like this character, so expect to see more of him from my gallery even if you don't want to!

Why did I draw him this way? Answers Below!

Spamton's back story is mysterious, and the game doesn't give us much to work with regarding his past. This drawing is based on my interpretation of him before he became the lovable trash puppet. There are a lot of fan interpretations of Spamton as an Addison, but I rarely see anyone draw him with black hair. I like his contrast with the black hair against the white skin (is he Snow White??!), but I understand why fans choose to depict him with white hair while he was still the "e-mail guy." I included a variant with the white hair for anyone who prefers that version. The white hair makes sense, but I like the idea of him having black hair as an "error" or anomaly. The gray outline is based on the sprite of both him and the Addisons. I'm a little bummed out to see most fan art does not include their cute little glow. No other NPCs have this look, so I believe it was intentional. 

My theories regarding the Addisons and Spamton are based on my experiences working in Sales and Customer Service (and yes, at some point, I was the e-mail guy lmfao.) Spamton confirmed in a Q&A that he was shorter than the others before his downfall. It's hard to tell in this picture, but he is still short, just closer to canon height, which is slightly shorter than Kris. I imagine the Addisons as being like male ballet dancers because of their attire and pointed feet. I'll probably write a speculative fanfic on this because I find how these characters work fascinating from the perspective of someone who studied advertising and sales. I also did ballet for nine years, so funny that. HAHA!

In this image, Spamton has not yet been relegated to the e-mail job just yet as they test him to see how well he performs on the floor. From my experience, if you suck at doing something upfront but your employer still likes you, they'll move you into another position. So, this is before they do that. LOL  Likewise, if you are not very good at ballet, you get sent to the back or to a spot where the audience can't see you very well. 

Anyway, I hope to do more pics of this character and his co-workers soon because I really like them, haha!

Unmarked Full resolution + processes on my Patreon if you're into that. Link: https://www.patreon.com/taralen

[pineapplefulfillseveryneed]

Sparks tour 2023 part 3: The Royal Albert Hall - show #2

Got to be honest: I was falling apart at this point during the tour. It had been another night of only managing to sleep about 2 hours at most and after a full week of sleeping 2 to 5 hours a night it unfortunately became clear my breaking point had now been reached: I was feeling so ill from sleep deprivation. In the morning I wasn't sure I'd be able to go to the show, but I could be upright when the time came so the show was on! 💕 ...even if perhaps I would have to stay seated the entire time, which felt like it would be somewhat acceptable because we were seated about as far from the stage as possible this night. I ended up not remaining seated though, we're talking Sparks here after all, but please keep in mind that there might have been more to the show than I can relay. (Also, once again, a big thank you to my tour buddies! :))

Mr.B The Gentleman Rhymer

I'd gotten super hooked on his song Looking Forward To Leaving by now and I had sung it quite a bit back at the hotel now that I'd caught more of the lyrics so I was super stoked to hear it again this evening, regardless of how I was feeling 🌞 I also especially enjoyed his incorporated dance moves for this song, so at this night that was my recording choice when it came to his set. You can see and hear it below :) Mr.B had also incorporated a little sales pitch for The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte this evening which was beautiful. *big thumbs up*

Before Sparks came on we could spot @nocribdoll from where we were seated and said hello from a distance by means of banana dance which was both great and effective! We also spotted Edgar Wright in the audience which was cool - we're so lucky that he was the one to make the documentary, with him being such a big fan ^^

Sparks

Sparks entered the stage to another big and beautiful applause. There was a little mess up with the first line of So May We Start which was soon caught and rectified, and honestly there's something to be said about opening one's second Royal Albert Hall show with the line “they hope that it goes the way it's supposed to go”. I for one very much respect that, and the way Russell immediately switched to the right lyrics was so impressive that it made me question if what came before had happened at all. (I'm partially sorry to be highlighting a mess up, but I just really liked it and there is footage.)

The audience was so amazing yet again, and we again got to enjoy one of those especially grand applauses already when we were just two songs into the show 💖 and, there was a small change in the setlist: they played VERONICA LAKE! Russell gave the song a proper introduction (a little history lesson with Sparks, if you will👌🏻) The performance was intense and beautiful and I really loved when the instrumental part hit :) (Unfortunately it later turned out to have been instead of Escalator (nooo my beloved!!!), but getting to hear Veronica Lake live really was a treat!)

The only upside about my tiredness was that I sucked a little less with capturing parts of the show in a less bouncy manner, but it's still Sparks so... (who was I kidding with “maybe I'll stay seated”💖) I captured a little bit of Music That You Can Dance To because it's a song I'm so keen to remember at every show and then it was time to dance our asses off and bring the party to this balcony! (We may have been far away, but we were front row in our section, so we started the party here just as much as we'd have done anywhere else in the hall ✨) I did a little banana at the right point in the song too, which funnily enough @nocribdoll managed to spot me doing 😂 I captured bits of Beaver O'Lindy (something I hadn't been able to resist on any night anyway because it is so special live), Russell's introduction to It Doesn't Have To Be That Way (ever since first seeing the show it was clear that his introductions to it were amazing and a little different every night), and Toughest Girl In Town (because of it being one of the most special songs to @dinkydiamond, and it just being great in general obviously ^^) But I think most of all I was capturing a lot of applause between songs, because the sound of these large audiences really was something that set the Royal Albert Hall shows apart 💕

When Gee, That Was Fun started the sadness really hit - nearing not just the end of this show, but also our part of the UK tour and that would mean saying goodbye to friends. (I couldn't listen to the song for a while after shows because it made me miss everything too much.) Luckily that's of course not where the show ends, we still had more applauding to do and we had an encore left! I really treasure A Love Story live and I could not love the choice for it as part of the encore more. I had loved it so much every night so far but it was cool as hell to see it from this perspective, facing the stage straight on yet far away. Those light effects *really* hit in full force when you can see the whole of it. (Not over the voice Russell does in parts of that song btw. SO GOOD.)

Apart from Veronica Lake there had been no major changes to the show, but why change a winning game? Edgar Wright took the audience photo once more, and the audience once more swayed its torches for All That. My memory is terrible in remembering any jokes that may have been made at this show (hell, I can't even remember Balls, my dearly beloved 😭) but at the end Russell blew a kiss up to @nocribdoll which was beautiful and I had accidentally captured him doing so, which wins :) They had to leave the stage a bit more swiftly than the previous night because Russell said they had a thing in the morning, but the applause had been so amazing yet again 💖

…And so ended the adventure of Sparks at the Royal Albert Hall.

Outside of the venue conversations were flowing like usual but as anyone present will know: I really was too broken to partake at that point. I had half a mind to go say thank you to Mr.B but having taken two steps in the direction of the merch table I already turned around knowing very well I couldn't do it this night. Somehow I still had managed to bring sufficient enthusiasm and energy to the show though, which honestly was a relief! 😌✊🏻 I'm really glad the power of Sparks had simply been too strong for me to remain in my seat. (There even had been a random guy on Twitter who had sat behind us in the balcony who had given us a shout out and had posted a picture of us dancing! I'm very fond of that photo, thanks random guy!)

[blazehedgehog]

Even if there's genuine love behind this Shadow renaissance, what difference does it make? Creators and fans love all sorts of things that I think suck, but their love doesn't negate my initial negative impression. I understand how enthusiasm can make good things better, but if you're starting out with something that's bad and unenjoyable to begin with it doesn't really move the needle. I agree that Shadow is redundant and tonally wrong for the series, so why celebrate an attempt to salvage him?

Because they don't salvage anything in this franchise. Ever. Good ideas, bad ideas, it doesn't matter. There's no growth, no learning, no improving.

When something works, they copy it forward whole sale.

The final boss of Sonic Colors. The final boss of Sonic Lost World. The final boss of Sonic Forces. You could probably lump the first boss of Sonic & The Secret Rings in here, too, as the prototype for this concept.

A routine repeated until people get sick of it. When it doesn't work, they pave over it with something completely different. Which they sometimes do anyway, completely unprompted. Remember what happened with Sonic Generations? Literally one of the most celebrated 3D Sonic games ever made. What was their next step? Throw it out and give us Sonic Lost World, a game which started over from scratch conceptually and barely had anything to do with any Sonic game to come before it.

When that didn't work, they gave us Sonic Forces, the most aggressively bland, unadventurous, circumspect Sonic game ever made. Something that was only made to please the concept of a focus group.

And then that was paved over with Sonic Frontiers.

For the first ten years of 3D Sonic games, it was always really easy to see that most of them had a spark of something special. They might have been buggy or unfinished or whatever, but there was a core idea that was both highly creative and very interesting. Which is why it was so frustrating when they'd throw the baby out with the bathwater every one or two games.

Shadow Generations represents something they never do: reexamine a past failure, pick out what worked, and improve what didn't. That's growth, and this series very rarely shows growth.

Like that's part of what seemed so initially exciting about Sonic 06 all those years ago, right? They were pitching it as a soft reboot. A do-over. A chance to take the concepts of Sonic Adventure 1, and not only do them with new technology, but do them right.

Because to reiterate for my younger readers once again: Sonic's reputation was already in the pits before Sonic 06 came out. Sonic 06 was going to fix that. And, well, it was a nuclear disaster.

But the idea was sound. It's just the execution that was the problem.

Of course I am going to celebrate growth if it's so rare.

When I put "Nothing matters, Embrace Nihilism" in my Sonic Frontiers video, that was a joke.

[transienturl]

And now for something completely different: a random product review!

This is a Port Authority Xcape BG100 computer backpack, with print-on-demand customization by Spreadshirt/Spreadshop. In the US, it retails for $27+tax from Mozilla's apparently-official merch shop, which regularly has free shipping promotions.

Now, first off, and importantly when considering this an ostensible piece of branded merchandise: the Firefox Aurora logo (now Nightly, but I'm sure you can see why Aurora was the original name/branding) that I picked here is apparently a terrible choice for generic print-on-demand, since the teal color it fades to at the upper right is probably way too saturated to be printable with a lot of processes. Mozilla probably shouldn't offer this design on this product, and I can't say anything about how good Spreadshirt's print accuracy is based on this.

That being said, in this particular case I don't actually care about this at all; if you just told me the result is a random (natural-gas-flame-themed?) alternative colorway for the Firefox logo I'd believe you:

Now, on to more practical matters. This product is, for some reason, $27. The same backpack on Amazon, without customization, is... $32. The bottom-of-the-barrel Amazon Basics backpack that appears when I search "backpack" on Amazon is $24. We're not talking about some $250 LTT bullshit here; the bar is somewhere around "it doesn't suck," and it definitely doesn't suck.

Size is important. I wouldn't call this a huge bag in length and width, but the claimed 7" depth seems about right and makes for a pretty voluminous interior. The angle shown on the sale page rather undersells the depth; the manufacturer's image might oversell it a bit (that one's pretty stuffed) but I would call it a reasonable, practical size.

The laptop pocket is described as fitting "most 17" laptop computers," and I think that's about right, maybe a bit optimistic considering how huge a 17" gaming laptop is these days. A typical 16" gaming laptop should fit fine (not going to bother to borrow my friend's to try it unless someone asks). I don't put my laptop directly in my bag, though, I put it in a sleeve, and a 16" M1 Macbook Pro in a padded sleeve just fits through the side zipper, which is what I need it to do, so, hey. I would call it minimally padded; I haven't tried other tech backpacks so I don't know what the standard is here but I would not want to put my laptop in without a sleeve. The separate laptop compartment and sleeve are more than it looks like you get on a lot of cheap backpacks, though.

Besides that, there are half-height and full-height flat front pockets, one with an organizer (with a zippered mesh; manufacturer pic is a bit old), and then the one big main compartment. No comments here; that's about how I'd do it. It's not much organization, but a lot of space efficiency if you're packing e.g. clothes. The zipper for the large compartment is angled, as you can see in the pic, which I think is smart. The elastic water bottle mesh pockets on the sides seem to work (my old bag's weren't deep enough and so the bottle would fall out, making them functionally useless; they probably should have angled the ones on this bag a little less but I think they're secure enough).

Build quality seems perfectly adequate; I can find no cut corners or anything chintzy, which is saying a lot for merch. Handling it, I'd easily believe you if you told me this was $60+ (and maybe it was when it came out in, I think, 2018). Zippers are large enough and smooth (plastic coil; metal body); strap padding and ventilation are reasonable; back padding and ventilation are rather good. The plastic top handle is a nice touch. (I might avoid using it if you filled the bag with something really, really dense; because of that angled zipper the handle attach point isn't on the strongest part of the bag, but whatever).

I have the "charcoal" color, which is a subtle two-tone. I wasn't sure if the grey would be very light, which wouldn't look great IMHO; the color is actually on the darker side, certainly darker than those photos depending on light angle, and really just makes it read as a black backpack that someone put significant effort designing some visual depth into. The use of multiple material pieces and angled stitching does look quite sharp; looking at it, I'd probably believe you if you told me it was $120?

So, in conclusion, uh... I dunno. I can't immediately think of anything I would change about it, and while I haven't tried any other competing products, it seems better-designed, better-looking, and less expensive than other similar things you could buy, and I guess it's also technically Firefox (or whatever else you want if you just go on Spreadshirt) merch.

Buy used stuff, obviously, when you can, and consider more environmentally friendly fabrics or whatever. But other than that, yeah, sure, if you need a backpack go buy this. It's cheaper than the price bump for a year of ad-free Tumblr, so that's something.