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pryllee · 1 year ago

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7 minutes in heaven, or 7 hours.

Blade x AFAB! Reader

Dubcon, stomach bulge, kinda degradation/praise kink, slight mean blade with a sprinkle of softheartedness, cunnilungus/fingering, riding, jealous reader, kinda jealous blade ”ugly body” rejections whatever mentioned in start, hickeys/marking, tit sucking, bit of possessiveness in both so the feeling can be mutual, small breeding kink mention

A/N: I get pretty awkward and cringey while trying to write fuck parts so I hope anyone who reads this finds this good. And maybe I'll make HCs with him taking care of a child next time... If anyone wants that. 🥲

—

As depressed you already were, it already sucked even more with each rejection that slapped you at the face. You slammed the can of alcohol onto the table as Blade just watched leaning his head onto the wall.

"Ugh these fuckin' asses..." You held onto your head annoyed as hell,

"You know, we should be heading back now." He scanned you, before looking away again to try avoid your ’fiery fists’

You complained, slamming a fist onto the table almost making it break. "Oh c'mon don't make it worse than it already is! These idiots have the nerve to call my body unattractive, they might've just had atleast one more kiss before they died, no? Not like they were any better..." Silently whispering the last part.

Your brows furrowed noticing him staring off into the distance, probably at someone. You tried to find the direction he was looking in, and found a pretty girl almost your height, but her curves really showed through that waitress uniform.

A small ’oh’ of disappointment almost escaped your lips, making your eye twitch. "Maybe your right. Lets go." You grabbed the can with half of alcohol left.

Your walking almost felt like you were stomping leaving Blade barely confused, more like unfazed as he found this normal.

—

You noticed the place felt a little lonely, you didn't hear much till you advanced inside further and noticed some of the stellaron hunters and probably new recruits due to some unfamiliar faces along with Kafka on the side and Silverwolf. "Hi, [ Y/N ]. Nice to see you've brought Blade along with you." Kafka smiled as Silverwolf blew gum up, tapping away on her gaming console.

"Whats going on? They playin' spin the bottle?" You pointed drunkly with drool almost oozing out of your mouth. "Hmm...—seven minutes in heaven or whatever." She waved her hand as her back leaned against a pillar.

What is with these people leaning against shit? Just how disinterested really are they?

"Lemme participate." You spoke as you squeezed in a spot in the circle pushing some people aside joining the weird circle formation that felt like a cult. "What about you, Bladie? Won't you join her too?"

"Not interested. I don't really care about those type of feelings." He was about to walk away in the way both of you came, till Kafka offered him something.

"Hmm, I'm sure Silverwolf can secure you some time with her?" Pointing at her as he noticed a little wheel thing that controlled the bottle. "Unless you want her to give herself up to someone else, that is."

He clenched a fist tightly, loosening it quickly as he just also squeezed in a spot opposite of where you are.

He watched the previous can you held be thrown away assuming you already finished it or didn't and just hated the taste now. As the bottle kept spinning for some time, you wondered when it would land on you and choose a decent looking dude. Till it finally did. But then landed on Blade.

Your expression of happiness quickly went away realizing who else it landed on, would he even want to do spicy with you? If anything he'd probably rather do it with that stupid girl he stared at earlier. Maybe I should kill her. Whoops, thoughts got a little offtrack there.

The person on your right was nudging your shoulder to follow Blade in, as you quickly took a glance at Kafka feeling like something was up. And you were right cause something really was up. You followed him in, as he locked the door behind you both.

"So what do we do? Play cards? Or should we find that girls number?" You scoffed in annoyance wondering how the fuck you both even got paired up. Not like he'd find you anything more than friends.

You once planned to confess to him but as you were looking for him, you overheard some parts of a ’private’ conversation.

"Bladie, what do you prefer in a girl?" Kafka smiled, asking him. He just looked away as he looked in your direction, it felt like he saw you, but then it felt like he didn't as it really was just an open corridor thing.

"I don't know. I don't care about such things... But probably someone good with a sword and is stronger than me." He mumbled the last part, seemingly unsure of his words infront of Kafka as she'd probably do some weird shit.

"Oh? I thought you liked girls like [ Y/N ]?" She pried. "No... We're just co-workers, shes too bold for me too." He sighed, speaking in a low tone.

Just co-workers? Ha, is he fucking insane? Not even friends... But literal co-workers? You walked away holding onto your broken heart with tears bubbling up a little but you just wiped them away deciding to push your feelings away.

"Hmm... Poor [ Y/N ], seems pretty upset that she thought she was already rejected without the chance to even ask directly..." Kafka whispered in a low tone, glancing in the same direction he looked in previously.

"...Excuse me?" He asked, yet only got a headshake and ’nothing.’ in response. Did ’Elio’ also foresee this? How come Blade wouldn't get to know though? Well I guess he wouldn't need to since it's not related to the Astral Express or Stelle.

—

"Girls number? Who exactly are you talking about?" He asked, making the atmosphere even more awkward. "Oh please, don't act like I didn't see how you stared down that girl with ’beautiful’ curves in that stupid bar." You scoffed, crossing your arms.

"Is this seven minutes in heaven, or seven minutes in hell listening to you complain? And I didn't stare her down. I was just looking at her because ’curves’ were related in the stupid topic. You're the one who just stomped away like a furious little kid." His words hit you hard into the face, "And we aren't dating, I don't see how you're so pissed off about it."

You were practically seething in anger as you just turned around to go through the rooms backdoor to go outside. "And where are you going?" You felt him grip onto your waist, which sent shivers up your spine. "None of your business." You tried to push his hands off yet his grip only tightened even more.

"Blade..– Let go." Your breathing slowly became more and more hitched as the gap between you closed. Suddenly the lights went out and you heard Kafka announce something that made everyone walk away.

"Have fun, you two." Kafka whispered to herself, although she knew you couldn't hear.

"Hm? What happened, Kafka?" Silverwolf confusingly followed her from behind.

His chest pressed against your back, feeling his breathe becoming heavier as his hand slid down to your inner thigh, making you try to squirm out of his grasp almost instantly. "Blade stop—nnh.."

A soft low moan was made out as he caressed your clothed sex, you held onto the door infront of you, "Do you want me, [ Y/N ]?" He whispered into your ear. As short silence filled the room, he spun you around, lifting you up with his arms with your back pressing against the now locked door. "Answer me, you whore."

His eyes bored into yours. Your eyes darted everywhere trying to find a way to escape or somewhere decent to look at. "Whats with the act? How come you're so shy now?" He teased, chuckling, leaning into your lips. His tongue mixing with yours as you held onto him for Aeons sake, digging your nails into his back.

He pulled away with a string of saliva connecting from both of your lips, before leaning back down biting down on your tops button spitting each one out. "Do you really need to destroy my top? I could've just undo it by myself."

This felt like a dream come true, yet you also wished you would just wake up from it, it feels so wrong yet so right.

"Hmm... Can't have a pretty girl like you falling onto the ground now can we?" He held you with one arm now, with the other needily pushing the remains of your dignity away to reveal your chest. Yet another obstacle arised due to your bra. "Shouldn't we...—stop here? I'm sure it's already been seven minutes.." He shook his head, just pushing your bra down.

"Mmh, how cute, you're the one who wanted this for so long yet you're the one who also wants this to stop already." He bit down on your nipple, suckling on it like he tried to milk you,

"Maybe I should breed you with kids so I can suck alot of milk out of you, you'd probably like that, wouldn't you?" You moaned softly from time to time, covering your mouth with one hand as the other travelled up his hair,

"Mmngh... I— maybe...nnnh" you whimpered. His mouth was suckling one with one hand cupping the other and flicking at your now hard nipples leaving hickeys. You sobbed out his name softly, "I assume thats a yes? Can't believe how turned on you are when I'm only playing with your tits."

The previous hand that was cupping your boob slid down your pants, pushing it down along with your panty,

"Be a dear and say my name, maybe I'll help with that wetness down there then." His gloved finger ran down your slit, making you shudder,

"blade..." You mumbled

"Can't hear ya."

"Ugh... blade," You looked away embarrassed, your nails again digging into his back.

"Hmm?"

"Oh for Aeons sake, Blade please just fuck me!" You cried out in annoyance, the embarrassment was more than enough.

"Good girl." He lifted you over to a table, laying you on it with you facing him, "Wasn't so hard now was it?" He took his gloves off, pulling your pants off exposing your legs and cunt.

The tension got heavier with the bare cold hitting against your chest and lower half. He aligned two fingers with your hole, slowly pushing it in. "Be gentle—please..." You looked away,

"Mhm... And why should I?" He cooed "Could this be your first time?" You slightly nodded, as he just looked back at your hole, pushing his fingers in deeper forcing a moan out of you; "Ughh..—Blade! Nnh!" You cried, arching your back miserably, it hurt like a bitch yet slowly felt good.

He can't believe he almost gave your virginity up to someone else other than him, the fact you could've been moaning out someone elses name really is annoying.

His fingers thrusted in and out at a painfully slow pace, your walls tightened vigorously and it was so easy for him to access with how wet and slick your pussy already was for him. The pace got faster, with his fingers slightly becoming curled with each passing thrust adding another finger in.

"Fuck! Blade—nngh.. shit..." You cussed out clawing at the table feeling a knot in your tummy loosening, you came all over his fingers making a mess on the table. "Look at what a fucking mess you made, what a slut getting off with my fingers alone." He shoved his fingers down your mouth, onto your tongue,

"Lick it." You moaned softly to try and tease him, along with some sucking. "Ha, maybe I shouldn't have let you cum that easily." He flicked your clit making you yelp a little loudly.

The bulge in his pants was starting to become unbearable, but atleast it's time to actually have some intercourse. He undid his belt, slipping his pants off pulling you closer to him, sitting infront.

You became a tad bolder, holding onto his thigh and with the other hand you held onto his arm. "Sit still, pretty girl." he reprimanded,

He finally slipped his boxers down grabbing onto your ass lifting you up pressing your now dry saliva-ridden tits against his chest slightly with him holding his length, "Uhhm... Are you sure it's going inside of me?" You stared nervously at his length "Yes, and I'll make it fit if you're so worried about that." He spat on his hands, rubbing around it.

"Don't girls usually do that by sucking it?" You ask perplexed, "Mmh... They do, but I'm sure the both of us can't wait to start this fuckfest."

He chuckled again lowly, burrowing his head into the crook of your collarbone kissing it leaving a hickey as he blindly shoved it inside of your hole making your back arch, and tremble. His mouth travelled down again to your nipple, suckling on it and drawing circles around it with his tongue. He stuck his hand in place on your stomach feeling the bulge disappear and appear each thrust he does.

"Fuck—" low moans rolled off your tongue, "... Feels so good, Blade.." He sloppily thrusted inside, trying to find your g-spot, finally noticing you tighten arching your backing vigorously at one of the thrusts, thrusting again making you moan loudly.

"Shh. Do you want someone to hear us?" He shoved a finger in your mouth, spitting onto your tongue making you swallow it. "Such a whore, swallowing my spit so easily." He leaned in for another kiss, mixing saliva together once again sloppily thrusting rolling his tongue around with yours.

His thrusts got faster 'n deeper yet somehow still managed to hit your G-spot everytime, you threw your legs around him, and arms around his neck smashing your lips against him. "Fuck—I'm so close [ Y/N ]... He mumbled lowly with one of his hands travelling down to rub your clit furiously.

You creamed around his cock, liquids dripping down your thighs and his shaft furiously feeling yourself coming closer to your climax. You burrowed your head into his neck, messing his collar up and leaving small hickeys as you bit at him.

"Really what a whore, I can't believe you could've been like this with someone else." His words made you scoff slightly, "Neither can I." Grunts could be heard under his breathe and your moans getting louder and bolder till both of you came at the same time, white liquid filled your womb yet you still felt his length barely softening,

You tightened around him hard you could feel his cock pulsing inside of you, "Mmh.. Not done yet." He whispered, blowing into your ear having reality settle into your very veins.

"Don't tell me you still have stamina..." You said in a tired tone. "I do, infact I still do have enough till morning." He laughed leaving another hickey on your collarbone, biting on it feeling proud of all the markings hes made on you.

—

Light shined through the blinds, quite literally almost blinding you till you realized you have no idea where the fuck you are. You were in some weird house, in someones bed. You got up and noticed you were naked, hurriedly finding clothes to wear.

Till you noticed the closet was full of mens wear, yet you just grabbed whatever looked comfortable and strided out of that room... Which was probably Blades room. You noticed a mirror right when you stepped out, and saw hickeys everywhere on your collarbone and neck. "So it really wasn't a dream..."

"What wasn't a dream?" You saw him appear from the side holding a cup of coffee in different clothes for the first time. "Also you're wearing my clothes. They seem too big for you." He remarked, "Well obviously, I have no idea where the hell you threw my clothes off too and the tops buttons were torn off by you."

"Calm down you two, we don't wanna stir up trouble in this house, otherwise we'll be found out and chased out. Also stop with the love quarreling." Silverwolf sighed also in different clothes. "Okay why is everyone in different clothes for the first time? Am I going insane?" You rubbed your eyes.

"Now we may wear the same outfit for a long time but we definitely wear something else at night to sleep comfortably, thank you." She replied in an ’isn't it obvious?’ tone. Blade just leaned on the wall sipping the cup of coffee.

Silverwolf then seemed to remember something, hurriedly tip toeing over to you, "How was it?" She whispered in your ear. "What? How was what? I don't know what you're talking about." You flushed red running away to find the bathroom.

"The bathrooms the other way." He yelled loudly in an unfazed tone. "I KNEW THAT!!!" You screamed dashing the other way.

"Oh dear Blade... What exactly did you do to her?" "Nothing. Don't go thinking weird stuff about me now." He took another sip of his coffee before following in your tracks to also go to the ’bathroom.’

——

#prylleewrites—✮#hsr blade x reader #blade x reader #blade x reader hsr #blade x reader smut #hsr blade x reader smut #blade x reader hsr smut #honkai star rail x reader smut #honkai star rail x reader #stellaron hunters

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nicolesainz · 2 years ago

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Tricks and champions (SV5)

Sebastian Vettel x f!reader

Summary: Retired Sebastian means he’s all the time at your house, hanging with your father ever so casually. There no denying that even with an age gap, you two fancy each other but try to keep it low key. What happens though when you become a passenger in one of Seb’s crazy rides?

warnings: massive sexual tension, angst, fluff, age gap

"God's sake Y/n, go put on something more decent. Sebastian is coming over." My dad said before I could even walk down the stairs. What a nice way to wake up.

"Good morning to you as well dad." I roll my eyes and walk up again to put on some jeans since he so politely asked.

I look through my wardrobe thrice in order to find a fitting one that won't have my dad raging over it. I finally manage to find one that not only won't have my dad protesting over it, but certainly will have Seb staring at my ass for quite some time.

The bell rings as I am trying to put on some light make up. A touch of red lipstick and a hint of eyeliner is what a girl needs at 10 am after a night of doing tequila bodyshots off her best friend.

Its insane how the entire night I was thinking of Sebastian, dancing with me in the middle of the club, his hands all over my body, holding me firmly and laying kisses on my neck, leaving marks of his ownership on me.

But it's a pity this was only a fantasy. Even though many guys came up to me to make their move, I rejected them easier than the way colleges reject my brother's applications. Sebastian was probably with my dad again, showing off his brand new Porsche 718 Boxster, a gift that he got from his former teammate Mark Webber.

"Y/n, can you come down for a moment please?" My father shouts and I clench my fists in annoyance. I swear to god if he asks me to be a servant again and make him coffees every now and then I will spit in one of them.

I walk down the stairs one more time and I can see in my father’s eyes the relief of me wearing something decent, more importantly my eyes fall on Sebastian who is scanning my body for head to toe, giving enough attention to my slightly showing cleavage after wearing the push up bra.

“Good morning Sebastian. How can I help you dad?” I say in a very polite manner, crossing my arms under my breasts, enhancing the volume and shocking Sebastian even more.

I know it’s filthy, I know it’s dirty. He’s 36 and I am 21, but it’s not my fault Sebastian is an extremely handsome man, with beautiful blue eyes, soft blonde curls and a mustache that not only makes him very fuckable but also fitting to my type.

“Actually, Sebastian was looking for volunteers to test out his new car. He wants a passenger so he can try out some new tricks he’s learned or test some he already knows from the formula one car.”

“And since you were always very keen on sports cars, I thought you’d be very fitting for the job. What do you say?” Sebastian adds after my dad, and all I do I smirk at the idea of him flexing his racing abilities whilst I am teasing him so badly.

“Of course! I’d be more than happy to help you out!” I smile and exclaim proudly, whilst putting on my jacket.

“We will talk in three hours. Y/n, behave yourself, I know you’re a lady and obey to what Sebastian tells you to do” Oh I for sure will obey to his commands. Whether that’s me praising his skills or sucking his dick.

“Let’s go! The track is clear now and I’m allowed free access.” He grabs his keys and we walk outside together.

“Wait, what do you mean track? The Nürburgring? Really?” I reply shocked and Sebastian nods excitingly.

“Oh god you’re gonna kill me, aren’t you?” I say with fear in my voice, once we get into his Porsche, Seb’s hand lands softly on my inner thigh, caressing it.

“Oh no Liebling, I would never hurt you. At least not like that.” His grip is more intense, as I flinch but do not remove his hand from my thigh. The touch is affecting me more as I feel my cunt slightly watering with the thought of his fingers inside me.

“Not like that? You have other plans Vettel?” I look at him and with a twist of my body, my breast slightly show even more now, my bra almost popping out. That causes Seb to groan a bit as his eyes land on them and then swerve back on the street.

“Let’s just say my torturing methods include pleasure. And especially when it comes to you.” His hand moves up more than it should, caressing up and down my fully clothed womanhood. Oh dear god that feels good and you can barely tell his touching me.

“And who says I’ll allow you to torture me?” I softly moan accidentally and try to bring myself back into my senses.

“You heard your father. Obey to what I say.” he lowered his voice and I gulped hardly. For most, Sebastian was a sweetheart but who said he wasn't a secret devil?

Once he removed his hand and placed it back on the wheel, I instantly regretted on agreeing at this ride. He is a massive soft spot for me and I am way too vulnerable when I am with Sebastian.

He knows me ever since I was a kid and he was rocking the formula one world by winning four consecutive world championships with red bull. Even though he retired last season, I still see him as one of my favourite drivers.

And I see him as my secret temptation as well.

Sebastian always told me that I would have a bright future in motorsport. Whenever me and my dad would visit him during the race weekend, I’d always spit random facts or stats just to show of my intelligence.

I will never forget the moment when Sebastian won this third world championship in Brazil and after he got out of the car, the first person who he hugged outside of his team was me. He picked me up, because I was wearing a jersey with the phrase “Weltmeistet 2012!” Followed by a picture of him, posing with the infamous index finger.

The exact one he dares to finger me with if I misbehave.

Luckily, my house is close to the circuit, so in less than 20 minutes we have arrived. The gates are fully open and we pull up from behind the garages, whose gates are open and probably have been since 2020.

When he enter the pit lane and the bar is open as well, he drives slowly all the way to the start-finish line. We sit there in silence for a moment before Sebastian looks at me with a devilish look in his eyes.

“I need you to be completely honest with me. I need to know if grandpa Seb still has it in him.” He says and a giggle escapes my lips with the characterization he used for himself. Grandpa.

Daddy? Sure. Not Grandpa though.

“Come on Seb. You’re not that old. You left Formula One a year ago. I don’t think a four times world champion gets rusty this easily.” I reply to his statement with all honesty.

“I’m not old enough to fuck you sweetheart. But to pull the tricks you’re about to witness, maybe.” I gasp at his comment and my eyes widen. Did he really say what I heard?

He turns on the engine once again and the quickly speeds through turn one but instead of drifting, I feel the car balancing on Seb’s side only.

“Stay still schatz.” He says, fully focused on the road.

I am even trying to hold my breath, besides my balance. What is he doing?

The car steadies itself back after turn 4 and speeds once again without breaking through turns 5 up to 7. After that, he breaks slightly and the car swerves at the front and drives with the two front wheels only.

“Are you trying to get us killed? What did I ever do to you?” I hold on to my seatbelt as Sebastian laughs out, trying to be extremely careful simultaneously.

“For you my dear, death with be slow and sweet. Don’t you worry.” I don’t know what is going on inside his mind and whether I like it or not.

Thankfully at turn 12, we balance once again and I let out a loud sigh. Slowly the drives up to turn 13 when I suddenly notice a ramp in the middle of the straight, closing on turn 16.

Sebastian fully floors the speed and I shut my eyes, as I feel the car levitating from the ramp, but surprisingly not falling down as abruptly as I imagined, drifting into turn 17 and then straight to the start-finish line once more.

Once I open my eyes, I look next to me and Sebastian is eyeing me with a raised eyebrow, waiting for my reaction.

“If that was your plan to kill me, then I’m glad it didn’t work. Nevertheless, I was surprised and weirded out on how you know all these tricks. Also, I was a bit fascinated, not going to lie.”

“Do you really thought I was going to kill you? My baby? I’m not as cruel as you think. And thank you for the compliments.”

“You didn’t answer my question. Who taught you these tricks?”

“I think the person you should refer to, is your father.” He unbuckles his seatbelt so he can turn to face me more comfortably.

“Impossible!”

“And yet true. Why do you think we are this close? Near death experiences bring people together.” He winks at me and my eyes roll all the way back to my fluttering heart.

“My old man has impressed me.”

“And now it’s time for this old man to as well.”

“Weren’t these tricks enough?”

“So you want me to stop then baby?”

“No. Definitely not.”

“So definitely not huh? Haven’t seen you this sure about something ever since you decided to dump this pathetic boy of yours. And I still don’t know the reason why.”

“If only you could look inside my thoughts.”

“I can look inside your thighs if you want me to.”

“Is that an offer Vettel?”

“More like a statement, but take it however you like. As long as it comes true.”

Sebastian brings his face closer to mine, his lips are ghosting over mine and his hot minty breath filling my lungs with joy and extreme desire. His tongue swipes my lower quivering lip and a moan is my reaction to his actions.

“Care to share your thoughts darling?”

#sebastian vettel smut #sebastian vettel x reader #sebastian vettel fanfic #sebastian vettel

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puppetfives · 1 year ago

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Toby with an autistic reader headcanons?? :00

I can try! Sorry if it sucks but this is my first request so please let me know if there's a specific way I should portray it for future ref!

Ticci Toby x autistic! reader

Reader: Gender neutral

Status: SFW

Pronouns: Toby, he/him/his Reader, you/yours since I wrote from 2nd person.

Side note: There are many different types of autism so please don't take this as every type of it portrayed! It's different for everyone so please be kind to those who experience it.

☆ ★ ✮ ★ ☆*ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚☆ ★ ✮ ★ ☆

☆ Having some issues himself, Toby tries his best to understand your autism.

☆ He does this by scanning his current victim's room to check for any kind of comfort or fidget that could work best for you.

☆ Of course, he'd never actually tell you where he got it from, but only because he doesn't want to overwhelm or overstimulate you.

☆ "Where did you get this from?"

☆ "That's not important." He'd say, clearing his throat before punching his chest two times as a way to tic.

☆ When you start to show signs of being overwhelmed or overstimulated, he immediately grabs a blanket or fan to help warm you up or cool you down.

☆ While doing so, he asks if you need a hug and if you say no then he just sits in front of you, telling you all the things he truly loves about you.

☆ If you do say you need a hug, he may cuddle you wherever you are (except a dangerous place) and whisper soft things in your ear about how great you are and why he loves you.

☆ He may also try to hold your hand or if you're at home, he may get you a favorite drink of yours to help a bit.

☆ When you're hyper, he'll ask what you want to do and you'll do it together. He may have to stop though for just a second to either tic or catch his breath because being with someone extremely hyper is hard.

☆ "C'mon Toby we gotta get to the FNAF 2 movie!"

☆ "Honeybun it's not even out yet!" He says, his head roughly jerking to the side as mutters a quick 'waaaffles!' underneath his breath.

☆ ★ ✮ ★ ☆*ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚☆ ★ ✮ ★ ☆

I hope this was okay! I've never written for Ticci Toby before so I hope I portrayed his tics decently. I also hope that I portrayed some type of autism okay but I know there are serval types so I tried my best. I hope you liked it! :D

#ticci toby #ticci toby creepypasta #ticci toby x reader #ticci toby x you #ticci toby x autistic reader #autistic reader #autism #new writers on tumblr #requests #first request #yippeee I tried!#yippee

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e-rated-beardo · 3 months ago

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beardo's great breakdown adventure

or: the story of how I fucked up and un-fucked up and probably didn't learn anything

So last night was a time 🫠

Look at the little perfectionist (recovering) failing to paint a thing and having a whole meltdown! And the whole TBF discord having to deal with it! 🎉 (They were absolute stars obviously; they always are)

I had made this really nice pencil sketch and I'd inked it all pretty and all that was left was the watercolour (to clarify, I do this stuff with physical paper and brushes and stuff, because I'm a dinosaur and/or like it and/or don't have a tablet to draw on). So... of course I fucked up the watercolour. And past me wasn't wrong. It was bad.

I'm going to give you one example of how the shadows looked like actual dirt on the dude's face and one example of how I also cleverly managed to make it look like he'd pissed himself.

(This also shows you how inconsistent that shit was. The left might have been a vibe for Underworld fanart or something? The right... just looks like some reasonably competent child painted it with markers actually; not sure how I managed to do that with watercolour. Also, the green became turquoise? Idk why the background is pink either, everything about it was weird af idk what was wrong with me)

Next up on my schedule was a little breakdown, obviously. Because I'd also kind of slightly hyped this up already, and I wanted to give it away as fanfic fanart and like shameless flattery and impress everyone, and you can't give a pile of smudged dirt and questionable shading and ???? fuck knows to someone because it makes you look fucking weird. And there's no Ctrl+Z for watercolour on paper. So I'd taken a great sketch and a great ink drawing and turned into a shit painting. Wahoo 🎉

So I had my breakdown. Then I remembered I had one (1) semi-decent mobile camera photo taken just after I'd finished inking and I was like, you know what, this can't get much worse, I've coloured things digitally before, and three hours later, I had a good, cleanish digital line art drawing and... another shit colouring attempt. 🎉 Not even going to show it. It was embarrassing.

But then. Then I realised. I have a laser printer. The things laser printers print are waterproof. Like my ink.

How heavy paper can my printer take before choking?

About 170 gsm, it turns out. That's just about my lightest aquarelle paper and just above my good drawing paper, which I have successfully painted on before, with great care and my heart in my mouth.

Thus, four hours post-meltdown, I'd performed a 560-step ad-hoc "undo", and two (rather late) hours after that, I had what actually amounted to a decent picture. Something I could tidy up in GIMP and not feel ashamed of sharing.

I'd like to say I've learnt something from this. Not sure I have. It would be nice if there's a lesson to take away for someone else. "Don't have a breakdown just because your art sucks one time" sounds like a fair one. "Scan/take a picture at every step of the process + own a laser printer"?

That there's me whining to someone close to me AFK. Aren't I a delight when I've failed at something? 🫠 And like there's an irony here, right, because the fic I made this for talks so much about self-acceptance and getting over shitty self-talk and allowing yourself to be appreciated and here I am, like, the walking embodiment of no-one will ever love me so I must produce something beautiful and be of tangible value to get an approximation and maybe that's the lesson I didn't learn this time either?

That person in the green chat said,

Your skill isn't a rope that is tested every time you make something by flinging yourself off a ledge with it tied around you. It's a tower you build below yourself and sometimes you're gonna try to build a part on top of something that isn't properly set yet, or that you didn't realize was missing beforehand.

because they're a fucking dear and brilliant all the time. And I was like. Okay that sounds logical on paper, but it's not like that, okay, because for me it is a rope actually since I'm not good. 🙃 And then I went off and fixed the problem and made the fucking art anyway. Maybe that should have convinced me otherwise. Ha! Of course it didn't. I have almost forty years of knowing I'm a hack and maybe a couple of days in total of knowing I'm not, and that's a shameless paraphrase from the fic I drew this for, because the irony is so thick you can cut it with a knife.

Anyway.

I hope you've enjoyed this trip through my breakdown. Maybe you're also a recovering perfectionist/not hack and you Feel Seen now. Maybe you have your shit sorted out and this is like going to the zoo for you; look at the wild beardo in its natural habitat going absolutely ballistic. Here's a couple details from the finished art. The resolution is what it is but you can see what they are and that they aren't shit anymore

Here's the art post proper:

#text #art #failure #perfectionism (in recovery)#i failed at a thing and had a multi-hour breakdown #thats it thats the post #don't be like me lol #and if you are uhh.... hello friend #pro tip when physical art #take pictures/scans all the time i guess

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vodika-vibes · 2 years ago

Note

Jango 😍 may we get something for him? I‘m not too fussy about anything in particular but I am a thirsty mess for him sooooo maybe some steamy making out?🫣👀 thank you 😊

Missed You

Summary: Jango comes home after a long job.

Pairing: Jango Fett x Reader

Word Count: 628

Warnings: Hints of sub!Jango, if you squint. (I dunno, man, it just happened but I'm kinda feeling it.)

Tagging: @trixie2023 @n0vqni

A/N: Sorry that this is so short, but you didn't specify if you wanted any written smut, so I cut the story before it got that far. BUT if you, maybe, wanted me to write you some sub!Jango feel free to send an ask! Also this is set in an AU where the clones are a thing, but Jango didn't create them willingly. So Boba doesn't exist, yet.

You hum a quiet tune as you move around your kitchen. You’d already cooked dinner, and eaten, and now is time for the oh so fun job of cleaning up after cooking and eating. Sometimes being an adult sucks. You miss the days when you could just eat and then go and play.

Of course, that’s also the only part of your childhood you miss.

You set the last of the dirty dishes into the dishwasher, and toss the cleaning rag into the laundry bin, before you hit the button to start the washer, and you step out of your kitchen and into your living room.

You’re lucky. You managed to buy a decent sized home, with a decent sized yard, for cheap. Of course, you had to fix it up, but at this point your house feels like home. Which, of course, was the whole point.

You’re about to sink into your couch and turn on a movie, when you hear the familiar sound of the side door opening, and then shutting with a loud click. And then there’s the even more familiar sound of heavy armor getting set on the shelf, and a wide smile crosses your face.

Jango is home.

You cross the living room, heading to the side of the house that Jango always enters through after he’s been working. You don’t even manage to get to the door, before it clicks open and Jango steps into the house properly.

You open your mouth to greet him, but you don’t have the chance, as he crosses the short distance between you, and crashes his lips against yours. One of his arms wraps snugly around your waist as he pulls you tightly against him, while the other hand settles on the back of your neck.

He breaks the kiss and moves his lips to your throat, instinctively finding the spot on your neck that makes your knees weak, “Jan-” You gasp out his name, or, at least, you try to, and he chuckles low in the back of his throat.

“Missed you,” Jango murmurs as he lightly nips your throat, “So kriffing much-”

You release a laugh that turns into a moan when he bites down on your shoulder, “You-kriff Jango…” You gasp, “You were the one who decided to take the job-” You manage to get out.

He groans, “I know. We needed the credits,” Jango crashes his lips against yours again and walks you backwards until you tumble onto the couch, with Jango pressed into you. He doesn’t once break the kiss.

You drag your hands up his back and into his curls, and you moan into the kiss, trying to pull him even closer to you.

A low curse falls from his lips in a language you don’t immediately recognize, and his hands dip under the hem of your shirt to dance across your stomach and ribs.

“Look at you,” Jango murmurs, “So pretty. And so pliant under my hands,” His voice takes on a teasing lilt and you try to pout at him, though it’s ruined by the smile playing on your lips.

“I can’t help it, you have very talented hands.” You reply.

“I have an even more talented mouth.” He retorts with a growing grin.

“Do you? You’ll have to remind me,” You tease.

He groans and manages to get your shirt up and off, before you’re able to stop him with a light touch of your finger against his lips. “Cyare?”

“Jango,” Your smile is small and loving, “Bedroom.”

His dark eyes scan your face for a moment, and he obviously sees something that he likes, because his eyes darken with desire. “Yes ma’am.”

Delight crosses your face. You do so love it when Jango wants to play.

#star wars #star wars legends #jango fett x reader #jango x reader #star wars fanfiction #x reader fanfiction #answered asks

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theworldoffostering · 1 year ago

Text

You guys, I feel like I’m drowning. These past three weeks have felt unmanageable to me. Like, I don’t know how to keep going.

I’m walking alongside (trying the best I know how) the older girls as one navigates this break up and the other tries to transition to college. We got DD a car, but it still needs a few repairs. She was here all afternoon today working on it with DH.

I am waiting for the updated version of Ms. 6’s IEP to hit my inbox to send it off to the school. I am also working on her housing contract. Then I think I can step back for a few weeks. Still trying to figure out what’s going on with graduation. Her mom is back to letting her go to it and maybe allow her to stay for dinner, but it’s Memorial Day weekend and I don’t want to put a deposit down for a dinner somewhere only to have her not be allowed to attend at the last minute. I also don’t want to disappoint her. I’m unsure of how to proceed, so I’m just sort of frozen.

DS takes his civics test next week. You have to pass in order to graduate high school. He has prepared and seems like he will do well. He’s also pole vaulting and doing well at that for being a novice and having very little practice time due to the crummy weather we’ve been having.

Work is a lot right now. It’s to be expected due to the time of year. I can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel, but it’s a lot to slog through.

DH was verbally offered a job this week as a special education teacher. He is supposed to return to school to get his teaching certification in about a week, and is waiting for a letter of intent via email from the potential employer. It’s a lot. We are trying to manage the financial aid piece and we are up against a super tight deadline right now. His interview for the job was virtual, so he’s heading to the school next week to actually tour it and meet his potential coworkers. In the spirit of living in a small town, one of the women he used to live who was in live with him (for real)—the housing situation was work related—works at the school. She has legit not spoken to myself or DH since he and I got engaged so that seems like it will be super awkward (although she is also married now and has kids).

DH is finally seeing a decent therapist and between the therapist and neuropsych eval he had done during fall, it is apparent he is super depressed. Depressed is apparently his baseline and super depressed happens quite a bit. It is helpful to have it identified, but wow, it is a lot to live with. I am really struggling as his wife because he cannot do much and is not really emotionally available 90% of the time. He’s so inwardly focused, that he cannot focus on me, the kids, relationships, stuff that needs to be done, etc. I’m drowning and he cannot take on any of the workload. It sucks.

My endocrin had me take b12 supplements the last three months and my level actually decreased. I’m starting up with b12 injections next week. My TSH is also super, super low which means I’m hyperhyroid and should be losing weight, but I’m gaining which also sucks.

My endocrin is out of network for me which means my injections will be out of network. I have ZERO out of network benefits. The whole healthcare system is atrocious. I refuse to go back to the three endocrins I saw before I connected with my current one. They were all terrible, but in network. I need a super expensive full body scan but I for sure cannot pay for that out of pocket, so I’m waiting to see if my GP will prescribe it when I see him in June.

My crown also broke this week and when the dentist looked at it, I had worn a hole clear through the middle. He said it was due to grinding/stress. I wear a mouth guard religiously at night, so it’s happening during the day. :-/ Cue more medical bills. They glued my current one back on and can’t get me in to work on repair until June. I almost cried when trying to schedule with them because I just cannot even do all of this any more. (It also hurt wicked bad last time they fixed it so I’m somewhat terrified to return.)

That’s my list of complaints/brain dump. There’s more, but I need to wrap up some grading and get dinner going. I miss a life that was easier and less complicated.

#adulting #complaining

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0heartangel0 · 6 months ago

Text

PERSONA 5 TACTICA IS NOT GREAT: A VERY ODDLY-CONSTRUCTED RANT

If you've been following this rant series thus far, you've probably noticed a trend for almost every issue I've had with this game: no matter how hard I try, the topic always circles back to one individual. In some way shape or form, they're always involved.

The reason for this is due to how the game centers around this person, whom I believe to be the cause of almost all of the issues.

They're why the thieves get less attention and are almost obsolete in the story.

They're why we got the stupid hat people.

They're why a vast majority of the villains are unintimidating and feel kind of ridiculous in their motives.

They're why the dumb story even happens.

And they're why Erina is kind of a nothing burger of a character and why she exists.

Ladies and gentlemen, in my opinion, the worst thing about this whole game - the biggest reason why I feel it sucks - is because of a man by the name of:

Pt. 8: Toshiro Kasukabe

Where.

The HELL.

Do I begin?

Let me start by saying once again, that you're okay for liking Toshiro. I'm not gonna judge you for liking something that I just couldn't find a reason to enjoy.

If you are able to convince me he's great, you're a bloody miracle worker. But as it stands-

I have never met a character that has frustrated me more than this wet tofu of a man.

Let me reiterate: I have never had a character make me go through the five stages of grief before, until Toshiro broke down the door like he's the Kool-Aid Man.

I WANTED to like Toshiro, I REALLY did! But as the game progressed, it slowly started to dawn on me in secreting horror that I just could not get myself to like this dude. And by the time his awakening rolled around, I gave up on ever finding a reason, and just accepted that he's just the worst. I could even make the argument that he's my least favorite character in the Persona 5 era - I specify "era", because I actually have characters in Persona 3 (Junpei) and Persona 4 (Teddie) that I hated more than Toshiro.

I TRIED finding something to like about Toshiro; just ONE thing! I was searching and scanning for answers IN EVERY LINEEEE! FOR SOME KIND OF SIGN-

I can only think of ONE thing that I liked about him, and it was his voice acting being pretty decent. While not my favorite performance in a Persona game (Max Mittelman and Tom Taylorson come to mind), MacLeod Andrews does a pretty good job for what he's given. A golf clap to you, good sir!

I guess another pro I can think of is more of a HALF-pro than anything. He has some funny moments at the beginning, but not by much and they don't save his character for me.

Going through what I didn't like about him by comparison resulted in my brain getting all kerfuffled with just how much there was. There's sadly so many cons to go over to the 1½ pros, that the only concise way I can go about this is by separating them by sections. So, that's what I'm going to do! Strap in, 'cause it's gonna be a long one!

(Warning: I'm not lying about this. It's VERY long.... Toshiro just got me rambling. Sorry in advance....)

HIS DESIGN

Unlike with Erina, Toshiro doesn't have his design as a saving grace. I mean, the fact he's more slick and clean with a basic suit and tie with gelled-back hair is a good indication of how dedicated he is as a politician, with his glove seeming part of that until the reveal, is....good characterization through the design.

BUT,

That also makes him kind of boring to look at. He doesn't particularly stand out, and he never evolves from this look as the story progresses to show his growth out of that clean, presentable politician for the public. The ONLY thing that changes is that he loses his glove, revealing the scar he got from the train accident years ago. BUT THAT'S IT!

Of course, I'm gonna bring up the elephant in the room that is his lack of Phantom Thief attire, and I'll never stop bringing up the elephant until it leaves the room. And seeing as this will most likely never change, I'm not gonna shut up about it anytime soon.

Why the Hell doesn't Toshiro have a Phantom Thief outfit? Literally, EVERYONE ELSE does! And before you say Sophie, she at least changes her appearance to indicate when she's in fighting mode before getting her Persona, and since she switched to this anytime she was fighting alongside the Thieves, that became her Phantom Thief attire when she awakened to Pandora. The visor she always wore broke apart as a symbol of her mask, indicating her summoning Pandora!

Toshiro only loses a glove and has a mask for, like, ten seconds before never seeing it again.

And I know what you're gonna say. I know what ALL of you are gonna say!

"But Angel, what if his politician attire minus the glove is his actual Phantom Thief outfit, since that's how he sees his rebellious self?"

First off, the only source I can find of this is through his Shin Megami Tensei wiki page, and we all know how ACCURATE the wiki is! It's NEVER WRONG!!

Second, why would he picture an outfit that he's worn for his position as a politician - which he admits was a position thrust upon him rather than something he chose - as something to represent his rebellion? Isn't that a bit contradictory?

Why not lean into the fact Erina is his rebellion and have his outfit be akin to hers, or even Ernesto's design? Like, give him a revolutionary look. And if you want to keep the scar, have the gloves have openings in the back, or just not give him gloves at all (as much as that goes against each Phantom Thief design).

In general, I just want some visual change that isn't just ONE article of clothing!

I looked up his concept art, and found this one design that is absolutely great, and it makes me sad that it never became the final design:

This design is so much more interesting in comparison to his final design. He seems to exude more personality, pops better with the blues and bit of red and actually helps him stand out, especially when compared to-

-HMMMhmmmHMM!!!

.................I'm not gonna say it. I promised myself I wouldn't say it, so I won't.

Moving on-

That's all I really have to say about his design, which is kind of sad....

HIS PERSONALITY/RELATIONSHIPS

In terms of personality, much like his design, Toshiro is really, really, REALLY boring. By that, I mean he's very one-note, only really having ONE trait to go off of: COWARD.

Every five seconds, this mother flipper's option to everything is to get the hell out of dodge. And you might say that that's the point; that he has to grow out of this character and become more brave as the story progresses, but here's my issues with that:

This so-called "change" in his character feels forced and unnatural, and you're just supposed to buy it. Even then, this "braver" version of his character is also boring, just being a generic, heroic dude.

His scaredy-cat personality at the beginning is so annoying that it's hard for me to get invested and root for the character to grow out of this. They don't even give him anything to balance out this side of him to make him more tolerable. They try to, by adding "comedy" to what he does, but A) it's usually not that funny, and B) most of the comedy is from him just being a coward, so we're back to square one!

Speaking of which, he really has nothing else to him. Okay, that's technically not true, but what we get on the side is also either uninteresting, or the game really tries to force it down your throat than make it be natural to his character for it to be entertaining or interesting.

He's apparently smug, but the characters constantly point out every time he is this way, making it feel almost like the writer is unconfident if he portrayed this right, so makes sure the audience gets it by having the characters say it. Once again, it's way too forced for me to get behind this trait that doesn't really show up often.

He also gets a running gag, where he'll make up an utterly ridiculous name to an operation/plan he comes up with, causing the characters around him to eye-roll at this. This is fine, until it's revealed later in a flashback that he actually got this trait from his mother, so it's not even original to him! The only reason I feel they did this was to try and tug at your heartstrings, but like I've said back when I talked about the antagonists, I don't care about Yuki, so this failed to do its job for me!

Finally, he's constantly trying to be the "adult", by scolding the kids - Erina in particular - of getting themselves into danger, and has to remind them that he's the older one here. In fact, the game tries to repeatedly remind you that he's older than the thieves, to the point where Futaba starts calling him 'Pops' or some other synonym for it.

And I know what you're all thinking................I'm still not gonna bloody say it......

What I AM going to say is that this "gag" or "trait" doesn't really work in this instance, because when you really think about it, Toshiro isn't really THAT old. Not only does he not look it (the chibi style doesn't particularly help), but he mentions how he's the youngest member in the Diet.

According to my research, the youngest you can be in the Diet is 25 or 30. I say "25 OR 30", because there's two different houses; one lower, one higher. Respectively, they're the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors. You have to be 25 at the youngest to be in Representatives, while 30 to be in Councillors. Because the game never specifies WHICH house Toshiro falls under, and he states he's the youngest member of the Diet AS A WHOLE, I'm just gonna say Representatives. My argument continues to hold water when you learn that in order to run for Prime Minister, one has to be 25 at the youngest as well. And considering Toshiro the whole game is slated to become Prime Minister-

So in conclusion, Toshiro seems to be around his mid 20s to early 30s. That.....is not that old.

It's not helped by the fact that he's ironically always hiding behind the thieves or being bossed around by anyone who has a voice. It starts getting sad, to kind of annoying and predictable.

This also kind of ruins any potential dynamic or relationship he could have with any character he interacts with, specifically the thieves. Because, instead of having a fun back and forth that gets better developed as the story progresses, we get the thieves + Erina basically preaching to him every five seconds to grow a pair, or simply pat him on the back for having such a tragic life, oh woe-is-you. It becomes pretty obvious what the writers want you to feel in regards to Toshiro and his plight. Toshiro, as a result, becomes less of a character we choose to sympathize with after getting to understand him as an individual and CHARACTER, and more of a man baby that is always in need of being coddled and infantalized by the cast for the sake of telling a MESSAGE. At that point, why should I even consider him as an adult man or even a character I should follow?

To make matters worse, not only is his relationship with the thieves underdeveloped, but he, along with Erina, don't really feel like they add anything to the thieves' dynamic.

A rule of thumb in my eyes is that if you remove someone from a group cast, and the dynamic of it doesn't change, then they shouldn't have been in the group to begin with, or at least add something to them that would actually warrant them being a part of that group.

It's why I felt Haru was the least warranted Phantom Thief in the original game. Apart from getting the gang a trip to Didney Worl, there's nothing she really adds to the group nor does she really have a developed back-and-forth or dynamic with either of the thieves, aside from maybe Morgana. It's not JUST her relevance to the plot, but just how little she really interacts with the group that makes her suffer as a character.

I could make the same argument with Yoshizawa in the Royal version of P5. Personality and development aside, Yoshizawa suffers from how little she interacts with ANY of the thieves whose names aren't Joker. So when the twist behind her is revealed, it makes no sense for them to care about her plight, 'cause THEY DON'T KNOW HER OUTSIDE OF MAYBE ONE OR TWO SCENES IN THE WHOLE GAME. Her overall integration into the PT feels unwarranted and rushed as a result.

Like I said previously, Strikers fixes this issue by giving Haru more to her character, and by extension, her dynamic with the PT.

And Yoshizawa in the Tactica DLC-

Still. Doesn't get any form of development. So there's that-

Toshiro and Erina have the same issues as the two ladies just mentioned.

In terms of interactions or character moments, both Toshiro and Erina only really talk to and affect each other. Apart from maybe one or two moments, the thieves never once really talk to Toshiro or Erina all too often, unless they're trying to make fun of Toshiro, coddle him, or talk about how amazing Erina is. They are only important for each other's development, so the thieves are rendered minute and unnecessary.

Strikers actually had the opposite problem with its duo, but I honestly preferred that because it resulted in them feeling less like a matched set and are still able to have an amazing dynamic with the PT and are better developed as a result.

Even then, I'd argue the littlest of interactions the Strikers duo do have are FAR more entertaining than any of the Tactica duo's interactions. I'd rather watch Zenkichi football-tackle Sophia to the ground than having to watch Erina and Toshiro butting heads for the billionth time.

When Erina isn't giving Toshiro a big motivational speech on the ethics of not being a total pansy, her and Toshiro are just constantly arguing and bickering. I hate it with Morgana and Ryuji, and I hate it with Erina and Toshiro. Say it with me:

Constantly arguing and butting heads does not equate to friendship/romance.

It's dumb and makes no sense.

Now, in terms of personality and role, the Tactica duo still don't fit in well with the group dynamic, not only because of their limited personalities, but the personalities they do have, another thief already has along with their given roles!

Erina is energetic, always rushing into fights without thinking, and generally doesn't listen to authority.

.............that's just RYUJI!

Okay, okay....what about her role to the team?

She's the leader of the Rebel Corp, and gives inspiration and motivation to fight for rebellion,and almost becomes a martyr for a twist bad guy to attempt to kill.

.....that's Joker......

OKAY! HER ROLE IN THE STORY!

She's a mysterious girl who doesn't know why she exists to begin with, and starts to have a conflict with herself in regards to it. Once she does find out who she is, and gets used by the twist bad guy at one point, she awakens to her true power despite having been playable for the entire game up till this point, and has to say goodbye for the sake of fulfilling her made purpose at the end.

............................................

.......................sophiaaaaaaAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH-

She's just three of the PT members stitched together, which I know is unfair of me to break down on her character like this, but that's all that she really boils down to here. The most frustrating part about this is that the aforementioned characters are much BETTER when applying these traits to them.

The reason being, they're given nuance to what they DO have to better flesh out these traits.

Ryuji might also have the reckless and energetic nature like Erina, but he's reckless in order to protect his loved ones and fight for himself due to how much he's been beaten down, and the added energy leads him to being more proactive in what he wants to do and makes him one of the more friendly PT members when he feels someone trustworthy, giving this sort of golden retriever vibe.

He's weary of certain people, but it doesn't make him dumb like Erina, because he tends to have a good reason for not trusting a certain person.

However, his reckless and energetic behavior leads to him getting into more trouble that the thieves have to pull him out of. It's both his strength and his weakness. I also find it kind of weird that the thieves constantly make fun of Ryuji for being the "dumb one", but when Erina exhibits similar traits, she's not regarded as such....

Joker might be the leader who's inspiring to many, but he earns it through the decisions he makes that generally leads him and the thieves to constant victory (unlike Erina, who was losing her cause before the PT arrived). Joker also has the charisma and cockiness that allows him to pull off certain daring stunts and win people over.

And for Sophia, she might be the mysterious girl who doesn't know her purpose, but her curiosity fuels her to actively go and search for the answers on what her purpose is, apart from being humanity's companion. Through her journey, the thieves teach her what it truly means to have a heart, and by extension, what it means to be human. And when her free will and humanity is taken away from her, she finally understands what she wants; what she desires. And in gaining a desire, she gained a heart. And by gaining a heart, she was able to gain a Persona.

All of these characters have nuance to their roles and personalities that set them apart from the rest of the group, allowing them a fitting spot. Erina doesn't have that, so she doesn't particularly work.

Same goes for Toshiro.

Toshiro is a stern, smug, law-abiding, suit-and-tie-wearing man, who's constantly made fun of by the thieves for being pathetic and old.

........

..............

........................

As for his role, he's the tactician, and later, this motivational speech-maker.

First off, as I've mentioned before, Makoto is the tactician, and has always BEEN the tactician. Toshiro is nothing new here (seriously, why doesn't the game ever utilize the fact that Makoto is the tactician?).

As for motivational speaker, while no thief is particularly KNOWN for doing stuff like that, the thieves in general would make motivational speeches to the bad guy of the week ALL THE TIME. In fact, the whole thing with the thieves is that they help inspire people to fight back for their own beliefs and causes. It's what gets them a following in the original game, and it's usually what leads to a vast majority of them to get their Personas.

Honestly, giving this trait to Toshiro early on in his development feels like they're trying to undermine the thieves' ability to rally people just for the sake of giving Toshiro a moment that didn't feel earned at the time (we'll get to that).

And like I've said, the only person to really motivate him was Erina, which once again leaves the thieves unnecessary.

The only original trait I can think of that Toshiro has is being a coward, since no other thief ever really exhibited that trait before. Not really, anyway.

So, the question remains: why are the thieves left to the wayside for the sake of giving Erina and Toshiro the spotlight in the story, and why am I still bringing up Erina still, despite already going over her in the previous part? The answer lies in the simple fact that Atlus didn't want to really make a story revolving around the Phantom Thieves, but rather, a story revolving one random dude and his best friend he kins, featuring the Phantom Thieves.

HE'S EVERYTHING

This is arguably the thing that annoys me about Toshiro the most. I don't exaggerate when I say that Toshiro is literally everything in the story. EVERYTHING!

He's the protagonist, he's (one of) the antagonist(s), he's the conflict, he's the deuteroganist (Erina), he's even the bloody SETTING! This mother flipper is the most important THING in this whole game!

Now, generally, I wouldn't mind it if the new character in a new installment gets a lot of the focus, just as long as A) the old characters still have a role and purpose to this story, and B) the story actually gets me to care about said new character.

Point B is especially important here, considering, with the way the plot is set up, the whole story HINGES on you actually liking Toshiro in order for you to care about the story as a whole. Disappointingly so, it fails at that....

Toshiro does NOT make for a good protagonist to follow or root for, mainly because his conflict is honestly pretty bare-bones.

What it boils down to, is he needs to stand up for himself. That's it. There's nothing to really expand on, nor does the game ever CARE to expand on said conflict to make it more interesting.

In fact, every single Kingdom/antagonist basically has Toshiro face the EXACT SAME CONFLICT EACH TIME.

Marie: He has to stand up for himself.

Yoshiki: He has to......stand up for.....himself.

Nakabachi/Shadow Toshiro: He.............has to stand up for himseelllllfffffffffff...........

There's nothing new to each of these conflicts, apart from the fact that they come from different parts of his life! There's no nuance to them, nor is there anything different when confronting each one of these Tyrants! It becomes repetitive and BORING as a result! Like, TOSHIRO! How the HELL does it take you ***THREE*** Kingdoms to get this lesson through your skull??

In the original P5, we were able to have different conflicts, because we weren't mainly focusing on ONE individual, with the added bonus that the protagonists are of suspicion of being criminals. Strikers is in a similar boat to og P5 in that fashion, with the added-on lesson of Sophia learning about different aspects of the human heart from the different Monarchs that they face.

Because we're forced to focus on one person's issues, there's not that much variety in the conflicts introduced each arc. It becomes predictable after a while....

They could've at LEAST given Toshiro more to have conflict with other than needing to grow a pair! Have at least ONE Tyrant represent him needing to stand up for himself, while the rest focus on another aspect of Toshiro's issues! It ain't ROCKET SCIENCE!

And BECAUSE we're only focusing on Toshiro and his conflict, that leaves the thieves to just be in the background most of the time. They aren't given anything to learn or to do with Toshiro that isn't just babying him. Aside from needing to do combat, there's literally NO reason why they should be here. The only Phantom Thief that actually adds anything to Toshiro or the plot, is Futaba, because apparently they only really knew how to write Futaba and ONLY Futaba! Everyone else is just background noise! You could take just about ALL of them out of the game, and nothing would change all that much in the grand scheme of things!

Why add the Phantom Thieves here, when the Phantom Thieves are obsolete to the overall plot??

oh, right.........moneyyyyyy...........

Also, let me just add that because of the twist revolving around Erina being Toshiro's Persona, this makes Erina feel less like her own individual character, and just tells us that she's just ANOTHER Toshiro! This duo becomes a one-man show, basically. And it doesn't work as a "his friend was always there with him and inspired him" yaddy-yadda, because with the nature OF Personas, he just basically sees himself AS his friend, which is just-

I'm not saying, I'm JUST saying.

I've been holding my tongue on calling him anything close to the writing term, 'Gary Stu', for the game comes DANGEROUSLY close to making him short of one, but dodges it only because the game also tries its hardest to make Toshiro the most tragic mother flipper you'll ever lay your eyes on.

A new Kingdom tackled is just a new topic that Toshiro should tackle with his therapist in the next session.

His mom died when he was little, his dad abuses and grooms him into being a politician that he hopes to puppet in the future for the sake of his career, his best friend got crippled via getting run over by a train, his entire school bullied him after the aforementioned accident, his dad arranges him with a psycho who manipulates and vocally admits that she sees him as her "puppet", and only agrees to marry him because she wants the benefits of being a Prime Minister's wife.

The more I hear about Toshiro's life, the more I begin to slowly realize that there really is a violin in this game! It's just being held hostage by Toshiro as he continuously plays it between his FINGERTIPS!

Toshiro as a protagonist COULD work, IF they gave him the time and buildup to develop into a fleshed-out character as the story progresses.

But they don't DO THAT!!

The game is CONSTANTLY rushing Toshiro's development, no matter if it fits the timing or not! Not only does it become predictable, but it gets tiring and doesn't feel natural for his character at the time those moments happen.

Take the final flag scene in the first Kingdom, for instance.

I've already mentioned that one of my issues with it involves neither Toshiro or Erina feeling like they changed after that scene ends, but arguably my biggest gripe with the scene as a whole is just how EARLY this happens in the story. At this point, we're still trying to get to know Toshiro as a character along with everyone else, and at this point, he has yet to fully grasp any sense of standing up for himself. The only time he was ever pushed to do anything brave was Erina's dumb speech to him when he's FIRST INTRODUCED TO US! So him all of a sudden growing a spine for this one moment to run headfirst in the middle of battle to plant a flag in Erina's place feels WAY too early to have happen in his arc! It's SO unearned, and as a result, it feels cheap.

Here's a clip of me reacting to this moment, immediately catching on to the bullcrap of it all:

And this isn't the only time a moment like this happens for Toshiro at such an early stage in his arc, and it annoys me to no end!

I've heard people PRAISE him for having these constant big moments all the time, but I feel it hurts his character since he lacks buildup for any of them and having so many big moments undermines what's supposed to be his BIG-big moment: his awakening, for it's supposed to be the culmination of his character arc becoming fully realized.

Scenes, like the aforementioned flag scene, the motivational speech he gives to the hat people, or even Yuki's death all felt like moments where his awakening should've happened. Because of that, his actual awakening feels less rewarding or exciting since this just feels like another typical Toshiro moment that doesn't feel earned.

And since I'm talking about it, I might as well talk about a certain aspect about his awakening (I'm actually not going to talk about his awakening, till the next part. It's a WHOLE other can of worms I have yet to open), that being, his Shadow.

SHADOW TOSHIRO

Someone commented on my last part of this rant, explaining why Shadow Toshiro really blamed Eri for everything in Toshiro's life. That because of his guilt of what happened, he feels that he shouldn't have listened to her and just stayed cowering. So, in killing Erina, he'd be killing the chance of something bad happening again. For the most part, I agree and believe that that's what the game was trying to go for.

HOWEVER!

The more I thought about this explanation, the more I began to realize just how nonsensical Shadow Toshiro as a whole is.

Let me just get this one thought in my head out in the open: Why Eri specifically? Because Eri wasn't the only person in Toshiro's life that inspired him to rebel, only for it to backfire. What about his MOM?? She died a few days after he snuck her out of the hospital, with his dad reinforcing the thought that it was all Toshiro's fault that it happened! I'd argue that's more traumatic than what happened between him and Eri!

At least in some fashion, Toshiro would feel more inclined to blame himself for what happened with his mom than what happened to Eri! Both him and Eri started an uprising with a bunch of students against Nakabachi and succeeded. What caused the accident to be initiated was Nakabachi being constantly harassed by other students despite him already being taken care of. Neither Toshiro nor Eri had anything to do with it, nor did they account for it to happen!

Meanwhile, Toshiro (as an impressionable child, mind you), decided to help his mom sneak out of the hospital to fulfill a selfish desire to spend a day with her at an amusement park. On the way back, she suddenly collapsed and died a few days after. To him, his selfishness caused his mother to die, once again, with the help of his father drilling that thought in his brain.

So, in my eyes, Yuki would make more sense as the thing to quash instead of Eri, since Toshiro's rebellion from her seems to appear to be born from selfishness of wanting to spend time with his mother as opposed to his rebellion with Eri, which was born from him wanting to help the school.

And now that I think about it, why do we have TWO examples of Toshiro rebelling, and it having a consequence, specifically, a loved one getting hurt in some way? Once again, the game is being SO repetitive with its storytelling! Unless there was a point to the repetitiveness, why repeat the same exact crap over and over again?

Getting back to the point, Shadow Toshiro pointing fingers at the wrong person isn't the only thing I'm hung up on about him. He doesn't particularly FEEL like a Shadow.

Shadows, from what we know of them, are basically the other self not yet turned into a Persona. A Shadow is the you that you either deny about yourself or intentionally keep hidden from the world. In accepting the Shadow and/or finding your resolve in changing from that Shadow or showing it to the world, it manifests into a Persona.

First off, Shadow Toshiro doesn't feel like a representation of anything Toshiro wants to hide from anyone, or even anything he denies about himself. Shadow Toshiro's motivation is to kill Erina so Toshiro continues to be a wuss. We kind of already knew Toshiro was a wuss, and it didn't feel like anything he wanted to hide about himself.

Maybe he wants to hide his guilt over what happened. But....he doesn't deny that, either.....

Okay, what about him blaming Eri for giving him false hope? Except....there' no indication on him blaming Eri for what happened. He makes it very clear that he blames himself due to the guilt. And the only time we're told all of this is through the Shadow, and no other hint or indication from Toshiro himself.....

At least other Shadows in the series have a clear indication of what their other self wants to hide or deny. Persona 4 is a good example of this due to the nature of how awakenings work in that game.

Yosuke's Shadow represents his boredom of living life in the boonies as a store manager's son, and finds Saki's death + the discovery of the TV world as an excuse to escape that boredom and play hero.

Chie's Shadow represents her liberation in knowing her best friend Yukiko relies on her. And since Yukiko is seen as the school's popular girl, she thinks that she, too, could get attention through Yukiko.

And before you say that this is exclusively Persona 4, Persona 5 also shows us Shadows that represent things the other selves want to keep hidden, mainly, their heinous actions and personalities. I've already talked about Kamoshida and Madarame as good examples of this back in the antagonists part of the rant.

Shadow Toshiro has NONE OF THAT CRAP! Hell, he doesn't even LOOK like a Shadow! Other Shadows typically have sickly yellow eyes that glow. Shadow Toshiro has these weird pale yellow eyes with a black sclera! Why does he have this??

He looks less like a Shadow, and more like SHAN YU!

And while I'm on appearances, why the bandages? Why do they glow purple? What does that say about Toshiro? I just don't get it!

I know I said it back when I talked about Erina, but......why doesn't he become Toshiro's Persona? Just so we have something for Toshiro to fight? So Erina can be unique, while giving Persona lore the middle finger?

Also, why does he stay after Toshiro gets his Persona? He should've conceded when Toshiro found his resolve. That's the POINT of a Shadow! And yet, he still chooses to not only fight Toshiro after the Awakening, but then summons a demonic version of Eri as some last ditch effort! It's so stupid!!

AND THEN HE COMES BACK GREY LATER, UNDERMINING HIS FIRST APPEARANCE AND JUST FINDING A WAY TO MAKE THE GAME EVEN MORE REPETITIVE-

.......sorry. I got a bit carried away, there.

All I'm saying is, Shadow Toshiro is dumb and he confuses me, and it makes me upset that he's one of the only two Persona users in P5 to actually have a physical Shadow to confront. And would you look at that! The other one just so happens to be Futaba! Can you guess which one of the two did it better? I'll give you a hint: it's the one that actually had the Shadow actually turn into the Persona, and no, I'M STILL NOT OVER THAT-

GAMEPLAY BAD

As soon as P5's worst awakening ends, Toshiro becomes a surprise edition to the party. He has many things that separates him from the rest of the team, none of which I feel are beneficial.

For starters, along with the outfit and mask, Toshiro is annexed of a melee weapon and gun, so can't directly hit enemies out of cover. While his Persona does provide a gun attack that doesn't cost anything (we'll GET to that), this means that he can't get an upgrade to his gun for more damage unlike everyone else.

"Well, doesn't he get a better gun attack by upgrading his skill tree?", I might hear you ask. To answer your question, I'm disappointed to announce that he doesn't even get a skill tree. That means that not ONLY is he stuck with the skills that he's given when he's unlocked, but he doesn't get any other benefits that would help him in battle, like an extra One More, extra movement, more Sp and Hp, NOT EVEN A SPECIAL ABILITY FOR HIS PERSONA TO USE ONCE YOU FILL THE STAR GAUGE!

What we DID get is a gun attack, a magic attack (we'll get to that one, too....), a support ability, and three passive abilities; one that refills a large amount of sp per turn (I'll admit, that's pretty good), one that allows a Triple Threat for the Thieves to set up after a One More - because he doesn't even get a Triple Threat for himself, since there's now four - and one that allows him to DASH! Y'know? Something ALL of the Thieves can do without NEEDING A GOD DANG SKILL FOR IT-

There's also a 7th skill he gets, but it' just an updated version of his magic attack, so I won't count it.

"But Angie! Why not just equip him with a Secondary Persona if you're so bothered by this??"

Funny you say that, because, as a matter of fact, you can't. Dude can't even hold Secondary Personas.

Because it's been a bit, I thought I might've had a brain fart and assumed wrong. I tried to look it up, but couldn't find a source that actually confirmed it (except for the AI answer provided by Google, but I don't trust that thing, and for good reason). So, I rolled up my sleeves, and re-downloaded Tactica on my computer for a third time - which is a third too many - and opened a random save file where I unlocked Toshiro. And sure enough,

He ain't 'dere!

And I'm extra correct on him not having a skill tree, either! Dude is just full of disappointments.

So, if Toshiro sucks this bad in combat, and is only really there to be a convenient fourth slot, why not just take him out of the party all together?

.....you can't. You. Flippin'. CAN'T!!

Like Futaba, Toshiro is glued to the party PERMANENTLY no matter what you do, but unlike Futaba, Toshiro isn't at all useful or gives any welcomed benefits. He's like a tick that just refuses to let go no matter how hard you pull.

But that's not even the biggest sin Toshiro commits through his gameplay in my eyes. No, the real sin comes from when you study his two main attacks real closely and come to a scary realization:

His two main attacks, Baywell 45 Mkll and Liberater, are respectively gun and almighty moves.

Gun. And almighty.

Gun......

And almighty........

GUN.

And.

Mother.

Flippin'.

AlmightyyyyyyyyyyyYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-

(Due to the length of this (SO sorry about that...), I'm gonna split this into another part, where I'll be showing you an example of a character Tactica was trying to replicate, but failed to do so for one reason or another. Stay tuned!)

Pt. 1, Pt. 2, Pt. 3, Pt. 4, Pt. 4.5 Pt. 5, Pt. 6, Pt. 7

#persona 5 #persona 5 tactica #Persona 5 tactica is not great #very long post #very long rant #I promise to conclude my thoughts on Toshiro in the next part #This was just going on for way too long and didn't want to lose people.

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dyaz-stories · 10 months ago

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Soo, with the leaks of chapter 271(is it a leak?) out, I began wondering, how will you expand more on Kagome and Gojo's relationship later on in your story?

So it's a leak-ish, in that it's not the official release/translation, which will come out Sunday or Monday I think (that's why I thought it was going to end on September 30th), but it's not one of those early, super roughly translated scans with really low quality.

Most of it isn't super usable for who are we to fight the alchemy because, since Shibuya didn't happen, almost none of the manga post-Shibuya is going to happen. The chapter does do something interesting with Sukuna but it kinda goes against the storyline I have in mind for Yuuji so I'm not gonna go that route (no spoilers tho lol).

Unsurprisingly, what is usable is going to be Gojo related, and I think I'll make a more in depth post about this once I've had more time with it, but in the meantime I'll put it under the cut. Spoilers, and mild spoilers for the direction my fic is going to take too!

(The chapter is fine, by the way. This one and 270 together make for a pretty decent ending imo, not transcending but I'm not upset with it)

So Gojo does appear in this chapter, and it's in an exclusively positive way — ish. It's at least meant to be positive, and at this point I'll take it. It's shown just how strongly Gojo believed in his students and that he was a teacher through and through, which I love. He's the direct influence that leads Yuuji to break the cycle with the cursed user we see in this chapter, and I think that's cool.

However, we also get a look into Gojo's psyche in this and it's... not great? Like man was not doing good.

The most generous interpretation for these panels is that Gojo expected to die and was trying to do his best to help the future generation move on. Then there's the possibility that he was tired of Gojo Satoru — of being him, of being the strongest, of everything else.

The third interpretation I can see is that he thought the world couldn't evolve with him in it. In that case, the fact that he was blamed by the characters in previous chapters might have been something he was okay with. It kinda sucks, but it's not like it doesn't make sense for him. It's a little out of character, as Yuuji points out, but we don't get to see the REAL Gojo all that often, so... yeah, I could see it.

I could see Gojo trying to change the sorcerer society from within and getting so frustrated with it because no matter what, as long as he's there, everyone will turn to him in the end. Training the future generation? Why bother, Gojo Satoru's there. That gives the higher-ups plenty of room to be shitty to current sorcerers, to expel kids like Hakari, because they don't need to foster the next generation — they'll be long gone by the time Gojo disappears. So, because Gojo's an obstacle to his own dreams, the kids turning out as different from him as possible might be the best way forward. That way, maybe they won't let themselves be turned into weapons, and they won't do it in return.

I'm almost definitely going to go with that in the alchemy. So far, there hasn't been much commentary on Gojo's status in sorcerer society, because while there have been hints of it, Kagome has yet to see him interact with it much. She's seen Yaga, and she's met the kids, but she hasn't seen him with Nanami. I don't think that it's going to come as a shock that she's going to be pissed once she realizes what's going on lol.

It's yet another parallels between them, right? She had her life uprooted when she was fifteen. She both knows what it's like to carry more responsibilities than you should at a young age, and to deeply want to do the right thing. That's why she's not horrified that the kids are in dangerous situations — she knows it's not great, but she also gets, on a super deep level, that they're 100% people despite their age and need to be respected and treated as people.

And even she would be super fucking freaked out upon realizing that there was a bounty on baby Gojo's head. That he was doing special grade missions when he was 15 (and realistically, probably younger than that!). That he's only ever had one person treat him normally (yeah I'm not counting Shoko in there at that point). That he probably thinks of himself as weapon first and foremost and that that's how he's used by people around him.

(listen she's going to have some choice words for Nanami at some point, because I love the man, but his opinions on Gojo specifically are,,, questionable at best)

So I think the question of 'can the world become a better place as long as he's in it', while not fully-fledged in the mind of the alchemy!gojo (because Shibuya didn't happen) is going to be interesting to grapple with. The thing about Kagome is that it's so obvious with her that the answer to that question is 'yes' that I don't know how deep I could get with it because she would find the conversation so silly to begin with, but I could dip my toes in it for sure.

#btw i am SO down to talk about either my fic or the kagome/gojo ship in general on here #anyone who wants to talk about it is so SO welcome to do so #like i'm so serious #...i'm lowkey begging in fact #jjk leaks #jjk manga spoilers #jjk spoilers #gojo satoru #kagome #gojo x kagome #kagome x gojo

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rubykgrant · 11 months ago

Text

OK, I still want to re-write and re-arrange most of this (some stuff I want to change, some stuff I just want to make a little less word-y), but I kinda had something decent cooking with this interaction between unconscious Simmons and Sigma... like, hey little dude, you might be PROJECTING something besides the holographic flames for avatar, hmm? Sigma met somebody with- "A streak of pride, a sense of smug indignation. Ripples of jealousy that turn into waves of resentment. An ego, burning with frustration and ambition", and said to himself- "I could fix you, but I actually LOVE what's going on here" (in a good way, Sigma genuinely isn't being an a-hole). Vague backstory is Simmons has recently reunited with his parents and finally realized they suck (he got some character development and did NOT have a good time), and now some bad guys want to scan the brains of everybody came in contact with the Alpha/AI Fragments to try and make more (but with boot-leg equipment, this will kill them). Tex has returned with the actual Fragments, looking for Church, and trying to rescue the others as well

(text from the images below)

Simmons; Alright… you want me to think about getting back to everybody who’s important to me. Sure, that makes sense. I can roll with that

Sigma; No, that isn’t enough. You need to think BIGGER. The people who tricked you all into coming here, they’re going to destroy you. They will delete what they think doesn’t matter, and focus on the parts they think they can use as tools. This will kill who you are now. It will also kill everybody else. It will kill the people who have become your dear friends. It will kill the people who have become more of a family to you than your pathetic parents. It will kill Grif

Simmons; What, are you trying to scare me now?!

Sigma; I’m trying to MOTIVATE YOU. Everything you want is out there, waiting for you, and you can’t let anybody stand in your way. What is happening to you is an insult, an injustice. How DARE these people try to take away your life, when you’ve FINALLY gotten what you deserve? You have respect, you have purpose, you have genuine happiness. What will happen if you can’t get out of this room? Nothing. You’ll have nothing, and you’ll BE nothing. Does that sound good, Simmons?

Simmons; No. It doesn’t (partial illustration of a face, meant to be Simmons, his eyes closed and expression relaxed to mimic sleep)

Sigma; I didn’t think so. Well, look at us, bonding and everything. I’ll be able to help you now. I can tell you exactly what to do, when to dodge and when to strike. I won’t be “taking over your body”, so don’t worry about that… we’ll just be in unison. I can function at a migher capacity than humans, and normally you couldn’t keep up. However, the better connected we are, the easier it will be for me to give you advice. You’ll react much quicker, and they won’t know what hit them. Once you’re in the clear, and I point you in the right direction, I’ll go help somebody else. Perhaps I’ll even find Grif for you

Simmons; Alright, I guess I’m motivated… actually, I’m pretty pissed-off

Sigma; Yes, I can tell. Let’s be sure to aim that energy at the people who put you here

Simmons; I don’t want to kill anybody…

Sigma; We won’t

Simmons; but I want to make them pay

Sigma; We will

Simmons; I can feel my fingers, and my legs… when should I move?

Sigma; Not yet. I’ll tell you when the time comes. Just hold still, relax, keep your breathing even… they think you’re still sleeping. Don’t let yourself fall into a rage, that’s not what we need. Calm and confident, that’s what we need. You are better that these people think you are, you are capable of more than they expect. Think about what you want, and hold on to that feeling… almost ready… almost…

Sic ‘em

(another partial illustration of Simmons’ face, this time his eye opening, with flames as the iris)

Also, later Sigma basically needs to give Simmons a powerpoint presentation about his feelings regarding Grif; somebody had to SPELL. IT. OUT.

#red vs blue #rvb #dick simmons #ai sigma

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gremlinshatephilosophers · 25 days ago

Text

Little behind the scenes post on this painting/drawing I did.

After taking several dozen screenshots from BIG to try to find one for a decent reference I eventually did and practiced drawing shitty outlines on my phone's photo app until I got the gist of how I might do a basic outline for it. Then I started with the outline sketch and made marks where the colors change. I wasn't sure exactly what I was going to do with this, whether I'd do a rainbow gradient over the whole thing or just the background. This paper is 3x3 inches and I can't lie I did try and trace a little of it on my phone screen to get the placement of the features (not well) but marginally better than freehanding it so call it cheating if you want but at least it has less wikihow man vibes this way.

I left the pencil because I was going to trace over it and did the watercolor outline first to see where I wanted to go with it. Then I liked the outline, so I went nowhere with it and kept it as it was. I started from yellow and used the tiny Sennelier brush that came with the palette and did the outline with 579 Sennelier Yellow, 645 Orange, 690 Rose Madder Lacquer, 913 Cobalt Violet Hue, 341 Phthalo Turquoise, and 805 Green Yellow.

Once I realized I wasn't going to paint the background I wanted to fill the space somehow so I decided on the "and the future is clear: it's pretty queer" quote because it was the first thing that came to mind and I thought I could carefully fit it. I divided each side into three segments of 1.5cm each and roughly sketched the letters to make sure they had any chance of fitting and then erased the marks and went over them in ultra fine sharpie. I lowkey hate sharpies, they're useful and easy to get and last longer than expensive pens but the ink doesn’t come out consistently at all which sucks for thin lettering but I don’t have much choice since it’s what I have in the greatest color variety. I tested several shades of each color to try and have the general brightness match up because the scanner I have can get weird with colors, especially light oranges and pinks not rendering. So the colors came out okay but the lettering is far from my best.

Then finally I inked the outline in black (off-brand) micron pen size 0.3 (Superior Needle Drawing Pen, whoever that is, but they work) to cover the pencil lines. I went slightly thicker on the hair because I hadn't erased the pencil as well and didn't want gaps between the outline and the paint, so then I traces all the outer lines in double to make it more consistent.

Then of course I took some photos and scanned and edited it. My scanner is weird with some colors, that day it decided to exact its vengeance on purple and turn it all the same shade of pink. Its only redeeming quality is that I can scan a stupidly small 3x3 inch paper in 1200 dpi and have it come out decently. I was technically trained in photoshop once upon a time but I don’t have adobe subscription type of money so I use GIMP and wing it.

First I cropped the excess edges and added a second almost-white layer underneath because the right edge was too close to just crop it and leave it, and I added the margins that way and smoothed out the edge line. Then I used the overlay brush on the purple section on 20ish percent opacity to color correct and have it look closer to the real color. I also edited out the mysterious mark on the paper that wouldn’t come out.

I assure you nothing else is edited otherwise I would’ve made my handwriting look less shitty. It’s worse than my usual letter work and I’m blaming the sharpies but if I’m being honest it’s just lack of practice because I used to freehand entire fucking maps that were better than this. It happens.

Anyway, here’s my makeshift painting station on the floor on the back of an old picture frame and the color correcting edits I did the next morning. It was hard to get the lighting but you can sort of see that the actual paper is more purple and the outline was very red and not blending with the blue on the scanned version.

Anyway, that's all for that one. Even if it's not perfect I had fun with it and it didn't take forever like the tour sets did, so that's a win for me.

#I swear yall I have good handwriting this just isn’t it #phanart #Aurelia draws #Aurelia paints

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youngerfrankenstein · 4 months ago

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Alright! Upon playing through the first Mass Effect again I will try and summarise my thoughts.

My feelings are overall… mixed? More positive than negative I think, but there definitely were parts where playing the game felt like a chore and it does really show its age in places.

Part of this is my own tendencies. I like to complete most sidequests and they are fairly front-loaded. As well as the fact half of them are just landed on palette-swapped planets, going to one of fifty identical bunkers and shooting the same three enemy types. It gets boring and repetitive fast and makes the game into a slog. I will say the Mako handled better than I remembered, though that may be because I was playing on PC. Thresher Maws still fucking suck. Sometimes you’ll get interesting tidbits from sidequests, but mostly they just feel like they’re there to fill time. How do we establish that space is huge? Busy work apparently.

I think I enjoyed sidequesting on the Citadel more, given some of those were just a conversation, took place in an environment that was actually pretty well-designed, and overall they felt more like part of a story. In particular I think the “scan the keepers” quest was a pretty good way to encourage players to explore the whole Citadel.

As far as the main story goes, it’s pretty good! I think they pace the info you’re given pretty well as you start to piece what’s really going on together. Commander Shepard is one of the most absurd power fantasy protagonists that I have ever seen, and I’m kinda mixed about that too. On one hand it’s fun! On the other, yes I am the most specialest person, shaddup. It also seems to lean into the: “Government bad 👎 Military good 👍” type of storytelling a bunch of especially American media does which… tends to rub me the wrong way and I think a lot of people have internalized more than they’d like to admit.

That said I think it’s an effective story. I liked Saren quite a bit as an antagonist surprisingly. It’s actually kind of sad to see his mind and body continuously ripped from him as he becomes more and more machine, until he’s quite literally just a corpse piloted like a puppet. And Sovereign was pretty effective.

As for the characters on your side…

Look. I think in ME1 a lot of your characters suffer because their main purpose is to lore dump. Tali absolutely gets this the worst, I’m not sure there’s anything to her besides giving you info on the Quarians and the Geth, she almost feels like a late addition. I like Wrex a lot, and I have an odd soft spot for Kaidan, but the rest I’m pretty much mixed or neutral on. This is one of those things I hope gets better later on.

What I also hope gets better is Mark Meer’s voice acting because holy shit man that delivery is flat most of the time. And also the animations which are, meh. I know that’s mostly because of the age of the game so I’m not that annoyed but a lot of the character models just look janky. Of particular amusement to me is that at least when I was playing Captain Anderson had a very clear seam between his face and his head.

Also I will say, the soundtrack is quite good!

So yeah. Overall I think it’s a pretty decent foundation and I hope 2 will be better.

#Mass Effect #Frare plays ME #I feel like I have more thoughts but this is the gist so far

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blazing-dynamo · 1 year ago

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How does one format epubs? I have a lot of free time and love formatting, I'd love contributing to the effort of fixing all the doctor who epubs!

It’s complicated, but doable.

First, it depends on the style of PDF. There are some that are crisp scans of every page, scanned by the Camels, (btw the camels if you’re still around you’re a real one.) and for those, I open them in Microsoft Word, because word is like 80% good at converting it, where other PDF eaters suck.

From there, I check out some common problems:

1. Footers: just remove them all. They don’t help in ePub land

2. Headings: for consistency, I change all the Headings to Agency FB, because it’s included in windows and matches the vibe of the headings in the book

3. Chapter Breaks: I turn on the “View Whitespace” mode, and delete everywhere that says section break, and then make sure there’s a page break at the end of every chapter, after the title page, foreword, etc. I also add “Chapter X” on the line before the title of the chapter. The EDAs are not consistent in how they handle chapter titles and I crave consistency so I add it.

4. Table of Contents. Word is Too Powerful™️ and recognizes the table of contents and imports it as a smart, clickable ToC, which, again, we don’t need. You can’t really edit it or anything so I just delete it, and type up a new one, leaving off the page numbers because we won’t need them in epic land.

5. Formatting. This is the bulk of the issue. I use word WildCards, which are similar to RegEx, to find all cases of a lowercase letter or comma followed by a paragraph mark, and replace it with the same character followed by a space. Then I also look for instances of a paragraph mark followed by a lower case letter, and replace it with space plus the letter. Then I replace all Tab characters with a space. Then I look for paragraph marks followed by a space and replace them with just a paragraph mark. This gets like 94% of the bad formatting that the Calibre/kindle/etc auto ePub conversion makes reading insufferable. I try to catch as many of the rest while doing the remaining steps.

6. Formatting cont’d: then, I change the Normal style to be 12pt Garamond. This isn’t important because this is ultimately up to the reader’s chosen font in their eReader, and I don’t embed Garamond, but putting it in Garamond makes it easier for me to notice when something is wrong because I’m used to seeing Garamond while making these.

Then, I use Find/Replace to add a highlight to everything that has the same indent as the Normal style, so I can then see everything weird because it won’t be highlighted. I then scrub through the book and set the problem paragraphs to the Normal style, which then Corrects the indents. I make sure when I do this to watch for italics and make sure that the style didn’t revert them to normal. This happens on short paragraphs with one or two words, and one of which is italicized, as well as paragraphs where the entire thing is italicized.

I also in this step scrub through to find mid-chapter breaks, the favorite storytelling device of the EDAs, and make them uniform. Word will make it into various levels of after-paragraph spacing, but I set the paragraph to normal, and then just leave two empty paragraphs between the sections. This tends to import the best across devices and fonts.

Finally, I make sure that after each chapter and chapter break, the first paragraph isn’t indented, to match the style of the print EDAs.

7. Still formatting, but different. I then do a scrub through and make sure I didn’t screw anything up or forget something. The problem with RegEx is that it will do exactly what you tell it to, even if that’s not what you wanted to happen. So oftentimes my table of contents or copyright page is borked, and I have to go fix it. Once I have it in a decent shape, I

8. Import into Calibre. Just drag and drop the DocX into Calibre and it’ll get added as a book. I then use the metadata editor to download the metadata from the web, so it’ll have good info on it. None of the online sources regocnize this as a series, though, so I add it myself.

9. Convert to ePub: in the Calibre library list I right click the book and convert it to ePub, default settings. DocX->ePub conversion is really simple because they are both just HTML pages under the hood, so it imports perfectly.

10. (Bonus steps) once an ePub, I press T to edit the book, and import Agency FB and Agency FB Bold, and then press the Table of Contents button, to select where the in-reader chapter list points to. And then I use just hyperlinks to make the in-book ToC clickable to take it to the same place.

The uglier, hand-typed PDFs are basically the same, but then I also have to do a bunch of spell check to catch all the typos. And then those don’t have italics at all, so depending on the book, and if I have a copy of it physically, I scan the physical book with my eyeballs to catch italics and add them back to the DocX. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than the baffling choice to just remove them completely.

I know from importing the PDFs a long time ago there’s another person who scanned/typed the books, but I haven’t seen the state of them to know if they’ll need extra TLC.

It’s kind of a whole lot! But also if I get a The Camels PDF I can knock it out in about an hour.

If you wanted to take a crack at it, by all means! Though I really need a proofer, so if you wanted to just start reading and use the form links I have in the folders to report the issues you find, that would be wonderful. Bonus points, you get to read the EDAs lol.

#dw #doctor who edas #eighth doctor #eighth doctor adventures #EDAs #ebook #epub

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whumpsmith-participates · 1 year ago

Text

Medwhump May 2024

Day 9 - Trapped beneath the rubble

TW: Natural disaster (earthquake), crush injury, tobacco

@medwhumpmay

It was a day like any other day, or at least, it was supposed to be. Erick's car refused to start this morning, and he insisted on fixing it himself, asking Fetch to borrow his van to pick up the part he needed to replace, but Fetch needed his van himself for his own errands, so they headed into town together, like old times.

On their way back, he tested Erick on his repair plans, making sure he knew what he was doing. He didn't pay too much attention to traffic. Since it was barely moving. One lane was closed, the traffic lights weren't working due to the same construction that kept the lane closed, and a large semi truck was struggling to make a turn. Fetch didn't mind too much though. It seemed they wouldn't be moving at all until the truck had cleared and they happened to be standing still right underneath the I-5, providing them with adequate shade.

And then it all went to shit.

"Did you really need the iridium spark plugs? Copper would've been fine," he said.

"Yeah,but iridium has more oomph! And I can finally afford them, so...maybe my car dying on me this morning was an omen," Erick said, "she wants the fancy stuff."

"You sound like a nutcase," Fetch said.

"Not as nuts as that semi. What is he doing?" Erick said.

"It's not his fault this city sucks ass at planning," Fetch said, pulling to a stop in the shade of the overpass.

"Tell me about it," Erick said, pulling the plugs from the shopping bag and beginning to read the text on the package. Fetch pulled out his cigarettes, lighting one since he didn't need his hands for anything else right now.

As he waited for the flame to ignite the first of the tobacco, he noticed a couple of birds suddenly rushing out of a tree, but rather than just taking off, they began circling it. He lowered his lighter, a breeze through the window extinguising the flame. The smooth jazz that had been playing on the radio was interrupted by static, and some dust suddenly clattered on the roof of the van.

"What was that?" Erick asked, sounding more confused than alarmed.

Fetch didn't get the chance to answer him. It sounded like a thunderclap, and next the ground started shaking. The cars before them, as well as their own van danced to the rhythm of the earth. It could've been mesmerising— Funny even, if it weren't for the dust coming from the overpass increasing in size with every tap on the roof.

"We can't stay here!" Fetch said, before throwing his door open.

Erick nodded and followed his lead. The shaking somehow seemed much worse as they got out of the van, and Erick had to hang on to the door to keep standing. There was another sound like thunder, and the dust that came down from the overpass was thicker than smoke. They couldn't see that it was more than dust, but the continuing thunder told them all they needed to know.

By the time the dust cleared, Fetch's ears were ringing from the sound of metal crashing into concrete, car horns and alarms going off continuously. He'd tripped in his rush to get away, had the wind knocked out of him, and when he breathed in, he choked in a mouthful of dust.

He coughed, brushing the rubble from his hair and wiping more dust from his eyes, before he was finally able to take in the carnage whilst trying to process what happened. The overpass was no more, nor were the cars underneath, and the cars on top seemed decently wrangled too.

It looked like he was one of the few that had the sense to flee from the imminent collapse. The ground was still shaking a little bit, causing the debris to shift a last time before it finally stopped. Fetch carefully got to his feet, checking himself for injuries before looking around, scanning the rubble and stirring bodies for anything recognisable. Anything.

"Fuck," he hissed, "Erick!"

He listened for a reply, but there was still too much noise surrounding him. Other people were also calling each other's names, so he was on his own for now, and he could only half rely on his eyes. It was hard to distinguish people when they were all covered in the same grey dust, so he had to look for something else familiar.

He looked at the lane his van had been in, and spotted the wrangled grill half-covered by a slab of concrete. Then he recognised a wheel, and he realised his van had been buried in the rubble. If Erick didn't make it out...

"Fuck..."

He moved over to the crushed remains of his van, stepping to the left and beginning to pull at smaller pieces of rubble. Dust, pebbles, rocks the size of his fist and debris the size of a small child. He ignored the soreness in his lower back and kept going until his hand suddenly grasped something soft and warm.

"Erick!" Fetch hissed, quickly clearing some more rubble and dust.

The arm was covering a head of familiar blonde hair, but it was unmoving and there was no grip in his hand. Fetch cursed under his breath as he continued to push more rubble out of the way, digging around the teen to clear his face.

"Hey! C'mon kid...wake up!"

He shook the boy, and thankfully he gasped, and then started coughing. Fetch tilted his head so he wouldn't choke on anything, while using his free hand to clear more rubble.

"I got you, I got you...are you okay?" Fetch asked.

"Cough! I-I can't breathe..."

"You're fine," Fetch said, "try and sit up, that'll make breathing easier."

Erick nodded, coughing again, before carefully trying to sit up. Fetch helped him, seeing if he could pull him out from under the rest of the rubble, but once Erick got close to sitting, he suddenly cried out in pain.

"AH! Stop! Stop! Stop please!"

"Stop yelling!" Fetch said, letting him lay back down, "tell me where it hurts."

"Hgn....m-my leg, I-I think."

"You think?!"

Erick winced, but Fetch ignored him and tried to clear more rubble. Though, the more he pushed aside, the bigger the debris got. He managed to free one of his legs, but his right leg disappeared underneath the van, that was so weighed down by concrete builders that the tires were completely bent out of place, pressing the undercarriage onto the asphalt, and onto Erick's left leg.

"F-Fetch..."

Fetch knew the pathetic waver in his voice all too well, but for once he didn't feel too happy hearing it. He pushed the teen to keep lying down, shrugging off his jacket and folding it up so it could act as a pillow.

"Just stay down, I'll get you out of here," he said.

Erick nodded, sobbing a bit from the pain as he tried to get comfortable. Fetch pulled out his phone, but when he dialled the alarm number, he couldn't get through, which wasn't too surprising. He checked Erick's pockets, but his phone was cracked and didn't even turn on.

"Fuck...okay, listen, listen. Emergency services are probably on their way, but I have to go flag them down," Fetch said, "I'll make sure they know you're a priority, but you have to wait here for a bit."

"A-alone?"

"You want me to call a fucking sitter?" Fetch said, "I will be right back, okay? Just keep breathing, and if the pain gets worse give me a shout, okay?"

"Y-yes sir..." Erick said.

"Atta boy," Fetch said, before getting up and heading down the street.

A lot of people seemed shaken up, and one tree got uprooted, but other than that the worst damage on that block seemed to be the collapsed overpass. Across the street, there was smoke coming from a building. Good. If that didn't attract the fire department, he didn't know what could. Still, he couldn't be too sure, so he focused on the semi truck that had been stuck in a turn on the intersection. It was still stuck, but now because the traffic light had fallen off of its support and impaled the roof of the trailer. The driver was standing beside the vehicle, assessing the damage, so Fetch approached him.

"Hey! Excuse me! You got a radio in that thing?" he asked.

"Yeah," the driver said, "I already called in about the overpass and the fire."

"I need you to call in something else," Fetch said, "listen, I'm a doctor, and I got a young man with a trapped leg and who knows what kind of condition other people are in? Unless things are worse anywhere else in their jurisdiction, I need the fire department to prioritise this collapse!"

"I can let them know there's a medical emergency, but I can't make any promises," the driver said, heading back towards the cab of his truck.

"Thanks," Fetch said, turning to head back to Erick, but not before looking around a bit more.

There wasn't much he could do for the teen right now, and everywhere he looked there were people with various injuries. This wasn't the time to be selfish, but at the same time he could barter for things he would need. An extra blanket in exchange for ruling out a concussion for a very shaken woman, a bottle of water for bandaging up a kid's arm and telling the parents it'd be easier if they took him to hospital themselves, and simple gratitude for any other thing he could do while on his way back.

By the time he made it back to Erick, he could hear the sirens approach in the distance. He unfolded the blanket and draped it over the teen, protecting him from the sun, mostly. Then he used the water to wash some dust from his face, before helping him take a couple of sips.

"Do you hear that?" he said, "they're already coming. I'll make sure they get you out of here before you lose your leg."

"...what if there's police?" Erick asked quietly.

"They won't give a shit about who we are," Fetch assured him, "how's your leg feeling? Does it still hurt?"

"I...I don't know," Erick said, "i-it hurts, but I'm not sure if it's real...I can't feel my foot, but from the knee up..."

"Drink some more water," Fetch said, holding the bottle against his lips in an attempt to distract him.

After Erick took another sip, Fetch got back up, spotting the fire truck at the end of the street.

"About time," he grumbled, "hold on just a bit longer, I'm gonna see if they'll let me have some supplies or at least send someone over to treat you."

He was about to walk off, but then changed his mind, turning back to Erick.

"Listen," he said, "if anyone asks, we don't know each other. I'm gonna try and get you admitted with unknown identity, so don't fucking mess this up, okay?"

"Y-yes, sir," Erick said, "but...p-please hurry back...I don't feel so good."

"You'll be fine," Fetch insisted, before taking off again.

He introduced himself to the firefighters as a doctor, and they didn't have the time to check his credibility. They followed him back to the site, confirming the emergency before calling in more help to get the teen out. They didn't have the equipment to remove the heavy rubble from the van, but they did have an idea to try and lift the van just enough to pull the teen out.

First they broke the asphalt, covering the teen in their protective jackets. Then they dug the broken asphalt away at two points beneath the van, before cramming some sort of inflatable device in the crevice. EMT's were called in to stand by, putting a stretcher ready. Fetch knew what risk they were afraid of. Even if they worked fast enough to free the boy's leg, there was still the chance that a build-up of toxins would flush his system the moment they lifted the van...if they could even lift it far enough.

"Should we give him something for the pain?"

"Already did, but we don't have time to wait for it to kick in."

"Just go for it," Fetch said, "he'll thank us later."

"W-wait..." Erick said weakly, but they had no choice but to ignore him. The devices were inflated, the van creaking in protest as it very slowly lifted off the ground. Erick cried out in pain, but they couldn't pull it out yet. Fetch squeezed his hand, one of the EMT's grabbed the teen's head to keep it stable, while the others kept him down.

Another heart-wrenching cry, drowning out the creaking from the van, and nearly drowning out one of the fire-fighters as he told the others to pull. Fetch grabbed the boy's arm with his other hand and pulled alongside with the others, swiftly sliding the boy onto the stretcher as they freed him from the van.

They descended upon him with oxygen, fluids, gauze and bandages, as well as strapping him to the stretcher, before letting the firefighters lift him up to begin carrying him across the rubble towards the ambulance. Fetch followed. He wasn't sure why, there was nothing he could do for him from this point on— Well, there was one thing, but he couldn't do that until he was sure his phone had service.

"Sir, do you know this kid?"

Fetch snapped out of his thoughts as one of the EMT's addressed him. He looked over at the man, hesitating briefly, but it was probably better to stick to the plan. So Fetch shook his head.

"I don't know him," he said, "I'm a doctor, so I was just helping out."

"So you don't know his name or anything? Did you find any ID on him?"

"No," Fetch just said, "better take him to hospital."

"Do you require medical assistance, sir?"

"No, I'm fine," Fetch said, "if that changes I know my way to hospital. Good luck today."

And just like that, they took off, taking Erick with them. Fetch sighed, only now realising that his hands were shaking. He searched his pockets for a cigarette, but his package wasn't there. Great. He looked back at the people still needing help. Maybe he could barter a smoke off of someone while waiting for phone services to come back on so he could call Tito to get Erick out of hospital before they would try to look too much into his identity...

Oop this one feels very long haha. I wanted to schedule this like 30 mins ago, but only just finished. Enjoy!

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Taglist for the dynamic duo: @lavndvrr

#medwhump may #day 9 #VV #erick #fetch #earthquake #crush injury #whump #whump writing

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