#and i don't have to read my main dashboard

[blackrabb1t]

im learning so much more about recreational drugs than i ever needed to lmao and it's all for an upcoming post

[brown-little-robin]

my last week, a visual demonstration

[losergames]

Chop Shop is strictly 18+ for language, themes, and potential explicit content. 

🔗 - Game Intro | Bug Report | Ko-Fi

Episode Three is now available! (+ 86,000) - PLAY HERE

Get your first taste of the underground car scene.

Meet some other players in the game.

Be made an offer.

5 achievements up for grabs!

And more!

AN: thank you so much for the patience - i've been dying to put this update out. lots of new characters and lots of variation!! there are 3 major paths to choose between in this ep, i recommend trying them all out! and thank you to my betas for keeping me sane lmao

This update comes with a patch and UI refresh (Version 1.1.2) Notes are under the cut. If preferred, you can access them in game in the start menu.

STORY

EPISODE 01:

MC should now be able to smoke! Buying cigarettes at the shop was not triggering correctly. If playing with an old save, you DO NOT have to restart as code at the beginning of EP 03 has resolved the error. Player will need to restart if they wish to read smoking related scenes in previous episodes.

Updated MC Name selection. Player can now choose from a list of names instead of having to input one to proceed.

Player can now give Taha their chocolate bar if it's in their inventory.

When asking Maz about their scars, the second choice 'You want to ask about it but you're going to keep your mouth shut.' should now take you to the correct response.

Extended and updated 'End Game' scenes.

EPISODE 02:

If MC is faint after exiting the car, but also drunk, they should now get the fainting scene, followed by Dilani helping the MC in the bathroom.

UI + TECHNICAL

SETTINGS:

Autoname Save is now defaulted to ON. This is to add ease and flow to gameplay, especially for mobile, tablet, and app users, instead of calling for an inputted saved name. If player wants to input save names, toggle Autoname Saves to OFF.

Autoname Save previously only used the forename of the MC but now includes the surname as well.

Removed the Fullscreen toggle as it is only intended for desktop use. Player can still toggle fullscreen function via the UI bar on the desktop interface.

Added a choice indicator toggle. (This probably won't come into effect until EP 04 or 05)

Changed serif font from Vollkron to EB Garamond.

OTHER:

Changing the MC's pronouns via the Dashboard has been updated. Additionally, after confirmation will take player back to the Dashboard and not close the dialog boxes entirely.

Hovering over 'Personality', 'Motives', and 'Skills' titles in the Dashboard will now display an information box with a definition. Mobile and tablet users will need to tap on the title.

'Resume Game' now only appears on the main menu when there is an autosave in the saves log.

Choices styling changes.

General UI and button style changes.

Fixed errors with the text message styling.

Added styling for reading text off of a page in game.

Darkened blue in light theme 'Skyline' to reduce eye strain.

CREATE A SAVE

Introducing Create a Save! This feature allows players to quickly manufacture a save file and start at a later point in the game.

Set your identity, appearance, history, and statistics; including personality, motives, and skills. Continue to set key decisions made in previous episodes.

Randomise options available for creating a PC and key decisions.

OTHER

Fixed gaps and spacing issues.

Minor phrasing and sentence structure changes.

Grammar and typo fixes.

whew -- that's a lot of patch notes! apologies for so much that needed to be fixed.

this update shouldn't break/ mess with saves but as a disclaimer i will say, if you spot anything funky, broken, or you don't think things are triggering correctly, try starting a new save. the new create a save feature is incredibly code heavy, and it's been tested relentlessly, but i wouldn't be surprised if something crops up.

if starting a new save doesn't resolve your issue - please submit to bug report or just send me an ask/message.

some things have been meaning to get fixed for Some Time - thank you to everyone that is using the bug report form!

apologies if there are typos and/or bugs - this was a long one to edit and my lovely betas did an OUTSTANDING job reading so much for ep 3 - thank you so much again!!! this time i am going to give it a bit more time before i put together a patch so i can grab more error responses haha.

create a save has also added a wee chunk to the word count, somewhere around 6k, but i'm not including it in the episode 03 word count as it's purely code. so, if you think the total wc is off, that's why!

if you've read this far, happy reading and thank you so much for the continued support!! :) - becky <3

[dailynnt]

FRIENDS WITHIN TOUCHING DISTANCE

⊹ Summary: Jungkook and you, his childhood friend, live together in an apartment, sharing space as roommates. Your relationship, built on years of friendship, is gradually becoming strained by growing sexual tension. You decide to become friends with benefits, trying not to complicate your feelings. But Jungkook's world is not so simple. When you begin to realize that he is hiding something, you open the veil of his double life - a world of mafia, criminal activity, and risk that could ruin not only your deal, but everything you valued in each other.

⊹ Couple: Jeon Jungkook/ Fem!Reader

⊹ Characters: The Reader, Jeon Jungkook, Park Jimin, Kim Taehyung, Min Yoongi, Kim Seokjin, Kim Namjoon, Jeon Hoseok.

⊹ 🔞 Age restrictions: 18+

⊹ 👩🏼‍❤️‍👨🏻 Relationships: ⚤

⊹ 📘 Number of part: 20/?

⊹ 🖇️ Tags: best friends, friends with benefits, slow longing, sexual tension, protected sex, unprotected sex, alcohol, drunken sex, inexperienced main character, mafia au, illegal trade, deaths of minor characters, weapons, swear words. Tags will be added as the story is written.

⊹👩🏼‍💻 From the author: A new part with a very very tense situation 😄 Please rate this part I enjoyed writing it so much 🤩

⊹ 🫂 Dedication: For you, my love @myjungkookthighs. You know that I appreciate you very much and love you🥰💜

⊹ ⚠️ Warning: English is not my native language, so there may be mistakes in the text. Please don't get mad at me too much! Those under 18, please don't read this story!

⊹ 📋 Tag list: @myjungkookthighs, @notsevenwithyou (If anyone wants to be in my tag list let me know)

≣ Chapter Index ↓

Part 13. Between despair and desire.

It was so cold. You only started to warm up when Jungkook turned on the seat heating for you. The heat spread nicely over your buttocks and warmed your lower back. But your hands and nose were still cold.

A few minutes ago, you and Jungkook drove out of the parking lot of your hotel. There was silence between you, you didn't speak. Why? You didn't want to. The reason? The reason is that he have a whole bag full of weapons, and it's decorated with an almost perfect lie on top.

You glanced at the dashboard, which showed -8 degrees Celsius and the time was 13.39. Jungkook was driving the black minivan he'd rented from the airport yesterday to get around town.

He drives with a completely indifferent expression. You took a quick glance at him, and it didn’t took you long enough to memorize every detail of his face.

The big black eyes, watching the road intently. His eyebrows were slightly drawn together, most likely because of the flow of thoughts in his head. For a moment, you wanted to know what he was thinking about. About your quarrel? Or about work? Or about that damn weapon bag and where exactly it was going to be used? His lips were constantly under the torture of his teeth, which were peeling off the skin and biting his lower lip where the piercing was. You also noticed a mole under his lip, which was clearly visible when Jungkook pursed his lips. His hands gripped the steering wheel tightly.

You turn your head to the right and look at the landscape outside the window. It changes instantly because of the speed of the car. You don't notice how Jungkook looks away from the road and looks at you.

He wants to find something to talk about, but he knows for sure that you don't want to talk to him. He just wants you to stop being angry and worried about that fucking weapon he so carelessly hid. He's such an idiot, Jimin said to leave it in the car. Jungkook returns his gaze to the road and the memory of last night is still fresh in his mind.

It's probably a coincidence, or you're on the same vibe again. You're thinking about last night's fight, too, and a wave of anger and irritation washes over you.

You are holding a gun. It is cold and heavy. Of course, you don't know much about pistols or assault rifles, but you can tell that this weapon is new and it is firearms. Because traumatic weapons use smaller ammunition, not these pointy-tipped ones that seem to be half a bag. You put the gun in place just as a voice comes from behind you.

"Y/N." - You hear Jungkook. He's calling you in a moderately calm tone, but you're still scared. You instantly turn around and see your friend. He's wearing the white robe the hotel provides, his hair is damp and his posture is tense. He quickly assesses the picture before him and realizes that the situation sucks.

You get up from your knees and walk two steps away, thinking that this distance is safe. You stop when you come across the bed.

"Why are you here?" - Jungkook asks. He's still standing in the doorway. You look at him with frightened eyes and feel either panic or fear, it seems all at once.

You see a guy you've known all your life. You spent your childhood and your school years with him, moved in with him when he offered to live with you during your university studies, started having sex with him because it turns out you had feelings for him all along. This is who you see before your eyes.

But his gaze does not seem familiar to you. You feel as if you are being pierced by the same knives that are in the bag near your feet. His gaze is direct, demanding, dangerous.

"I heard something fall." - You start to say. "I went to look and found this." - You point to the black bag with the weapons.

"Why did you open it?" - Jungkook asks calmly, but you can hear the desperation in his voice.

"What is it?" - You continue to hold your hand toward the bag. "Why do you have so many weapons?" - You keep your voice steady, but you don't know when it will break.

"I'm explaining everything to you now. You misunderstood..." - Jungkook trying to explain, and starts moving in your direction.

"Don't come near me." - You say. Maybe you're afraid of Jungkook right now, to some extent, but it's more about not wanting him to be close. He stopped a few steps away and kept his eyes on you. "First, try to explain this." - You say and you both understand what the conversation is about. You see Jungkook tense up even more.

"I told you I work for a security company. It's private, so we buy all our weapons personally. We have always bought them in Japan, but through a distributor. When I left yesterday with Jimin, I decided to get some new ones myself, so I went to the store and bought some weapons." - Jungkook said. You could feel your heart pounding against your chest. Blood was pounding in your ears. Why is he only now telling you that he sometimes buys guns himself? Why the hell doesn't he share anything with you?

"Do you use this weapon at work?" - You asked, incredulous.

"Yes. My company protects powerful people." - Jungkook said, half-truthfully.

"Why did you never tell me that your company uses firearms?" - You continued to question your friend.

"Why would I do that?" - Jungkook asks. You giggle sarcastically.

"Because you and I are friends, sort of. Aren't we?" - You say irritably. Fear has almost been replaced by anger. Jungkook wants to answer, but you speak for him. "I asked you a billion times who, where, and with whom you work. And you were silent. I don't understand why you can't share such simple information with me. I consider myself your best friend, and the prefix 'best' means sharing everything." - You say sharply. Jungkook clenches his jaw, his chewing muscles pulsate.

"Don't forget the fact that you're a girl. Some things should be kept from you so you don't get worried." - Jungkook tries to keep his voice calm, but he's almost holding back too.

"You're going on about this 'worrying' shit again? What am I, your mommy? Of course I'm worried about you, but it's not like I cry over every bruise you get. I'm your fucking friend who supported you and was there for you when you needed it. And for some reason you're being a total asshole and hiding everything from me." - You almost shouted.

Jungkook doesn't understand why he's treating you like this. He really should be more open with you, but every time he wants to tell you something, this damn 'protect her at all costs' thing kicks in. It's all because of where he works.

To protect you from the world Jungkook lives in, you have to know nothing. He's been hiding the truth for a long time, and not just from you, but from his parents and brother. He's used to lying about his job and his lifestyle. You know, complaining about being hit in the head with a gun during a racketeering operation is not something you can usually talk about.

He knew he was taking a risk when he asked you to live with him. But he didn't think you'd be that curious. Have you always been like this? For a while, everything was fine, and Jungkook was skillful at dodging questions. He thought he could do it, and maybe he would have succeeded if it weren't for the fact that you started fucking and Doohoon showed up. It was his actions that got you to Japan and to that damn bag.

"My work is a serious matter. It's not something you can tell just anyone. It's not sitting at the checkout in a store and then coming and telling how you were scolded for not giving a discount. It's not just security, it's high-level security, and I have to be careful in every detail. Weapons are a part of it, and I can't just open up these things." - Jungkook explained, giving an example of how you once called and complained to him after meeting with an unpleasant customer. Your face was distorted by anger.

"So I'm 'anyone' to you, which explains why you didn't say anything for so long." - You feel disappointed and hurt. You shared everything with Jungkook, everything without exception, and he just couldn't tell you where he worked and what he did. You would have understood everything, you wouldn't have been the person who pestered him with phrases like "I'm so worried", "maybe you should quit" and so on. You have always been his support and backbone. Why did he forget that at some point and start hiding everything?

"You're clinging to the words Y/N. I didn't tell you because, first of all, I didn't want you to worry that I was dealing with weapons, and secondly, I'm not allowed to say anything at all about work because it's completely about anonymity. And you know very well that you are very important to me, not just anyone." - Jungkook argues. You laugh sadly. You're so sick of this shit. Just a week ago, he promised to tell you the truth, but you caught him hiding something from you again. And to be honest, his ‘I bought a new guns because we always buy in Japan’ sounds so lame.

"Listen, Jungkook, do I look like some kind of stupid girl to you? Do you think when you told me you work for a security company that I don't guess that you deal with guns? Do you think, thatI think you protect people with sticks and arrows? Or what? Fuck..." - You swear to get rid of the anger inside you. "I perceive any information adequately. And for some reason I thought you knew me and could trust me with anything."

"You don't understand me." - Jungkook said rudely. He irritably took off his robe and threw it on the bed. How can you not understand that he is protecting you? You were dumbfounded at the sight of his naked body.

His beautifully muscled body distracted you greatly. You remembered how you had sex with him in the bathhouse just half an hour ago. Jungkook irritably took his clothes and began to change in silence.

"For me to understand you, a genius, you needs tell something to me. Or at least explain your actions." - You replied sarcastically. Jungkook, who had already put on his sweatpants, looked up at you. He came up to you without a shirt and with his torso completely bare, which was a distraction. You tried to look only into his eyes. He came close and you were not afraid of him. You realized that he would never hurt you, even if he had ten bags full of weapons.

"You are as daring as ever, baby, in your words." - Jungkook said calmly. "If I don't tell you something, it means I have personal reasons. You have no right to tell me what to tell you and what not to tell you. All you need to know is that I care about you." - Jungkook fell silent and you felt his tone send a shock through your body.

"How do you care about me? Ha Jeon?" - You asked with a poisonous smile. "You hide your life, from me, your friends, your girlfriends, and now you're telling me that's what 'caring' means? You're acting like a fucking gangster, hiding who you are and 'protecting' me." - Your voice turns slyly sweet. But your expression is pure anger. Jungkook looks down at you from the height of his height, right into your eyes. It seems as if he is covering the entire space with himself. His face is literally 20 centimeters away, but you are not afraid.

"I told you about the work, just not in detail. I introduced you to all my friends. As for girlfriends, I thought you weren't interested. They always pissed you off. Why do you think I'm a gangster? " - Jungkook says, and a cocky smile appears on his face. You boil with anger.

"’I care about you. But I'm not telling you what I'm dealing with because I'm shooting a gun. I introduced you to my friends, but you don't fucking need to know who they are. I'm not home for days at a time, and you don't need to know where I am or what I'm doing’." - You imitated Jungkook in a very mocking tone. "You're trying to keep me away from your real life. That's what gangsters or assholes do." - You said without emotion. Although you are very angry. Jungkook is silent for longer than necessary. You can almost physically see the flashes of lightning that radiate from you and him eyes.

"Don't get involved in something you shouldn't." - Jungkook suddenly says. His tone is warning, but you take it as a threat. You notice that he doesn't deny his involvement in the gangsterism. But why would Jungkook be a gangster? It’s for sure he's done with illegal fighting?

"I don't interfere. It was you who brought the bag of weapons to our room and didn't hide it from me carefully. All I want is an explanation." - You say with irritation. "Tell me the truth for once. Just without this 'I'm protecting you' bullshit. Why do you need this weapon?" - You ask and Jungkook is silent again for a long time.

He's hesitant about what to say. He looks into your unyielding eyes and doesn't know what to said. Jungkook recalls Jimin's words, and he claims that you will understand him. But he is afraid that if he tells you, you will turn away or even worse, get into danger. And all because of what he's become. He's already put you in danger, for fuck's sake. The fact that you live with him makes Doohoon even more annoying. If he knew he liked you, he would never have asked you to live with him.

"I need all this guns for my job." - Jungkook says, and it's really true. "That's all you need to know." - He decided he wouldn't tell you. Because you are the only light in his dark life and you have to stay that way. Even if you're didn’t want to still with him, he needs to know that you're alive and that no one will ever touch you. He will take care of it.

You close your eyes against the fierce irritation. Why are you here? Why are you asking all these questions? Why are you living with him? Why are you friends with a man who doesn't trust you with anything? You open your eyes and see Jungkook's serious gaze.

"Okay." - You say and clear your throat. "Then I guess I'll go." - You're about to walk away, but Jungkook stops you. You want to scream for him to let you go, but you feel his lips on yours. You try to fight him off, but he presses you closer and deepens the kiss. His kiss is demanding and even controlling. You are intoxicated by this sensation and forget for a moment that you were just fighting. His hands are clutching yours to keep you from pulling away because he desperately needs you. You can feel how it sets you on fire. But you recover as soon as he stops kissing you. You want to hit him for the ease with which he can influence you.

But he saw it coming, because you're absolutely chained in his arms. He looks into your eyes for a moment and then pulls you to his chest. You can smell his perfume and hear his heart beating next to your ear.

"Don't go!" - He asks. "Please understand me, I can't tell you everything. It's not safe for you." - He argues. But you feel nothing but intense resentment.

"Let me go." - You say colorlessly.

"No." - Jungkook refuses.

"I swear Jeon, if you don't let me go..." - You would have finished this sentence by threatening to kick him in the balls, but at that moment Jimin, who had knocked before, enters the room.

"Jungkook, you didn't lock the door... I was looking for you with Y/N..." - He sees you two hugging and freezes in the doorway. "Oh sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt..." - He turns away and Jungkook loosens his grip. You drop Jungkook's hands and walk away.

Later that night, your group is sitting in a restaurant. You sit down away from Jungkook and only came because Taehyung persuaded you to. He was the only one you knew well out of everyone. So your seat was next to him. No one noticed that you weren't talking to Jungkook at all because the conversation at the table was lively.

You remember when waitress brought another round of beer and Jimin said that he had met his old Japanese friend. They talked about business, and the friend mentioned a Christmas party he will throwing at a restaurant in the Hirafu district. It was some kind of an elite establishment because Hoseok had rated it. The whole story ended with your whole company being invited to the party.

That's why you're a today going downtown with Jungkook. He offered to buy you a suitable dress because you didn't bring anything with you. You couldn't say no, even though you really wanted to. But you couldn't go to the party in a ski suit or jeans. You could have gone with Taehyung, but that would have been weird, and everyone would have suspected that you weren't talking to each other because Jungkook had suggested that you buy something suitable in front of everyone. As usual, he left you no choice.

You were so angry at everything that was happening. You would have been better off going to Suwon, sitting at home by the fireplace, and enjoying your parents looking at the gifts you bought.

When the two of you finally arrived at one of the upscale boutiques in the city center. Jungkook turned off the engine and you immediately got out of the car and headed into the store. It was as if you knew where to go and what to do. But really, you didn't care what you wore to this party tonight, you just wanted to get it over with.

The boutique had a festive atmosphere: garlands were shining everywhere, and the air was filled with the light scent of Christmas trees and cinnamon.

You were silently looking at the dresses, touching the fabrics, and one caught your eye. It was a delicate champagne-colored dress with a long train, off-the-shoulder, and plunging neckline. It was both elegant and charming, and made you look very attractive, emphasizing your best parts.

"Try this one on." - Jungkook said quietly as he came closer, but you didn't answer, just took the dress and went to the fitting room.

When you came out, he froze. Your silhouette looked incredibly delicate and graceful, but at the same time so hot that he couldn't take his eyes off you. Jungkook was looking at your figure without hesitation, and you were annoyed. You could see the delight in his eyes. The last time he saw you in a dress was at your graduation. He was stunned by how beautiful you looked then. But now you look even more beautiful and alluring. And in an instant, Jungkook realized that everyone will be able to look at your beauty at that party, and he will be angry that he is not the only one who can enjoy it.

He even forgot that you were still angry with him. His lips stretched slightly into a smile, but he said nothing, just couldn't take his eyes off you.

"You look..." - He finally muttered, but you cut him off.

"Don't do that, Jungkook. Just choose if it suits you and let's go." - Your voice was cold. You took the dress off and handed it to him as you left the fitting room.

"Maybe you want to try on another one?" - He asked carefully, trying to make his voice sound casual.

"No." - You said without even looking in his direction. Jungkook felt irritated. Your cold demeanor pissed him the hell off.

As soon as the dress was purchased, you headed out without waiting a second. You wanted to get in the car as soon as possible, arrive at the hotel and lock yourself in a room. Jungkook was annoying you terribly, because you saw how he wanted to make up. But he has a serious offense, and it's not just about guns or hiding the truth.

Last night you couldn't sleep for a long time after you came home from the restaurant. You left before everyone else, citing fatigue. You locked the door to your bedroom so that Jungkook wouldn't come and analyzed your friendship with him. It turns out that you two stopped being normal when he went to university. And remembering the fact that it was then that he started to engage in illegal fighting, you thought: what if he really is somehow connected to crime?

Remembering the car in which you had sex with him and his clothes that day. You said he looked like the Mafia. God, no. That's not possible. Because it's Jungkook. He's just Jungkook. A kind, funny, cocky guy who only thinks about sports and girls. That's how you knew him.

For almost three years, you haven't had a normal conversation with him. You saw each other a few times a year, but you talked on the phone. You didn't notice any changes because he was probably hiding everything.

It was only after you started living together that you noticed that he became withdrawn, it was about his life. You were constantly asking him everything, and his answer was either some kind of joke or he skillfully avoided answering. That's it. Your "best friendship" ended when Jungkook graduated from high school.

You decided that you didn't want to sit in the front seat and feel the terrible tension between you. When Jungkook unlocked the car, you went to the back seat and climbed into the seat behind him. It took him a while to realize where you were, but as soon as he noticed that you were in the back seat, and in added you were behind him, he knew that things were going to be tough. This needs to be resolved somehow.

"Why did you sit there?" - Jungkook asked, out of the annoying you'd aroused in him back at the boutique. You didn't say anything. He waited a few long seconds. "Y/N! I'm talking to you!" - He barked, turning to you from the driver's seat. You gave him a completely indifferent look with a little disapproval and continued to scroll through your phone. Jungkook cursed loudly. He started the car and pulled out of the parking lot.

You didn't look where you were going because you were looking at your phone the whole time. But when the car stopped, you realized that you couldn't have gotten hotel that fast.

When you looked up from your phone, you saw Jungkook get out of the car and slam the door loudly. You followed him through the windshield and when he was at the back door, you tried to figure out what was going on.

Jungkook abruptly opened the door and you met his angry gaze. In a moment, he was on the seat next to you. He unceremoniously snatched your phone and threw it somewhere on the other seat.

"What are you doing?" - You protested.

"Fuck Y/N, you're driving me crazy. Say something already! Because I'm tired of talking to silence!" - Jungkook didn't yell at you that hard, but he was talking too loud.

"What's wrong, dear? Don't you like being ignored? I'm sorry I'm not so good at hiding my true face." - You said mockingly. Jungkook seemed to go crazy. He grabbed your hand and squeezed it, not to hurt you, but to make you look at him.

"You like to run your mouth, I know. But why can't we talk about things normally?" - Jungkook asks, and you hear your breath coming faster.

"What's the point of talking to you? You're never going to tell the truth anyway." - You say, sharply.

"Why are you so fucking stubborn? I've told you more than you need to know. I'm keeping quiet for your own goddamn safety." - Jungkook explains once again.

"I'm stubborn?" - You laugh hysterically. "You mean I'm supposed to act like nothing happened, ignoring the way you're always hiding things?"

"I explained everything." - Jungkook says briefly, more calmly.

"You explained it." - You repeat. "Your 'serious work' that requires weapons? That's a great explanation. Do you want me to applaud you for that? What about everything else?".

Jungkook was draining you harder and harder. When will this situation end?

"I'm protecting you, when will you realize that?" - Jungkook tried to get through to you.

"What the fuck are you protecting me from?" - You screamed. Jungkook didn't know where the anger came from. He pulled you a few centimeters closer to him in one sharp movement. Your eyes were frightened because you did not expect him to grab you. But the fright was immediately replaced by rage.

"From yourself." - He said with a threatening tone. You clearly did not expect to hear this. You held your breath.

"What is this nonsense?" - You ask. He silently studies your face. You are losing all patience. "Hey, Jeon!" - You shout. "What the hell did you just say?"

"You better not say anything else to me. You're making me really angry." - Jungkook warned you. You smiled defiantly at him.

"Are you crazy? You started all this..." - You said, but he interrupted you.

"Yeah, and you're the one who drove me crazy." - He says in a low, hoarse voice that echoes in your head. You feel mixed feelings of anger and desire when he says that you drove him crazy. It's not right to feel this way.

You want to get out of his space. But this is Jungkook, he never lets you go. He pulls you so that his lips touch your ear. His lips are hot, and you can't help but feel frost on your skin.

"You completely and utterly make my roof go. And even now, all I can think about is how to fuck you so hard here that you'll shut your pesky little mouth." - You hear his low and threatening voice. You shouldn't be doing this, but his tone makes you instantly wet. You want to hit yourself for reacting this way.

He leans back and looks at you as if you are the only thing that matters to him right now. His eyes burn with an incomprehensible fire-a mixture of anger, passion, and something you can't quite put your finger on. He lets go of your hand, placing it somewhere on the headrest of the seat.

"You so sure I want you to fuck me?" - You say cheekily. He smiles slyly. He knows you're lying. His eyes fall to your crotch. Jungkook touches the waistband of your sweatpants with his free hand. He looked up at the same time as you did, because you were watching his movements too. You looked at each other with fierce desire.

"We're going to find out." - Jungkook says hoarsely. He puts his hand in your pants and easily passes the underwear. As his fingers part your folds, he feels your wetness. And fuck, you're just flowing. Now he smiles cockily when he sees you trying to hold back a moan, closing your eyes.

"Look at me." - He orders, moving his fingers ruthlessly over your clit. You obey him immediately and open your eyes. Jungkook's gaze is dark, completely saturated with lust. You seem to get even wetter when you hear that commanding, husky voice.

"Go ahead and say you want me to fuck you." - Jungkook says with authority. You spread your legs wider to give him access to your very wet pussy. As he plunges his fingers into your passage, you grab the seat and can no longer hold back your pleasure.

You moan, which makes Jungkook get harder and harder. Your moans are the best melody for his ears. He plunges his fingers into you so deeply that you start to want more. Your moans become like whimpers because you want Jungkook to fuck you. Hard, gently, whatever, let him do it. You're such a liar.

"Go ahead and beg me, I want to hear you ask me to shove my cock deep inside you." - Jungkook says in your ear as he continues his torture. He bites your ear and you just feel a crazy rush of unbridled desire. God, you can beg him as much as you want, to make it's already happened.

"Fuck Jungkook, fuck me!" - You beg, just as he asked. Your voice sounds desperate. Jungkook smiles, you didn't resist for long. He kisses your neck, freeing it from clothes and hair, and kisses it so that there will definitely be hickeys. He doesn't care how you going hide them.

"Ask for it better." - He murmurs against your skin. You feel dizzy from his fingers inside you. You wonder if you can come just from Jungkook's fingers.

"Please... Kook... fuck me hard." - You beg. He pulls away from your neck, leaving a few strong hickeys, and pounces on your lips. His tongue takes over your mouth like a master. He kisses you so hard that you are going to come from everything he does to you. But just as you think you're about to come, he pulls his fingers out of you and away from your lips. You breathe heavily and try to understand why he didn't finish what he started.

"You didn't think I was going to let you come on my fingers, did you?" - He asks, plunging them into his mouth. He sucks on your wetness and then smiles cheekily. "Only on my cock."

"You could have let me come." - You rebel, your eyebrows raised.

"It's a punishment for your annoying tiny mouth." - Jungkook says. You push him away angrily, but he hardly doesn’t move. How dare he not let you come? You begged him.

"Asshole." - You are offended. Jungkook grabs your chin and forces you to look at him.

"You didn't ask well. You should try harder." - Your friend says with authority. You lose your mind at this tone.

"Go to hell." - You cut him off. Jungkook is amused by your anger. He chuckles softly.

"Right after I fuck you here, my love." - He takes off his jacket and you watch him with an angry look. He throws it somewhere on the seat and then moves closer to you to undress you, so that you have as little clothing as possible. He takes off your puffy short jacket, which you have not buttoned, and you see a sly glint in his eyes.

"I haven't even asked well you yet, and you're already undressing me?" - You say with a gloating smile. You're provoking Jungkook. He grabs you and you whimper from the unexpected movement. In an instant, you're on Jungkook's lap. He turns you onto your stomach and locks you in. "What the hell are you...?" - You scream, but then you feel him pulling your pants with underwear down to your ankles and your voice catches in your throat. He touches your wet cunt and smears the moisture all over your labia minora. You bite your lip to hold back a moan. You feel your face burning, and you don't know whether it's because of shame or the intimacy of the situation. You grip the seat until your fingers turn white.

What you don't expect is that Jungkook will hit you on the ass. It's not a hard blow, but it's noticeable.

"What a cheeky girl you are. Do you think you won't be punished for your long mouth?" - Jungkook says tensely in your direction. He says the words slowly with visible control. Your pussy gets wetter and you feel a pleasant ache in your lower abdomen.

He hits you again and you hear that sinful sound. You fucking love it. You whimper when his hand touches your cunt and then his fingers sink inside you. You can feel his hard cock resting on your stomach.

"Do you get so excited about being slapped on the ass, my little whore? A few minutes ago you were so brave and confident. Why do you seem so small now? You're not answering? Wait until I'm there to shut you up myself." - You hear his excited voice. He is tormenting you with his finger, and you just want him to fuck you. Your desire is strong. You just want to feel him fill you as deeply as possible.

"Jungkook..." - His name comes out of your mouth. You feel him touching your clit and making circular, almost gentle movements that make you go crazy with pleasure.

When you feel your orgasm approaching, you can't hold back your moans. They fill the entire space around you. Jungkook will feel his hard cock twitching at these sounds and the sight of your wet naked pussy and buttocks. Fuck, he just dreams of shoving his cock inside you and fucking you so hard you can't sit up.

Your loud, long moan means you came. Jungkook feels your clit twitching with his fingers. You lay your head down on the seat exhausted and don't care that you're naked right in front of Jungkook's eyes. Your body, relaxed and trembling. Your breathing was becoming steadier, but still lost somewhere between deep sighs and a barely audible moan that remained echoing on your lips.

You tried to get up. But you felt a hand on your ass. You stopped, waiting for what would happen next.

Jungkook was already eager to take you completely.

"Did you like it?" - Jungkook asks you. You are embarrassed, but you have to tell the truth.

"Yes." - You say quietly. Jungkook sits you on his lap. His horny cock rests in your ass.

"Say it again, baby, I didn't hear you." - He asks greedily, his eyes ravaging your face, especially your lips. You're embarrassed by the desire in his eyes, but at the same time you feel confident.

"I liked the way you punished me." - You say in a firmer voice. Jungkook smiles, his lip tenses and you see the hole from the piercing stretch.

Jungkook takes your face in his palm and kisses you. You feel those plump lips and can't get enough of that touch. Your tongues intertwine and you can feel once again how much you like to feel Jungkook on your lips. He as a usual, becomes necessary to you.

He plays with your mouth while holding your cheeks with one hand. He is in complete control of you and you just can't resist this power. You want to stay in this position and you don't know what Jungkook has done to you. If he could read your mind, he would be shocked at how much you want to be controlled by him.

Your lungs are burning and you have to pull away from each other. When your lips part, you slowly open your eyes and see Jungkook's smile.

"Baby, take off your clothes, I have to fuck your little cunt." - You silently do as he asks, undressing on his lap. You take off your shoes, sweaters, and a bra. You are left completely naked. He looks at you impatiently, and the moment your breasts are exposed, he immediately grabs them in his hands. His tongue is already on your nipple and biting it. You hiss in pain and pleasure.

"Stand up. I'll take off my pants." - He orders you and you sit down where you were before Jungkook "punished" you. You see a wet spot on his fly. He laughs gloatingly and undoes his button. "Do you see how you wet me?" - Jungkook asks, taking off his pants and shoes at the same time. You don't answer, just watch in fascination and wait for the moment when you can ride him.

Jungkook does it quickly. He's already taken off his boxers, freeing up his erect cock. It's thick, pre-cum dripping from the end, and the head of his cock is purple and begging for attention.

Jungkook stands up and turns around to face you. You can see his cock bumping against his thighs. He throws some of your things behind your back and says.

"Get down on all fours." - You do as he says. You get down on the seat on all fours, showing him the perfect picture of your swollen, needy pussy. You can feel your cum dripping out of it, running down your inner thighs. Jungkook puts his cock on your ass and pounds you with it several times. He uses his fingers to spread your wetness.

Your head falls down when you finally feel the touch there. "You'll swallow me perfectly, baby." - He comments on your wetness. God, he should hurry. Jungkook puts the head of his cock against your hole and you can't get enough of the sensations. The way his big thick cock stretches your walls.

Jungkook waits no more than a second and starts fucking you. You moan. Why does it feel so fucking good? It's so amazing.

"Yes... so good." - You moan. Jungkook has one hand on your hip, and the other hand is on your back, possessively. When Jungkook wants to get deeper into your passage, he grabs your hips tightly and fucks you with sharp, deep thrusts. You can hear your bodies grinding against each other, making the most sinful sounds you've ever heard. His balls are slamming into your asshole. There is no end to your blissful feeling. Jungkook plunges deep into you, stopping when you feel him twitching inside.

Jungkook leans his torso against your back. He caresses your clit and fucks your cunt at the same time. His hot breath burns he presses his lips to yours ear.

"Does my little whore like it when I fuck her?" - Instead of answering, you let out a languid exhale at his low, sexy voice. Jungkook is not satisfied that you don't answer. He slams into you sharply and hard, pushing his cock into you mercilessly. "Answer me when I ask you." - He says roughly. How does he know you like it when he's so bossy? Do you make loud, long moans.

"Yes... fuck yes Jungkook, I like the way you fuck!" you say, and you're choking on the sensations.

"Do you want me to be gentle?" - He asks biting your ear. Would you like that? Probably not. Maybe not this time.

"No." - You exhale. "I like..."

"You like me fucking you like a whore?" - He says, still in your ear. Yes. You fucking love it. His cock, which is so hard and deep inside you, reaching your uterus. He makes you feel high. And his roughness and possessiveness make you a lustful bitch.

"Yes, Jungkook, I'm going to come…" - You say as his movements make you dizzy. As soon as he hears that, he comes out of you. You freeze. Did he came out? You turn to make sure Jungkook is still there when he grabs you and puts you on the seat.

"Make yourself comfortable." - He says.

"Why the hell are you teasing me today?" - You say, catching your breath. He's already stopped you from coming twice when you wanted to. Jungkook laughs gloatingly out of the corner of his mouth. He helps you lie down.

You end up on your back, your head on things, and you can smell Jungkook's perfume. It looks like his jacket. He lifts your legs, throwing them over his shoulders. One of his legs, bent at the knee, is positioned near your hip, the other is on the floor, he will use this leg as a fulcrum.

He takes his cock in his hand, which is completely covered in yours and his semen, and plunges into you again. He exhales slowly, almost moaning. When he fills you with his cock again, you calm down, and you are no longer angry. He makes a few turns with his hips to get better positioned between your legs. But Jungkook remembers how you complained just now. Does he have to teach you a lesson again?

"If you open your mouth again without my permission, I'll fuck you so hard you won't be able to sit up!" - He says into your lips. You smile provocatively. These words sound promising and arouse a burning desire.

"Let’s! Make me shut up…or scream." - You say with the same smile. Jungkook raises his eyebrows and is almost happy that you didn't listen to him. Now he's turning you into a mess. He warned you.

He fills your lips. Kissing you passionately with his tongue. His lips move insistently against yours. He bites your lower lip, releasing it with a tug. Jungkook starts to push you. Setting a normal pace at first.

It doesn't last long, at some point he straightens up and half gets out of you.

Then he lowers your legs and bends them at the knees and approaches you again. All this time, you do not take your eyes off each other.

He puts one hand on your chest and bends the other at the elbow and places it near your head. So you are pressed tightly together. He starts fucking you so deeply and hard that you roll your eyes in pleasure. Each of his thrusts is accompanied by the worst sound of your wet cunt. He sometimes kisses your lips.

Your neck tempts him. Jungkook runs his tongue around your neck to taste it. He sucks the skin on your chest and bites your erect nipples. You scream and moan at the same time. The pain of these kisses is too pleasant. You can't even imagine how you wear a dress with all this stuff on my neck and chest.

His fast movements change to slow ones. He slowly pushes his cock into you to the very end, and then picks up the pace again. Jungkook is like that insatiable man who wants to take maximum pleasure from you. Your tight cunt gives him the most pleasure of anyone he has ever fucked. Your nails dig into his skin. You're trying to cut through his biceps with one and the skin on his back with the other. You scream in his ear, and it's probably a good thing he stopped at the side of the woods on the way to the hotel, otherwise half the city would have heard you.

"Kook... I can't." - You said whimpering.

"Can't do what, baby?" - Jungkook asks breathlessly. You both are drenched in sweat and smell like sex.

"I...I...I can't take it." - You say breathlessly.

"Yes you can, my little slut. I have to fuck you hard!" - Jungkook assures you. You feel the knot in the bottom of your stomach about to burst and release the most blissful pleasure.

Jungkook can't help but moan as he feels your walls tighten around him. He realizes that he won't have time to get out of you because his orgasm comes so suddenly and quickly. You cum at the same time as Jungkook. You whimper his name and feel his hot sperm filling your vagina. When you're orgasming, you don't realize what just happened. Jungkook's cock twitches, filling you to the brim.

Your friend puts his head down on your shoulder and you both breathe frantically trying to catch your breath. When Jungkook softens inside you, you open your eyes and look up at the ceiling of the car.

"Did you just cum inside me?" - You ask in a slightly hoarse voice. You realize that now Jungkook is lying on top of you and his cock is inside you without a condom. He lifts his head from your shoulder and you notice a few strands of his bangs are strayed by sweat. He's been working hard. He has a worried and guilty look on his face.

"Fuck, baby, I didn't have time..." - He says, breathing deeply. You panic. Jungkook looks at you and realizes that you are terrified. But he knows that if you take emergency contraception in the first 72 hours, you won't get pregnant. He has had such cases and he knows it well. Unless, of course, you ovulated. "Everything is fine. You haven't ovulated, have you?" - Jungkook asks to make sure everything is okay.

"I did a few days ago." - You answer. Jungkook sighs in relief and you notice. He gently withdraws from you and the semen flows out of your entrance. Jungkook finds some napkins and helps you wipe yourself. You sit up and feel how sore everything is. Your pussy is swollen and your entrance is on fire. You can still phantom feel Jungkook's cock. He was right when he said you wouldn't be able to sit up.

"We'll go to the pharmacy now and I'll buy you some birth control pills. Everything will be fine, you won't get pregnant." - You put on your underwear and freeze when he talks about pregnancy. God, this can't be happening.

"Okay. But you're an asshole, I really can't sit down now." - You complain. Jungkook pulls you to him, cupping your face in his hands.

"You're so good, you accepted me so well." - Jungkook says and kisses you. Slowly and gently, savoring his favorite lips.

"I would say too well." - You joke as you pull away from his lips. Jungkook pecks your lips one last time and quickly gets dressed.

It seems like you've made up, but it's obvious that you haven't solved any problems. You need to take care of the immediate problem of the unwanted pregnancy first, and then you'll deal with everything else.

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[dannychai1617]

ao3 skin that i made!! (copy code under "keep reading")

it's a messy combination of pieces of code from other people's skins and my own changes

the header image is NOT MINE! it is "Pattern Galaxy Space Planets Vibrant Linear Universe" by Arncil on Redbubble, which i just used as an example for an image you could use!

here are some of the skins that i can remember using as part of this, but i've been building it for years so forgive me if i forget some:

Shortening long tag fields by Xparrot (on ao3)

Slim Shaded by AO3 (on ao3)

Lily Garden by tealtiam (on Tumblr)

AO3 Tag category coloring! by ao3css (on Tumblr)

come back here to my tips or leave a comment if you need some help customizing the code!

Background color: #26303C

Text color: #CBC6C3

Header color: #46626D

Accent color: #993F33

steps to create a new skin using this code:

log into ao3 account

go to dashboard >> skins

click "create site skin"

make sure TYPE is "site skin"

add a unique title

copy all code below

paste into field 'CSS'

click on "use wizard" at the top

copy and paste the four colors written above into their corresponding boxes

click SUBMIT

click USE

how to customize this skin:

FONT SIZE: at the very top of the code, change the "90%" to be bigger or smaller to change the font size within a fic

MAIN COLORS: to change the main colors, select "use wizard" when editing the skin and replace any of the four hex codes under "Background color:", "Text color:", "Header color:", and "Accent color:"

SECONDARY COLORS: find all hex codes within the code and change those numbers as you like! i changed all colors to match with the color palette of the header photo that i chose to make it feel cohesive

TAG COLORS: towards the end, the "relationship", "character", and "freeform" tags alternate three colors to make them easy to separate. in this skin they are all very similar, so you can change those to be whatever colors you like!

HEADER PHOTO: find the link towards the end of the code right before the warning tags and replace it with a link to any photo you like! it loops, so you don't have to worry about sizing or anything

FONT: i'm unsure how exactly to do this, but the in-fic font is currently set to Georgia Serif, so i suppose just go find that and replace it with your preferred font!

BORDER STYLES: wherever you see the code "border-style:", replace the word that comes after it with one of these options: none, solid, dashed, dotted, double, groove, ridge, inset, outset, or hidden

WARNING TAGS: at the very end of the code is a list of words or phrases that, when they appear in the tags of a fic, are highlighted in a contrasting color so that they are easy to avoid if necessary. you can add or remove those tags however you like, or change the warning color!

COPY AND PASTE ALL CODE BELOW

#workskin { font-size: 90%; } li.blurb .tags { max-height: 7.5em; overflow-y: auto; } #header { min-height: 0; } #header a, #header fieldset, #header ul.primary, #header ul.primary .current { border: 0; background: 0; } h1 a img { height: 50px; border: 0; } #header .landmark { clear: none; } #header ul.primary { background: rgba(0,0,0,0.65); border-bottom: 1px solid rgba(0,0,0,0.75); } #header ul.primary, #header ul.primary .current, ul.primary.actions a, #header ul.primary .current { color: #CBC6C3; } #header ul.primary .current, #header #search input, #header #search input:focus { background: rgba(0,0,0,0.25); color: #CBC6C3; box-shadow: inset 0 0 3px #131A2A; border-color: #131A2A; } .actions, .actions input { text-transform: lowercase; } blockquote.userstuff { font-family: "Mido", "AUdimat", "Ostrich Sans Rounded","Lucida Grande", sans-serif !important; position: relative; background: rgba(0,0,0,0.1); padding: 2%; border: 1px solid rgba(0,0,0,0.15); box-shadow: 0 0 2px rgba(0,0,0,0.4); } blockquote.userstuff:after { content: "\201D"; right: 0; top: auto; left: auto; } body, .userstuff { font-family: Mido, Georgia, serif; } .heading, .userstuff h3, .userstuff h4 { font-family: "CabinSketch", Georgia,serif; } #main .heading { color: #CBC6C3; } #inner .group, #inner .heading, fieldset, .verbose legend, table, table th, col.name, span.unread, span.replied { outline: none; background: transparent; border-color: #131A2A; border-style: double; box-shadow: none; border-radius: 2em; border-bottom-right-radius: 0; border-top-left-radius: 0; } #inner .group .group .group, col.name { border-style: double; border-color: #CBC6C3; box-shadow: 0 0 2px #000; } #inner .bookmark .user.module, #inner .wrapper { border: 0; border-radius: 0; border-top: 3px double #bbb; box-shadow: none; } .filters { font-size: 90%; } .toggled form, .dynamic form, .secondary, .dropdown { background: #fff url("/images/skins/textures/tiles/white-handmade-paper.jpg"); } a.tag, a.tag:visited, a.tag:link { display: inline-block; padding: 1px 3px; margin: 2px 0px; border: 2px solid #46626D; border-radius: 5px; } .commas li:after { content: ""; } h5.fandoms.heading { color: transparent; } .favorite a.tag { border: none; } .tags li.relationships:nth-of-type(3n+1) a.tag { background-color: #1d3954; } .tags li.relationships:nth-of-type(3n+2) a.tag { background-color: #264663; } .tags li.relationships:nth-of-type(3n+3) a.tag { background-color: #305475; } .tags li.characters:nth-of-type(3n+1) a.tag { background-color: #214154; } .tags li.characters:nth-of-type(3n+2) a.tag { background-color: #294c61; } .tags li.characters:nth-of-type(3n+3) a.tag { background-color: #31576e; } .tags li.freeforms:nth-of-type(3n+1) a.tag { background-color: #234e54; } .tags li.freeforms:nth-of-type(3n+2) a.tag { background-color: #2a585e; } .tags li.freeforms:nth-of-type(3n+3) a.tag { background-color: #316269; } .tags li.freeforms a.tag:hover, .tags li.characters a.tag:hover, .tags li.relationships a.tag:hover { background-color: #26303C; color: white; } #header .logo { display: none; } #header ul.primary { box-shadow: none; padding-top: 30px; padding-bottom: 30px; background: #FCC191 url(https://i.pinimg.com/564x/8c/bc/ae/8cbcae1760dc88ae8730566337a5d2eb.jpg); background-attachment: fixed; } li.blurb a.tag[href*="suicid"], [href*="suicide"], [href*="Suicide"], [href*="rape"], [href*="Rape"], [href*="consentual"], [href*="Consentual"], [href*="non-con"], [href*="consent issues"], [href*="Kidnapping"], [href*="kidnapping"], [href*="Canibalism"], [href*="cannibalism"], [href*="Cannibalism"], [href*="Dove"], [href*="dead dove do not eat"], [href*="murder"], [href*="Murder"], [href*="harm"], [href*="self harm"], [href*="Harm"], [href*="Torture"], [href*="abduction"], [href*="asphyxiation"], [href*="blood"], [href*="Blood"], [href*="death"], [href*="Death"], [href*="gore"], [href*="Gore"], [href*="incest"], [href*="Incest"], [href*="trauma"], [href*="Trauma"], [href*="torture"] { color: #000000; font-weight: bold; background-color: #993F33; }

[rythyme]

Introducing the Thai Drama AO3 Trends Dashboard! (Beta) 🇹🇭

Over the last several weeks or so I've been building an auto-scraping setup to get AO3 stats on Thai Drama fandoms. Now I finally have it ready to share out!

Take a look if you're interested and let me know what you think :)

(More details and process info under the cut.)

Main Features

This dashboard pulls in data about the quantity of Thai Drama fics over time.

Using filters, it allows you to break that data down by drama, fandom size, air date, and a select number of MyDramaList tags.

You can also see which fandoms have had the most new fics added on a weekly basis, plus the growth as a percentage of the total.

My hope is that this will make it easier to compare Thai Drama fandoms as a collective and pick out trends that otherwise might be difficult to see in an all-AO3 dataset.

Process

Okay -- now for the crunchy stuff...

Scraping 🔎

Welcome to the most over-complicated Google Sheets spreadsheet ever made.

I used Google Sheets formulas to scrape certain info from each Thai Drama tag, and then I wrote some app scripts to refresh the data once a day. There are 5 second breaks between the refreshes for each fandom to avoid overwhelming AO3's servers.

Archiving 📁

Once all the data is scraped, it gets transferred to a different Archive spreadsheet that feeds directly into the data dashboard. The dashboard will update automatically when new data is added to the spreadsheet, so I don't have to do anything manually.

Show Metadata 📊

I decided to be extra and use a (currently unofficial) MyDramaList API to pull in data about each show, such as the year it came out and the MDL tags associated with it. Fun! I might pull in even more info in the future if the mood strikes me.

Bonus - Pan-Fandom AO3 Search

Do you ever find it a bit tedious to have like, 15 different tabs open for the shows you're currently reading fic for?

While making this dash, I also put together this insane URL that basically serves as a "feed" for any and all new Thai drama fics. You can check it out here! It could be useful if you like checking for new fics in multiple fandoms at once. :)

Other Notes

Consider this dashboard the "beta" version -- please let me know if you notice anything that looks off. Also let me know if there are any fandoms missing! Thanks for checking it out!

The inspiration for this dashboard came from @ao3-anonymous 's AO3 Fandom Trend Analysis Dashboard, which I used as a jumping off point for my own data dash. Please give them some love <3

[tyrantisterror]

At Sea Without a Map Post-Script

After two months of so, my little writing experiment At Sea Without a Map has come to an end. And because I'm vain, I not only felt compelled to share it, but to talk about it in depth after the fact, so here we are. This is going to be long, though, so I'm not only going to break it into sections, but put it all under the cut for the sake of your dashboard. So go ahead and dive into the depths of the Sea of Monsters with me one more time!

Part 1: Never Stop Blowing Up

The writing process of Wizard School Mysteries Book 3 was really strained - not because of the book itself, mind you. When I was actually able to work on it, Book 3 came together really well - I think it required the least substantial rewrites of any my novels thus far. It's just that real life was kind of beating the shit out of me while I was trying to get it done - or maybe the better metaphor was that it was just slowly but steadily draining me of energy all the time. I'm honestly surprised I got the book out in roughly the same amount of time as the first two - by the way life had been treating me, it should have taken longer.

But when I got done with it I was accutely aware of how tired I was. I still had the creative drive, but fuck I needed something simple as a palette cleanser - something easy, and more importantly, something that was allowed to be bad. I needed something creative to do that was surplus to requirements and fully within its rights to suck ass so long as I had fun making it.

Around this time, I decided to rewatch Dimension 20's Never Stop Blowing Up. Brief explanation of what that is: Dimension 20 is an actual play show, i.e. a recording of people playing D&D and other TTRPGs. I'd say its reputation is built on the contrast of its main DM, Brennan Lee Mulligan, who makes these meticulously crafted campaign plans, and his chaotic band of improv comedian players who promptly derail those plans spectacularly. Like, a good deal of the show's humor comes from Emily Ashford or Ally Beardsly doing something so off-the-wall that it shatters whatever the scene was going to be and creates a far more absurd and zany spectacle in its place. Which is why Never Stop Blowing Up is pretty notable, because it's the one campaign where Brennan himself is the agent of chaos, fully unleashing his own brand of madness that the players struggle to keep up with. And fuck does he seem to have fun with it.

Of course, all of the analysis above is purely from the outside looking in - it's likely that a lot of the "chaos" is played up for the audience. But still... there is something to the idea of a person who's been working on meticulously structured stories letting loose and just doing something extremely stupid.

So I decided to give myself a Never Stop Blowing Up moment - a short story that would be simple by design, with no standards to live up to or goal beyond "have fun telling a silly little story." I then came up with a few key criteria:

It can't be set in the Midgaheim/ATOM universe. I don't want the burden of figuring out where this story would fit among others.

It's gotta be a romance. People who've read my books might have picked up on the fact that I like to write about people falling in love, for the same reason I like to write about fire-breathing reptiles and friendly monsters (i.e. I use writing to indulge in things I'll never experience in real life). I've only used romance as subplots in my fiction before, and tend to feel a bit guilty if I focus on it too long - like I'm being self indulgent. Well, this is all about self indulgence, so the romance should be front and center.

It's gotta be SIMPLE, episodic even. Not complex plotting required.

I almost chose my xenomorph romance for this, but I had developed its outline to the point where it would be too complex to fit. I then considered a sort of superhero story that could be pitched as "what if Bringing Up Baby but Katherine Hepburn's character is a Harley Quinn-esque supervillain and Cary Grant's character gets turned into some sort of horrifying genetic mutant in the first ten minutes." That one hit a weird roadblock when I got to the character brainstorming phase (the first phase of any writing project I do) - I was trying to figure out what the mad scientist who turns out Cary Grant-figure into a mutant would be named, came up with the name "Dr. Skullfuck," immediately realized that having a character named "Dr. Skullfuck" is a Mark Millar-ass writing move that I could not allow myself to do, but then couldn't stop thinking of the name "Dr. Skullfuck" and giggling, which just brought all thinking to a grinding halt on that project.

(I'll still probably do it someday, though - just, you know, without Dr. Skullfuck)

Inspiration struck again, though. I'd been getting into Epic: The Musical, a musical retelling of The Odyssey, and it put me in the mood for a sea monster story. But, more than that, it got me thinking about one particular archetype from sea monster stories - but that brings us to the next part of this Post Script...

Part 2: It Was Always About Calibani

Ok, so, one of the big changes Epic: The Musical made involved Odysseus's encounter with the sirens, and before you read more of my rambling, I'd like you to watch two animatics for the two songs in question here:

A summary: one of the sirens takes the form of Odysseus's wife to try and tempt him into getting in the water, Odysseus tricks her into giving him directions, captures her and the rest of her kind, and proceeds to have his men slaughter them horribly. In the OG story the sirens don't die - nor does their song involve imitating a man's wife, for that matter, it's just a really pretty song.

This is done for an important narrative purpose - Epic: The Musical is focused on analyzing the moral ambiguity of Odysseus, and how it is constantly challenged by the impossible choices he is forced to make in his attempt to get home. At this point in the musical, Odysseus has decided to stop trying to be a compassionate man, shirking all mercy in favor of utter ruthless pursuit of his goals. These two songs are meant to be unsettling as hell - this is the beginning of a series of heartless choices by both Odysseus and his men that will culminate in the mutiny and complete annihilation of Odysseus's crew, as well as Odysseus himself being so hopelessly stranded that nothing short of divine intervention will save him.

I bring this up because when I first heard these two songs - specifically while watching these two animatics - it, like... it devastated me. I was so horrified and sad, so shaken by it. And part of it was for the reasons outlined above, but admittedly that wasn't the gut reaction I had. No, my immediate reaction was, and I quoute my own broken brain verbatim here: "You can't kill the sirens! They're not for killing, they're for loving!"

...now, those of you who know me are probably not surprised by this very stupid sentiment coming from me. One of my more popular posts is just me talking about how down bad I would be for various folkloric monsters whose whole shtick is "looks like a pretty lady but Watch Out." But as a person filled with immense self loathing and doubt, my brain immediately looked at that very stupid sentiment I expressed and said, "Wait, no, that's fucking dumb, I'm fucking dumb. The sirens are remorseless murderers. These sirens in particular preyed upon a man's love for his wife, who he has not seen in twelve years, to convince him to let them kill him. They are, by all standards of morality, Very Fucking Evil, and if they were not women you would not feel bad about them getting killed."

And as my brain argued with itself over this topic, I got to thinking about the various monstrous/othered sea women of The Odyssey - not just the sirens, but the witch Circe, the nymph Calypso, the monsters Scylla and Charybdis. And I thought about the others of their kind in other myths and folktales - selkies, mermaids, etc.

There's an archetype of sea monster that focuses entirely on one specific anxiety sailors are prone to, namely the fact that (for a good deal of human history) being on a boat meant spending a lot of time away from women. The horror of this monster is how it uses that desire for female company to tempt people into danger - like a mirage, it leads you to expose yourself to danger in pursuit of an illusory comfort.

But, unlike real world mirages, these monstrous sea women DO exist in their stories. More than that, they're often, like, sad and lonely. Their narrative purpose is just to be a temptation, but that doesn't change the fact that they do have lives of their own in these worlds. And, softie that I am, I can't help feeling sad for them, especially the ones who actually seem to want the same companionship the sailors they tempt want. Sailors don't stay with their Circes, they don't marry their Calypsos. The sirens live on a barren rock, alone, Scylla is left to wallow in misery at her monstrous form, and the selkie always has to leave for fear of being trapped by a person who won't love her on her terms.

I realized I had my hook for this simple, easy, silly little sea monster romance story: I was going to give a sea woman the happy ending she'd never get from anyone else.

Sailor may be the protagonist, but make no mistake: At Sea Without a Map was always, always, ALWAYS about Calibani.

The goal with Calibani was simple: I was going to set up a fairly standard Monstrous Sea Woman, but where other stories would let her be in one episode of the travel narrative and move on, this one would stick around. She'd be an unambiguous predator of human beings - an open and admitted maneater - but she would have no true malice to her. She, like all predators, eats what she can get to survive, and it just so happens that she's adapted to eat humans. And the story would pose the same question to the reader that my brain posed to me during Different Beast: is there any way you could make a siren-style sea monster sympathetic? Can you make a normal person who doesn't have my particular brain rot look at a maneating siren and think, "You're not supposed to kill her, you're supposed to love her!"

One of the few unavoidable plot points of At Sea Without a Map was that Calibani and Sailor's relationship would become romantic. What kind of romance it was could have varied substantially - it could have been one-sided, it could have been toxic, it could have been far more tragic OR far more comedic. But it was always, always going to be a romance of some sort - the goal of this experiment was to make you, the reader, love Calibani. All else was icing on the cake.

I decided to base Calibani's personality on Miranda from The Tempest - i.e. a sweet girl who is both wordly and naive, who understands the strange setting of our "lost at sea" story far better than the audience viewpoint character does, but views the mundane world of the audience viewpoint character with wonder and naiveté. In fact I almost named her Miranda outright... except I already had a character in the setting I chose for this story who had that name, and as an allusion to the same Shakespearean character no less. So I settled on naming her after Miranda's adoptive sibling (of sorts), Caliban - more fitting in some ways, as Caliban is a fish-human hybrid who is arguable more native to the magic island in The Tempest than Miranda herself.

(Calibani isn't the only Tempest name homage, either - her mother, Sycorax, takes her name directly from Caliban's unseen but oft-spoken of witch mother. Dr. Antonia Warefore takes her first name from Antonio, one of the human villains in The Tempest who hopes to use being lost at sea as a way to perform a coup. And the mothman Iriel takes her name from Ariel, the wind spirit in The Tempest who aids the wizard Prospero in controlling the magic island. If Sailor has a "real" name, it's probably either Ferdinand or Miranda, the two lovers who manage to blend civilization and the wilderness together with their romance.)

Visually, I wanted Calibani to not be any common archetype of sea monster woman, but rather something that evokes the popular images while still being her own thing. She's not a mermaid or a siren or a selkie - she's basically "what if a sea serpent was also a girl." In-universe, she's chubby because she, like all marine megafauna, needs blubber to survive. Out-of-universe, she's chubby because I've found that routinely drawing cute chubby girls is good for my mental health.

Part 3: CYOA

Now, while we live in a post-Muncher society where shame and cringe are emotions only the cowardly should experience, I am nonetheless Very Catholic about expressing my own feelings of, like, liking girls and shit. I cannot help feeling guilty when publicly expressing adoration of women without, like, an excuse - it's gotta be a joke or something, you know? I can't be genuine about it, or else Jesus will beat me with a cane for disrespecting women with my lecherous gaze.

But luckily I've cultivated a loyal audience of fellow monsterfuckers, which meant I had an excuse lined up: if I made this a choose your own adventure type deal, a story with audience participation, then you all would be my accomplices. And Jesus can't cane all of us! He doesn't have enough hands! I found a loophole bigger than his stigmata!

Plus I love collaborative story-telling - there's a thrill in not having total control of where the narrative is going. As Brennan Lee Mulligan must know, there's a joy in having to deal with the chaos thrown your way by letting others grab the figurative ball, even if just for a moment.

Part 4: Offbeat Melody

Since I did not want to set this story in Midgaheim, I decided to steer myself away from a vaguely medieval setting altogether. But I also didn't want to limit myself with the need for "realism" that putting it in a normal sea would require, and making a new setting whole cloth would start pushing this project into "not easy" territory.

Luckily, I had a setting lying around that I hadn't played with in a while, which just so happened to have a location that was PERFECT for the sort of Never Stop Blowing Up style madness I was aiming for. For a few years I ran a Monster of the Week TTRPG campaign called Offbeat Melody, and one of its core setting elements was taking the goblin universe hypothesis in paranormal science (yeah it's a real hypothesis) to an illogical extreme. We had specifically seen glimpses of the Sea of Monsters in Offbeat Melody, i.e. the parallel universe where monsters like Nessie, Ogopogo, Champ, and the like all hail from. Well, why not have a whole story set there? It's literally a universe devoted solely to creating sea monsters - what better place to strand our modern Odysseus?

Offbeat Melody was always sort of a Never Stop Blowing Up project, or at least NSBU adjacent. Some of my most unhinged story-telling moments are in that campaign - you could make a supercut of just the "commercial breaks" in the various sessions and it'd basically be an I Think You Should Leave episode. Taking one obscure corner of its multiversal world and exploring it in detail was perfect for this project.

Part 5: Monster by Monster

With our main romance as sorted out as could be for a CYOA story, it was time to figure out the "episodes" of this sea voyage. I settled on there being ten to roughly align with The Odyssey - just in terms of number, mind you, not in a one-to-one comparison. The first was, obviously, Calibani herself, which left nine more slots for me to fill with monsters. Let's go through them together in brief:

Tree Storks - any lost at sea story eventually has to get its protagonist into an island at some point, but this immediately begs the question, "Why don't they just stay on the island where it's safe?" The answer to that question has to be, "it's not safe there, actually." The Odyssey does this quickly and cleverly with a one two punch: the first island seems safe until you realize the food on it brainwashes you into forgetting everything except your desire to eat it, and the second island is full of delicious sheep but also giants who will eat you just as easily as they eat the sheep. When other islands show up in the story later, you immediately regard them with suspicion, because you don't know HOW they're going to be fucked up, but they definitely will be. My goal with the second episode was to establish the same sort of danger - that land is NOT safe, that islands WILL be fucked up and dangerous in ways you might not expect.

I also wanted to establish that this is not just a sea of monsters, but a very WEIRD sea of WEIRD monsters. It couldn't be any old monster on this island - it had to be one that was unique, unexpected, and maybe just a bit silly while still being menacing.

I've always felt that there's a lot of un-mined horror potential in storks, cranes, and herons - any bird with a long neck and spear-like beak it uses to stab smaller creatures from above. Just imagine yourself in a frog's place in the world - tiny, going about your business, when suddenly something shoots down at you from above and impales you before you even feel the shadow fall over your face. Or perhaps you did see the shadow - some of these birds spread their wings to create shade specifically to attract fish, and then spear the poor little bastards.

Well, what do people often look to islands for when out at sea? Shade - the shade of a palm tree. And palm fronds kinda resemble feathers, don't they? Wouldn't it be both ludicrous and terrifying is there was a stork big enough to mimic a palm tree - and wouldn't that be a DEVIOUS trap for a sun-drenched sailor to fall for? So the Tree Storks were born.

The Globster - I made a list of sea monster archetypes in the early planning for this project, and one I wanted to include was a kraken, i.e. some sort of tentacled sea beast. But I didn't want to do JUST a big squid or octopus, or even a riff on them. I wanted to take the idea of "big sea monster with lots of tentacles" into a stranger direction.

Since the Sea of Monsters is explicitly the home universe of lake and sea monster cryptids, I thought it might be fun if ASWaM's kraken equivalent was a globster - just a big ball of rotten meat. I love drawing monstrous faces, so I decided it'd just be, like, MADE of hideous rotten faces, all melting and congealing together, with its tentacles doubling as the tongues of its many mouths. A perfectly wretched image that, like the Tree Storks, would do well to establish how Fucked things could get in this setting. Plus similar monsters had appeared in Offbeat Melody, which would make for a fun sense of familiarity for the, like, five or so readers of mine who had listened to that campaign before.

Captain Peter & the Dolphin - Another thing I did in the early planning stages of this project was make a list of the different sea voyage stories I know and love, the most contentious of which is The Life of Pi. That's a story that I love on a literal level but kind of hate on a figurative level - its whole theme/message is that doubt is the worst thing you can have, that if you don't commit to believing something with zealous conviction you are a coward. As a person who thinks doubt is valid, that "I don't know" is sometimes the ONLY truly valid answer to a question, I have issues with that message.

But I can't help loving the beautifully ludicrous idea of a non-anthropomorphic tiger sailing the ocean on a big Odyssey of its own. Like, if that story didn't actively hate me for being agnostic, it would be one of my favorites.

So I decided to, you know, just steal the idea of a tiger Odysseus. The tiger in The Life of Pi is named Richard Parker. Richard Parker also happens to be the name of Peter Parker's dad. Hence we get Captain Peter - the figurative son of Richard Parker, if you will. And to ratchet up the absurdity of a tiger Odysseus, I made him a pirate and the sole sailor of his voyage. Somehow, this tiger has manned a boat on his own.

Captain Peter was intended to be the hero of another story - a sign for the readers that it IS possible for a stranded person (or, in this case, tiger) to survive out here. To that end, he had to rescue our heroes from another threat, but not one that would be interesting enough to take the focus off of the tiger pirate. Originally I planned for that threat to just be a big shark, but I ended up liking my shark design too much to put it in a role that small, so I quickly designed a nasty dolphin for the role instead. I think that worked out well, honestly.

Dr. Neptune - Episodes 5 and 6 were the mid-point of this journey, so I wanted the two monsters of those to escalate things significantly. I figured episode 5 was probably a good place to FINALLY give some meaningful exposition on what was going on, and there are a lot of stories about mad scientists doing weird shit on islands in my big list of sea voyage stories I love. So we get Dr. Neptune, a classical brain-in-a-jar mad scientist who's affable enough to give more-or-less accurate exposition but loony enough to be a problem. This also felt like a good spot to remind the reader that Calibani is not just a girl with a tail but rather a Sea Monster herself, and one that we'd been making stronger by allying with.

With his human-but-not-quite nature and cyclops eye, Dr. Neptune could sort of be seen as the Polyphemus of this story, couldn't he?

The Crocodisle - One of the sea monster archetypes on my list was "the island that's actually a sleeping monster," of which there are many in mythology and folklore. My favorite is the Jasconius from the voyage of St. Brendan, mainly because it's more or less benign and actually comes back to help St. Brendan and his crew at the end of the story. I always love when I can find an old story with a friendly monster in it.

When thinking of my own spin on the island monster concept, I remembered the only Magic the Gathering card I had as a kid, which I still have and love to this day: The Sandbar Crocodile. This card already inspired Crocogon's color scheme in The Atomic time of Monsters, but I felt I could go to that well again one more time, and so made a crocodile that wasn't just a sandbar, but a whole damn island to itself. And, like Jasconius, it turns out he's pretty chill.

I did not think of the pun name "Crocodisle" until I was actually writing the chapter in question.

The Femdom Mermaids - These three were a late addition to the roster. When I had Calibani bring up mermaids early in the story, I realized as soon as I wrote her rant about them that we'd HAVE to meet some later on in the story.

The readers had significantly shaped Calibani and Sailor's romance by this point, and I decided that it could be useful to have a chapter that was devoted to showing definitively how these two were good for each other. I thought the mermaids could provide a good contrast: have them act out a seemingly more benign take on the monstrous sea women trope (they abduct our hero to protect and care for them!) only for it to quickly feel MORE deranged than Calibani's comparatively simple desire just to eat him.

The spirit of Calibani's rant about mermaids was taken from weird* girls I knew in high school complaining about cheerleaders, so I wanted the mermaids to look like the sea monster equivalent of popular kids to Calibani's chubby weird girl. Two of them got the names of famous beauties - Helyne = Helen of Troy, Clio = Cleopatra.

(*when I say "weird" I mean it in a complimentary and affectionate sense)

Bob, meanwhile, kinda... rebelled, I guess? Before I had names for them, I listed "bob" by her as just, like, a descriptor for her hair cut, but then I liked it as her name, and once she was named Bob she became more than just a mean popular girl. She was a weirdo too, the little punching bag of the two mean popular girls who did their dirty work and smiled through their abuse because hey, at least they included her. It gave the trio an easily defined dynamic, helped make two of the three more visibly nasty, and gave us comic relief in an arc that could very well have gotten too uncomfortable otherwise.

And I guess it worked - readers REALLY loved Bob, and were very vocal about it, and I realized mid-arc that I had accidentally made her too likable to just leave in this arc. So Bob got to be rescued from her awful friend group thanks to readers like YOU.

Lord Ironteeth - yeah, this was the shark that was too cool to be a minor threat. When I drew his noggin, I realized he would need a chapter of his own, one with gravitas. I decided he'd specifically be the threshold guardian -once we beat him, we'd know for sure how to get home, even if there were a few more threats in store.

Spindle Inc and Sycorax - when I was a kid I used to have this recurring nightmare about being on some sort of underwater sea station that had this huge sea serpent trapped inside it. I'd look at the sea serpent from a window within the station and see it coiling in its tank, only for it to look at me with fury. In that glance I would suddenly realize two things with absolute clarity: first, it was going to break free and kill everyone, and second, we deserved that destruction for what we had done to it. The terror of the dream was less that the sea serpent was going to break free, and more the guilt of knowing that all the mayhem that was about to unfold was our fault to begin with.

I thought that would be fun to homage with the penultimate chapter of this story. OBVIOUSLY the sea serpent was Calibani's mom, obviously the trauma of its capture was why Calibani grew into a predator that specializes in hunting humans, obviously we would have to free the sea serpent despite that running counter to Sailor's goal of getting home. Easy, easy, easy plot point to include.

Spindle, Inc. is the primary antagonistic force in Offbeat Melody, so they easily slotted into the role of the arrogant humans who captured this monster for nefarious and selfish motives. They could tie a lot of other plot threads together too - Dr. Neptune was a scientist who worked for them as a contractor only to get screwed over (i.e. they stranded him in the Sea of Monsters, expecting him to die, and then used his research to make their own base of operations in it), we'd learn of him through a spindle briefcase left behind by some unfortunate rogue agent who got eaten by the Globster while he was trying to escape, hell they could even be one of the possible origins of Sailor themself (more on that later). Very useful villains, Spindle.

The Abyssal Mother - I knew the last sea monster would need a lot of punch to it. I briefly considered just a big whale - the Moby Dick to Spindle's corporate Ahab - but it felt underwhelming after all that came before. So I went for arguably the most dramatic possible sea monster, a full on Cthulhu-style elder god. If you're a frequent follower of this blog, you might know I have particularly high standards for Eldritch Abominations, so I realized this was going to be a pretty big challenge for me to live up to, and decided to keep the cthulhu in question reserved to the last few entries as a result - the less it appears, the less it has to live up to.

I realized I had a good angle when my experiments with the Cthulhu "squid for a head" concept ended up having a face framed in shadow - you know, the same visual that our protagonist has in most appearances. That provided some very juicy parallels between the two that made this final monster feel particularly noteworthy to me, ones that I'll leave you to ponder, since they tie into...

Part 6: Themes

I did not set out to have a theme in this story. I just wanted to make a sailor and a sea monster kiss. That was my only goal.

But I really don't begin with theme in ANY of my writing. I figure out topics I want to address, but for all my novels I feel like the themes didn't start coming together until about halfway through the first draft, when enough of the elements of the story had been set down and interacted with each other enough for me to realize what I was saying with them. A huge part of my second and third drafts for my novels have focused on making the themes of my stories more concrete and unified.

Well, ASWaM is very much a first draft of a story, but it's a simple enough story that I think the theme found itself pretty well despite lacking subsequent drafts to refine it.

ASWaM is about doubt and direction. It's about being adrift in a world that is in many ways hostile by nature, about not feeling like you're where you're supposed to be or even WHO you're supposed to be, and about setting off aimlessly in the hope that maybe you'll find your way to that mythical land of "what my life is supposed to be."

When I began the story, Sailor had amnesia and wore clothes that obscured their identity as a way to make it easier for anyone to step into Sailor's role. Sailor had to feel like You, the Reader, and so we don't know their name, their gender, their eye color, their hair color, even their skin color (note that their hands are always wearing gloves, and their face is always in shadow).

But it also meant Sailor is, well, undefined, at least at the start of the story. Sailor doesn't know who they are, what they are, how they came to be. Sailor feels distinctly that they should be Something Else, should be Somewhere Else, should be Someone Else, should not be who/what/where they are. Sailor is plagued by doubt, by a need to go in a different direction, by a need to be other than they are.

This initially contrasts with Calibani, who begins the story very confident that she is doing exactly what she was designed to be doing and acting exactly like she should be. As they interact, they begin to shift each other in opposite directions - Calibani questions her existence and nature, sometimes to a self destructive degree, and Sailor begins to find something about who and where they are that they like. They find a healthy middle ground together - doubtful enough to want to be better people, but with love for themselves that allows them to not feel the need to up-heave their lives entirely.

I knew at the start that I would build an expectation for there to be some answer to the question of who Sailor is and where they came from, because those are the questions that begin the whole narrative. I brainstormed a number of answers to those questions, but once I got a few chapters into writing the story and saw this theme of doubt developing, I realized I couldn't answer them. From a thematic standpoint, the doubt HAD to remain. So I gave hints to possible answers, bits of evidence to support the possibility of them being true, but never planted a smoking gun that answered it for sure.

Sailor can't know the answer because NONE of us know the answer. Outside of blind Life of Pi style faith, you cannot know for sure that you are living the life you're supposed to live. All you can do is figure out whether you're happy with the life you've got, or if you need a change. Sailor will never know who they are supposed to be, but they did learn who they are, and they love that person now.

For those curious, the possible Sailor origins are:

Occam's Razor: they're exactly what Dr. Neptune theorized, i.e. a human who got stranded in the Bermuda Triangle (or the Devil's Triangle or any other number of paranormal triangles) and fell into the Sea of Monsters. The trauma of that experience gave them amnesia. It's just brain damage and bad luck.

A Spindle Experiment: Dr. Warefore mentions that Spindle has been trying to find a way to make a human who can evolve like the denizens of the Sea of Monsters. Sailor may well be an attempt to do just that, perhaps one they wrote off as a failure and abandoned (they do that a lot)

A Deep One: Sailor is the offspring of one of the denizens of the Sea of Monsters (most likely the Abyssal Mother herself) who has somehow been tricked into believing they are human, to the point where they seem to be human to everyone else, even other monsters. Maybe a human summoned a sea monster to breed with on earth, and Sailor ended up being subconsciously drawn back to the Sea by their blood. Maybe Sailor never actually lived on earth at all, but was only made to THINK they had as part of the transformation into a human.

The Platonic Ideal of a Sailor: the Sea of Monsters is full of archetypal concepts, and arguably a sailor trying to find their way home is just as archetypal as any sea serpent, mermaid, or kraken. Our only proof that humans aren't native to the Sea of Monsters is Dr. Neptune, and he's not as reliable an expert as he claims to be.

This theme of doubt and direction also made the compass more important to the narrative than a simply mechanic for audience participation - a compass, after all, gives direction, and the feeling that Sailor is not where they're supposed to be, that they need to head in a different direction, is ultimately the catalyst of the plot. The compass is, in many ways, the antagonist of the story - the force that keeps Sailor from accepting themself. I realized this a little after I started making the different directions have personalities - initially they just represented broad concepts (North = follow conventional wisdom ala the North Star, South = preserve your short-term self interest at all costs, East = act with curiosity and be willing to take calculated risks, and West = throw caution to the wind and do anything that seems novel and exciting), but over time they became little characters themselves.

Since it was our thematic antagonist, I decided to pepper in some ideas about what the compass might be in-universe - and, in a move that would no doubt frustrate the compass, we also don't know for sure which of those is "correct." Is the compass a poltergeist, some amalgamation of dead sailors who try to steer other lost souls home? Is it a malign entity that leeches off of those desperate enough to seek its aid, living through them while pretending to aid them? Is it a device Spindle made to lure sailors to their clutches, OR to guide their experiments in human/monster hybrids? Was it a cursed item that forced a sea monster to assume a human shape? Who can say - the compass sure can't, it can only tell you a direction to go in.

Part 7: Q&A

Since this was an interactive story, I felt it was only fitting to add one last interactive element to this post-script write up, and some of your happily obliged me by sending in questions.

When I noticed how fast readers were falling for Calibani, I figured there was a good chance we'd end up staying in the Sea of Monsters. By chapter 7, I figured it was more or less a given, and by the end of the Lord Ironteeth encounter I was almost 100% sure Sailor would remain at sea. There was always a chance, though - while a look at the polls shows that the audience got more and more on the same page towards the end, there were always dissenting voices, and the desire to get an answer to the question of Who Sailor Was remained strong, as a number of people kept trying to find angles where they could get that AND stay with Calibani.

I was surprised early on by how easily the audience fell in love with Calibani, to the point where I made a few posts commenting on it. I mean, I shouldn't have been - as I said earlier, I have cultivated an audience of fellow monsterfuckers on here, and I know at least a few of them saw my bait and knew they could get me to be freaky in a way we found mutually agreeable (thank you all again for helping me escape being caned by Jesus for being horny).

Like, we REPEATEDLY ignored developing the plot in the Tree Storks chapter for several days just to spend more time with Calibani - something that I enjoyed immensely (this whole thing was an excuse for me to write and draw a cute chubby sea monster girl as much as possible aftter all) but also knew as a storyteller was not what most would consider a good story call. I like how it turned out, but it defied conventional narrative wisdom, you know? I was surprised.

On the other side of the coin, I was also surprised by how the audience NEVER chose an option that was humorously disastrous. I gave plenty of them, and, like, generally in collaborative storytelling there will be at least one moment where your collaborators decide to do the really, REALLY stupid thing that makes everything spiral out of control really quickly. I figured at least once the audience would choose the troll response, but no, you guys worked hard to keep Sailor and Calibani alive. You refused to let them hurt each other, refused to let them throw themselves into danger, refused to imperil them for your own chuckles. It was very sweet and unexpected.

I say "you refused" but to be fair it's not like NO ONE voted for the troll options - they generally got a handful of votes, just one that was beaten by a landslide of more reasonable options. Hopefully those of you who voted for the troll options enjoyed Bob throwing you a bone by disintegrating Dr. Warefore - that was my consolation prize to you.

Yes. I knew at the beginning that there would be two endings for this story: either Sailor leaves the Sea and goes home, or Sailor stays there forever. Or, you know, Sailor dies as a result of you guys choosing several stupid options in a row, but as stated above you guys avoided those scenarios pretty decisively.

Had Sailor gone home, the following would have occurred: first, they would forget everything that happened in the Sea of Monsters. Second, they would wake up in a hospital, having been found in the Atlantic Ocean by a human-recovery charity run by... oh, isn't that funny, some tech company named Spindle Inc! Spindle would foot the medical bills and even offer Sailor a job, but Sailor would decline because even now they're still not sure what Spindle even does. Sailor would go back to their life and find it familiar and utterly mundane, but not particularly happy. Their father died when they were 18, their mother was never in the picture, they have no siblings. They worked an office job and were sort of a nonentity - that position has long since been filled, but Sailor gets a new job and lives out much the same life: simple, mundane, dreary. Every now and then they get a pang of desire to leave, to go to sea, but they push it out of mind. They never even see the ocean again as long as they live.

Sailor would have gotten the normal life they thought they were supposed to have, the normal memories and name and identity, the mundane life of a normal person. And they just had to trade everything they found in the Sea of Monsters to get it. A question is answered, a direction is followed, but is it the right answer, the right direction?

Well, I think doubt would have remained.

I had a very vague idea for there to be some sort of man-eating giant in, like, a crystal castle. He got cut to make way for the mermaids.

I wanted to fit in a big whale and a giant crustacean, but there wasn't room or an interesting angle for me to want to make room for them. Saved for a possible sequel, I suppose.

I also wanted to have a scene with, like, DOZENS of sea monsters, including some of the ones from Offbeat Melody, but the goal of "this should be EASY you dumbass" made me kill that idea pretty quick.

Thank you!

The primary inspirations were:

The Odyssey and Epic: the Musical

The voyage of St. Brendan

The many "weird shit happens on an island" movies in Toho's filmography, i.e. Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster, Son of Godzilla, Yog Monster of the Deep, Matango, etc.

The Island of Dr. Moreau

The Boy and the Heron

Ponyo (specifically Ponyo's parents - I wanted Sailor to have the same desperate energy as that wizard who fucks the giant sea goddess)

The Life of Pi

Slay the Princess (perhaps most obvious in the use of second person narration, multiple voices in the protagonist's head, and falling in love with a creature that has tried to kill you at least once)

I'm going to use this to springboard to a related point in a second, but first a genuine yet humorous answer: Yes, absolutely yes, I am enough of a big romantic sap that I would give everything about my life away to be with a person who loves me and explore a world of monsters in a heartbeat. Hell, I would have jumped in the water the minute Calibani asked and died with her fangs in my neck and a smile on my face. I am dumb this way. Do not follow my example.

On that related point, though... Most stories like this, I daresay ALL stories like this that I know of, end with the hero abandoning the fantasy world in favor of reality, never to return. And that seems like the proper choice and lesson on the surface - we don't want to tell audiences to give up their real life in favor of a fantasy, after all. That's encouraging escapism, and that's not healthy!

But, like... textually speaking, the fantastical world IS real to the characters in these stories. And it's often not really an escape - was Sailor's life devoid of conflict and suffering in the Sea of Monsters? Fuck no! It's just that they figured out how to deal with that conflict and suffering - they built skills and a support system, they adapted, they learned how to overcome what was there.

I think it can be argued that sometimes the return to a "normal" world is, in itself, an escape - the idea that your life can spiral into chaos but that's ok, you can just reset everything and go back to The Way It Was and Should Be is just as unrealistic and unhealthy an idea as You Should Escape to A Better World. Sometimes your plans for your life fall apart, sometimes you're thrown into a place you never intended to go, sometimes you have to learn skills you never anticipated needing and ally with people you never thought you'd befriend to deal with problems you never dreamed you'd have to overcome. And sometimes it's ok to look at your derailed life, your Not Where You Should Be life, and say, "Well, I've learned how to live here... maybe I can stay."

Especially if there's a cute chubby sea monster girl who loves you.

Bob was never supposed to appear past chapter 7, but about halfway through that chapter I realized the audience and I myself would be heartbroken if we didn't rescue her. Definitely for the best - she provided some well-needed comic relief in the final chapters.

This is gonna sound snarky, but, yeah - there were 58 choices with four options a piece, and we only chose one of the four. While some of the options would have similar results, almost none would have had identical outcomes. And some would have been VERY different.

Like, to go back to the beginning: when Calibani attacked, we could either throw a net on her, harpoon her, try to drive around her, or hide below deck. We picked the net, but for the other three options:

Harpooning would result in us hitting her in the thigh, causing her enough pain that she collapses on our deck and we, horrified at the violence we committed, just sort of push on. Calibani would be wounded for at least the next chapter, perhaps longer, and significantly weaker (and probably harboring a great deal of hidden resentment while also being genuinely scared of Sailor). She would be vulnerable during the stork attack, forcing Sailor to take a more active role in that chapter.

Trying to steer around her would result in us essentially fighting her with our boat, resulting in the boat capsizing and Calibani getting tangled up in it. We'd wake up alone on Stork Island and have to travel in search of our boat, alone and vulnerable among man-eating trees. We'd run into Calibani again, also beached and in trouble, end up recruiting her to help us get our boat out of the sand.

Hiding below deck would end in a sea storm that leaves us inside our boat as it's beached on Stork Island. We'd fend off the storks alone, and run into Calibani once we get our boat out to sea, as she got away more or less unscathed.

All of these would have majorly changed the trajectory of our relationship with Calibani and our identity as Sailor, despite seeming to have the same component parts on the surface. Now account for how similarly slight changes in the other options could have gone, and we could have had a very different story indeed.

Part 8: Our Girl

I just think she's neat!

[joojconverts]

          4t3 Conversion of ICFB's Summer of '59 Set

A 4t3 conversion of a Barbie inspired set for all your sims, made originally by IceCreamForBreakfast, now to ts3!

As a preparation for the (surely iconic) Barbie movie releasing on the next couple of weeks, I decided to convert this super cute set which I downloaded as soon as I saw on my dashboard! Hope you like it! Enjoy! <3

————— —————

Known Problems:

There are two seams on the bikini top that I have no idea how to fix. They don't show up on Blender, Milkshape, TSRW, and not even CAS. just in-game, which is so annoying. I hope they don't bother you!

If you find any more problems, please let me know!

LIGHTING GLITCHES ONLY APPEAR ON CAS!

Note that teens and elders have neck gaps. This is sadly the price for having them available! For teens, try using this and this slider by gruesim!

————— —————

ALL OG CREDITS GO TO @ice-creamforbreakfast​! IT’S NOT MY MESHES, AND IT’S NOT MY TEXTURES, I JUST CONVERTED THEM TO THE SIMS 3!

————— —————  

NOTES (PLEASE READ):

This set is quite low poly, since with most clothes I baked the textures onto sims' bodies with thornowl's technique, and that's the lowest possible polycount for clothes. The accs are also low poly. The only meshed clothes are Ken's shirt and both rompers, which are also pretty low. The children's swimsuit's skirt is really low poly so I don't even consider it, and the hairs are also gameplay friendly, they're about 6K.

Some outfits (and the sunglasses) have some beachy and tropical vibes presets for you to choose from, including the romper's flamingo one and the children's swimsuit leafs one (main presets for both)! Of course, all of them have recolorable presets as well! I hope you like them!

The hat has three versions: one for adults, one for children and one for toddlers. They're all unissex and hat-slider compatible! I adapted the adults' version to the Brigitte hair, so it'll fit nicely without having to move the sliders!

The sunglasses have two versions: a regular one, that works just like usual glasses, and one that works like a hat, which means you can move with the hat slider. As seen on the preview, I already adapted it to the Barb hair, but you can use it on whatever hair you want with no problem!

Now come on Barbie let's go partyyy!

SimFileShare |  Dropbox

☕   buy me a coffee or become a patron!

————— —————

Credits:

@ice-creamforbreakfast​​ for all the meshes and textures; Original post

💖 @katsujiiccfinds​ @kpccfinds​  @xto3conversionsfinds​ @emilyccfinds

[stranger-opinions]

maybe it's not a writers-block; maybe you just need a break

creativity is a muscle, right?

you need to exercise it to keep it in good shape, to have it ready when you need it and don't we all love those hyperfocused sprints of writing where the words just spill out of our fingertips...

but muscles get sore when you overuse them, will strain when you force them past their limits, they need nourishment to stay healthy and in shape

fandom today has a competitive atmosphere. many wouldn't admit that; it's supposed to be fun after all. just vibing with our mutuals, playing with the blorbos having a fun time online to scratch a few itches.

but the truth is that it can become a lot of pressure rather fast.

putting out several k of (edited) writing a month, setting up painstakingly formatted posts with the right tags and a fun header we spent hours on to look effortlessly cool and eye-catching just to hit post and then feel... nervous. excited too, sure...

but damn, when will the next chapter be finished? or the next one shot? will there be enough time to put a few blubs in between so that the few people who actually seem to care won't forget about us and move on?

writing for writing's sake is a nice notion. the myth of the self-sustaining artist who needs nothing more than a passion and their tools of choice.

but shit isn't just created out of nothing.

what has that all to do with the title of this post do you ask?

very few people can just keep going and going making art like that without needing any breaks and a good portion of those people very likely have very different conditions than most of us have with full-time jobs, families, school and so on.

For many of us writing is a main outlet, an important hobby and a safe space but that still doesn't change that it is a creative hobby, an outlet that demands energy: emotional, mental and physical (typing for hours is hard work if you want to believe it or not) and that sometimes makes it impossible to accept that we just need a fucking break.

"writers-block", in my own experience, is my brain telling me that something is off and that it's on strike until I fucking fix that.

and sometimes it's just that I need a break.

that I need to recharge my creative batteries, take in things that inspire me, that make me happy and get me excited without having to make anything myself. to just be. take some walks amongst trees, watch a new series, read a new book, go into a deep dive of some random topic on wikipedia until I don't know where the fuck I started from.

sometimes I just need to log out, cut the overstimulation of a never ending dashboard, turn off what everybody else on tumblr is doing, how much everbody is putting out, get away from my frustration about "my flopped fic" or the latest fandom drama and reconnect with the real reason I am doing this.

the love for stories and the source material.

for some people those breaks can be as short as two days, for other is might be weeks or months and that is not only okay but totally normal.

sometimes you might realize that the reason you are not writing is that you actually don't want to. sometimes you just want to daydream without the extra work sometimes you're just not in a writing mood and it's not much deeper than that.

that doesn't have to mean you're done with your blorbos. it just means that there are more valid and fun ways to play with them.

don't worry, the fandom will still be there when you decide to pick up the keyboard again. maybe with less people, maybe with many different people but you will always find someone who cares. those who have moved on to different things not come back wouldn't likely have stayed if you had powered through.

fandom shouldn't be a you're in or you're out thing but a place you come to when you want to.

contentification of fandom has had a lot of negative effects on the way we create and so many people fade from their hobby because they simply burn themselves out to a point where it leaves a scar.

so. find something that makes you happy that does not require you to invest too much creational energy. rest those muscles as long as it takes.

nothing you can get on tumblr or ao3 is worth the sore brain, the frustration with yourself and the stress you add onto your mental health ontop of everything else in your life.

recharge, reevaluate, reconnect

have fun

[everliving-everblaze]

Tips for Engaging in Fandom

Here are my tips for engaging with fandom in a productive and healthy way, from someone who has been in the KotLC fandom for seven years.

When engaging with other posts:

Block liberally. I block all confession/anonymous opinion blogs, as well as haters of my favorite characters and ships (and people who hate a lot in general).

Unfollow liberally, too. You can even break the mutual! Nothing is stopping you! I've stayed friends with people after unfollowing them, even.

Don't like, don't read. If something is upsetting you, move on. Don't feed it.

Filter tags you don't want to see. You can do this in Tumblr settings, and posts with those tags will be hidden on your dashboard. I mention a few below that might be a good place to start.

When posting yourself and interacting with other people:

Tag your discourse and negativity. That way, other people can filter it out. The main tag is #kotlc discourse, but some other used formats are #anti [X], #[X] neg, and #[X] hate. For example, #anti alina.

Take a break before replying or posting. It's not going to go well if you respond when you're upset.

When in doubt, ask. Ask if you understand correctly what their post meant. Ask if they like to debate or would rather not. Ask if they're okay with joking insults. Ask if they'll use a tag for you.

A kind person will generally appreciate a respectful question, and if they're not kind, it's probably best to block them.

Ultimately, remember you can't control other people. You can make requests of them, but it's up to you to use these methods to get rid of things you don't want to see.

I hope to have a fun time with all of you!

[runaeveena]

Your dashboard if you were in a d&d fantasy world still involved in fictional erotica discourse

🦄feywildwildwild Follow

is anyone else tired of humans being the default race to pair up with monstrous races in smut? like no wonder Tinker & Claw didn't get any traction outside of TomePlane

🪶 eagledust4ever Follow

tinker and claw was mid and written by a gnome sexologist and are we still calling non humanoids "monstrous"? in 186PD no less?

🕰️ gnomepologist

so now the eagledust shipper (and fake auran language scholar) is going to preach to us 🙄 some of us dont want to read about humans laying eggs every third month

🪶 eagledust4ever Follow

way to avoid the issue and maintain your humanoidcentric elitism but sure lets argue about kinks on tomeblr

🍆 troll-schlong

all of you shut up humans are sluts and im a motherfucking m-m-m-monster

345 Notes

🌧️ hau-iratxoa-besterik-ez-da-euskaraz Follow

just saw someone on TomePlane argue that a dragonborn and a dragon having sex would be considered incest AND beastiality

🗝️ crypt-princess Follow

💀💀💀 not every dragon was part of the Great Hatching and most dragonborn know who our lineage derives from

and since when are dragons BEASTS!?

☘️ celest-ial Follow

you should see what else people on TomePlane call beastiality

🦨 ancientskeleton

we are not bringing back the druid debate sylvanus help me

11,008 Notes

🩵 faerieee-imagines2 Follow

imagine you've been capture by an evil sorcerer and he puts you in a glass jar that's filled with firemoss which is so comfy but its making you so warm so you have to undress and as you remove each item you realize the sorcerer has been watching you and now you're blushing and its maki g you even warmer and soon youll be completely naked and vulnerable to whatever the sorcerer wants you for

121 Notes

🌠 crownofstars

cant believe i got called a freak for hooking up with a Slaad at the Unicorn's Underhorn

🕯️andersfirelight Follow

they're literally abominations??

🌠 crownofstars

and? ribbit ribbit bitch 🐸 you write Age of Light rpf

75 Notes

🦹mage-ocracy Follow

wow this farmer nobody has become such a handsome paladin with a chiseled chest after i threw his family into a lava pit years ago

🦹mage-ocracy Follow

waaahahaha you have fallen for my trap *casts spell of get horny* *spell hits the mirror which reflects back onto me* *my throbbing boner slices through the ropes holding the paladin* waaaahaa

14,283 Notes

🦚 faeynadaughter Follow

honestly im glad humans are the main target for erotica because elves have been sexualized for far too long

🍯treebarkhookhandwagondoor

part of the halfling sexual liberation movement was to embrace sexualizsation because we were treated as undesirables under the Valief'taur Period that now its weird to see elves suddenly turn face and claim that sexualizing anyone is bad

🪡 scç-writer

ugh honestly and especially now that elves are using Glindeloomstalk's talking points as if theyre here to "uplift" us from eroticism when halflings have known for years how he was a purity kinkster

3,119 Notes

🌠 crownofstars

this is now a slaad fucker blog

20 Notes

⚔️ rangerdick

oooo "humans are too sexualized" ooo "elf pussy is boring now" once again everyone forgets about orcs being treated like the walking cock with hands in books and irl

⚓riilée Follow

isnt orcish religion about fucking and sucking to take over the world

⚔️ rangerdick

you wish you could suck me off

🧜🏼‍♀️ tritonitistitties Follow

ranger dick don't you post daily dick pics

⚔️ rangerdick

i also post hole but no one seems to notice those wonder why that is

🐓the-walking-cock-with-hands Follow

i noticed

⚔️ rangerdick

hold me and fuck me would you

21,447 Notes

🦁king-killa Follow

Everyone you have to read this new book! It's total trope subversion where the dwarf is pansexual and the orc is asexual!

🍺 i-fuck-hags

wow someone should write a play about this

[andiv3r]

☆ ! INTRO POST ! ☆

DAILY CLICKS - CLICK

EXTRA LINKS - CLICK

HEY THERE! ☆ * . °

I'm Andiver :3

-> i am an intersex transmascfem boygirl with audhd and a lion + coyote therian as well as being aromantic and abrosexual + aceflux, so if that bothers you, you should probably leave now

my pronouns are (no preference)

he / him / his + it / it / its + xe / xem / xyr

or she / her / hers if we're friends !

note: i usually prefer masculine gendered terms over neutral / non-gendered or feminine ones !

CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK

CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK

No DNI, anyone can interact with me or my blog so long as you're doing so with respect and kindness. If you intentionally make me uncomfortable or act like an ass I'll probably block you, but other than that, I'm more likely to block tags than people.

anyone can add me just pls tell me who you are

MY DISCORD IS andiv_r <3

the ones i care about most have sideblogs!

FANDOMS I'M IN -

most important:

- warrior cats @andiv3r-warrior-cats

- doctor who @andiv3r-doctor-who

current biggest hyperfixation:

- gravity falls @andiv3r-gravity-falls

other interests:

- tma @andiv3r-the-magnus-archives

- good omens @andiv3r-good-omens

- dbda @andiv3r-dead-boy-detectives

- dungeon meshi (no sideblog)

- wings of fire (no sideblog)

- ted lasso (no sideblog)

- probably several i forgot about

note: i have a "don't like don't read/watch/look" attitude in regard to media, fanfic, fanart, etc. so long as no real people are being harmed, and my views on ship discourse can be summed up as "ship and let ship"

BLOGS I RUN -

dashboard simulator

- @these-posts-arent-real is a dashboard simulator blog where i make fake posts, mostly set in the warrior cats universe

animal adventure game

- @animal-adventure-game is a game where you start out in a forest and progress through text-posts

gravity paws au

- @gravity-paws-au is the blog where i store all information on the warrior cats / gravity falls alternate universe thing i'm working on

↓ TAG SYSTEM ↓

Regular Stuff

#andiv3r rambles - my regular blog posts... basically what it sounds like, i ramble

#ive been asked - replying to asks

#reblog on main - any reblogs that go onto here instead of my side account for reblogging for whatever reason

Fandom & OC Stuff

#andiv3r rambles about [fandom] - my general posts tag + whatever fandom i'm talking about, block these tags to avoid seeing me talk about whichever fandom it is

#wc!omens - my (temporarily dormant) art project where i'm putting good omens characters into the warrior cats universe

#cygnus post - any post about my gravity falls oc, cygnus

#my murder lesbians<3 - content about my warrior cats ocs swiftheart and stormstripe

#a sort of immortality - content about my werewolf & vampire ocs, lori and lucille

#gravity paws - content about the au where i'm putting gravity falls characters in the warriors universe

Trigger Warnings

#nsfw - usually just mentions genitals for comedic effect, sometimes will be suggestive posts or art

#suggestive - tag for artworks or fanfics i post with sexually suggestive themes

-> #avert your eyes‚ y'all - what i will be tagging my nsfw posts as, specifically for people who want to filter out my nsfw posts and not the general nsfw tag (copy and paste the whole thing into your filtered tags to get the "comma", i promise it will work)

#vent - posts where i'm in a bad mood, be careful

#flashing lights - posts that contain flashing or flickering lights, which i most likely will not post often as i have issues with that myself

#eyestrain - posts that contain bright or very contrasting colours that might cause eyestrain

let me know if i should tag other triggers on my posts

BLINKIES MADE WITH BLINKIES.CAFE

From here

[sgiandubh]

Just so stories: Mommy and Daddy

In the (questionably) blessed White Picket Fenced America of 1955, things were deceptively simple:

Mommy stayed home, while Daddy was earning enough cash to buy that new Frigidaire.

Uhm. No, not really: see what happens to Mad Men's Betty Draper, the pearl-stringed suburbia matron. Not exactly a cheerful look, but perhaps a true, albeit neurotic, one.

For some unfathomable reason, one of the main dismissive arguments used against shippers reads along some very similar lines. I paraphrase, as this is a collective POV (probably stemmed from CO's laboratory and snowballed to great success across their dashboards):

'Oh, aren't they stupid! How can they expect C to follow him around the world, children in tow, at his beck and call? Or to wait for him, military wife style, as he traipses from Vegas to London to Paris to Belgium? What are these, The Fifties?'

To this Dorothy Dixon, along comes one of the Tumblrette Pundits, with a ready-made answer, always the same:

'Of course they are stupid! Of course she doesn't! Every time she is working somewhere, she brings McSideburns and The Blonde Bambino around! And McSideburns takes care of Blonde Bambino, as he should! Reality, not fantasy!'

Let alone they have absolutely no clue about the real state of play, given the almost complete, paranoid opacity reigning since at least a Certain Sad Event. Let alone that no other logical/common sense argument provided is accepted (cults seldom deal in both acceptance and common sense);

Nannies? Pah, so 1992! Family safety net? Pah, so suburban! Working parents? Pah, these people are stars, their life is a cornucopia of perks and freebies and glam!

So, in a nutshell, according to them:

Mommy is busy working and Daddy follows all along/ stays at home with Blonde Bambino, hoping that Mommy will bring enough cashola to finish that double glazing people usually install in December.

In other words, we immediately picture C as a 'starke, titanische Weib' / the strong, titanic woman German poets were so fond of back in the 1800's. Dragging along a diminutive, shy, understanding and private McSideburns, trousered Vestal extraordinaire. The rest is taboo (or should be, in my book), at any rate.

Something wrong with this vision? Yes. It's exactly the 1950's one they accuse us of espousing (we don't), but this time the male/female symbolic roles are reversed. As a result, a shrink would have many thoughts and probably a handful of questions about that need to completely castrate the Goddess's Consort to perfect oblivion. Obliterating his life, his story and even his name, for Christ's sake!

Not a good look for either C and The Prop and, to be honest, quite a weird, borderline insulting one, especially when coming from 'respectful, realistic' fans. The real utility seems to be concealing the emptiness of a Tale Forever Untold. It will be effectively replaced by the chorus with the perfect fantasy of a modern dad, a successful producer/manager and so on and so forth.

Reality is a bit different, if you just take a look on The Fratellis' Wikipedia page and follow the links:

But, but, but... 'additional personnel' (😱😱😱) - how could that be?

And yes, remember (LOL) David Eustace and the FMN shooting photo of the Happy Dynamic Duo? Happy to oblige to a friend who provided a work project (that album was postponed two or three times, then released in 2021) during COVID, probably.

The mere thought of a young, urban, sophisticated, committed and trusting couple, living and loving their best life, traveling separately or together, allowing 'spaces in their togetherness' (wasn't that The Prophet quote she liked and shared?) is something that gives them the shingles. Anything but this. Anything - even that sad The Empress and Her Additional Personnel narrative.

You see, they don't like The Obvious. At all.

[tenpintsofsundrop]

Fanfiction Etiquette 101

(Things You Didn't Know You Need To Know)

So, I have seen some discussions about these things on my dashboard, and I know some people are new to tumblr and new to fanfiction in general, so I decided to put this list together in case it might help people. And this stuff goes for all fandoms, no matter what type of fanfiction to write and post.

Also fyi, this post is mostly for people who write and post fanfiction.

1: Putting A Readmore/Cut On Fanfiction

So a 'readmore' (also known as a 'cut') is the ability to put the body of your fanfiction under a cut off link so that people's dashboards are not clogged up by long sprawling paragraphs of text. This is also helpful if your fic contains smut and people don't want to be subjected to smut - people have to click through to keep reading sensitive topics.

The button for it looks like this on desktop:

And this bar of options comes up on desktop when you hit 'enter' on a blank line.

And it looks like this on mobile:

Tumblr put it permanently into the hotbar of options so that it's easier for people to put a readmore on their posts on mobile.

Once you have inputted it, it comes up as a light grey jagged line, showing you where your text cuts off in the main post aka what text is visible before the cut and what's not.

And generally, I think it's a good idea to put the readmore after the first paragraph of your fic, or after the description/summary.

I have noticed that some people put it in after several paragraphs for a longer fic, but I think to make fics easier to reblog, you could put it closer to the top. And even if you're writing smut blurbs, you should put it close to the top to keep smut concealed in case people don't want to read or see smut.

If you don't use a readmore, people are less likely to reblog your fic because they don't want to put a long text wall on other people's dashboards.

2: Using (Stolen) Gifs As Fanfiction Covers

I have seen some discussion about using gifs from google, and people putting a gif that they have downloaded and simply writing under it 'this gif is not mine, please DM me if it's your and I will give you credit'.

It's generally established among gif makers that downloading random gifs and putting them on your fanfiction is bad etiquette. Those are considered stolen gifs.

Even if you say it's not yours and offer to give credit, any gif you repost that is not yours is considered a stolen gif.

Fanfiction writers and gif makers need to work together, not against each other. Reblog gif sets you like, and don't download random gifs, no matter what the source is.

The best way to use gifs as fanfiction covers is to make them yourself or to use the tumblr integrated gif search system.

The gif search system is in the same hot bar as the readmore, labelled under 'gif'.

When you pull it up and click on it, you type in the name of the character you are looking for, and then you can scroll through the results. You can click on a gif to add it to your post, and remove it if you don't like it. So you can try out different gifs to find the right fit of what you're looking for.

And when you find what you're looking for and put it on your post, it automatically credits the gifmaker.

And the credit appears like this. And the name of the gifmaker can be clicked and then it takes you to their blog, so you can see who made the gif. This is a much better way to use gifs, because if someone likes a gif they see on your fic post, they can click through to the original gifmaker and reblog it.

Alternatively, using stills from the show/piece of media you're fanfic is about is a great way to avoid using stolen gifs.

2.5: Using Flashing Gifs On Fanfiction

I have noticed that a lot of people use flashing dividers for their fics, and they don't tag it with a flashing warning (#flashing gif or something similar) and they don't see this as a problem.

Using a flashing gif in fanfiction without a warning can negatively affect disabled readers. Not just people with photosensitive seizures, but people with migraines and different types of eye issues.

3: Using Coloured Text For Fanfiction

Speaking of accessibility issues, I have noticed that many people (especially people new to tumblr/new to fanfiction) use Tumblr's coloured text option to differentiate characters in fanfiction - assigning one colour per character with dialogue.

Some people also just use coloured text for the whole body of their fics, just making it straight up unreadable for disabled people.

Using coloured text in fanfiction makes it inaccessible because certain types of colour blindness makes it unreliable to see on a white background, and bright colours can cause eye strain for different types of disabilities.

It is kinder to use the traditional black text for the body of your fic, and any important information (like the content warnings, DNI criteria, etc).

4: Putting Thorough Content Warnings On Fanfiction

Speaking of content warnings - I could (and probably should) make an entire post about this topic alone, because many writers (both new and old) are severely lacking in this department.

Content warnings are supposed to be more for just smut - and if you do have smut in your fic, you should put warnings for that, instead of just releasing for fic into the wild with no warnings at all. Content warnings are supposed to be for anything that could be potentially triggering for a reader - phobias and fears, sensitive topics, uncomfortable or fear-inducing situations, and kinks and nsfw topics.

Tbh I think not enough people put warnings for alcohol and alcohol consumption in their fics, because alcohol is far too normalized to most people, but again - I could probably make a whole post just about content warnings in fanfiction. Basically: if you think your post could be triggering to someone with an addiction or in addiction recovery (or triggering to a sober person who doesn't want to read about drugs or alcohol) - then include those things in the content warnings.

Fanfiction is about informed consent.

People need to be better informed about what the content of your fic is before they consent to reading it. Also, if you're worried about the warnings being too detailed and giving away 'spoilers' for your fic, then you're probably worried about the wrong thing. And you can just put a warning at the very top that says "the content warnings of this fic contain spoilers for the plot of the fic" and let people make their choice if they want to skip the content warnings or not.

Please, write about all the dark or sensitive topics that you want, but just put detailed warnings on your fic so people can be informed about it before reading your fic.

People always appreciate thorough warnings, and they are more likely to read your fic if they are fully informed before clicking into the body of it.

4.5: (Not) Censoring Content Warnings

Tumblr is not tiktok. (Same goes for posting fics on AO3, but this post is mostly about Tumblr fics.) On Tumblr you can say/spell out any word you want without your post being suppressed or taken down - suicide, kill, murder, fuck, abortion, hell, porn, tits, cumshot, etc.

So that means that when you're writing out the content warnings of a fic, you should write them out fully, rather than putting slang or alluding to the topics in a fic. (Again, informed consent.) Rather than saying 'this fic contains SA', say: 'this fic contains sexual assault' or 'this fic contains rape'.

I saw someone using the term 'unalive' in the content warnings of their fic, and tbh, that's what inspired me to make this whole post.

If you're not mature enough to spell out all the topics in the content warnings of the post, you're not mature enough to be writing and posting about those topics.

Also, try not to use terms that need to be looked up/implicit terms. Certain terms for kinks (like dacryphilia or somnophilia) might lead a person to google those terms and find things they don't want to see. So instead of using those terms, just say 'crying kink' or 'sleeping kink' instead, so that everything is spelled out plainly.

...

This is all I can think of for now. Basically, just be kind to others when posting fics. Be kind to gif makers, disabled readers, and anyone from your fandom who might have an interest in your fic! Be safe and have fun writing! <3

[chestnutisland]

Are you ready for our annual Chestnutfest?!

Posted a month in advance, I hope that's enough time for you lovelies to whip up something sweet to celebrate our favourite DBZ OTP♥ Please click Read More to view this year's details!

Happy creating everyone! And pls do share the post around!♥

As always, here are some guidelines.

Starting the 12th of September, upload your submission for the day's theme, note that 9/18 is a free space but you can also use the theme Indirect kiss for that day, and tag me so I can re-blog your marvelous creations! Please use the following tags in the first 5 tags of your post so I can see them in my tracked tags. They are the blog tag Chestnutisland and this years specific tag Chestnutfest2k24. You can also Mention me as @ chestnutisland (without the space) and I will get a notification.

Preferably upload the theme for each day on the actual day but if you can't or rather upload them all at the same time for example, or maybe can't finish on time for one of the days, or just want to participate for one or a few days, that's fine too. As long as you use the tag system I will see it.

Of course, this is Tumblr we're talking about so if for some reason I don't see your work, please send me a DM.

Of course, you are also welcome to use the submit post button to directly submit to me!

Any medium is allowed, art, fics, AMV's,moodboards, playlists, anything you can come up with.

Any rating is allowed, however for NSF(W)T works, please censor your work and use a link to a different website to view uncensored. Please use a Read More as well as a community label and tag appropriately. In example, Ao3 and Pixiv both allow these kinds of works.

No works that break up K18, please. And Absolutely No NTR or ANYTHING of that nature. I will not share it and I will instantly and permanently block you if you submit it.

Please use Tumblr's link feature for off-site fics like on AO3 or FF.net, use a read more if you post fiction directly to Tumblr, that way we don't clog up everybody's dashboards.

Other characters are allowed in your works, of course, hey the more the merrier right? But do make sure K18 is the main focus, please.

The exceptions to the above rule are submissions for 9/17. I decided to dedicate one day of the fest to Android 17 and/or Marron. You can focus on one of them for that day or both, as long as one of them is the focus it's totally cool. Oh and just in case and to be crystal clear because it is out there...**Do not submit Mar17 works, I do not condone those sorts of works for these two characters together!** Ship art of either of them with different characters is allowed as long as it is appropriate. For example, MarTen or 17xOC is fine.

As always, if you have any questions, just send an ask or DM my way, and I'll happily answer any you may have!

This post will be queued a few more times before the start of the fest.

[swarayaps]

INTRO POST + FRIEND APPLICATION <3

oh boy, this might be a bit long... but it's worth your read, i promise!

hello hello~! swara here from my main @swaramalani !! so this is my first post here on my secondary blog, where i'll be— yep, you guessed it— yapping as fuck.

﹒✧ name : swara <3 ﹒✧ age : 17 ﹒✧ from : india! (IST) ﹒✧ prns : she/they ﹒✧ sexuality : sapphic abro (+taken!!)

﹒✧ purpose of this blog : to pour the chaos out of my mind and into words. and make some 4lifers along the way.

﹒✧ hobbies and the sorts : (i have a list of hobbies n interests so be prepared lol) writing, singing-songwriting, art, listening to music (!!), making digital products (including aesthetic discord servers, notion dashboards, subliminals, carrds, wallpapers, etc.), animanga + series, movies, manifestation, gaming (occasionally; genshin impact + ddlc), content creation, streaming (again, sometimes), being queer as shit, being addicted to social media, aesthetics, blogging + more! (pretty much anything and everything that catches my attention) ﹒✧ current obsessions : social media (discord, tumblr, pinterest, instagram, spotify not exactly a social media, but you get my point, youtube), 13 reasons why, random shit on youtube that gives you the chills or makes you paranoid (like this), sanrio, patreon, overworking myself, my kuromi plushie, the cute barbie merch from miniso (and the whole of miniso itself, ngl), arcade gaming, cafes (!!) + more!

﹒✧ list : i'll list some of the fandoms i'm into and some music artists i like! not ALL tho, since that'll end up taking the entirety of the post lol ﹒✧ music artists + bands : taylor swift, conan gray, chappell roan, girl in red, megan thee stallion, julia wolf (SUPER underrated, HUGE fan. if you're into her music, pls pls pls hmu !!), ayesha erotica, shayne orok, ariana grande, cigarettes after sex, sabrina carpenter, doja cat, penelope scott, lana del rey + more! (do keep in mind tho, that i mostly just listen to random music by random artists; whatever i like basically) ﹒✧ animanga + series + movies : sasaki to miyano, attack on titan, jujutsu kaisen, horimiya, kimi ni todoke, boku no hero academia, haikyuu!!, junji ito maniac, ginny and georgia, gilmore girls, heartstopper, 13 reasons why, moonknight, all of us are dead, loki, descendants movie series, everything disney + mcu, the princess diaries, mean girls + more!

﹒✧ dni + dislikes : basic dni criteria. dni if: lgbtqphobic, racist, hater, sexist, rude etc etc etc. basically just be a decent person. "i'll respect you as long as you don't disrespect somebody else's existence." also, dni if: -15/21+, cishetero males (got nothing against the men, but... i've just had some bad experiences with them online, most of which include them wanting to date me) as for dislikes, i can't really say i dislike much things, but keep politics and religion out of the convo.

﹒✧ socials : @/swaramalani everywhere: instagram, patreon, discord, pinterest, twitter, youtube, soundcloud, spotify. so stalk me/add me all u want xx (ps: bonus points if you're from india!!)

created : 15/11/2024 3:48 pm (friyay)