#anyway that wasn't the point of this post

[ranticore]

some more horse guy fashions, specifically historical

erased the mandolin for this one goodbye mandolin i couldn't be bothered drawing you

so my thought process for this is like what would a society of, lbr, british ppl who are horses value and how would that translate into what they wear if they specifically don't have a taboo against nudity. these fashions are pre-florian conversion (florian was the guy who gave them all government-mandated shame) and considered traditional (the full coverage dresses are also traditional but to a post-florian period so those would be called like. idk. classical). they were still in use in the enclaves north of ironwall for quite a while. anyway returning to the point, the answer to 'what they value' is movement. in actual horses, herd hierarchy and social function is based off movement - free movement for animals for whom the flight response is so strong is an incredibly important thing. dominance in horses is expressed and reinforced by controlling and curtailing the movement of subordinates. for these people, free movement was enhanced by kinetic fashion - free-flowing garments like capes, loosely-pinned headgear with feathers and floaty cloth, and noise-generating devices like bells and chimes were all used to elaborate and enhance the appearance of somebody's gait. the overall look was mostly based off of morris dancers (pheasant feathers, bells on the legs, handkerchiefs) because i like the tie-in to suppression of folk dance by puritans. i think these guys would have some great folk dances

in much the same way trainers are just normal everyday footwear now, game kerchiefs/flags were worn in non-sports contexts because it suffused into the mainstream and became Cool. the flags were used in a game similar to tag rugby if you've ever seen that played (where snatching people's flags is used instead of full contact tackling, forcing someone who's been 'tagged' to stand still until the flags are returned). as i said before somewhere, centaur team sports go incredibly hard.

the tail ornaments were status symbols and in appearance a bit like the traditional show turnout of shire horses. woven grass and straw could be used for a temporary ornament like these, but metal or carved wood were really impressive, and very common gifts of favour between romantic partners. more flags could be hung there if you wanted to be really cool

variations of this style of mane décor were also employed (they loved their ribbons)

in the same time period, Ironwall fashion was a little bit different. These expensive caparisons were usually purchased secondhand after a real horse was done wearing them, with distinct front and back halves of different length. The garments would usually have the original liveries removed and replaced by generic religious iconography as few centaurs would ever have their own heraldry. Later, in the Georgian and Victorian eras, full coverage to the pasterns with a single undergarment was the only acceptable option (that's the classical style now) The rest of the picture is self-evident, but centaurs at the time wore additional... equipment on the withers which were called a variety of very colourful names but mostly referred to as gelding bars (as in, they will geld you if you sit on them). they were metal and spiked. these were introduced by the florian government to discourage the grossly inappropriate contact of one person's legs around another. previously there was no great taboo against riding on a centaur's back, it wasn't super common but nobody was like "this is basically public sex" until our pal centaur cromwell i mean florian came along and decided this was the work of the devil. young people were also made to wear these to discourage the homosocial behaviour very common to the mid-20s age groups of both sexes, and they also had a place in preventing stallions from wrestling (ironically increasing the danger of their fights because well now all we can do is stand back and kick). the wearing of these devices was mandatory. headcoverings were not strictly necessary, and neither were fully-wrapped tails, but some especially devout citizens took to it quite well.

[ivysprophecy]

Not so good surprise.

warnings: talk about nipples, nipple piercings, mentions of sex and boners? i think that’s it. obvious cursing.

word count: 728

an: hey guys!! so this is my first time posting in a long time but both my friend and i @kimoralov3 wanted to write little blurbs about jj reacting to nipple piercings so please go show theirs some love!! warning this is unedited so i hope it’s not too incoherent

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"JJ! Baby are you home?? I got ya a surprise!" you walk through the door with a sneaky smirk on your face, setting your bag on the couch as you walk in.

He walks out of the bedroom adjusting his hat on his head, his eyes clocking your chest the second he looks at you. His mouth is a gap, unable to look away from your chest.

"What's that?" he points at your chest accusatory walking closer, his eyes not moving.

"What's what baby?"

"That- those- right there- those-," his finger reaches out poking at your erected nipple causing you to let out a small yelp raising your hands to cover them.

"Woah! Owe- shit baby you can't touch them yet! They're so fucking sensitive- shit that hurt."

And with that his eyes finally move from your chest up to your face, bulging out of his sockets.

"Shit mama I'm sorry- wait- pause. Time out baby, did you just say I can't touch them yet??"

You nod amused at his reaction, wincing a little at the lasting ache, "Yea, you gotta wait a couple months to let them heal."

"Well how long is that supposed to be??"

"The guy said anywhere from 4-9 months."

"NINE MONTHS??" Your poor boyfriend is flabbergasted, wounded, physically pained by the news. You could swear you see tears swelling in his eyes. "Wait- wait wait wait wait. You're telling me some random guy did this??"

"I mean yea- I had to go to a professional. It just happened to be a guy."

JJ in all honestly couldn't care less if it was a guy or a girl, he's just pissed that it wasn't him who got to do it, to be there, to see it, to see them.

"So I can't touch them at all? Until their all healed up? Mama that's too long... I can't kiss 'em? Touch 'em at all? Shit-" Poor guy is in agony, quite literally spiraling at the thought of not being able to have his hands on them. With or without the piercings. "Doesn't seem like a good surprise mama."

You can't help but laugh at him honestly, he's quite literally almost in tears.

"Are you sure about that baby?" he's about to give his two cents and complain before you carefully lift your tank top over your head and tossing it on the couch next to your bag. "How about now."

Now, the boy is silent. Stuck dead in his tracks, mouth open like a fish out of water gasping for air.

"I know they're a little bruised and swollen so they look funny right now but-"

"Shhhh sh sh sh-" He interrupts you putting a finger to your lips, looking down at them in admiration. Again you can't help but giggle. Your boyfriend has never been one to hide how he feels about anything, usually dramatically as well. "Holy shit mama- look at 'em they've got little jewels 'n shit- look so pretty mama. How am I supposed to not touch these? So beautiful-"

"Well if you want you can help me clean them but that's the closest you're gonna get."

"How do you clean 'em?" Frankly it was adorable that he was so desperate that he was willing to learn.

"I've gotta take a cup, put some saline in there and tilt it back onto them a few times so I can wash them out good- it actually looks kinda silly-"

"But when I do that I can touch them right?"

You can't stop giggling at this point. "Yes JJ, you'll be able to hold 'em while I do it."

"A win is a win I guess- I can do this. For sure."

You press a kiss to your boyfriends lip with a smile still lingering on your face. "You're adorable baby. But I don't think you'll last a day. But you can look at 'em all you want I promise. I have to wear loose shirts anyway so you'll have easier access-"

"Don't tease me right now mama I'm serious- already got me all worked up just by lookin' at 'em."

And sure enough JJ was already working a semi, "Oh you poor thing... why don't we head to the bedroom and let 'mama' fix that for you yea?"

He was off the bedroom, dragging you behind him before you could even finish.

[kiyo-cant-write]

hi hi! jade req again, kinda toxic this time

can we get jade with a reader who’s really easy to manipulate and they know it? idk if it makes sense but like jade realizing reader isn’t oblivious to his manipulation, just kinda self-destructive and hopelessly into him

jade thought he was being slick because reader wasn’t calling him out on anything, but he overhears their conversation and finds out that they’re fully aware jade is a ton of red flags but is still staying anyway, and his reaction to that

i really hope this makes sense! idk how to word it

jade w/ an easily manipulated reader ✧･ﾟ

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Aw! Thank you for another request! I love Jade and Octavinelle so much! I hope that I did your idea justice. Please let me know if you'd like another request in the future! Onwards to the story! ^^

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Summary: Jade Leech has been stringing [Name] along for fun and due to the instruction of Octavinelle's Housewarden. He thought he was doing well... but it seems [Name] may have had ulterior motives.

TW/CW: Toxicity but the standard Fish Mafia kind

Notes: established "relationship", they/them pronouns for the reader, the reader is Yuu/Ramshackle Prefect, the reader is described as human and younger than Jade/frosh, ADeuce if you squint, implied to be post-Azul OB

Guest Stars: Deuce Spade, Ace Trappola, Grim, Azul Ashengrotto & Floyd Leech (referenced)

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✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:

Jade Leech

As much of a sadist as Jade can be, he's not exceptionally cruel outside of what he deems as the necessity for his purposes.

He is a bit smug when he thinks he has [Name] under control.

Jade is pretending to be "honor student Jade Leech."

He acts as their friend and support albeit for the Lounge.

He pretends to care, to do everything to help them.

He smiles at them, speaks politely, and even "affectionately."

They trust him and they tell him things they shouldn't.

He will use those bits of information when the time comes.

Every time they have an inkling of doubt, he squashes it.

His surprise is evident when Floyd points out that it might not be the case this time, but Floyd is Floyd and doesn't explain.

Wanting to make sense of this discovery, Jade observes [Name].

He watches to see if [Name] really has caught onto him.

Jade is intrigued and what he finds does not disappoint.

He is surprised to find that they caught on long ago.

But they stayed? Why?

Because they "love" him?

Why would they love the guy trying to string them along?

It didn't make sense to him. He felt a tug at his heartstrings.

Did he feel bad about this?

He didn't know what to do.

Jade starts to avoid [Name] after realizing their feelings.

He retracts further into his honor student persona.

[Name] will not win this fight. He will not be bested by a freshman.

The battle has just begun and Jade needs to bury this sinking feeling in his chest. What does it mean anyway?

Floyd serves as a live studio audience to Jade's struggles.

Jade is an observer. That had been his role for so long, that he wasn't sure when it began. Ever since he was young, he would watch and calculate while Floyd was the type to rush into things, be impulsive, and just a tad stupid at times, at least when they were young. Jade never intended to make his observations a skill, but sooner or later, everything becomes an asset.

That's what his father had always said.

His mother worried about the sadistic streak in her son, but she couldn't do anything to prevent its development. Jade was, after all, a member of the Leech family. He and Floyd would join the family business sooner or later unless they wholly refused its offer.

"[Full Name]," Jade mused to himself, "How interesting."

Azul had been the one to ask him to pay extra close attention to Ramshackle's Prefect in case they strayed too far from things, or got into any trouble. The magicless human that had saved others from themselves, they interested the owner of Mostro Lounge. Jade had simply agreed with Azul's request, observation was his skill, after all.

It had never been meant to evolve, and certainly not into this.

Jade watched as this person fell for his polite words hook, line, and sinker. It was almost too easy. They were shockingly trusting, telling him all sorts of things he could use to be downright evil if he wanted to be. It wasn't time for that, not yet, but one should always guard their secrets (perhaps not as much as Azul, but at least a bit).

He didn't need to do anything unless the moment called for it.

At the time, it had not been necessary.

That was weeks ago.

Azul hadn't given further instructions and, to be fair about it, Jade didn't want to earn that octomer's ire. Not today, anyway. He and Floyd were troublesome, yes, but not stupid.

So, as Azul had instructed, he was trailing the Prefect until told otherwise (or until it became boring, whichever arose first). Though their reactions had been predictable, he could argue that things were getting boring now.

Floyd would have given up ages ago, he was sure of it.

[Full Name] was currently spending their time with their classmates, Ace Trappola (easily swayed by competition and bets) and Deuce Spade (note: gullible as a child). Jade had kept an eye on the three of them (and Grim) because of their closeness. It was rather irritating how buddy-buddy they were. He had worked a bit to get [Name] alone those few times they had spoken privately.

Standing away from the trio, Jade listened in on their conversation.

"[Name], I don't think that this is good," Deuce told them, clearly worried for their friend's mental state, "You need to be more careful. Don't you remember what happened to me and Ace?"

"I fucking remember!" Ace chimed in, "It sucked. Don't trust fish."

"Nya! Fish are food, not friends," Grim told them, "Especially eels!"

"Ah... You guys..."

Jade almost wanted to chuckle at Grim's words of "wisdom" but he withheld it, knowing that he mustn't give away his position. Not yet.

"You shouldn't trust Leech-senpai," Deuce continued, "Do you not remember how he and his twin brother acted before?"

"THEY TRIED TO KILL US, [NICKNAME]!!" Ace interrupted Deuce, earning him a glare from the navy-haired boy, "Sorry, Deuce-chan."

"Don't call me that."

What Deuce was doing could only be described as glowering.

"Lighten up and help me convince [Nickname] not to get themselves murdered by a shady eel and a shadier octopus!" Ace told him, slapping Deuce on the shoulder, "Just because they're better doesn't mean they're changed fish! Fish are suspicious!"

"Ace, do you have some fish-related trauma outside of campus that I should know about?" Deuce asked him, "It's starting to seem—"

"FOCUS ON [NICKNAME], DEUCE."

Ace's reddened face was a sign that Deuce was on to something with that fishy nonsense. Jade Leech would remember that fact.

Fish trauma. Noted.

"....Okay," Deuce agreed, turning back to [Name], "Do you want to tell us what you've been doing with Leech-senpai? We're worried..."

Deuce trailed off for a moment before he added a Deuce-typical offer.

"I can fight him if you want me to. They're messing with my friend."

"N-no thanks, Deuce... I don't think I need that," [Name] said, laughing at the antics of her friends and roommate, "Honestly, I know he's not being honest with me... But I don't really... care?"

The words surprised Jade but he refused to give himself away. There was more information to be gathered, for his own needs and Azul's.

They don't mind my dishonesty? Heh...

"I have never been more concerned for you than I am right now," Ace said, tone lacking its usual goofy undertone, "Do you want me to tell Mom and Dad about anything? They would help..."

Ace wasn't sure what to do but this was a worry. So frantic to say his sentence Ace neglected to register his misnomer for Vice Housewarden Trey Clover and everyone's favorite senpai Cater Diamond. He could lay awake and think about that later.

Deuce clearly felt similarly as he reached out to put a hand on [Name]'s. He wasn't good at solving problems of the emotional variety but he could be a support. Or, he would try to be one.

"Even if we can't say anything helpful... We can be here to listen."

"I appreciate it, but I'm fine," [Name] tried to assure them (but it wasn't working), "I just... I like Jade-senpai... and if this is how... he will talk to me... then I am okay with it. I've just been going along with all... that."

Jade felt time stop for a millisecond as he processed the words. They had been "playing along"? They didn't fall for every trick? Perhaps this was more interesting than he had thought. Still. He didn't like being bested, perhaps he needed to up his game...

"[Name], that's not good... I don't think..." Deuce managed.

"I wish Mom and Dad were here..." Ace mumbled.

"[Name], don't leave me for a fish! It's not even tuna!"

Grim clung to his human with small paws, tail swishing.

Jade was baffled not by those that Azul had previously controlled but by [Name] themself. They were something odd amongst the students of Night Raven College. They didn't shy away from his... methods.

But they said they liked him. He wondered if that made him feel something. He wasn't one to like other people, stay around them long... especially these landfolk.

It was a foreign concept.

Oh dear. [Full Name], you've managed to intrigue me now.

To the concern of Deuce, Ace, and Grim, Jade Leech wouldn't be letting his human prey go any time soon. Not for Azul, or his brother... This was something he was pursuing now. For better or worse.

I hope they're prepared to best me once more.

What would they say if I said I "loved" them? ♪

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Imagine the rest for yourself~

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Thank you for reading! Likes and reblogs are appreciated! Do NOT repost my writing/headcanons as your own >:c Check the top of my blog for the inbox status and read the rules before requesting. This is not a twst-only blog! ^^

[boomstab-papa]

Hi tumblr, middle-aged bitch here, reblogging to confirm the stuff on this post. (TW for discussion of eating disorders and suicidal ideation)

Personally, I've never been tiny or thin. Trim and muscular, maybe, but never tiny. My lowest weight happened during high school, after WEEKS of being SUPER FUCKING SICK.

See, when you're sick, your body needs nutrients that are easy to break down and absorb. But digestion is hard work. So instead of dutifully digesting the food you eat while you're sick, it starts eating ITSELF. Especially your muscles. I lost a significant chunk of weight while I was sick (and couldn't lift as much afterwards) because MY BODY ATE MY MUSCLES.

"Fun" fact: if you severely starve yourself, your body really will start digesting your other organs, not just your muscles. I know somebody who was on a starvation diet due to being a broke college student, and his body straight up ate his tonsils. They're gone. He never had them surgically removed. His body just ATE THEM.

It is NOT FUCKING WORTH IT to starve yourself try to make some of your fat disappear. Your body eats itself, not "just your fat".

It is additionally NOT FUCKING WORTH IT to be regularly, debilitatingly hungry.

Like, I get it, most of us are not the shape we were when we were younger. Maybe you feel like this is a bad trend. But this trend is true of most animals as they age. The teenagers are stringbeans, the mature adults are chonkier. Quit fetishizing youth. Quit fetishizing thinness. Get used to being old and chonky. Get used to telling people to "fuck off" if they think being older and fatter is bad. Furthermore, GET USED TO EATING ENOUGH.

Again, my experience here, I spent almost 20 years trying to stay "trim" like I was in high school and eating the tiniest lunches. I even cut that lunch into two smaller lunch breaks at work, trying to spend less continuous time hungry. But fuck, I was still hungry. Lightheaded. Dizzy. Confused. Tired. Shitty focus. MISERABLE. My work suffered, my mood suffered, and I literally wanted to die.

(Also I was overeating in the evenings, to the point of discomfort. I wasn't eating enough and my body was MAD.)

Somewhere in the last couple years, I decided "FUCK THAT SHIT".

Now I eat a lunch that's big enough to keep me from getting lightheaded until it's time for dinner anyway. I don't make myself uncomfortable with too much food in the evenings. I'm not spending most of my day half-fainting or mondo bloated. I'm also on three different medications that all warn that they might "cause weight gain".

And I'm fat now. I'm fine with that. I feel better than ever.

TL;DR go read the original post again:

"If you feel like you have to eat less than your body tells you it needs to be skinny, please just be ok with being fat."

Diet companies won’t tell you this but starving yourself is a lot worse for your health than overeating

This post is explicitly about being ok with being fat. If you feel like you have to eat less than your body tells you it needs to be skinny, please just be ok with being fat.

[starmapz]

you know, i wasn't going to make a post about this so as not to give this anon the satisfaction of a response, but they've been blocked so they won't see this anyway and i think there's a bigger issue to address here.

i want to start by saying that i've got thick skin and this doesn't affect me in the way they clearly would like it to. it says much more about them than it does about me and i've got bigger fish to fry than some insecure anon.

what i DO want to address is the fact that i've seen more and more posts popping up lately about how some people need to be nicer to authors and while this applies not just to authors but to everyone, i do feel it's worth mentioning that in all honesty i'm glad this came to me and not someone who may be put down by a message like this. i know the anon button tends to make some people much more bold but if at any point you ever think of sending anon hate to someone, maybe take a moment to consider how foolish of a notion that is.

on the topic of authors in particular, please bear in mind that we do this for free, in our spare time. i work a full time job, this is just a fun hobby for me. imagine if you shared your hobby with the world and someone anonymously told you it was bad, how would that make you feel? i'm quite fortunate that this sort of thing doesn't get to me but that doesn't make it any nicer of a message.

on a much lighter and somewhat unrelated note, i also received a very nice text from a wrong number around the same time as i read this message, so i think they cancel one another out lmao. just thought that was funny.

anyway, sorry for the much more serious post than my usual content, but please, as a reminder, be nice to authors, and for that matter be nice to everyone. you never know what someone else is going through, and even if you do, it's no excuse to be hateful or rude.

[prince-liest]

It's kind of a weird (not sure if good or bad or just neutral!) experience to realize that a lot of the personal headcanons I've written into my own writing have become well-known enough that they're treated as general fanon with a lot of people using them and not realizing that they, like, originated from a specific place rather than just being ambiently popular. Every once in a while I come across a fic where there's an AN that says something to the tune of, "Oh, I saw this popular headcanon that [insert something really specific from 666: Live On Air!] and wanted to[...]" without attributing it to me - or, most likely, even realizing that it came from me!

It's an interesting feeling! I think the times that actually bother me are when it's people that know they got the headcanon directly from me and choose not to credit me (or in one weird instance, credit me, then edit their stuff to bury the credit to be really hard to find for some reason - y'all, I do notice these things even when I don't comment on them).

I've been straight up plagiarized many times before. It's ranged from friends in RP groups stealing my characters because I wasn't using them often anymore, to more recently someone ripping out chunks of one of my Hazbin Hotel fics and rewriting it as their own. It's a uniquely horrible feeling, and I think it makes me sensitive to feeling uncredited as a result even when plagiarism isn't occuring. On the other hand, this is literally how headcanons evolve and I'm actually so fucking happy that specific things that I was outright nervous to post because I thought people would (and in a few cases, people did) react very poorly to them are now, like...fairly common fanon.

Anyway, I don't think it's wrong for people to carry forward headcanons to the point where they don't even know where they came from. I also think most likely some concepts became convergently popular when more than one person had the same thought! It's how fandoms work and I know for a fact I've done the same... but it does very much give me the warm and fuzzies when people that use my ideas do give a nod in my direction for where they got the inspiration! In return, I try to make a point to do the same.

[jaycarekids]

based on one idea i had, wrote this a little while ago and finally decided to post here

At some point, Jay stopped.

Stopped caring. Stopped trying. Just.. stopped.

Talking was all but torture, so he didn't talk. Eating felt pointless, so he didn't eat. Going outside became a chore, so he didn't bother.

Instead, he just existed. Look ahead with empty eyes, eat the food the others left right outside the door for him, throw that up, sleep, repeat. He didn't want to die, not really, but he didn't have the energy to live.

After doing nothing but stare at bedroom walls and old pictures for days, Cole and the others had staged some stupid intervention. Told him that they missed her too, that they understood, but that what he was doing wasn't healthy.

Something like that, anyways. It happened only a few minutes ago. He couldn't remember the details. (He didn't want to.) All he knew was that a mountain of words later, he'd found himself sitting outside.

He looked up at the sky. Today was a sunny day, blue untainted by a single cloud, temperature warm but not hot, gentle winds blowing every so often.

How strange it was, that the world could be so perfect and yet so very destroyed.

Everything about his own was ruined. Ever since.. the incident, it felt like all eyes were on him, and First Spinjitzu Master were the stares terrible. Pitiful things, words whispered behind closed doors and told right to his face, blank apologies that didn't mean anything to their owner or their recipient. The empty, yawning pit that could never truly be filled, signed away to deep brown eyes and childhood dreams years ago. Those stupid voices that stirred, pulling him down, down, so far down. That feeling, that godawful, terrible, freeing feeling when he didn't resist.

But the worst part? Nya was still out there. They'd held a funeral for her, but she wasn't dead. Gone, but not dead. Not dead, but not truly alive.

His yang had left him. (The wind got just a little more aggressive.)

Everyone left him. (Gray began to blanket the sky.)

Why did everyone leave? (The blue wasn't visible anymore.)

Jay clenched his fists, seething in silent rage. And they all said that they knew, that they understood. Kai was the only one who came anywhere close, and even then he didn't really get it. They dared to insinuate they felt what he did, dared to look him in the eyes and tell him they missed her just as much, dared to even suggest that he'd heal. He didn't need healing, he didn't need fixing, he needed gentle kisses and annoyed smiles and nighttime comforts where she'd wake up when he woke up and yeah dreams were terrible but the only dream he needed was right in front of him.

A yin to a yang, the eye of a hurricane, a love everlasting. Jay needed Nya, Nya needed Jay, and that truth would live long after they died.

He still needed her, but she didn't need him anymore.

Then he cried. Sat down on the steps since when had he been walking away and sobbed. Not just for Nya. Selfishly, he also wept for himself.

Because Jay Walker had disappeared into the sea with a thing wearing the face of Nya Smith, and all he'd left behind was a shell calling itself human.

The sky cried with him. First gentle, soft kisses of rain, the tears of heaven falling on his skin and tracing gentle patterns down. Then a little harder, harder, until harsh wind and unforgiving torrent of water was all that surrounded him.

Jay probably could've put a stop to it if he tried. But he had tried before. He'd been trying.

Fate was not kind to those who tried.

So he stopped.

[foodtruckery]

Hi there! Im a bit new to ur blog but i just wanted to pop in to tell you how much i adore Combat Baby! Im actually super insane about it!! Idk why but the whole coat bits were just phenomenal and live in my brain forever now? Im already a sucker for older ford and mullet stan but oh boy now i cant stop picturing every version of stan stealing his brother's coat...for regular reasons and maybe also spicy reasons 👀 like a consensus i see is ford being a clothing sniffer but stan could also have a coat to sniff...as a treat...anyway sorry for rambling a bit here!! but please keep up the excellent work!

hello there, anon!! hey, if it makes you feel any better, i am also new to this blog so no worries there at all lol. ahh but thank you so much, it's so kind of you to come over here to say that!!

and okay hahaha let me ramble a little bit about the damn coat! cause i hadn't actually planned for like. ANY OF THAT to happen, so i am just thrilled to hear you enjoyed that random ass bit that ended up running away from me! cause like here's the thing. my main goal was just to get a few of ford's fucking layers off for the sake of the scene (fun fact: this whole scene originally started in a different room entirely and i said fuck that and moved them to the kitchen).

but then i figured the coat gave stan something to kinda consider while ford is faffing about, gave me a point to work on to keep driving at that "similar but different" narrative i was trying to lean into. but like....then the coat is there y'know?? i hadn't even included him asking for the thing in my first pass of that scene. but then it kinda felt like chekov's coat at that point and i couldn't not bring it back in.

but yes, i'm absolutely with you. i really do love the idea of stan like. taking comfort in being surrounded by something that smells like ford. especially if we're talking mullet stan and older ford here. and uhhhh. i had other like stuff i was gonna say, i think, but i kinda got carried away so.

hey! welcome to the blog! have a vaguely, hand wavey post-combat baby tidbit of stan jerking off in ford's coat:

This was stupid. Painfully, humiliatingly stupid. And if he got caught, Stan was pretty sure he'd just voluntarily disappear for another ten years rather than reckon with that particular flavor of mortification. 

Fuck, what did it say about him that the thought of Ford walking in and catching him beating off in nothing but his brother's stupid coat just made his dick twitch harder in his palm? 

Stan bit down on his lower lip and cast a furtive glance towards the door, but he didn't slow his fist any. He couldn't hear any movement outside the room, which suggested that Ford was still down in the basement or fucking around in the woods — he couldn't actually remember which one at the moment. He just knew that Ford had gone and occupied himself somewhere else and left his coat laying around, easy pickings. He hadn't even thought it through before he grabbed the thing and made himself scarce with it.

Vaguely, Stan reasoned that if Ford hadn't taken his coat, he probably wasn't wandering around outside in the fucking snow. But that meant he was probably somewhere inside still, and that really shouldn't make him as hot as it did. 

“Fucking hell,” he panted, fumbling with his free hand to tug the collar of the coat up to his nose. He breathed in the familiar-but-not smell of Ford and the memory of making embarrassing noises into the same material while he was railed on the kitchen table. 

Shuddering, Stan rolled his palm over the head of his dick and smeared precome down the shaft, muffling a moan in the jacket collar. It was heavy, a noticeable enough weight shifting against his bare skin that if he closed his eyes and tried hard enough, he could almost imagine Ford kneeling behind him, pressed against his back and draping his arms over his shoulders. It would put his mouth right against that spot behind Stan's ear that had never fully shaken the phantom feeling of Ford's lips moving there. 

But what the fuck would he even say? Would he be pissed at Stan for taking his coat? Probably. Sneer that he shouldn't be surprised that a whore who can't keep his own clothes on would feel entitled to stealing his. He'd loom against his back and watch Stan fuck his own fist right up until he was twitching, nearly there, and then Ford would grab his wrist and tell him to stop because he didn't deserve to come. 

Stan tucked his chin to press closer to the material he was holding to his face and rocked his hips, as much to follow the steady pumping of his fist as to feel the coat shift against his thighs and around where his knees were pressed to the floor. Because he hadn't even managed to make it to the fucking bed once he'd gotten into the room. He'd just stripped in a hurry, leaving his own clothes thrown haphazardly to the side, and yanked on Ford's stupid space coat. 

If he were going for realistic, if Ford wandered upstairs and threw open the bedroom door and found Stan jerking off in the middle of the room, he probably wouldn't do anything at all. He'd get that brief, surprised little look on his face, eyebrows raising over the rim of his glasses and maybe, maybe part his lips just a little bit. 

And then, while Stan was stammering and trying to come up with an excuse or an apology or literally anything worth saying to make this look less like what it was, Ford would reset his expression and cross his arms and say something short like, “Well? Get on with it, then.” He would stand in the doorway, maybe lean there a bit, comfortable as you please, and watch Stan frantically try to finish the job like he was simply overseeing one of his less interesting experiments. 

Stan huffed against the coat and swallowed down a moan as he rubbed against the sensitive spot under the head of his dick. He was so close. And he needed to hurry the fuck up if he didn't actually want Ford to walk in on him. Cause that was all well and good while he was hot and shivering and chasing down an orgasm, but he would probably actually die if he got caught. Or maybe Ford would do him a favor and just kill him on the spot for it? 

Nosing the fold of the coat collar, Stan heard a quiet click in the room before the heater kicked on, thrumming away to keep the stupid cabin at a reasonable temperature for the middle of winter. Because the heat had been turned off, like Ford had suspected, and they'd managed for a few days with Stan chopping wood and putting the shack's little fireplace to use. But that was a miserable chore, and eventually Stan figured, fuck it, and gave the gas company a call. 

Turned out, telling the right sob story with an appropriately pathetic voice could get you an extension and get the heat back on until your genius brother figured out his nerd ass replacement for powering the shack. Stan didn't know what he meant by that, and he hadn't asked, because as long as they had some way of heating the place up, he was happy. 

But he did distinctly remember telling Ford he had gotten the gas turned back on for another couple weeks. The way he made that brief, surprised face and then, for a moment, nothing else at all. Long enough that Stan had rolled his eyes and turned to head back out of the room, because really, what the hell had he expected here? But then Ford had finally cleared his throat and said, awkward, like he'd only just realized he should, “Thank you, Stanley. Good work.” 

Stan shoved a mouthful of Ford's coat between his teeth and bucked jerkily when he came all over his fist, skin tingling and Ford's voice rolling around between his ears. 

“J-Jesus Christ, Stanley,” he panted to himself once he'd stopped whining and could spit out the edge of the coat — didn't taste nearly as good as it smelled. And, he realized with a groan, he'd managed to get jizz all over the sleeve. Fantastic. 

Once he caught his breath, he would get dressed, wipe the coat off as best he could, and put it back. Then he would pray to god that Ford didn't notice anything, wouldn’t see the splotchy attempts at cleaning it or smell Stan on it. And he would never touch the damn thing again. Really.

[tinfoil-jones]

Gravity Falls: For Your Own Good, Ch. 4

Summary: A few years after moving to Gravity Falls and having his lab built, Stanford Pines happens upon his estranged twin brother, Stanley. He mentally prepared himself to be suffocated by his brothers neediness all over again - what he wasn't prepared for was Stanley walking right past him like he didn't even notice him.

Rating: M for language, violence, and adult implications

Preface: Dialogue only, but some actions will be annotated for clarity. Cross-Posted on AO3 Here

First - Prev - Next

CH.4

"If we’re going to get to the pit of this peach we gotta get some variables outta the way first. I need a scan of his brain and yours. While conscious.”

“Mine as well?”

“You said he’s your identical twin - he should be genetically the same as you. We can use a scan of your brain as a comparison to see if there’s physical damage on the organ itself, because brain damage is the most common cause of amnesia.”

“I do have the technology available for an in-depth scan, but… ”

 “But what?”

“It’s in the shape of a ray gun, but like a traditional MRI whoever is getting scanned has to stay completely still.”

“I don’t s’pose in the time it took me to go into town and get supplies, you managed to reconcile with him?”

“Reconcile? He’s still convinced I’m a mad scientist out to harvest his organs, 'or worse turn him over to the IRS'- don’t ask about that second part. If I point anything gun-shaped at him, he’ll freak out.”

“Can’t say I blame him…”

“Hush, Fiddleford. There’s an easy way we can get him to hold still.”

“Stanford- Stanford put the tranquilizing doohickey away. We both know that concoction of yours wasn’t formulated with humans in mind. Surely you have less caustic means of sedation.”

---

“Stanford, anyone can tell that bottle’s been tampered with.”

“I have a theory that this persona of his is so self-destructive he’ll still drink it.”

“Y’know, this bottled water tastes suspiciously like two crushed Ambien tablets.” 

*Stan keeps drinking it anyways*  

“I am impressed, but I also hate that your theory was correct.”

*Ford undeafens the cell*

“Stanley, if you think there’s zolpidem in that, why are you still drinking it?”

“You think two Ambien is enough to take me down? Guess again, I’ve used this stuff to cut coke. You’re gonna have to try harder than that, PhD.” 

“Hmm, so we should have used Coca-Cola instead of water…”

“That ain’t what he meant by- how did you survive by yourself out here?”

---

“Hello there …Stan?”

“Sup babe.”

“Don’t call me that. I was wondering - you’re so handsome already, but it’d surely tickle my fancy a bit more if you put on this necktie.”

“Hell no.”

“Do you not know how to tie one? I’d be happy to-.”

“I know how to tie a tie, specs. But I’ll never wear a necktie ever again. Not after Colombia… I still can’t shave that part of my jaw without nightmares.”

“I beg your pardon?”

---

“I couldn’t convince him to put the mind control tie on.”

“Fiddleford, why are you staring a thousand yards away?”

“He was explaining to me his time in Colombian prison, then he went on a tangent about necklaces and now I don’t think I can change a tire without thinking about it ever again.”

“... Interesting. We’re not resorting to the tranq gun yet?”

“This is your own brother you’re talking about.” 

“There’s only one thing we can do. The only thing that will 99.99% work on my brother. I didn’t think it would have to come to this so soon. But it’s our only unharmful option left.”

---

“Stanley.”

“Doc.”

“I will give you twenty dollars if you stay still for thirty whole seconds.”

“On one hand this is a set up… On the other hand, I’ve done worse for twenty dollars.”

“You what ?”

“Ten bucks up front.”

To be continued...

[estellardreams]

I wasn't entirely sure about posting this but I keep having this plot point rotate around in my brain and I'm thinking of making a fic about it.

Granted, I'm still pretty new to the LMK Fandom so uh... Yeah. Still thinking about it.

Anyway tried making a concept comic and got carried away to get the point across but it was way too clear in my head. So why not?

[centrally-unplanned]

Oh for sure, don't worry I would have no expectation for you to know this or anything, but that question was a bit rhetorical - I blogged a bunch about Vicky 3 recently, and actually blogged precisely about this topic when the game was first being developed! It is absolutely true that the "meta" of Vicky 2 was, in part, to absolutely cheese the military by say underfunding your own so you can focus on development and then using micro to outplay the AI. What they wanted to do was eliminate micro as a skillset so that other factors such as tech/industry/leaders become the dominant way to "win", and I approve of that.

To take your post as an excuse to sort of dig into that (sorry for the hijack! ^^) I have two thoughts on that approach. One is that yes, that goal is good, but not only does the system "not work" it doesn't work in extremely unforced ways. Imagine military units were manually controlled but otherwise the system is pretty much the same, and the "base provinces" for fighting are quite big, like the "HQ" units on the map

(you can make em a bit smaller, don't worry about the specifics). So you click a unit to a territory, and then it "enters" the territory and the game does the same exact thing it does now - lots of little battle events trigger, the "random encounter" elements prevent you from micro-massing to constantly outnumber the AI and the provinces are too big for that anyway. Then you win or lose, and if attacking and winning you occupy the province over time.

That absolutely accomplishes 90% of their goal. Almost all wars would be "take armies, throw them at territory I want to conquer, they fight", cheese is way down, and it reduces clicky clicky a ton. Except I can actually control my god damn units so that if something goes wrong, it is my fault and I know how to fix it, as opposed to an AI's fault that I have no clue how to fix.

I think that "player agency" thing is their real achilles heel, because they keep running into the fact that players want to be involved in their wars, and so they have in fact made combat more complex than it is in Vicky 2 in service of making their non-interactive system feel interactive. The UI is such a hot mess, look at this screen that is just for supply bonuses for armies:

That is 16 toggles for each army. Nothing like that exists in Vicky 2 - but ofc it is fake complexity, typically you just toggle on 80% of them and forget it, but you have to do it! And when you build new armies you choose the specific location of every single brigade's barracks, and generals get hired, promoted, die/retire, gotta replace them! Gotta enable one of these 7 different tactics based on infantry/artillery ratios you manually set for each army because no standardized build cloner exists! And if you have 4 cavalry units in your army now you can trigger the Zerg Rush Offense tactic which gives you plus 13 pierce damage against Qing Eunuch Wizard Brigades but if you go full infantry you can cast Wall of Iron for +50% defense, hmmmmm!

That level of complexity is fine, fun even, if you want your game to be a complex war simulation. But didn't you tell me you didn't???? Wasn't that the whole point??? And there is absolutely nothing comparable to putting in the work of toggling 8 supply bonuses and building 30 barrack buildings spread out among your provinces to minimize revolt risk and hiring 4 generals with Adamant Defense tactics to lead an army for it to recieve its order to Enter Korea and have it fuck off into Siberia because the AI thinks that is the same front. It is a hydra of design, everything is warped around the idea that "micro" is bad but micro is defined solely as manually moving units. Trying to make it interesting without that has spiraled out of control.

The second point I want to mention is, okay, you wanna reduce military cheese. I get why you wanted that in Vicky 2, since players would just go on these ahistorical map-painting sprees. But the reason they did that in Vicky 2 is that they didn't have anything else to do? Vicky 2 was complex to figure out, but once you did it was very simple to play. You set up the gov you want, build factories, click the expand button sometimes, research tech. Otherwise you wait...and do military stuff. The military was the only place you could go clicky clicky, it demanded your detailed involvement to execute on. But that is less of a problem with the military, and way more of a problem with the rest of the game.

Vicky 3 absolutely nipped this in the bud. The economy allows and demands a ton of individual decisions - every farm, mine, and factory can be built by the player, even if it doesn't have to be. You can constantly go to the market screen, go "okay what are we short on", and build more farms, set up more trade routes, reduce its use as an input good, etc. Every economic building as a "tech line" for how it produces the good, often multiple tech lines - but they don't upgrade automatically, they are individual toggles that use different goods as inputs and so sometimes you don't want to immediately upgrade, and it is all on this crazy screen:

Set aside the bad UI and some downstream issues right now, as a concept this is good design! As a player I need to make decisions about "how are we upgrading my economy from iron to steel machine tools?" Are we ready? Do I need to build more steel mills in preparation? Maybe set up some iron trade routes for that? This is micro, in a good sense, you as a player need to get involved.

Which means that if you don't want to do a military map painter game, you aren't going to be bored anymore! You will have a ton to do, you don't need to do it at all. You do need to reduce micro, sure, but you can also just fight less in general - that is up to you now. And the diplo system also pushes back against mass-scale conquest. The problem Vicky 2 had has essentially vanished - you don't need to fix it beyond some simple micro reductions that say Hearts of Iron 4 for example already did better.

And when it comes to cheesing the AI with tactics...who really cares? It is a sandbox game! It isn't hard to beat the AI, it isn't a competitive game, what are you achieving with this? Players self-direct every single game, by explicit design. You should aim to reduce the cheese, but you do that by building a simple system that the AI can handle so options for cheese are limited. You don't do it by building a system the AI can't handle and then making the player incapable of fixing the AI's mistakes, so now it is AI versus AI and they are both equally bad. That isn't an answer! That is a punt.

Which I think is part of my core frustration with the system - you can tell they put a ton of work into it, but at the very base it is a fool's errand. Vicky 2's combat system wasn't broken as a core mechanic, it was just executed badly (The combat map has thousands of provinces, you begged for micro! Just don't do that!) in a game that was light on player input. Now you have a totally new game but are fighting the last decade's war, and doing it badly. It seems incredibly avoidable, and has cost them so much time as a dev team for no real purpose.

Was playing Vicky 3 again, a new Japan run with the VFM mod (which helps add more event depth) and I have definitely gotten the hang of the econ system even more, it has its flaws but the core works very well. I have advanced on getting the political system a bit too, can implement reforms and such. And I studied the military, learned where some opaque stuff in the UI is, etc.

So I go to invade Korea to liberate it off the Qing, declaring war while the UK is invading them to double team them. I try to naval invade Korea...and my attacks get "cancelled" because there are British troops in Korea, we aren't the same war. So I have to wait for that war to *finish* to attack, defeating the point of this strat.

I do, I naval invade Korea, but my attack gets blocked up by endless streams of Qing boats that I beat over and over but since they "exist" in the naval zone I can't progress. Meanwhile the Qing do naval landings in the North of Japan, and I beat them a dozen times, but one attack slips through and "lands" in Chubu.

This "shifts" the combat front system from "defend all of Japan from naval invasions" to "now there is a specific front" - and none of my units auto-deploy to it, so that lone invasion force sweeps a bunch of land before I notice it a few days later. I click my armies near Tokyo to deploy to the "front" near Kyoto to fight them off...at which point they all get on boats and try to autodeploy to Kyushu island - technically part of the same front - leaving the path to Tokyo completely empty and allowing the enemy to advance. And when they do reach Tokyo, that becomes a new "front" causing my units that sailed to Kyushu to sail *back*, which then gets cancelled again since sailing is slower than marching and the whole island is taken by the time they get there and since this is a "front redeploy" i guess it doesn't count as a naval invasion?

I pressed one button - deploy to Kansai front - in that entire sequence.

What problem was this system supposed to solve? What wasn't working with "click on army, have it move to territory, fight"? In Hearts of Iron 4, you have AI-managed fronts? But you don't have to do that, you can manually click them too. It just auto-controls the functional, intuitive system for you so you don't have to micro. Here the AI system is the only way anything functions, so if it breaks your military deletes itself and you can't intervene. And it isn't really less micro intensive! Because if you aren't like 24/7 hawk-eyed on the fronts you aren't going to notice when they just decide to Deploy to HQ because one battle was lost and you need to frantically reclick them which will maybe help but you can't be sure because you are only guessing where units will go.

I get btw that if you are fighting on a land border this system at least functions - but it does not function better than Hearts of Iron 4's system there. It is still annoying to have no control when the units path like madmen. But for now doing anything military with island nations is just insane. Maybe I can figure out cheat codes for auto-winning wars just to make the roleplay go smooth lol.

[rapha-reads]

Anne Rice, IWTV, Part 3, Armand to Louis:

"'It is through you that I can save myself from the despair which I've described to you as our death. It is through you that I must make my link with this nineteenth century and come to understand it in a way that will revitalize me, which I so desperately need. [...] No. I must make contact with the age. [...] And I can do this through you . . . not to learn things from you which I can see in a moment in an art gallery or read in an hour in the thickest books . . . you are the spirit, you are the heart.'

'No, no.' I threw up my hands. I was on the point of a bitter, hysterical laughter. 'Don't you see? I'm not the spirit of any age. I'm at odds with everything and always have been! I have never belonged anywhere with anyone at any time!' It was too painful, too perfectly true.

But his face only brightened with an irresistible smile. He seemed on the verge of laughing at me, and then his shoulders began to move with this laughter. 'But Louis,' he said softly. 'This is the very spirit of your age. Don't you see that? Everyone else feels as you feel. Your fall from grace and faith has been the fall of a century.'"

Alfred de Musset, Confession d'un enfant du siècle, chapitre 2 :

"Trois éléments partageaient donc la vie qui s’offrait alors aux jeunes gens : derrière eux un passé à jamais détruit*, s’agitant encore sur ses ruines, avec tous les fossiles des siècles de l’absolutisme ; devant eux l’aurore d’un immense horizon, les premières clartés de l’avenir** ; et entre ces deux mondes… quelque chose de semblable à l’Océan qui sépare le vieux continent de la jeune Amérique, je ne sais quoi de vague et de flottant, une mer houleuse et pleine de naufrages, traversée de temps en temps par quelque blanche voile lointaine ou par quelque navire soufflant une lourde vapeur ; le siècle présent, en un mot, qui sépare le passé de l’avenir, qui n’est ni l’un ni l’autre et qui ressemble à tous deux à la fois, et où l’on ne sait, à chaque pas qu’on fait, si l’on marche sur une semence ou sur un débris***.

[...] Il leur restait donc le présent, l’esprit du siècle, ange du crépuscule, qui n’est ni la nuit ni le jour ; ils le trouvèrent assis sur un sac de chaux plein d’ossements, serré dans le manteau des égoïstes, et grelottant d’un froid terrible. L’angoisse de la mort leur entra dans l’âme à la vue de ce spectre moitié momie et moitié fœtus**** [...]

Toute la maladie du siècle présent vient de deux causes ; le peuple qui a passé par 93 et par 1814 porte au cœur deux blessures. Tout ce qui était n’est plus, tout ce qui sera n’est pas encore. Ne cherchez pas ailleurs le secret de nos maux*****."

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

Anne Rice definitely read Musset. And Musset would have ADORED Armand and loathed Louis - or maybe the contrary. And depending on when exactly during the 19th century Armand and Louis met, Armand might have already read Musset, and Louis would read him at the end of the century - Confession was published in 1836.

Translations of the passages in bold (translation by me and it's 4am for me right now, so don't expect a perfect work):

*"behind them a past forever destroyed"

**"in front of them, the dawn of an immense horizon, the first lights of the future"

***"the present century, in a word, what separates the past from the future, which is neither one nor the other and which resembles both at the same time, and where one does not know, with each step one takes, if one steps on a seed or rubble"

****"The anguish of death entered their souls at the sight of this specter, half mummy and half fetus."

*****"All that was is no more, all that will be is not yet. Do not look elsewhere for the secret of our ills."

There's a whole Comparative Literature essay that could be written, mirroring Confession with Interview... I will definitely come back to that idea later. Probably. At some point.

[heatwa-ves]

dog symbolism save me dog symbolism

[journey-to-the-attic]

one thing about ik is that she will always reach out

[unproduciblesmackdown]

Lackadaisy Enrichment

[art-is-kayos]

Everlasting A5