#anyways i got sidetracked

[silverselfshippingchaos]

Pairing: Ash (self-insert)/Basch fon Ronsenburg

Word Count: Almost 800.

Warnings: suggestive if you squint, literally just them making out, takes place a year after the game, vague ff12 spoilers

Synopsis: Unfortunately so, not even being a married woman could save Ash from the responsibility of being the Flame of Rabanastre. And yet, in times of peace, the distance between her and her husband felt farther than ever. With enough nagging from her friends and comrades, Ash takes the journey to reunite with her husband. And clearly, her knight in shining armor missed her just as much as she missed him.

The Arcadian silks are smooth and soft against Ash's bare back as she lies down against the back, letting Basch climb on top of her with ease. Ash makes herself comfortable against the cushioned pillows. Her hair was down, a halo of black curls that Basch had been so eager to feel once again. After all, it wasn't often they had time for themselves since the war ended, so all the time they had together was savored.

Ash's hands grasp at the sheets,

"Now these... These are nice."

"Aren't they?"

Basch's voice is deep and rough, and it's clear that the last thing he's focused on is the look of the damn sheets.

"You look beautiful with the red as your canvas."

Ash could never get enough of him, and she never planned to. The ring on her finger was but a physical representation of a promise that was always there, even when Basch was behind bars for two years. Still, despite it all, Ash thinks to herself that she was the luckiest woman in all of Ivalice to have such a view all to herself.

Ash humors his words with a soft smirk. Her fingers trail up from the red, silken sheets up his arm. Her touch is gently, her nails just dragging along his scarred skin and muscle to eventually rest her hand upon his cheek. She takes a moment to truly admire him.

They were older now, so much older than they were when they meet, but blue-gray eyes like a perfect storm always stayed the same. His hair was shorter now, in an attempt to look like someone who he never truly was. To the world, Basch was dead. To her, Basch was her life.

"It is rather exquisite bedding... Though I would expect nothing less from the Emperor's loyal protector."

Through the thin, white curtains blowing softly from the window, there was little but the moonlight illuminating them. Ash liked it that way—It reminded her of old times. Nothing but them and the sand beneath the stars, the sounds of quiet gasps and whispers of love the only thing either of them could care about. Archades wasn't the deserts she called home, but Basch's arms were home enough.

A flame needs a spark, and that's exactly what he was to her.

Ash leans her head back with a soft moan as her partner kisses her neck. If this is what happened whenever she got out of Rabanastre for a month, perhaps she had better become Archadia's Flame instead, always within arms reach of her loyal knight.

Basch leans in to pepper kisses along Ash's jaw, the poke of his short beard a contrast to the soft, feather-like touches of his lips.

Ash can feel him chuckle,

"I am much more than that, my lady. Allow me to show you."

They had been lovers for years, friends for even longer. It's not heated passion or lust that brought them together on that quiet night in the castle, but rather the feeling of two lovers reuniting. And Ash has no complaints.

There is nothing quick or hungry about the way Basch kisses her. Basch does not just kiss her. Basch worships Ash. Her body is one that he knows all too well. It was one that he had known when he was so much more than the man he was now, one that he had known whenever he was held in chains in Nalbina, and one that he had known in the hot, Dalmascan nights that left him red and exhausted.

Every inch of her is something that he knows so intimately, so he takes his time kissing her, feeling her as if to memorize her with his lips once more.

How could she? She had spent so many nights in Rabanastre dreaming night and day about her husband's arms only to realize that, as always, the real thing is so much better. Basch's lips trail down to her clavicle, kissing and sucking soft bruises that he knew Ash loved. The sweet melody of her breath and soft whispers of I love you only serving as motivation for him to continue. After all, it was a knight's job to serve his lady.

His hand trails to the side to meet hers, their fingers interlocking in a way that only affirmed the belief that, yes, they truly were made for each other. Ash simply closes her eyes and sighs, basking in the feeling.

Perfect in every single way is what Basch was to her.

[antrunner]

me and my friends trying to happily and peacefully make art about comics and video games:

dumbass anon asks in our inboxes:

[fellthemarvelous]

My favorite things that Obi-Wan and Ezra have in common:

Hondo's "best friend"

Maul's obsession

Unique bond with animals

Fond of a Mandalorian named Sa_ine.

Spending ten years in exile before someone comes for them.

Fondness for Ahsoka Tano and Captain Rex

[itsafreetrialofdeath]

master tacticians at work

[theholeyness]

[yea-baiyi]

ok but the hualian statues extra really said hua cheng couldn’t be there for xie lian for every terrible moment in his life, but now he can go back and heal xie lian’s inner child, could care for him every time he was in pain, be beside him in every moment of loneliness, comfort him in every moment of grief. something something it’s a metaphor for how love truly can heal old wounds

[hunybody]

just remembered the one time eddie started really unloading on his father, after years of repressing, his father had a heart attack in front of him. just like when he finally started unloading his stuff about shannon and chris walked in. he is SUCH a guy who is punished by the narrative

[vividviolence]

just realized I didn't post these. uh @elementcattos

[rystiel]

au where fiddleford ends up coming back after stan loses ford and they work together to fix the portal

(and also they fall in love)

[shirojikimattari]

Hey

ⱽᵃᵐᵖᶦʳᵉ ˢʰᵃᵈᵒʷʰᵉᵃʳᵗ

Reference after cut uwu

By columbo (@thisuserisalive)

[linkyu]

tell me about your defense contract pleage

Oh boy!

To be fair, it's nothing grandiose, like, it wasn't about "a new missile blueprint" or whatever, but, just thinking about what it could have become? yeesh.

So, let's go.

For context, this is taking place in the early 2010s, where I was working as a dev and manager for a company that mostly did space stuff, but they had some defence and security contracts too.

One day we got a new contract though, which was... a weird one. It was state-auctioned, meaning that this was basically a homeland contract, but the main sponsor was Philip Morris. Yeah. The American cigarette company.

Why? Because the contract was essentially a crackdown on "illegal cigarette sales", but it was sold as a more general "war on drugs" contract.

For those unaware (because chances are, like me, you are a non-smoker), cigarette contraband is very much a thing. At the time, ~15% of cigarettes were sold illegally here (read: they were smuggled in and sold on the street).

And Phillip Morris wanted to stop that. After all, they're only a small company worth uhhh... oh JFC. Just a paltry 150 billion dollars. They need those extra dollars, you understand?

Anyway. So they sponsored a contract to the state, promising that "the technology used for this can be used to stop drug deals too". Also that "the state would benefit from the cigarettes part as well because smaller black market means more official sales means a higher tax revenue" (that has actually been proven true during the 2020 quarantine).

Anyway, here was the plan:

Phase 1 was to train a neural network and plug it in directly to the city's video-surveillance system, in order to detect illegal transactions as soon as they occur. Big brother who?

Phase 2 was to then track the people involved in said transaction throughout the city, based on their appearance and gait. You ever seen the Plainsight sheep counting video? Imagine something like this but with people. That data would then be relayed to police officers in the area.

So yeah, an automated CCTV-based tracking system. Because that's not setting a scary precedent.

So what do you do when you're in that position? Let me tell you. If you're thrust unknowingly, or against your will, into a project like this,

Note. The following is not a legal advice. In fact it's not even good advice. Do not attempt any of this unless you know you can't get caught, or that even if you are caught, the consequences are acceptable. Above all else, always have a backup plan if and when it backfires. Also don't do anything that can get you sued. Be reasonable.

Let me introduce you to the world of Corporate Sabotage! It's a funny form of striking, very effective in office environments.

Here's what I did:

First of all was the training data. We had extensive footage, but it needed to be marked manually for the training. Basically, just cropping the clips around the "transaction" and drawing some boxes on top of the "criminals". I was in charge of several batches of those. It helped that I was fast at it since I had video editing experience already. Well, let's just say that a good deal of those markings were... not very accurate.

Also, did you know that some video encodings are very slow to process by OpenCV, to the point of sometimes crashing? I'm sure the software is better at it nowadays though. So I did that to another portion of the data.

Unfortunately the training model itself was handled by a different company, so I couldn't do more about this.

Or could I?

I was the main person communicating with them, after all.

Enter: Miscommunication Master

In short (because this is already way too long), I became the most rigid person in the project. Like insisting on sharing the training data only on our own secure shared drive, which they didn't have access to yet. Or tracking down every single bug in the program and making weekly reports on those, which bogged down progress. Or asking for things to be done but without pointing at anyone in particular, so that no one actually did the thing. You know, classic manager incompetence. Except I couldn't be faulted, because after all, I was just "really serious about the security aspect of this project. And you don't want the state to learn that we've mishandled the data security of the project, do you, Jeff?"

A thousand little jabs like this, to slow down and delay the project.

At the end of it, after a full year on this project, we had.... a neural network full of false positives and a semi-working visualizer.

They said the project needed to be wrapped up in the next three months.

I said "damn, good luck with that! By the way my contract is up next month and I'm not renewing."

Last I heard, that city still doesn't have anything installed on their CCTV.

tl;dr: I used corporate sabotage to prevent automated surveillance to be implemented in a city--

hey hold on

wait

what

HEY ACTUALLY I DID SOME EXTRA RESEARCH TO SEE IF PHILLIP MORRIS TRIED THIS SHIT WITH ANOTHER COMPANY SINCE THEN AND WHAT THE FUCK

HUH??????

well what the fuck was all that even about then if they already own most of the black market???

[itsevansart]

soon.

make my day by reblogging and not reposting!

[t00thpasteface]

sunken pirate treasure...!

[littlefridayhoney]

seventeen + make up a guy (hyung line ver.) 

[autumn0689]

Lester Papadopoulos is a comfort character to me. I’ve been a huge Percy Jackson fan for years now, and I’ve loved many characters (Grover, Nico, Leo, Percy, etc) and when I first read TOA I loved it, but after rereading it…

I fell in love with Lester, this caring and complex character who had many layers to him, that came off as selfish, and yet just so happened to be one of the most selfless characters in the book.

He’s caring, he’s a former god, he’s selfless, he pees himself regularly, he loves his children, he drowned his ex that one time, he is a god of many things, he has had many lovers. He has so many aspects to him that makes him so interesting.

He has a redemption arc as he realizes that he has made mistakes, but also realizes that he has been abused by Zeus, that it most likely influenced how he view things, and how he may have picked up toxic behaviors from Zeus. He learns to be more human, which is such a beautiful arc to see him go through.

He cares SO MUCH about others. He grieves for Jason and Crest and Heloise and so many other people. He tried to sacrifice himself many times and has many heroic qualities, but he is an unreliable narrator and sometimes what he says doesn’t reflect what he does.

His and Meg’s relationship is one of my favorite friendships in the books. It feels like it’s the two of them against the world at times. Meg cares so much for him while also calling him out on his bad actions (like when they were on Sutro Tower) and Lester cares so much for her as he realizes that she has been abused, that she needs help, and that he wants to help her separate from Nero’s influence, that he is so proud of her for standing up to Nero. They both form such a strong bond with each other and I just- I love them!

He is also absolutely hilarious. I find myself laughing as he is just- so snarky sometimes? He also sometimes know random things? (Like the Goddess of Sewers Cloacina) He is also funny when he has no knowledge on how human things work (like not knowing the price of Tater Tot’s)

He also gets anxious and freaks out and cries and he just feels. He gets happy and laughs and gets sad and laments. He gets flashbacks and clearly has trauma but doesn’t let that excuse his bad actions as he feels guilt for his actions. He can also be quite harsh on himself, blaming himself often and sometimes projecting that onto others (like him saying that Piper is blaming him for Crest’s death??) He is such an emotional character and I love him for that.

I love whenever he gets his godly strength as it starts with small things and then it gets to the point that he can create fire with his hands just by simply mentioning cauterizing a wound and breaking Nero’s fasces and having enough strength to drag Python into the Underworld and is strong enough to hold on just enough to save himself from falling into Tartarus. He is such a strong person who has an incredible pain tolerance.

There are many other things that I love about Lester Papadopoulos/Apollo. I think I can positively say that he is my favorite PJO character. I often reread TOA more than the other books. I love the story and how dark it can get while also exploring the themes of how abuse affects you.

I just- I love Meg and Apollo. I need for fanfic of them!! I need more content of them! Their friendship is so underrated, so when I see people make fanfic of them I get so happy!

I also love the community. The fan-artists and the fanfic makers and anyone who just writes long posts, like me, are so talented and is honestly the best fandom I’ve been in.

I hope the PJO show becomes popular so that more people can read these amazing series. I hope there will be a day that TOA gets adapted, and even if it doesn’t, I still have the audiobooks to go back to.

Thanks TOA fandom, for still going strong, even years after the books ended and new books have come out and are still making fanfic about them. It feels like the books have never ended, like the TOA books are still going on and are still making posts.

I’m so happy to be part of such a passionate fanbase.

Anyways if anyone is willing to offer any good fanfics then let me know!

[brother-emperors]

The Borgias, The Purge / The Cardinal's Wardrobe, Carol M. Richardson