#basically I'll make this super awkward for all of us
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respectthepetty · 6 months ago
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@babyangelsky, @super-fan thinks it's black, but you know what, I'm gonna fix it either way.
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I'm getting Yak in purple even if I have to make it happen myself!
IT WASN'T A DREAM!
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And now I gotta figure out this blue!
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snoopyracing · 4 months ago
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wanna be yours 2.0 // ln4 social media au // part one
part two | part three
pairing: lando norris X american!reader / mclaren photographer!reader and slight pato o'ward X reader
warnings: swearing
summary: a remix of my fic wanna be yours in social media au form. or basically lando and the reader both being in love with each other but being too stubborn and scared to say anything so they suffer in silence until one finally crumbles.
contains: best friends to slight strangers to lovers, pining, angst, jealous!lando, asshole!lando, clueless!lando, and perhaps a little lando or pato? situation.
masterlist
─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───
may 5th, 2024
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liked by landonorris, y/bsf, oscarpiastri and 100,000 others
y/n.jpg: miami baby! i think the guy in the second pic won some kind of race involving super fast cars but i could be wrong.
landonorris: who is that guy???? he's really good looking...
↳ y/n.jpg: i think his name is lando onewin.
↳ landonorris: bye. that doesn't even work.
user1: you always take such good pics of lando.. thank u queen
user2: lando always being the first to comment. dude's down bad lol
y/bsf: the kids miss you. please come home.
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may 6th, 2024
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may 8th, 2024
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may 9th, 2024
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liked by landonorris, mclaren, patricooward and 200,000 others
y/n.jpg: back at the mtc today for a very special reason! everyone was there to celebrate my amazing photography skills and editing on all the pictures from the season so far! lando was even kind enough to show up with a trophy to give to me! i love my job <3
in all seriousness. could not be more proud of you lando!!! it's been a long time coming, but we both know it's only the beginning!
landonorris: that awkward moment when you tried to take the trophy from me....
↳ y/n.jpg: DON'T SAY THAT PEOPLE ARE GONNA THINK IT'S TRUE.
↳ landonorris: i'll make sure they engrave the next one with your name too.
↳ y/n.jpg: ok but as long as my name is listed first.
mclaren: our favorite photographer ❤️ -liked by author
user1: ok but where is y/n's trophy fr??? she's hands down one of the best photographers in the game rn.
user2: y/n and lando you are so dear to me
user3: pato in the likes??
↳ user4: y/n used to work for arrow mclaren before working for mclaren f1. also pato is literally the reserve driver for f1 this season... honestly the web that is y/n, lando, and pato intertwines so much it's kinda crazy...
may 11th, 2024
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may 14th, 2024
y/n.jpg added to their story
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landonorris replied to your story
↳ WHY WOULD YOU POST THAT??? IT'S MORE THAN A JUMPSCARE!
oscarpiastri replied to your story
↳ why do you always catching me folding in front of lando like that :/
may 15th, 2024
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may 19th, 2024
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liked by y/bsf, oscarpiastri, patricooward and 100,000 others
y/n.jpg: imola 2024.
y/bsf: best photographer in the world. i love you!!! -liked by author
user1: not even a pic of lando's car.... oh no :/
user2: no funny caption... no lando like or comment... guys we are in the trenches
user3: we love you y/n! -liked by author
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may 21st, 2024
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y/n.jpg added to their story
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landonorris replied to your story
↳ what the hell?
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caeunot · 11 months ago
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johnnie guilbert x reader
➷ breeding kink plus some fluff :3
PSA: the johnnie ive written about is the fictional version we all have in our minds, we truly don't know how he actually is and it's good to make a balance to avoid any uneasy or parasocial feelings when writing about a real person.
you and johnnie have been dating for around three years and you already decided that he is the man you are going to marry, you two are both almost 30 now which is terrifying but it also is making your baby feaver worsen.
you have always wanted kids and johnnie knows that, he never was fully against it but he always looked a bit awkward when you two would talk about it.
johnnie also knows that you have an extreme breeding kink, which has led to a lot of roleplay in the bed but you feel it's time to do something a bit more official.
when one of your friends asked to babysit their 17 month old baby you agreed! one part because you love kids and other so that you can give yourself and johnnie (mainly johnnie) a feel for how it's like to be a parent.
"thanks so much you guys! we haven't had an actual break for so long we need this.", "it's our pleasure I promise we will take good care of lil jess". your friend passes her into your arms and johnnie bends down and pokes her arm. "hey jess! I'm Johnny and I'll help look after you for the next few days :D"
you start unpacking all the baby stuff like diapers the toys and milk, johnnie watches you in awe and for almost every item asks you questions about it. "and what about this?" he says pointing to a cream. "that's for diaper rashes! their bums are super sensitive so it's important to add after changing a diaper". " so u gotta like.. rub it on and stuff...".
you laugh at him and he laughs back, but his laughing stops when you mention how he will have to try change her a few times himself. eventually you two settle everything in and you teach him the basics like how to feed them and how to make the bottles.
"okay can u put in microwave for 20 seconds! she prefers it warm". johnnie put the bottle in and started staring intensively into the microwave, you can't help but let out a laugh by accident making your hand immediately smack your mouth. "okay what was that for!! I thought I was doing this properly.." you walk over to him and put your arms around his waist. "I laughed because you looked so cute doing it baby, I'd love to make you a dad"
that comment made him turn his head to the side as his face went a bit red, you remove your hands from his waist and use it to guide his face to yours and you two share a deep kiss.
that night after putting jess to sleep in her fold out crib you and johnnie cuddled on the bed while watching some tv when johnnie turns to face you, "do you think I'd make a good dad?". " johnnie are you kidding?! you would make an amazing dad! you have such an sweet nature and you are the perfect mix of playful and serious, baby your the blueprint for a perfect dad" he let out a big gummy smile after that and pulled you on top of him and you two start making out for awhile before falling asleep in each other's arms.
at the end of the weekend you two had learned a lot, you learned that johnnie actually is really good with playing with babies.. not so much the unfun stuff like diapers and spit but that's something you get used to over time. and johnnie learned that there was nothing more than he wanted at that moment than to make you a mom, the way you were to gentle and sweet to the baby and the way you knew exactly how to do everything with her. honestly he found it really hot. that's why that night after jess went back home he took your hand and started to gently lead you to the bedroom.
"johnnie you weirdo what are you doing!" you say jokingly as he closes the bedroom door and pushes you onto the bed. he leans over you and whispers in your ear, "im ready" knowing you would know exactly what he ment. you immediately reached for his face and you two share a deep kiss and slipped tongue, he picked you up slowly to push you further onto the bed and immediately took off his shirt and pants as you do the same.
he crawls towards you like a hungry animal, while sitting on your thighs he starts kissing your belly and slowly gets higher and higher till he's finally kissing your face. in between the kisses you moan out, "fuck me johnnie, fuck a baby into me". you could see how much those words did something to him because with no hesitation he immediately starts pulling down your panties, but instead of what you expected he slipped his hand in between your legs. he slipped 2 fingers in making you shudder and hold the sheets as he went back and forth inside of you before letting one finger out and using it to rub your clit slowly.. enough to where it's making you go crazy but not enough to orgasam just yet
after a few minutes he takes his soaking fingers out and licks them, "are you ready darling?" he asks you in a sweet whisper without actually giving you time to answer as he slips it in almost instantly
he starts grinding back on forth inside of you and leans forward to start kissing you and grabbing your boobs to keep him steady, after a little bit of him going slow you decided to speed things up by pushing up your hips making his dick go deeper inside you, taking him off guard he let out an accidental whimper. this was enough to make him go harder and faster.
and harder and faster he did
the whole bed was screeching as you two rocked it back and forth, you have never seen johnnie like this before, he normally is really sweet and gentle but this time he's being really rough, he's digging his nails into your back and leaving bite marks all over your chest.
"after this your all mine y/n.. this is me claiming you" and as he says that he moans and grips onto you harder and you feel his warm seed filling you.
when he took it out he immediately stuck his finger back inside to make sure you don't loose any of the baby batter he gave you.
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amelie-isnt-french · 9 months ago
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I'll bite.
I need to know about the red string conspiracy doc.
Sounds very fun
I have been WAITING for this. Get ready for the combined brainrot of @alice-apparently and I, you poor soul. Now, listen up, 'cause we’ve got a labrynthine twisted task of a tale to tell, and if you don’t keep up, you might get lost :)
And obviously: spoilers for tmagp. don't keep reading if you're behind 🫵🏼
First things first: anyone currently descending into paranoia? we're already there, poster children of paranoia-land, that's us. May I present the title of the wonderful conspiracy doc -
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There's also a TMA conspiracy doc Ali made, fully colour- episode- and entity-coordinated. It's like 24k words and not even fully done. don't worry about it.
Which is why we're going to be super normal and low-key about the Protocol red string doc right?
of course.
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As you can see above, our collaboration relies on Ali's colour coding and her making nice, structured observations of possibly important things, while I provide the Latin and cheer her on. Balance is important in a marriage.
Also included in this all-round package: character info, quotes, etc.
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I've since moved on from my "Gwen is evil" theory because I simply love socially awkward, abrasive characters who are good at their job a little too much (nervously shuffles Jonathan Sims, the Archivist, further behind my back). Still the hottest bitch at the OIAR, don't @ me.
Also also, in this house we love Alice Dyer and don't trust her any further than we can throw her. what is UP with all your comments Alice? What do you know???
Anyway.
But Ames, you say, didn't you promise quotes? I did, and I'll do you one better: tmagp quotes with additional obnoxious commentary from yours truly and Ali
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If you'd like to see Ali lose her shit over the red canary implications (which I fully support), hop over to her tumblr @alice-apparently and give it a read. It's delightful.
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Right. Moving on from the random screenshots. Basic outline of part one of the paranoia board is a section for every episode. Ali is listening to ep7 as I write this and having a great time (not), so there's not much in the ep7 section, except for this:
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Thoughts and prayers, love, thoughts and prayers.
And FINALLY, my favourite section.
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This is the speculation part, time line puzzle and colour coding reference, but my current favourite is this:
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She's trying to reverse-engineer the case coding in tmagp, a noble cause. Godspeed, Ali, bc that is too many numbers for my silly little brain. I only excel at criticising stupid horror protagonists aka Personal Screening:
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That's all for now.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk, and to send you all off, one last silly comment from me to you and the universe:
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Bye!
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codacheetah · 5 months ago
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AGREE WITH YOUR PREVIOUS POST. I like mean Loop as a facade only, but we know they still care and love...
Now I have a question, what's your favorite Loop takes/headcanon
Oh my god I'm so sorry I took like two weeks to answer this one I prommy it's not bc I'm exclusively a hater or whatever. I just straight up forgot to answer Oopsie. I'm putting this under cut bc it got long enough that you all would shoot arrows at me for putting it on your dash
Anyways there's a lot of Loop Thangs I like frankly. A big one that I enjoy is when fic authors in postcanon make the transition of Loop into the party structure kind of rocky. Usually bc Loop's neuroses creating a level 12 psychic barrier between them and the party + the inherent awkwardness of meeting somebody who's apparently super close in a way (that you'll never fully understand) to one of your friends. Who let's be real I feel like half the party (coughIsabeauandMirabelle) would catch the aura of "oh they do not like us at all" from Loop. I want Loop to be happy and with their family but you just know this bitch is going to make it as difficult for themself on purpose. The Siffrin Special.
I also just generally like when they keep Loop as a star postcanon. I'm not at all a hater towards Human Loop (in fact I think it can be itself an interesting setup for a Loop fic) but I do like Loop as a star more thematically. Something about having to accept that things have changed and moving on from it regardless. Also bc Loop being dysphoric about their body scratches a very transgender projection itch in my brain Yessss little star you're stuck in a body that draws unwanted attention and which you have no control over how it looks and functions in a way that feels fundamentally wrong to you. (Pointing at canonically transgender character) Yooooo this guy is such a cool trans allegory omg
Hmm what else. This is more of a sloops thing but I always enjoy in fics when they lean into the fact it's selfcest frankly. I've become a selfcest enjoyer bc of this ship I'll never get over that act 5 dialogue abt the cautionary tale where Siffrin says he never understood the moral of the story bc the idea of having somebody just like him who understands him. Oh my gyoooooooooooooooood. I want them to melt into sludge I'm always thinking of that analogy from superflyghtheart on discord comparing Loop and Siffrin to endlings of an endangered species. 💥💥💥It's like. This is less sloopy now but I'm caught between the intersection in my head of "Loop would probably benefit from developing their own identity as a person separate from Siffrin bc they need Something they have control over" and "Loop is of the Siffrin Species and they are significantly too sentimental to let go of the shreds of what they used to have, especially after having lost all of it once already". Both of these things are yummy as fuck when ppl smarter than me explore them and they're kinda the main Story Paths for postcanon Loop anyways so I'm always winning. So like idk tldr I like it both when ppl have Loop diverge a lot as a person and when they have Loop try their best to stay as much of a Siffrin as possible!
I'm limiting myself to four paragraphs so you don't all want to hit me with hammers but I do have Loop Biology Headcanons. I've explained mythoughts on their guts before and don't feel like recounting them but whatever True #codacheetahwarriors remember my deranged rambling. ANYWAYS I kind of mentally run on the assumption of Loop's body as like. The Universe couldn't keep Loop in Siffrin's body, bc they needed Siffrin to be in it (and I guess a system situation introduces too many factors of its own? idk). The Universe operates with the goal of fulfilling wishes with the least intervention possible, so The Universe makes a body out of cheap inorganic material (star-scrap basically). Miniature star for a head fueling the body with Craft energy (I'm not going to get into my conspiracy that all Craft is the same here). Molds the star scrap into a vaguely Siffrin-shaped/sized vessel and plonks Loop's conscious into it and calls it a day. So Loop's body as a poor simulacrum of a human body is like. They're capable of breathing but they only really benefit from doing it on a psychological level. They can't eat or drink and don't have a mouth because it would require a significant level of added effort to make a digestive system, when they can just derive energy from their star. They don't have reproductive organs because they're not made from organic material anymore anyways. They don't need to sleep bc their body never gets tired but they still do it because it's not really a great idea to leave your brain on running for too long anyways.
I fucking lied I'm on paragraph five bc the block of text is annoying me. To continue that's all a preface to say I think it's super fun when Loop has body functions that are weird and unpredictable. Their little frizzles on their body are reactive to their emotions the same way their headstar is, and feel like static if you touch them. Their head has a vague boundary so their eyes have something to be rooted to but the function by which their optic nerves work is unclear to everybody including themself. They glow based on intensity of emotion and the temperature of their star changes via specific mood. Bc I think it would be fun if the battlefield in twohats when from ice cold to boiling hot frankly. Ok these are all just my headcanons (temperature one very loose though I'm not a hard subscriber to it) but they're not uniquely mine it's just examples of what I mean. One I don't have as a personal headcanon but I do enjoy is when Loop feels the same physical sensations as Siffrin bc it's funny and I like inflicting misery on the star.
I'm going to shut up now like actually . Loop for your troubles
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spanishskulduggery · 1 year ago
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Just discovered while talking to someone in Spanish that "Adiós" is more of a permanent goodbye, something you might say to someone you expect to never meet again, like a stranger. Instead, he said I should use "nos vemos" when speaking with people I know, which makes sense. I was wondering what other goodbyes I could use that aren't permanent? Obviously there's "hasta luego" and "hasta mañana."
I wouldn't go that far necessarily, but yes adiós can be used for people you don't expect to see for a long time (possibly never again like sayonara means in Japanese)
Literally, adiós is "go with God" which would have been a lot more impactful in the time of needing to journey days/weeks/months to meet some relatives, and possibly having to deal with war, disease, wild animals etc
A lot of Western langauges have something similar, even "goodbye" is "God be with you/ye"
Some people do use it for a permanent goodbye. Others use it for an indefinite but probably long period of goodbye
And some people just say adiós as a standard goodbye with no deeper meaning other than "bye"
Note: You can also say adiosito which I wouldn't necessarily recommend outside of friendly conversation since it can sound sarcastic; it's like "toodle-oo" but it's literally a little goodbye
Note 2: If you vehemently hate someone and you hope to never see them again, you can say hasta nunca which is like "see you never" and I think that's beautiful
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Today people do use adiós just as "goodbye" though it can read as "we won't see each other for a while"
The more short-term is nos vemos "we will see each other"
Another variation is a direct object version rather than reflexive. You can say te veo pronto "I'll see you soon" for example, instead of nos vemos pronto "we will see each other soon", that sort of thing
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There's also hasta pronto "see you soon", hasta la próxima "see you next time"
And a lot of people have adapted certain words into Spanish like bye/bai or chau/chao for goodbyes
chau/chao in particular comes from ciao and is super common especially in South America
Another common one I say is cuídate "take care of yourself" / cuídese for polite, cuídense for plural
Depending on context you can also say ¡Suerte! "Good luck!" (or ¡Buena suerte! or ¡Que tengas mucha suerte! "Hope you have lots of luck" or te deseo mucha suerte etc)....
Another common one I say is ¡Ánimo! which means something like "Chin up!" but literally it's "energy" or "cheer"; if you're saying ánimo with someone you're essentially saying ¡Aguanta! or ¡Resiste! which is like "Hang in there!" or trying to pep someone up, where animar is "to cheer someone on" so it's all related there
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Also I know you said spoken but just in case, if you're signing off on a letter/email there are some basic phrases you can use:
saludos = (a generic kind of goodbye) [lit. "salutations" or "regards"] un cordial saludo = (something like "kind regards")
atentamente = "yours truly" / "sincerely" [lit. "attentively"]
estamos en contacto / estaremos en contacto = "we'll be in touch"
And if you're writing a friendly letter you can say abrazos or besos for "hugs" and "kisses" respectively; it's very common to say something like te mando un abrazo "I'm sending you a hug" or something like that
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Also, if you're at a party or something, you can say something like ya me voy or me largo or something like "I'm heading out"
I tend to say something like hora de irme "time for me to go" because in my English-speaking brain saying me largo feels awkward like I'm storming out but I know that's not what that always means
Additionally you can say debo irme "I should go", something along those lines is pretty standard
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If you're being funny, I think me piro vampiro is somewhat used in Spain (but maybe not so much now)... it's just there for the rhyme. Literally "I'm out, vampire" or "I'm leaving, vampire" [pirarse is an idiomatic way of saying "to leave"]
For Latin America, more common would be chao/chau pescao which is literally "goodbye seafood/fish" since pescao is an informal spelling of pescado where the D can kind of be aspirated
You may also see/hear chao/chau bacalao "goodbye cod"
Again, all for the rhyme. The equivalent of "see you later alligator" in English. Everyone loves a rhyme
But obviously only do this among friends because it's informal and a bit childish
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morally-earl-gray · 3 days ago
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its ✨crisis time✨
sooo.... im aroace.
ive kinda known for a long time but i was in denial about it until recently (my internal thoughts are... complicated)
anyways, i want to come out to somebody, but im not sure who. i have a few options so im making a pro/con list (something i do a lot when making important decisions). yes, this is very personal but i need an outside opinion.
Option 1: lets call her Estelle (not her real name)
Pros:
younger sister
im really close to her (we tell each other almost everything)
bisexual, and i was one of the first people she told
already suspects that im aroace
Cons:
shes really pushy
shes gonna be weird about it and ask too many questions
she hasnt been as honest with me as she used to be, so im a little hesitant to open up to her
Option 2: Poppy (again, not her real name)
Pros:
shes my twin sister
we're really close
if i tell her, shes finally gonna stop asking me why i dont get crushes (and stop calling me a liar)
shes pretty understanding
she probably wont ask too many questions
she tells me everything about her life
i know she probably wont tell anyone
Cons:
shes straight (and doesnt know our other sister is bi) so she could be weird about it?
i might need to explain it to her bc shes less educated
Option 3: Clara
Pros:
lesbian, so she'll definetly understand
already knows what aroace means
we've been friend since kindergarten and we text a lot
Cons:
i know for a fact that she's not completely honest with me about her life
i dont know her as well as i thought i did :,(
basically idk... it would be kinda hard for me to be super honest with her, and i would feel weird about it
Option 4: put a PSA on my extended family group chat and then completely disappear (lock myself in my room) for like a week
Pros:
they'll all finally know
theyll stop calling me a liar when i say i dont have any crushes
i can stop feeling like im hiding something when im around them
i gotta come out sooner or later, right?
rip the band-aid off
if i come out first, my sister will probably feel more comfortable when she decides to come out
Cons:
theyre REALLY homophobic
they have extremely... old-fashioned views on stuff like families and gender roles etc
they definetly wont understand
theyll probably call me a heartless robot or smth
i'll probably end up as an outsider in my own family
they're gonna be super awkward around me
long story short: every bad thing that you could say to an aroace... thats what theyd say to me
So... if anyone has advice, i would love to hear it. this is literally eating me up inside, i really want to talk to someone but i dont know who. also (and this is a weird request) my dms are always open, if anyone's out there and wants to chat, please message me and we can work through our crisises together
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lowkeyremi · 1 year ago
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mayaaaaa !! so your aot fluff just sent my soul back to my levi fanfic phase 😭😭 can you please please write more of levi with his younger lover ??? i need to know all about it !!! how do they cuddle? how did they get together? what’s he like in public with them????
love you lots <33
OFC!! This is such a cute concept i'm excited to write this >:3 AND ILY TOO <333
It's not required but if you haven't read the first part you might wanna do that :)
CW: None, just fluff
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First encounter:
The two of you met when he was on a business trip. You and your friends were shopping for new clothes and he was at the store for a new tie, because according to his boss, "you wear that same tie all the time, Ackerman. This meeting is really important so try to look nice."
When you saw him it was game over. Funny thing is you didn't even try to hide it either, your eyes widened, your jaw was on the floor, and everything.
"That guy is so hot! You should talk to him." Your friend squeals.
"No way in hell, he's probably married! That'd be so weird." You argue in return. Your friend didn't give up though.
"Excuse me, sir! If you're looking for a tie my friend can help you look for one! She used to work in retail." Her voice is sweet when talking to him. If that super hot guy hadn't been right there you would have smacked her.
He didn't say anything at first, he looked you up and down. "He's checking you out!" She whisper-yelled. You elbowed her in the rib.
"I have a suit that looks like- you know what let me just look for a picture." He says, and what the hell... his voice is like silk.
You walk over to him. "Here it is." The suit is a dark gray, with a white undershirt. Your eyes scan his phone, it's an older outdated model and you can't help but giggle.
"Is gray a bad color for me?" He asks, with sarcasm.
"No no! It's just.. what model is your phone? It looks old." His brows furrow as he inspects his phone.
"I don't know, I got it a long time ago." He says with a shrug, "It works just fine."
"Sorry sorry. What kind of tie do you have right now? If you have one." You say trying to be inclusive.
"The one I usually wear is black but this is a special occasion so I need something else." You hum lightly while looking around.
"Okay, I'm thinking blue. Specifically dark blue." He nods and you two look around for a dark blue tie without patterns because he's basic.
Out of the corner of your eye your friends are making smooching faces and other romantic gestures. You're going to end them later.
"I found one thanks for the help." He says.
"Of course!" Fuck, too happy?
He stares at you for a moment, and you stare back before looking away. You take a step back and clear your throat.
"C-can.. I get your number?" Your foot is tapping and you're looking everywhere except for at him.
"Yeah, sorry if my calls don't go through because of my crappy phone." He says with a small.. smile?
You stare for a second in silence.
"That was my attempt at making a joke, it was bad." He says with a sigh.
"Yeah... we're gonna need to work on that. What's your name Mr. Gloomy?" You hand over your phone, you have the dial screen open so he can put in his number.
"Levi Ackerman." That small smile returns.
"I'll see you around, Levi."
In public:
Turns out you were actually the one who wasn't big on telling people about you at first. Levi is proud of everything he does. In all honesty you were slightly embarrassed by having an older boyfriend.
"What if people think you're my sugar daddy or something?" You reason.
"I'm not that old." He rolls his eyes.
"Why does it matter what other people think of our relationship anyway? They're not dating you, I am." He explains. He makes it sound like common sense, which it is, but you still think it's a little awkward.
"I mean it doesn't matter too much but-"
"I respect your decision. I'm not huge on PDA but I'd at least like people close to me to know." He explains rubbing his hand up and down your thigh. You grab his hand (which happens to be very veiny and pretty) and kiss it.
"Thanks, Levi."
-----
When you did tell everyone... you were all over him. Levi was never big on PDA but he didn't mind giving you a little kiss or holding your hand.
The only time he's really touching you in public is one someone's hitting on you. Levi gets scared that you'll find someone younger than him.
-----
"Did you want to go out sometime?" Your new co-worker asks you. He doesn't know you have a boyfriend but you've been rejecting him all week.
You check your phone to see that Levi's just arrived. Your shift ended early today and he promised to come get you and take you out.
"Um no than-"
"Are you ready to go, baby?" Levi's voice is confident and smug. The guy looks over to Levi and then to you. His face flushes and he starts to stammer.
"U-uh sorry. I... I didn't know." Levi exhales as the guy walks away in a hurry.
"You should call me that more often." You chime in with a cheeky smirk.
"I do." He offers you his hand. When you take it, he leads the way to his black cadillac.
"I mean yeah! But not outside of the house."
"I'm working on it... baby."
Meeting the parents:
To your surprise they were very accepting of Levi.
"They've always been very childish. I'm so glad they found someone to keep them in shape." Your mother was embarrassing as always.
"Take care of them." Your father had said.
Levi nodded and they stood there awkwardly.
"Um dad! Levi works for a law firm! Isn't that something? You've always wanted me to get into law school, remember?" Your attempt to change the subject worked.
"I did, but you never wanted to. Always said "Dad! I don't wanna sit at a desk all day!" What law firm do you work for Levi?" It must be a parent's job to embarrass their child.
"Oh I work for..."
That convo went on forever.
-------
"Hello, Mrs. and Mr. Ackerman." Levi nodded, which motivated you to place down the bouquet of Mrs. Ackerman's favorite flowers on her gravestone.
"You guys seemed like great people from what Levi told me. I'm taking care of him, he's not a lonely loser anymore." Tears are welling up but nothing comes out, you smile softly.
"I was never a loser." His eye roll doesn't go unnoticed by you.
"If that's what makes you feel better, then okay. Anyway, I wish I could have had the chance to meet you guys. Mrs. Ackerman I can see why your husband married you. You were fine as hell. That must be where Levi gets it from." You rant with a little giggle.
"I look more like my father." He reminds you.
"Yeah yeah, this isn't about you. I'm trying to meet your parents." You wave him away and continue to talk to the Ackermans.
"I think they would have liked you, a little weirded out by you at first but in the end they would have loved you like you were their own." Two arms wrap around you and then those tears fall. Out of all your relationships none have ever made you feel this loved and wanted.
Chilling:
"Boop!" Levi almost bites your finger this time.
"Stop "booping" me. It's annoying." He's facing you while in bed, those dark, onyx eyes look into yours. God he's so beautiful.
"I'm bored, let's get up." That's probably the tenth time you've said that to him.
"We agreed on fifteen more minutes of cuddling." Levi is a cuddler. In previous relationships you've complained about not being cuddled enough.
Levi is all about physical affection inside of the household. You love it, but at times like right now, you just crave to move around.
He's peppering your face with kisses, your eyelids, your nose, your cheeks, everywhere. The cherry on top is that he smiles when he hears you chuckle at his actions.
"Okay now we can get up, since you're so impatient." Those snuggly arms let go of your body so you can go get ready for the day.
"I love you Levi!" He hesitates upon hearing you say that before responding, "I love you too."
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In conclusion Levi is literally like a dad who has to keep one of those little kid backpack leash things on his kid (you) lol he loves you tho <3
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rileyclaw · 2 years ago
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Hii! First off i just want to I'm such a big fan of your art and animatics! Your art is just so expressive and unique its addicting to look at 💞💞
I was wondering if you could go over how your process or tutorial in making an animatic? Whenever I try to start to make one, I get jumbled up and end up ditching it lol
I'm sorry if you get this question a lot 😭
So sorry it took me so long to answer this- I was in a Busy time (diseaseridden with covid and being punched by finals) when I got the ask and wanted to answer it with some stuff Im using for my next TOH animatic!!
I'll say one thing first: I get jumbled up and ditch so many animatics. For every one animatic I release, there are three to five more I have that have NEVER seen the light of day (yet). And that's okay!! It's fun just to make them for me, and I hope it is for you too!! Animatics are scary because if you're working on it alone, it can be really hard to be your own cheerleader to keep up the mojo to keep going. So that makes it really special when there is that project that makes it to the finish line- cuz you can look at it and go "holy crap I made this. holy crap i MADE that look how SICK that is dude!! all that work and look at the turnout!!"
The following stuffh is just my personal process and is by no means representative of a professional animation pipeline, but this works for me as a Lonely Artist! It all begins with the idea - whether it's a song, or just a story you wanna tell. In the case of the one I'm gonna demo here with , I wanted to animate Hunter's first day as Del's apprentice!
The first thing I did was write a script. Not fancy or AO3-quality, but enough that I understand the pacing and the visuals of each shot. I usually just put this in a doc or put it in a script format, if I feel fancy.
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Then, I take that script and find music that I think would fit for it- and remix it (if needed) to fit the pacing/mood/etc! This is what this new animatic looked like before I began ANY artwork- this is a me thing because I'm super inspired by audio as opposed to visuals first. But you might be different- this is just how I like working personally!
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Then begins the research! I find references for characters, background layouts, and create a style guide for the animatic that tells me how thick lines will be for characters, backgrounds, if there'll be tons of value or no. I make a turnaround for each character so I can refer to them because Im gonna be drawing them over and over a LOT and want to be consistent! Luckily TOH has no shortage of references, so I based my work off them.
THEN, I can begin drawing. I'm a little,,, (a lot) ADHD and may not always do this process, but if you're new to animatics or daunted by the task at hand, make beat boards of the entire project.
This is just a page of rough thumbnails that get your visual idea down - look how rough and quick these are!! I try not to spend over a minute on each beat board if I dont have to, unless it's a particularly complex shot.
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When it gets to the stage where you're ready to begin the actual scenes, I personally tend to do backgrounds first because I like to set characters into backgrounds - and for every animatic, I have the Awkward Blue Sketch Stage which is basically my beat boards timed out as an animatic.
I used Storyboard Pro for this (Toonboom, not free ): icky), but the process can be replicated across most art platforms in whichever way you feel most comfy with! This is so I can time the drawings before I devote time cleaning them up-- which can make for some Pretty Funny looking little guys but theyre important!! trust!!
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Once a big sequence of shots is cleaned up (I usually do 40-60 second chunks at a time), I export the .mov and send it to my editing program (which in this case is still Premiere Pro) - and then repeat this process again and again until.. it's done??
Here's like a TL;DR list of basically everything I said summed up:
• Make a loose script or bulletin of the idea! Do your research!
• Depending on what kind of animatic you're making, time it to music!
• Make a beat board of very loose gestures for your shots, and time them - then move on to refinement & cleanup!
• Combine all shots, refine music cues and timings, add any last needed VFX, and export!
There's no secret recipe or anything, it's just learning a pipeline that best suits you, whether it is for something professional or something you want to make for fun because you just love to make!!
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spacecolonie · 1 year ago
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i adore your paintings so muchhh would you happen to have any other tips or tutorials for your process? anything from thumbnailing all the way to final render
Thank you 😭♥ I appreciate that a lot!! To start with I've got my advice tag (both new and veeery old stuff lol), & my youtube has a couple of speedpaints on it, one with commentary including process, brushes etc
In terms of general stuff about how I approach painting, I tend to tailor the method to the desired outcome. I talk about it more in depth on this post here, I also link to some references & tutorials that I really enjoy/recommend!
Besides that though, I guess I can do a little walkthrough of the Whisper & Tangle painting I uploaded a few months ago, since I tried something new with it that I pseudo integrated into my workflow & could be fun to talk about? 🤔
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SO yes, I do always thumbnail when I'm doing a bigger painting, and they're definitely not pretty LOL. I usually use the colour fill lasso just to block in basic shapes and values with a gradient map slapped on the top -- I ended up swapping the values around in the end because it let me use the fireflies as the sole light source, making it more character focused! Then it's the usual process of resketching it all & flatting in the base colours (I also added Whisper's wisps hehe), then adding shading:
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This is how I usually approach it, w/ all the shading layers clipped to the original flats to preserve editing. Multiply, screen & overlay are the most common layer modes I use while doing this, and if I'm ever struggling I'll sometimes add a gradient map too in order to unify awkward colours etc. The new thing I tried for this painting was doing what's often nicknamed as a 'clown pass' -- which is using hard edged shapes to create an easily-accessible selection mask for each part:
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It looks Super funny but I actually found it very helpful, and I ended up using it to select & cut out all of their body parts onto seperate layers, which were then alpha locked. It meant I could go ham w/ large or textured brushes, smudges etc without worrying about losing those edges, or accidentally over-rendering and screwing up the anatomy in the process!!
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I've kept doing something similar since, though it's a bit more dialed back; mainly using the lasso select to chop it up directly and preserve specific/necessary edges, grouping up similar body parts on a single layer etc.
After doing all that, I sat down and started rendering. The background was all blocked in & detailed with a hard round brush and these amazing brushes from Devin Elle Kurtz. There isn't anything super insightful that I think I could type on how I render, but I do have that speedpaint I mentioned earlier that'll probably shed more light. It's just a lot of eyedropping & painting, rinse and repeat
When rendering is done I usually add a concoction of adjustment layers, as well as an overlay w/ a noise texture on it. I also sharpen it all after doing so! These are the ones that I ended up adding for this painting:
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The dupe & blur is a fun thing that doesn't always work, but it looks super neat when the painting itself calls for it, especially when paired w/ that noise texture. It can make stuff look like an old/low quality photograph or recording -- here's another example w/ a shadow and amy doodle I posted a few months ago:
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That's about it for this painting, the majority of the time spent on it was honestly me rendering those damn leaves 🥲 Very tedious but worth it & it was a really good learning experience. I'm not sure if any of this will prove useful but thank you so much for sending in the ask, & if you (or anyone else reading this) wants a similar breakdown for a different painting of mine, please do let me know and I'll try my best to do one!! 🥺💞
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eggcats · 6 months ago
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I'm still working on chap3 (I have a bunch of unconnected little things, but I'm a bit stuck on how to connect them quite yet - but hopefully soon I'll he able to write and edit)
But instead I decided to write a "current day" slice of life fic, based on my AU, where they meet Charlie and the Happy Hotel
(some ideas came from @shizukasobsessions and my replies in the comments of my fic♥️)
There's so many different pieces here tho, lmao - like, Alastor killed Valentino and took Angel's soul to replace him as the overlord of porn, to prevent Angel from failing he gave him Husk to guide him on being an overlord, (Alastor refers to Angel as solely Anthony, the less he thinks of the pornography offshoot of their media empire, the better)
Vox is still the face of their company, Voxtek is still named after him (Alastor has no issues taking a more behind the scenes role, there's a reason he WAS the radio demon but mostly got that name from torturing souls on the radio, not by trying to force everyone to only listen to his radio show - he has no issues with Vox doing just that with television/hypnosis but he doesn't mind allowing him to truly embrace his cult-leader personality here. Vox is still his housewife behind closed doors, tho, Alastor just doesn't want to hobble him in any way)
So it's really funny to think Charlie is just dealing with overlord after overlord (and one former) as she's trying to run her hotel
I'm thinking in this AU, Angel/Anthony decides to let some of his employees stay and try out the whole "redemption " thing, as long as Charlie gives them a safe place to stay rent free - in my AU, Angel was originally owned by Valentino when Alastor killed him, so Angel not only knows what brings people to his studio, he knows he can't protect them all - hence his agreement with the princess of hell
However, Angel and Vox are friends (Husk's #1 piece of advice to him, while Angel was freaking out that his soul chain changed hands along with a bunch of new responsibilities, was "make Vox like you - if Vox likes you then you're almost entirely safe from Alastor, trust me, I know it looks the other way but it's not")
(Angel now does genuinely like Vox, and they get along pretty well, but he will admit - if only to himself - that he originally became his friend to prevent from being torn to pieces like he watched happen to Valentino)
Alastor still obviously doesn't believe in redemption, but the only reason he's there at the hotel is because Vox asked him to be (and Vox is there because Angel asked him on behalf of Charlie for some advertising for the hotel)
And @proshipper-on-ship mentioned the Chaggie parallels of Charlie finding Vaggie at a dumpster, and Alastor doing the same, and I thought it'd be really funny to have their first meetings come up
Charlie, awkward but trying to come to terms with the truly alarming amount of Overlords in her hotel: "So...how'd you two meet?"
Alastor, smiling as he finally can set up his punchline: "Found him in an alley and brought him home with me."
Charlie, super excited: "OHMIGOSH, that's basically how I met Vaggie!! How'd you find him?! I was looking for anyone to help after the Extermination!"
Alastor: "I sensed someone using my radio waves and immediately went in search of who."
Charlie, actively looking at Alastor like he's as harmless as a kitten: "OhEmGee that's so sweet! And you were just going to take him under your wing but then you fell in love?!"
Alastor, deadpan: "No, I was going to kill him."
Charlie, looking exactly like 😦: "What."
Alastor: "He wasn't a radio, though, so I decided to let him live."
Vox, with his screen in his hands: "Alastor, you gotta stop telling people that."
Alastor, thinks it's secretly very funny: "Why not, it's the truth, darling?"
I just love the idea that Charlie, for a second, thinks Alastor might be as soft and kindhearted as herself as she sees similarities in their relationships, and then Alastor just immediately breaking the illusion.
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rins-batcave · 13 days ago
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RANT TIME bout the mean girl
Basically, I met E in the 6th grade. We were both new students at my school. I've been in the same class with her every year since, even though I've never requested her.
In the 6th grade, we had two other friends. K and Y. Y we're still friends with, but K ended up leaving our friend group. I always kinda recognized the fact that everyone wanted to be friends with K most, and I was closest with her, which made E resent me I think.
After all the drama, K apologized to me and we're on pretty good terms, but E is still salty.
She's very competitive with me over everything, even our mutual friends, which makes it annoying to be around her.
She hates me, I know she does, and I don't understand why she still even bothers talking to me.
She herself has said she's very jealous of me, mainly because I'm the top student in our grade and her parents know that. They always compare her to me.
But again, I know how resentment can build but I honestly have never done anything to her.
I sometimes go through periods of ignoring her because she really upsets my mental state that much, and when I'm really deep in my depression phases I can't make room for that. But she often ignores me too.
Sometimes I'll joke and she'll start making really mean jokes back, and sometimes, like I make a similar kind of joke because I think it's ok if she's made the same kind but then she gets really mad.
This year I'm in a class with E and S, and it means that I'm forced to hang out with her with only one person present.
E, S, T and I are in a smaller mini friendship group, but it makes it super awkward for S and T when E is mad at me. She constantly rants to them about me and then they refuse to tell me stuff and E makes a big effort to exclude me and make me feel out of the loop.
I told some friends about it and they say they've never felt that and it makes me feel crazy and maybe I'm just imagining this all and I am crazy but I just feel so bad every time I talk to her and it scares me when she gets mad because she knows lots of stuff about me and my family and her mom has connections in the school and she could wipe me out so fast whether or not she knows it and I feel so fucking crazy because no one sees it or believes me.
The one person who ever agreed was K, and we used to talk about how weird E's passive aggression was and her behaviour but now I have no one I can talk to it about and I just don't understand I guess.
Maybe I'm just painting myself as the victim I feel like I am and I barely believe myself but I feel so shit about it.
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immeasurablesaladcg · 19 days ago
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hello bestie. i have chosen to share some of my cuddy/thirteen agere headcanons with you.
- when "adopting" (so to speak) little!thirteen, cuddy gifts her a stuffed animal - a bunny - and uses it to demonstrate what's gonna happen when thirteen stays over at her place (for the first time). like, she brings props and everything and basically does a play for thirteen where she explains each step of their routine with the bunny, like "...and then bunny and i will eat dinner together..." and then she feeds the bunny with little plastic carrots and stuff. so thirteen knows what she can expect :)
- thirteen then insists on taking the bunny with her for every part of their evening routine.
- in this au little!thirteen is 2 and she likes to suck on her thumb 😌 well at first she's too shy to do it around cuddy, but one time cuddy catches her on accident (like when she's still groggy after a nap), ofc she totally panics and stares at cuddy with huge eyes to see if she's mad or smth, but cuddy reassures her that it's okay, she doesn't mind, remy can suck on her thumb if that makes her comfortable :')
- thirteen is a Calm Babey and generally doesn't talk that much, and she's not like. fussy or bratty so when she does cry/ throw a tantrum over something, cuddy knows there's an underlying issue, but she always manages to calm thirteen down and they figure out the problem together.
- when thirteen de-regresses (progresses? 😭) it's always. kind of super awkward for her LMAO at least in the beginning. cuddy always invites her to stick around for a cup of coffee and thirteen always declines bc she just wants to bolt, but one time cuddy is like "oh i'll miss having my little one around... 😔 but ok i understand if you have to go... 😔😔😔" and then thirteen is like ok FINE i'll stay... they end up sitting on the couch together and thirteen shyly cuddles into cuddy's side and gives her a lil kiss on the cheek bc even tho she's the dean of medicine and her boss' boss, she's always gonna be thirteen's mommy too🙏💯‼️
that was all bestie goodbye
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Yesyes I agree. In my head if Thirteen was in like a kid range she'd be a bit of a menace (affectionately), but as a baby/toddler she's so chill. Just wants to hang out and be looked after. Playing blocks by herself but just liking the feeling of someone being there with her :)
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boom-butterflyeffect · 7 days ago
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Hi, idk if you do until dawn girls requests but if you do and Iyou don’t mind can you do a NSFW alphabet for Sam or Ashley? Thanks :)
Sure thing! I'll make a Sam one at a different time!
this one will most likely be unsatisfying i can't lie because my brain just keep yelling "asexual awkward virgin ashley" at me
Ashley Brown NSFW Alphabet
A - Aftercare
Lots of cuddling afterwards, and she may feel a little bit shy or embarrassed.
B - Body Part (Her favourite body part on herself and you)
I think on herself she'd like her hands, specifically her nails, or her eyes, because she thinks they look pretty. On you, I think she just thinks all of you is really neat, but if she had to choose a favourite maybe it would also be your eyes.
C - Cum (anything to do with cum, basically)
uhhh I feel like Ash wouldn't like to be messy, jesus this one is hard...
D - Dirty secret
Ash definitely thinks big hands are a turn on, but would never admit she does because of a certain glasses-wearing blondie who has big hands. He specifically comes to mind when she thinks "big hands are sexy".
E - Experience (How experienced she is)
Virgin. I'm sorry. But I'm right.
F - Favorite position
She likes the intimacy of missionary I think.
G - Goofy (Is she more serious in the moment?)
Definitely a bit silly, cracking jokes, just wants the whole experience to be lighthearted and enjoyable
H - Hair
These ones always feel like weirdly awkward to answer for some reason, idk
I - Intimacy
Yes! She loves all the sweetness and affection.
J - Jack off
I don't think she'd do it often, but she does do it occasionally.
K - Kink
Hmm... I can't imagine Ash being super kinky tbh, I think she just wants to be held really gently and treated really softly <3
L - Location
I imagine Ash would be very private about this stuff and keep it in the bedroom.
M - Motivation
I can't imagine her having a particularly high sex drive, or there being anything in particular that gets her in the mood, I feel like she sometimes for her it's just a nice way to blow off steam or relax after a stressful day
N - No (Hard limits)
I feel like Ash keeps things very simple, and wouldn't really be up for much experimentation, which is valid!
O - Oral
Imo, Ashley wouldn't really do giving or receiving. The sexual stuff with her feels pretty minimal.
P - Pace
Soft and slow, just super gentle and romantic <3
Q - Quickie
I don't think so tbh, again, when she does do it I feel like it's more for the intimacy and romance of it rather than out of sexual desire
R - Risk
Nope. No risk. None. All safe and comfortable and cozy in the bedroom.
S - Stamina
Low stamina, one round and she's ready for cuddling and a nap.
T - Toys
I feel like she'd own a small vibrator or something, but she'd never use it with a partner or anything, it would be a secret.
U - Unfair
Playful teasing at best, like the "please tell me you're gonna take a vow of silence." joke
V - Volume
I think it would mostly be gasps and heavy breaths and sweet words of affirmation.
W - Wild card (Random NSFW HC of my choosing)
I kinda hc Ash as the kind of person who would be a bit more sex-repulsed. She'd jokingly be like "smash" and read fanfics of fictional characters, but actually having sex would seem awkward and uncomfortable for her, I think.
X - X-ray (Size)
uhhhhhhhhhhhh
Y - Yearning
Not a lot in terms of sex, I could see her being very cuddly and affectionate though, always liking to hold your hand, or hold onto your arm, be close by your side.
Z - Zzz
Would most likely end up taking a nap after the post-sex cuddles with you
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thecurioustale · 2 months ago
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I got Google's new AI toy to generate an entire podcast discussing a scene from my book.
I read with much enjoyment and pleasure of nostalebraist's recent experiences with Google's experimental new NotebookLM, which will take a piece of writing that you give it and generate an entire conversation where a pair of AI-generated hosts get into a "deep dive" discussion about it, in the style of a discussion podcast.
I listened to the "The Northern Caves" and "sufficiently advanced" podcasts and was similarly impressed at how far the mimicry of human speech patterns has come.
While it is in the experimental stage, NotebookLM is free to use. All you need is a Google account. That's a pretty low barrier to entry—and I have just enough vanity and masochism synergy to try this out for myself with my own work!
Let's do a deep dive, shall we?! =D
I had Google whip up a "deep dive" of a piece of my own writing that I shared earlier this year for the ATH 25th anniversary, a scene from The Great Galavar, set many years before ATH where a much younger Silence, new to Sele, asks Galavar for a desk and they go to Javelin's furniture shop to see about getting one. (I only fed Google this scene; not the attached scene where Javelin visits Galavar later that night.)
Here it is:
I'll start off with a complaint that spans the entirety of the podcast: I was put off by the disingenuous way that both podcast hosts acted as if they hadn't read the work under discussion and expected the other to explain it to them, because they keep switching these two hats back and forth (proving very conspicuously that they both know the work very closely), and it comes across as patronizing. I noticed, however, that I found this more off-putting with the podcasts nostalgebraist shared than with my own.
And a couple more quick complaints:
First off, there's no recognition of Silence's left-handedness, so frankly I think we can throw these toasters onto the scrap heap for another 20 years of development. 😏
(Actually, stick a pin in that; I'll come back to it later.)
Second off, I forgive these AI hosts for their horrible butchery of the pronunciation of custom names like "Terlais" and "Sele." 😭😭😭 That's understandable and not off-putting (though it does jar).
But mainly:
I am very impressed by the the AI's ability to synthesize an understanding of the material with such high fidelity and general accuracy! I think it's super cool!
While obviously this represents a major stride for AI technology, I think this is first and foremost to my own credit for writing such a coherent scene in the first place (more on that later). With my own work being analyzed, it was a lot easier for me to notice (as opposed to with nostalgebraist's podcasts) just how the AI was essentially digesting and repeating my own text back at me, occasionally literally but more often through a very basic layer of interpretation and recapitulation. For example, at the beginning they talk about how Silence has this sharp intellect and "sees right through you"; this is true and I would even call it insightful, but it's also explicitly there in the text, conveyed in different words but unmistakably the same idea. So really the AI picking up on it is just a validation that I wrote it in the first place. (More on that in a moment.) This makes the AI synthesis somewhat less impressive than it otherwise would've been, i.e. a very elaborate form of mimicry, but the absolute reading on my impress-o-meter is still very high. This is, all things considered, a fantastic level of comprehension, mistakes notwithstanding (more on those in a bit).
It was a very awkward, disorienting experience for me to hear these convincing simulacra of people earnestly discussing my work, especially with the work being a scene about Silence, which is always quite personal for me. I think, echoing nostalgebraist's thoughts, that it hits on a level that would not have been as intense / visceral for me if the exact same conversation were purely in text. But even if it were text, I definitely feel seen (in a rather uncomfortable way, like with a light that's too bright) that the AI easily picked up on the fact that this scene is all about Silence even though she's not the point-of-view character and Galavar actually has a much larger presence in the scene than the AI deep dive would have you think. The AI saw right through that.
The main complaint I gathered from nostalgebraist's reaction to the AI podcasts about his works was that the AI analysis was anodyne, superficial. I partially agree, which I'll get to. But with this criticism in mind, I thought to be on the lookout, when listening to my own AI podcast, for insights about how a more lay audience might engage with and understand my work. Are any hypothetical lay readers picking up on the main themes? Do they understand the basics of what's happening? How does my work come across to the sorts of people who listen to the kinds of podcasts that NotebookLM is simulating? That kind of thing.
I found the answer promising: Like I implied above with the AI's recapitulation of Silence's power to comprehend people's thinking and nature, if this podcast is any indication, I think my work is more readable than I have given it credit for. I don't consider this scene to be a particularly "easy" one to parse (nor particularly "hard"), but the AI did a pretty good job of it, so maybe I was underestimating a hypothetical human lay audience's ability to absorb and enjoy it as well.
I do have a complaint of my own: I was wryly amused at how the AI replicates the common practice of the male podcast host leading the discussion and doing most of the talking, with the female host providing a lot of affirmations and occasionally offering original insights with less egotistical framing. It's very subtle, and I can't rule out that it's just me being oversensitive and construing data out of noise, plus I don't listen to a ton of podcasts (especially the type of podcast that this experiment is most directly imitating), so there's that caveat too...but I still perceive it strongly enough to wonder what it's doing in there, as it's not something I would expect Google to: A) do deliberately; B) fail to notice.
Anyhow, as to the analysis being anodyne or not: Yeah...yeah, I do see it. But I'd probably look at it as an exercise in realistic expectations. What do we realistically want from an AI podcast host? To be challenged both deliberately and serendipitously with insightful perspectives and non-obvious ideas? To what extent?
To approach those questions, consider this: I mentioned earlier that you should stick a pin in the fact that the AI didn't pick up on Silence's left-handedness. That was a joke, obviously, but it touches on a point of interest for me in this experiment: All of today's big-splashy AIs work by virtue of having lots of examples of human-generated data to draw from and emulate (plus the information contained in your prompt). What happens, then, when you invite them to venture into spaces that humans rarely talk about, such as, oh, for instance, a stylish and objectively correct obsession in sinistrality?? Well, the answer seems to be that they just don't pick up on the opportunity. I'd probably have to be more pointed about Silence's handedness in the text, thereby raising left-handedness to the level of "an idea in itself," for the AI to notice it as relevant to the meaning of the text. In essence, I would conclude that uncommon ideas are nearly invisible to the AI when they are present only in the background. (Silence's left-handedness is explicitly mentioned only once, and is alluded to twice more.) This has implications about this kind of AI's ability to compose original philosophy; namely, that the AI is constrained for the most part only to repeating what we already know and connecting different things that we have already said. And I don't know if this is something fixable, because asking someone to interpret something that they don't already have good information on is an exercise in a form of intelligence that I don't know is well-suited to how these AIs work (and would thus be more likely to produce gobbledegook answers and continually infer meaning where none is intended).
So, in this one respect, I am not impressed by this AI performance, but neither am I thus surprised. I would have been shocked if they had picked up on the subject matter that is much more niche or even virtually exclusive to me.
I think perhaps the next big frontier for getting these AI "deep dives" to have more valuable (the first frontier having been developing the ability for the deep dives to be seriously attempted at all) is for AI to begin doing what humans do, plugging in life experience to connect seemingly unrelated ideas together. By my understanding this is emulable (and thus "fixable") under the current paradigm of AI, at least to some extent. I always enjoy it when some character is talking about some straightforward problem, and their mentor / advisor / parental figure / etc. starts telling this seemingly unrelated story that ends up either recapitulating the same idea in a different way (sound familiar?) or else shedding new light on the original idea through context or testimonials. I think this is something the current crop of AI could be taught to do.
This brings me to a comical moment at the end of the podcast where one of the hosts mentions that she gets "chills down [her] spine every time [she] reads it" (lol) when she gets to this point in the scene:
“Fat, eh? Not many of those around here. It’s not really an Ieikili fashion.” “Give it time!” Silence merrily exclaimed. “I will teach this whole society how to grow fat.”
CHILLS !! LOL
And the hosts go on to elaborate that it's "chilling" because with Silence there must be a double meaning to it, i.e. ambition, influence, etc. This is a very interesting take, and it's also the first of several mistakes I'm going to discuss.
The mistake is twofold. First of all, the female host calls Silence's line about teaching society how to get fat the last line of the excerpt. It's not; it's closer to the middle. I find this error fascinating because it implies the absence or failure of some kind of logical error-checking that I would have thought is trivial but which perhaps isn't. Second of all, there's no deeper meaning to Silence's vow. She just likes fat people. If there is a deeper meaning that must be forced out of it, it is an insight into Silence's multifaceted nature, as elsewhere in the scene there is so much focus on her restoring her health and vitality and mobility after a long convalescence from her prior injuries. She's all up for fitness and mobility, but she's also up for curtailing that on her own terms (as opposed to involuntarily), or having a lover do the same, when the context is right. I think this error provides insight into the kinds of calculated risks that the AI takes in order to compose its analyses. The AI is obviously not well-exposed enough to fat liberation speech in its training data to have picked up on this fat-affirming message as such; instead it drew on the imagery of growing fat as a metaphor for growing in power and influence, which is much more common in our culture—enough that the AI assumed that's what I was talking about.
So, this gets back to what I was just saying about the potential dangers of trying to force the AI to draw conclusions on ideas that it isn't well-exposed to: It'll do it wrong, both in assuming meaning where none is intended and in characterizing what that meaning is.
A second mistake that I'd like to mention is that, early in the podcast, the hosts characterize Silence as someone of "very few words," which isn't supported in the text (and if anything Silence tends to be verbose). What I think what the AI was picking up on is that Silence wasn't sharing her full thoughts with others, which is actually a really clever (and correct) reading, and somehow got from there—perhaps by way of Silence's deliberateness and her initial "passivity" in Sele during her convalescence—to the idea that she doesn't physically talk much. This is a fascinating conflation to make! I assume that what's going on here is that the AI has fitted Silence's personality type into a box, and this box potentially includes the character trait of not talking much, and the AI decided that there is enough supporting language in the scene to establish that Silence indeed doesn't talk much. No such language exists, but I see how an AI (and perhaps a human reader not familiar with Silence) might infer that it does. I'd be curious to round up some humans, make them read this scene, and ask them questions so as to implicitly invite them to say that Silence is a mate of few words without explicitly prompting them to do so. I bet you some would, even though in this very scene Silence is literally quite talky! Because it's easy to compartmentalize those things, I think: Silence's actual talkativeness, and her personality traits which might imply that she is not talkative.
A third mistake, which is, again, wrong in an interesting way is that there is a very clear up-front statement by the male host that Silence "is a woman," with emphatic tone on those words. This isn't the end of the sentence. He pauses, and there is some reaction from the female host, and then he finishes his thought: "...of few words." So, this is mistake not only because of the "of few words" part but also because of the "is a woman" part. I go out of my way to characterize Silence as near to genderless as possible, and while this doesn't apply to physical sex (she is female-bodied) there also isn't any discussion of that in the scene; so the AIs are drawing this purely from her pronouns, the discussion of conation (mindwashing / "mental merging" as the AI aptly puts it), and the clarification that Silence and Galavar are not bonking.
I wouldn't necessarily bother to call it out (I don't expect AI to use my paradigm of sex and gender), except that the way the host delivers his distance really emphasis the "is a woman" words, and I think that's deliberate; I think it's a very clever thing the AI is doing, piggybacking on a separate idea (about Silence not talking much) to insinuate without immediately mentioning it that there are sexual tensions in the scene. Now, it's wrong; there is no sexual tension—not between Silence and Galavar anyway. (And the AI elsewhere allows that the source material is vague on this point; I would say, from reading this scene in isolation, that that's fair.) But in fact this is the scene that woke me up to the fact that there can't be sexual tension between Silence and Galavar, at least not in the past, because she's still practically a goddamn kid when she kids to Sele, and Galavar is early middle-aged. I had never wrapped my head around that until I was laying out this scene in my thirties and realized that it'd be gross. So I wrote this scene with no sexual tension between them at all; the fact that Javelin originally mistakes Silence as a lover of Galavar before actually meeting her in person is part of the verismilitude of Javelin. But I can see how an AI without knowledge of any of these characters' histories outside this one scene might take the mistaken perception by Javelin as a positive indicator of a relationship between Silence and Galavar. So, again, I think we are seeing some of the limitations on this type of AI. In the grand scheme of things, many human storytellers would have sexual tension in a situation like this. And I think the AI failed to see that there wasn't any, or at least wasn't able to make up its mind.
I actually like this failsafe. The podcast hosts mentioned several times that the source material is unclear or vague, which makes it a lot safer for them to speculate. That, in my opinion, is a really solid implementation by Google of a way to lampshade the AI's risky assumptions to the end user. This way, if the podcast hosts go barking up the wrong tree at least they will appear to be doing it honestly, based on the text's own ambiguity. And I think all the instances where the hosts invoked this failure are justifiable instances, even if they aren't necessarily correct that the text is in fact ambiguous.
Another mistake, and one that's a lot more disappointing for technology which is otherwise getting so impressive, is that the hosts misgender Javelin later in the podcast after originally getting it right. (Editor's note: Actually I am not sure that they gender her correctly in the first place. I've listened to this thing so many times in the course of writing this that I'm not up for going through it again, so take the following with an asterisk.) I suppose this too is a reflection of how the AI actually weaves its stories: To them, the "Javelin" mentioned at any one moment in their podcast isn't necessarily the Javelin mentioned at any other moment. The AI''s persistent understanding of, for instance, the City of Sele as the setting for this scene does not imply a comprehension of what "the City of Sele" is but rather that it would be appropriate to mention a thing which is probably called the City of Sele in various instances where our human minds would in fact agree that it is appropriate.
A very understandable mistake is that the hosts infer that Silence's choice of the word "secretary" has some special meaning that goes beyond the actual meaning. (She chooses the word, having only recently become proficient in the Selish language, because of its relationship with "secrets.") The AI hosts are wrong in their speculation but they're right to be sniffing something there. (It is, after all, the title of the excerpt.) And you kind of need to have the other scene, with Galavar and Javelin that evening, to better understand why it's the title, and so I don't hold it against the AI for falling short here. I do like that they tried to mention it at all; I think they would have been remiss not to.
A final mistake that I'll mention is that, when talking about Silence's new immersion in Sele after having lived in Junction City, the hosts did indeed take an incredibly anodyne route of characterizing this discontinuity. I found that line of discourse to be very underwhelming. And it rises to the level of a mistake because it is not correct. Silence's adjustment to Sele is not complicated all that much by her past life in Junction City. That's just plausible-sounding tripe; it's not analytical at all.
There are plenty more mistakes, of course, but, moving on from mistakes to talk about specific praises, I really like how the AI hosts were able to pick up on the fact that Silence's behavior in this scene is all about her trying to prove herself. It is specifically stated in the text (albeit in a narrower sense, referring only to Silence's newly restored ability to walk partway across the city), so I'm not surprised that the AI picked up on it, but I'm glad that it did. That smacks of good design to me. It's a very important detail. And, assuming Google put its "top men" on the case for making these deep dives as compelling as the technology (and the company's contortions to avoid getting sued) presently allow, I would be inclined to consider the successful identification of this point as important to be a high-quality indicator that their efforts were constructive.
But, of course, this is the same tech that I found so underwhelming in the previous paragraph, so...you know. You win some; you lose some.
Another praise is that I appreciate the hosts for being gentle with me in describing "Silence's almost superhuman level of perception." It was equally within Google's power to invent an AI podcast host duo that will just absolutely trash you and roast you and make fun of you instead of acting like your work is the most interesting composition they've seen all year. Silence's capabilities are definitely possible, and I would even argue plausible, but I fully grant she is performing way above your average schlub. A character like her may not defy belief, but she strains likelihood. So I think it's fair and probably even authentic for the hosts to point out that she's "almost superhuman." I think not mentioning it at all would be a mistake. Silence is not just making power plays; she's an extremely competent person making power plays.
Anyway! Let me go back to something I said earlier that I said I would get back to:
I think this is first and foremost to my own credit for writing such a coherent scene in the first place
It occurred to me, even before generating this deep dive podcast, that I would like to feed the AI a scene that is much more difficult to parse, and see what that "deep dive" looks like.
So join me later when I do that. But for now, I think this is a good place to end it.
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obsidiancreates · 9 months ago
Text
Catching Up (With No Murders This Time!)
(I just wanted Shawn and Abigail to like, see each other again and get a little closure since they broke up under such horrible circumstances.)
"Hey, sweetheart. I just wrapped up a case and I just so happen to be next to that awesome bakery you love, do you want- sweet! Uh, no, no Gus with me, your croissant will make it to you with no bites taken out of it. ... No, I'll buy my own so I'm not tempted either. Yeah, well, Selene called and told him Charlie is running a fever so he sped off before I even finished the wrap-up. Oh, gotta go, someone is about to try and get the last Nutella-filled one."
Shawn hangs up and rushes up to the counter as the person who's eyes were lingering on the Nutella-filled croissant is about to order. "You know, I am amazed you guys still make these, because I heard that hazelnuts and chocolate combined can give you hair loss."
The woman freezes, and Shawn almost does a little celebratory shimmy- until she turns around.
Shawn's mouth parts in shock. "Abigail?"
"Shawn?" Abigail blinks. "Are you really..." She leans in and whispers, "Why are you in San Fransisco?"
"I- I uh, moved here. A few years ago with- uh, well with my wife." He holds up his hand. Please don't let this be awkward, please don't let this be-
Abigail holds up her hand, showing off her own wedding ring. "We match."
A tension Shawn hadn't realized he was holding bleeds out of him. "Look at that!" He grins at her. "Who knew us crazy kids would ever find that, huh?"
"Who knew. ... Oh, you um, wanted the Nutella."
"Yeah, if- it's Jules's favorite so I just-"
"Jules? The detective you worked with? ... Actually, that makes sense."
"... Is that a... bad, 'that makes sense'?"
"No, just... it makes sense. Here, uh, I'll have the regular chocolate instead. My husband is allergic to hazelnuts anyway, I'd have to brush my teeth before kissing him, it's... a whole thing."
They order, and sit together while waiting for the coffees.
"So, um... how long have you been married?" Abigail asks before taking a bite of her pastry.
"Let me see, uh... six years, now? ... Holy crap, I've been married for six years. ... What uh, what about you?"
"Four. We met through the program I do, for teaching abroad."
"Ha, that's cool. I'm a detective, I married a detective, you're a teacher, you married a teacher... fits, it-it fits good."
"Yup."
"... Sorry about uh... all the stuff I put you through, back then. Taking you to crime scenes and client's houses was a little-"
"Stupid?"
"I was going to say offbeat, but... stupid works too." They both give a small laugh. Shawn awkwardly picks at his own pastry, Jules's sitting in his lap. There's a beat of silence that's just agonizing.
"How's Gus?" Abigail looks up at Shawn again. "I mean, I just assume you're both still doing the psychic detective thing."
"Oh, Gus is great. He uh, he got married too, about four years ago now, just before the whole uh... pandemic, thing. She's basically a clone of him, but a woman, and they've got a kid."
"Let me guess. You're the godfather."
"Which still freaks me out, by the way. He's a great kid though. Smart and awesome, just like his dad, and it looks like he got The Super Sniffer too. Gus says it's too early to tell, but-" Shawn puts a finger by his temple. The movement feels weird. He hasn't really leaned into the whole "psychic" thing for a few years now, and when he does he usually use the finger-to-eyebrow device anymore. When was the last time he did? ... Dear god, it's been ten years. Ten years since he moved out of Santa Barbara.
"Time really flies," he finds himself saying."
"Tell me about it." Abigail shakes her head. "My husband and I adopted, about two years ago now, and she's just... shooting right up. When she started walking I couldn't believe it."
"Gus couldn't either. I think he showed me the video about a billion times."
"Crying?"
"Absolutely weeping, yes."
"Nice to know some people never really change."
"Mmmm, I wouldn't say that. He's done some pretty badass stuff since you last met him."
"You do know that seems... a little far-fetched."
"More far-fetched than the time we had to prove a polar bear was framed for murder?"
"... I'm not sure if I believe you about that."
"If we had time, I could condense each little weekly adventure into about a forty-three minute story each."
"That's not very condensed."
"... You're right, it's not." Shawn nods, and looks up as the bell on the door jingles- he hears Abigail laugh a little about it and mumble that yeah, people don't really change.
The man at the door spots Abigail and grins. Shawn hones in on a wedding ring, a tie with Abigail's favorite flowers as the design, and hair that just may rival Shawn's own.
"Hey, honey." The man sweeps right over to Abigail and leans down to kiss her in her chair. "Finally sorted out the issue with our plane, we should be on our way day after tomorrow."
"Oh, thank god," Abigail groans, holding her husband's hand as he pulls over another chair to sit next to her. "I'm so tired of hotel food."
"You and me both," her husband chuckles. He looks at Shawn. "Who's this?"
"Oh, um, this is Shawn Spencer."
"Ooooh, you're the guy who took her to a crime scene as a date one time."
"Guilty," Shawn says with a laugh.
"Nice to meet you, I've heard a lot about you. Good things!"
"And some not-so-good things, I'm guessing?"
"No, no. ... Not about you as a person, anyway. Plenty of bad things about your job."
"Yeah, I figured. ... Oh, there's our coffees." Shawn takes his paper tray with 4 coffees (Gus and Selene will need them) and stands up. "Well, this was totally unexpected, but I'm glad it happened. It was nice seeing you again, Abigail."
"Nice seeing you too, Shawn." She smiles at him. "I'm glad you're doing well."
"Me too. Doing well is pretty great. Oh, and, glad for you, I guess."
Abigail laughs again. "Bye, Shawn.
"Bye, Abigail."
He walks out of the bakery, the sound of Abigail chatting with her husband following him until the door closes. She sounds happy. Happy and relaxed in a way that even on their best days, she never was with him. And he's glad.
He's just genuinely happy for her. That's a really, really nice feeling. No jealousy, no feeling of missed chances, no wondering of 'what-ifs'. Just... actual, authentic happiness that she's doing well.
He tucks Jules's croissant into his pocket and pulls out his phone.
"... Hey, babe! Yeah, got the last Nutella for you, and a coffee. ... Yup, that perp was our case. Really? Described being caught by 'some kind of ninjas or something?' Well, babe, as much as I'd love to tell you I've secretly been a martial arts master our whole marriage, you can put in your report that he's absolutely lying because he's very embarrassed. Truth is Gus accidentally knocked over some marble statue onto him while he was chasing me through the art exhibit. ... Can I fill out the statement later tonight? I got coffee for Gus and Selene too. Awesome! I will hang around to tell you who I just ran into, though. Of course I'm neglecting paperwork in favor of personal matters, if I ever don't then your husband has been replaced by a pod person. Okay, love you, I'll be there as soon as I find a ride..."
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