#but i have so many other concepts i'm working with

[bitten-fruit]

already FERALLL at this assistant concept more please

omg...... i'm so sorry for this. can you tell i'm ovulating? somebody sedate me please

[he wants a word with you]

Your boss is a prick and a cunthound. You need this job. here's [part 1] for some John POV Executive John Price x EA f!Reader 18+ mdni - 2.5k words - cw: degradation, free use, maybe dubcon?

You follow Mr Price down the stuffy corporate corridor, with your swollen heart in your throat. 

What did you do wrong this time?

Was there an email you failed to send? A meeting you forgot to book? Maybe you saved a document in the wrong place. Maybe you missed one of your many deadlines. 

You watch his besuited back, broad and tall, the billow of his open jacket as he marches ahead of you with long and aggravated strides. The back of his neck burns hot and red, he digs white-knuckled fingers into the angry skin as he rubs it vigorously. 

You pass the incoming traffic of other colleagues, and you see the concern in their glare when they look at Mr Price and then at you. An unspoken apology for your imminent castigation. A silent yikes.

Fuck, he’s going to fire you. Whatever you’ve done must have been catastrophic. Did you cost him profits? Did you humiliate him in front of a client?

“Did I do something wrong?” You anxiously chirp, fearful of being too loud but not wanting him to mishear you over the sheer volume of his fury. 

He doesn’t answer you. 

Instead he comes to a sudden stop, and you almost slam into him with the keen velocity of your pursuit. 

He gestures into the open door on his left, his other hand hooked on his hip under his jacket. 

“I don’t-”

“In,” he grits, lips pursed into an admonishing line, and you do not disobey him. 

With a skip you enter the room, heart thundering in your ears, and he storms in behind you. 

The stationery supply room; cupboards and shelves, full of paper and writing utensils. Atop the counter sits a guillotine cutter, open reams of white A4, a few stray cuttings littered about. On the one bare wall is a hip-height printer, one that most often fails to work. The air is dry and powdery, thick with the clinical scent of fresh paper and ink. 

Mr Price leaves the door ajar, and he wipes down his face with an open and rigid palm. 

“What is wrong with you?” He suddenly blurts, his interrogative glare shoots straight through you. 

His eyes are wide and angry, and you shuffle on your feet, fidget with your fingers. “What did I do?” 

He only steams ahead with his reprimand - closing in on you, heavy step by heavy step, you stagger backwards on instinct. “Slobbering all over that fuckin’ pen. Christ. Are you trying to drive me crazy?” 

Your back hits the wall behind you, it pushes a puff of nervous air from your open lips. Eyes fluttering between his, you choke on any words you think to offer him. 

“I - I don’t - pen? - I didn’t-”

“What more can I do?” He growls, cranes his head to close the distance, “How far away do I have to put you?” 

You suck deep a quivering breath as you blink up at him, his head a foot above yours and his body all but trapping you where you stand. 

“I don’t understand,” you whimper. “What am I doing wrong?”

He huffs like a bull. “You’re fuckin’ killing me, love.” 

You feel your mouth water when he calls you that. It makes your cheeks glow strawberry red. 

“What can - what do you want me to do?” You ask timidly, sweetly - you want so desperately to please him. You can’t lose this job. You can’t have him disappointed in you. 

He rubs his jaw with a straining hand, his murky eyes rake from your lips and linger on the faintest bit of cleavage in the collar of your button down. 

“I want you to turn around.”

His order is uttered dark and hoarse, so low that you feel the vibrations of his voice from where you stand. 

Your lips part gently, bottom lip trembling as you swallow under his heated glower. 

But you do as you’re told. You’re a good listener, you can show him that.  You spin around awkwardly in the tight space between his heaving body and the wall, until you’re met with the cold white drywall against your nose. 

You hear his breathing turn ragged and animal, almost growling, it makes you sweat. You lift your arms cautiously, placing both palms flat on the wall, and stand on the very tips of your toes. 

His hands are on you, then, hasty bear claws comb over your ass and clutch the meat of your hips like you might slither away from him. He tugs you backwards and you rock on your toes, arch your back to meet his pelvis with your behind. 

You feel it, hard as iron and heavy as tungsten behind his straining trousers; he grinds his rigid cock against you, warning you with it, letting you feel the weight of it. He hunches forward, you feel his wiry beard against your cheek and his warm lips against your ear. 

“You proud o’ yourself?” He snarls, a bestial gurgle deep in his chest. “Proud of what you do to me?” 

Your heart buzzes with such speed that it makes you dizzy, turns you stupid. 

“I’m - uh - I’m not-”

You want to smack yourself for your inability to form a single sentence, a single word, as you feel his harsh fingers claw up the back of your thigh, catching in the sheer black nylon that clings to your feverish skin. 

“Nothing to say for yourself?” He gnars into your skin, you feel his teeth as he speaks. “‘Course not. You’re a fuckin’ airhead, aren’t you?” 

His wide paw reaches the hem of your pencil skirt, the fabric too taut to be pulled up with ease - so he clutches the back of it with both hands, grips either side of the stiff kick pleat. 

You yelp as you feel him rip your skirt apart by the seam, the tear of the fabric shrill and ear-splitting. Your head urgently spins on your neck as you shoot a glance at the open door - muted voices of others in the office travel through the gap, blissfully unaware of your indiscretion. 

“Someone might-”

Bitten off by a gasp, his angry fists grasp at your stockings where they meet at a seam that runs down the cleft of your ass. He rips that, too, hurried and ravenous; he stretches a wide hole in the thin nylon that runs in a ladder between your legs. 

“Someone might come in.” You finally find the words, moan them out in a hasty breath like he might cut you off before you can warn him. 

He hisses; “I don’t care.”

His hand forms a blade, slicing between your legs and hooking under the gusset of your knickers; you hold your breath, sucking your lip between your teeth and biting down hard enough to draw blood. His thick fingers run along your slit, goading and mean, triggering a pathetic little whimper from your throat when you don’t have the words to plead. 

They push past your lips, dipping between your sodden folds like he’s checking the temperature before venturing any deeper. You feel him grin against your neck, beard abrasive against your sensitive skin, as he lets out a low, cruel chuff of laughter. 

“Fu-hu-huck,” he chortles, mocking, and you only let out a stifled cry as he coaxes your opening with the tips of greedy fingers. “Like being told off, do you?” 

He kisses the side of your neck in a hungry and messy suck, shivering gooseflesh crawls from his bite and down your spine. He plays with your syrup between his fingers, marvelling at the quantity, the slipperiness. 

You squeak as a single finger presses against the ring of muscle at your entrance, and pushes past it - he hooks it, drags it against your slick inner wall with a pressure that makes you grind against his hand to force it further. 

“Answer me.” 

You whine in complaint before you reply as instructed. “Yes,” you croon, writhing and eager.

He obliges you and stuffs his finger deeper, two knuckles deep, and his palm is flush with your cunt.

“Mh. You do. Fuckin’ soaked, aren’t you?” He hums deeply, hoarsely, pleased. 

He pulls his finger out of you, then, and you groan in frustrated defeat. 

“Don’t fuss, love,” he grumbles. “You’ll get your fill.” 

With your head over your shoulder, you watch in your periphery as he smears his glistening fingers down his lips, under his nose - sticks them in his mouth and sucks them clean like he might savour the taste. 

“Mh,” he rasps, grins, letting the scent and flavour of your cunt fill his mouth and sinuses until it turns his shark eyes black and hungry. “Fuckin’ good.” 

You hear the leathery clinking of his belt buckle as he undoes it, the strident rip of his fly as he tears it down. A shuffle, a grunt, and his heavy cock lands against your lower back with a thump. 

You gasp, turn rigid - he runs a firm hand down your spine, rests it in the dip of your back, pushes a deeper curve in the arch. Grasps your hip and yanks it back, rams your body against his, angles your pelvis just right. 

He grabs his cock in a fist, smacks its solid against your ass like it’s a burden. 

Holds his fingers to his lips and hucks up a lump of spit, crude and dirty, you feel him smear it against your cunt as pulls your panties to the side. 

He gives no warning as he feeds his length through the hole he tore in your stockings, slides the blunt and fleshy head along your slit to coat it in the amalgam of fluids that drip from you. His tip finds its sheath, nestling between your folds and rutting against your tight opening as if to taunt you. 

With a hoarse growl he bucks his hips, his cock breaks through your entrance and rams deep into your cunt with a single thrust. It forces a wet and mewling cry from your throat, forgetting that the door to the room is open and freely accessible to anybody you work with. 

“Shh-sh-sh,” he hisses, he undoes his tie with a single hand as the other keeps your hips tight against him. 

He ruts again, somehow deeper still, and you let out a sore yelp - but he shuts you up, stifles your crying as he packs his steel-blue tie into your open mouth. Stuffs the silk fabric behind your teeth until no more will fit, and your saccharine noises are dampened into muffled whimpers. 

“Tha’s better. Fuck,” he curses through teeth. “Can barely fuckin’ fit in that little cunt of yours.”

His hand holds your throat, then, and the other controls your hip with vicious strength - and he fucks you in earnest. Fucks you hard and hostile, the round head of his cock hammers your aching cervix as if he could fuck past it. Fucks you like he’s angry, like he has been eagerly waiting for each forceful thrust - pent up since he met you, fuel only added to the flame every day that you came to work. 

The tie in your mouth is sopping wet with your keening saliva, your eyes well with tears of some twisted rapture - you want to tell him it hurts, but not to tell him to stop. 

“You take it good, don’t you? Found one fuckin’ thing you’re good at, eh?”

You whimper. You like him mean, don’t you? You like him angry. 

You spilled that tea on purpose. You deliberately missed that deadline. You talk loudly because you know it frustrates him. You suckle on that pen because you know he wishes it were his cock. 

His heavy hand clutches your wrist and pins it to the wall in front of you, and you feel light on your feet. The hole in your stockings only tears bigger with each thrust, you can hear the fabric of your pinstripe skirt rip further up the back; likewise, your cunt stretches to fit him to the hilt, the delicate skin threatening to tear as he splits you open. 

With a final rut, pounding hard into your womb, he bites down on the tendinous flesh of your neck and growls into your skin, chuffs out of his nose like a grizzly; “Fuck.”

You feel his cock twitch and surge as he pumps his come deep into you, it overflows - it dribbles down the cleft of your cunt, down your thighs, soaks into the sheer polyester of your stockings. Didn’t think, or didn’t bother to ask if you were on birth control - it doesn’t matter to him. Your cunt is as much his as your livelihood, and he’ll fill it with his come if he pleases. 

He leans his weight against you as he recharges, panting and spent, he rests his forehead against the back of your head. 

“Mh,” he huffs, “fuckin’ needed that.” 

You exhale all the air you had been holding in a breathy whine, cunt still aching and now painfully empty,  clit swollen and eager for any ounce of attention. He pays it none - only came to take, no time or interest in giving. 

He pulls his tie out of your mouth in one long rope, it drags a string of glistening saliva with it. 

“I’m-” you breathe furtively, mouth free, “I’m glad I could help.”

He pants out a laugh, deep and gravelly, places a drained kiss into your hair. 

“Help you did,” he assures you, amused and sated. “Next time I want to see all of you. Hear me?” 

“Next time?” You ask timidly. 

He pulls his cock out of you, and the spate of hot come he plugged inside comes out in a gush and soaks your already damp knickers. 

“Aye,” he grunts, tucking his semi-hard cock back into his boxers, insouciantly doing up his belt. “You’d like that, eh?”

You swallow a weary breath, push yourself from the wall and try to shimmy down what’s left of your skirt to conceal the mess he made underneath. 

“I - um,” you hesitate, embarrassed, you tuck a piece of hair that had been fucked astray behind your ear. “I would.” 

A devilish grin stretches in his lips, sharp teeth, as he loops his wet tie under his collar and does it up neatly - as neatly as he can, while it’s covered in the damp splotches of your spit. 

“‘Atta girl.” With a domineering hand he grabs your jaw, tugs your head upward and meets your lips with a single hard kiss. Smiles at you with praise. “Knew you were a slut.”

“I’m n-”

“Head home for the day, will you, love,” he orders rakishly, smoothing out his pale blue button down. “Important meeting. Can’t have any more distractions. Understood?” 

“Yes,” you comply with a simple nod. 

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, Mr Price.”

“Tha’s my girl.”

[ckret2]

(I said earlier I had a fic excerpt about DEATH LAWYER AXOLOTL, here it is.)

The god hopefully turned to the time giant—

She shook her head, expression flat. "Nope. I'm a civil engineer, not a hostage negotiator."

—and then turned to the Axolotl. "You. You know how to talk to mortals like this triangle that's taken over Dimension Zero, don't you? Isn't he like the omnicidal monsters you represent every day?"

The Axolotl looked nervously at the wormhole into Dimension Zero. He could see blue fire and hear wails of pain on the other side. "Ah," he said.

####

Biologically there was really no such thing as a god, in the same way that botanically there is really no such thing as a vegetable. Tomatoes are fruits; spinach is a leaf; carrots are roots; broccoli is an unfinished flower. The word "vegetable" just indicates the cultural role a plant performs in the kitchen.

The word "god" indicated the cultural role an entity performed in cosmology: a god was anything that exerted enough power that mortals felt driven to worship it.

Different beings so honored with the title "god" handled it in different ways. For the Axolotl's part, he thought it was a useful designation to help with networking, but mostly it was a pain that meant he was put up on a pedestal for doing his job.

The Axolotl was a god of justice. Not the god of justice, but one. He held dominion over an abstract concept; over millions and billions of years, his words and decisions slowly, inexorably altered the idea of "justice" on a multiversal scale. Mercy, retribution, punishment, rehabilitation, equity, equality, fairness, and righteousness were like multicolored clays he could twist, squish, sculpt, and blend at his leisure, permanently altering what those ideas meant to the mortals they affected.

Which was to say: he was a lawyer.

He was also known as a god of rebirth. Which was to say: he specialized in afterlife law. Before going into law he'd only been a psychopomp, but after having to escort too many despairing souls to afterlives he felt were too severe for their sins, he'd decided he wanted a say in where he took his souls. Now he helped clients get their charges reduced so they were eligible for a higher-tier reincarnation, or got their purgatorial sentences reduced, or—on rare occasions—even helped them avoid damnation. (Although he didn't take many damnation cases. He didn't always win—and those ones were too depressing to lose.)

And lately, he'd been developing a reputation.

For the past few centuries, he'd been working on a damnation case. He was defending a supervillain who'd built a weapon that could slice open the fabric of spacetime—a crime against reality—and bisect planets in its wake. He'd died inside the jurisdiction of an afterlife that had legalized eternal damnation. Case law had long since established that the dead had to be sent either to the afterlife system of their native jurisdiction or an alternate afterlife system of their choice in order to be judged, provided that the proper afterlife accepted their transfer request.

But if this villain had been extradited to his home world, the heaviest sentence he could have faced was a thousand years purgatory, with an option for early reincarnation for good behavior after a hundred years. So the jurisdiction he'd died in had summoned up some bureaucratic red tape to dismiss his native afterlife's extradition request, and he'd been sentenced where he'd died. They'd wanted to establish via case law that the dead who had committed crimes against reality could be damned in whichever jurisdiction they happened to die in, and hoped they could get away with it just for lack of anyone protesting the move. After all, everyone involved much preferred that a mortal wicked enough to obliterate multiple populated planets and trillions of lives receive eternal punishment.

Everyone involved except the Axolotl. 

Taking this case hadn't made him many friends. He didn't care; he had his principles. Let an interplanetary supervillain be dragged away to a foreign afterlife just so that he can be forced into damnation, and next it'll be a planetary dictator; let a dictator be dragged away, and next it'll be a murderer; and next it'll be a burglar; and next it'll be a jaywalker that a psychopomp has a personal grudge against. If the Axolotl could establish that even the most undeserving mortal imaginable, a criminal against reality, still deserved the right to be sentenced in the afterlife of his choice, then he could establish that everyone less evil deserved the same right.

If he had anything to say about it, in two or three trillion years he'd see eternal punishment outlawed completely; but untilthen, he was not going to sit idly by and let this flagrant abuse of interdimensional law become the new meaning of justice! He would get that supervillain out of eternal damnation, personally escort him to his native afterlife, and see him reincarnated on his own home world—and mark his words, he would rain so much bureaucratic hell on the judges and psychopomps that had let this abuse of justice take place that no god would dare keep a soul from its rightful afterlife ever again, or he wasn't the Axolotl!

All of which was to say:

Yes, unfortunately. This triangle was like the omnicidal monsters he represented every day.

And so he was appointed hostage negotiator.

####

(And that's why a trillion years later he's the guy helping Bill submit an insanity plea so that he can go to Theraprism rather than get the permadeath penalty.)

[stringlessau]

IT'S STRINGLESS' 1 YEAR ANNIVERSARY (+ early concept art compilation)

Posting this dumbass little video to start off the day since we have a lot of little gifts for our awesome community today.

One of those things is something i've been wanting to do for a very long while: posting a lot of the original concept art for stringless (since ive always enjoyed seeing other people's early concepts) some of these i have posted massively before, some are completely unseen, so it'll be fun

This one is the page that started it all, his design is at the same time largely unchanged and also completely different

All i have to say is that it originally said (regarding spamton and swatch) "they bicker like an old married couple" but then i thought about it and i changed it so theyre literally just married

Didnt mean to make swatchton, made it anyway lmfao

Right after that, i got working on neo designs, I wanted to make him really scary looking, the original concept was to make him look skeletal and generally for him to look insane and like he had been reanimated from the dead, but a lot of people had told me over time that they didn't really like the design, I was very defensive over it but I ended up taking criticism and i actually really like the new neo, it balances the uncanniness of the original design with the sleekness of my new art

Payton was a natural next step, without someone to sell the thorn ring there'd be no neo, so although his design visually stayed almost the same, he went through a lot of color revisions (thanks mostly to @maskedalterego, who helped me to nail his final color palette), he suggested the gloves, and helped me to balance the saturation of the design since really I've never had a good eye for color.

His final design, color wise, was just me experimenting using the colors of my sona at the time on him, which I was hesitant to do but was so happy with the palette that I kept it.

It's interesting that he was originally intended to be the pink addison (since he sells one of the snowgrave required rings), and the reason he ended up being the blue addison was corey beepington (and the eviction notice short which I have taken one too many concepts from), this still influenced me to make his outfit pink initially, which still is a huge part of his character design

That exact same night, I created concept art for Raster (weirdly, I was sure I created them before Payton, but it might be because I was generally uninterested in Payton earlier on), their design is also largely unchanged, I just got better with shapes and color, I also ended up changing their cheek markings after seeing some swatchton fanchild art by ne0nbandit

A first until now, the first concepts for payton neo were made on paper

I took very long on this design, and I only updated it every few weeks to make tweaks because I felt the concept was too good but my execution didnt make it justice

I'm very proud of how the design looks now, as of the latest neo redesigns, I feel I could finally make this idea justice

Swatch's design went through some last minute changes, I wanted to use this color palette for swatch to contrast with spamton, but decided against it, then i changed their hair to be longer, to make their Stringless design distinct from their regular Deltarune design

Historically, these two are pretty important, the first pieces of art I ever made featuring Rakhin's old design, when he wasn't part of stringless and I was just befriending rope (he made me Payton fanart first, fell in love with his style), the contrast is beautiful

Now to finish this post, here's some unseen Snowgrave route art I made over the time Stringless has been in development, they're all pretty quick sketches, but i love them nonetheless

Thanks everyone for the insane reception this AU has gotten, I haven't been feeling very good this whole year for a huge amount of reasons I can't get into, but Stringless and its community always helps me to remember why I do the things I do

Thanks for everyone's comments and everyone's kindness, thanks especially to @theropeaaa , for being the literal other half of this AU, without whom I couldn't have ever done the Stringless pages, @maskedalterego for helping me and listening to my ramblings since the start, @scamp-boxx for being this AU's biggest hype man (the first ever comment on the first spamton concept art was by them, and they helped me nail so much of the snowgrave route), @boykisserwoah and @weirdohno , for also being here from the start and making an absolutely insane amount of fanart oh my god, @gutamajunk , for motivating me to create Raster, and writing several story outlines on the first days of stringless that were the foundation for the pages, and diaryous milch and rory, our friends that have helped with character designs, story ideas, voice acting and have generally been instrumental to what stringless is today

THANKS EVERYONE <3

-Nick

[icewindandboringhorror]

I made a few new wax seal stamps out of clay (like the ones I did for my worldbuilding stuff forever ago), this time just of random symbols that I thought might look good done in the style of painting over the raised part of the wax or etc. :0c Some of them aren't carved deep enough to really show up that well, but overall they worked okay for being clay lol

[jichanxo]

me & you & the son we used to have [from nov/2023]

second image is based on this fanfic by snap which you should totally go read

[starflungwaddledee]

What Starstruck Dee theory have people made that is your favourite?

there have been quite a lot, and i genuinely love them all!

early on i think the most popular theory was that she was possessed or had been possessed at some point, most likely by dark matter. she actually debunked this theory personally, but i think people just assumed she was lying! 😂

my favourite part is not any one theory, but watching a shift in thoughts over time as more things are revealed, and seeing people share theories/work together in comments and reblogs. i like the "OOHHH WWWWHAT...!?!" moments a lot; whether they are a reaction to my storytelling or to other folks' detective work!

early theories revolved around how she was weird for a waddle dee, or at least a native of popstar. despite my never explicitly confirming anything to the contrary, theories have now broadly shifted to assuming she is not from popstar at all, and most people do now generally agree she's not really a waddle dee.

i don't recall exactly who first came up with each theory (though some big players are @the-void-is-a-disappointment who did a huge amount of early deetective work and encouraged me to build it as a story for solving, @shibuya-toasted-with-extra-cream, @graycoin and @jojo-schmo) and i'm not sure which of these theories are still held by anyone

but here a few of my favourites, roughly in order that they started appearing...

♻️ she's a total mimic species like kirby or void, copying things around her either by intent or by accident 🗑️ similar to above, but she's an incorrect copy or a "beta" mock-up type of a waddle dee 🧚 that she was just born different, like a fae changeling, and might have been hidden away when young as a result 🕰️ she is something totally inorganic and/or mechanical, created by or like the clockwork stars or stardream, perhaps wish contingent 🥇 sometimes attached to the above, she was created to serve some sort of Greater Purpose. she might have failed at it or been flawed, and was subsequently discarded on popstar 🌠 a dozen and one wildly different things connected to the "falling star that hit her". alien life form on the meteor transferred into her on impact. infection by intergalactic bacteria/dark matter. simply massive concussive trauma that fucked up her signature (back when we thought that was the only thing wrong with her). the star was magic and fused with her. she hatched from it and is literally a star herself. probably missing some here. 🪐 waddle dee from a different place/planet. this one is quite a sensible theory, given that we do see many quite different dees! 🤍 she is a fragmented piece of void/void termina. this one in particular i know is @shibuya-toasted-with-extra-cream 's ongoing theory and she's put in a lot of really cool work towards it! ⚔️ she's somehow connected to the heroes of yore. this theory i think has only started popping up since galacta knight has become a reoccurring visitor in her storyline and we've started asking questions about her familiar looking magic spears, but you can certainly 1hko @moonverc3x with this one 🧿 she's connected to the matters. sometimes soul, because it's sometimes star themed and lacks a token representative. where as a connection to dream might link her to fecto forgo/fecto elfilis in some way (a creature also well known for a catastrophic meteor attack). i've also seen folks confident that she's connected to heart matter as well, probably again due to everyone's favourite grumpy swan showing up

this is all i can think of or locate right now, but there's been a pretty wide range of things. i feel there has been a rather interesting transition over time from "she's a messed up waddle dee" to "she's probably connected to a universal superpower of some kind" which i am genuinely really really thrilled about?! 😂 what a glow up for a pathetic little wawa!!!

i'm also personally really fond of seeing how people's existing biases influence what they can find and draw connections in. for instance: i know @jojo-schmo loves the forgotten land and elfilis, and digs into those connections and draws out some really cool stuff because her knowledge is already so specialised! i think this is the true highlight of working on this story for me, people theorising and engaging in the lore, and laser pin-pointing things that tie into our personal faves-- the way we tend to do with kirby lore as a whole-- is such uninhibited delight

i sincerely hope people will enjoy where starstruck's story does go, in the end!!

[vimbry]

I kinda feel like there's this weird pushback around people asserting their boundaries online sometimes and I don't really know why. if someone says they don't like a single person liking a large amount of their posts in a short time for whatever reason, a dozen others go, "well I like it when people do that, so everyone is welcome to spam like me". if someone says they don't consider being mutuals to necessarily mean being friends, a dozen others go, "reminder that if we've even glanced at each other even once then we're the bestest friends ever and you can talk to me any time!"

it's not like, morally wrong for people to have preferences for how they'd like others to treat them, and it's strange to try and fight to be the most accommodating kindest nicest doormat ever. I guess the dumb discourse around, you know, colour palette/pose theft or whatever, has made people have more knee-jerk reactions to having an actually reasonable boundary.

[oh-meow-swirls]

how does the raft not capsize.

[qiallosa]

answering messages in a few but as i'm doing a lil thing i've been thinking way too heavily about oz again so if anyone wanted to join in on my au wizard of oz concept and wanted to bring me any of these amazing characters as an affiliate like this and i'll message you to spill all the details.

FINLEY — the awkward shapeshifter companion to the king. he was once cursed by theodora , making him a flying monkey who serves oz as his right hand. casted with charlie cox.

THEODORA THROPP — oz's long since forgotten ex. the two were destined to marry long before the two were even born , but the marriage was cut short due to oz's affair with glinda. the witch was devastated and has had a vendetta ever since , more so regarding her lost place upon the throne of oz more than anything else. casted with sarah shahi.

EVANORA THROPP — sister to theodora , evanora has sat as the trusted adviser to the throne of oz for decades , that is until oscar relived her of her duties upon dumping her sister , leaving the thropp sisters to harbor a shared distaste for the king. casted with mozhan marnó.

OZMA DIGGS — oscar's beloved twin sister and the princess of the emerald city. ozma is oz's most trusted confidant and the most devout member of his team toward his cause. casted with either sophia bush or morena baccarin.

DOROTHY GALE — oscar's estranged daughter in which he has lacked any sort of contact with over several decades as she was raised by her aunt and uncle in the land without magic after the passing of her mother , that is until oscar sends the natural disaster which brings her to oz. casted with madelyn cline.

ANNIE GALE — would be prevalent in flashbacks , being oscar's past lover from the land without magic , whom he met during his time within a traveling circus in which their love affair spawned their daughter , dorothy. casted with katheryn winnick.

LUCREZIA DIGGS — also only prevalent in flashbacks , oscar and ozma's mother. the most powerful witch known to oz at the time and a force to be reckoned with. casted with monica bellucci.

ZOROASTER DIGGS — again , only prevalent in flashbacks. the father to oscar and ozma and a tyrannical ruler of oz. he was the root cause of the civil unrest in oz which brought the great war that ultimately lead to the untimely demise of he and his wife. casted with sylvester stallone.

[thefirstknife]

can we please. go one (1) week without the PVP obsessed people going off about how PVP is the only thing that matters in the game. im so very tired. "PVE people are probably about to find out that PVE can't carry the game because PVP is ruined and we're all gonna quit and play better games" please just can they shut up and go already instead of threatening us with a good time they never follow through on??

I saw that stuff as well, I know exactly what you're talking about. It's incredibly disingenuous and deliberately incendiary to cause more people to bitch about the game being doomed or whatever.

They are constantly using "steam numbers" to show that this is the lowest population count that Destiny 2 ever had and how that's proof that the game is being ruined and dying, that pvp bros and content creators are more important than we think they are, that Bungie needs to make Destiny 3 (yes, that is unironically stuff that people are saying) and other really incredibly tiring things.

Not to mention the vitriol towards the devs. Every time they bitch, more and more people show up in the comments saying awful shit about devs and how they are lazy, they don't work, they don't care, they are bad at development and so on. This is what eventually fuels harassment.

These "steam numbers" are disingenuous because they are taken out of context and they strip all other external reasons from the "low player count."

Is there a low player count? Yes! That is correct. Even when we account for console players, it's still low.

This is nothing new. This is a constant trend. Last month of the season ALWAYS has low numbers. People finished their story and their pinnacle grind and their seals and are doing other things.

More under for length:

Is this the lowest it's been so far? It seems to be, though the final month on steam charts isn't over so we can't fully tell yet, but it seems to be one of the lowest. However, there's been similar numbers before during seasonal end. It's quite literally nothing new. We go through this every season, except this season it's slightly lower than usual.

Why is that? Well, the chart Aztecross put to prove there's not many people playing happened on a Monday before the final Tuesday reset of the final week of the season. Yeah bro, very few people have things left to do in the season. They're not bothering. Unlike you, other people have other hobbies and games to play. I haven't played in days, I only got on on Saturday to finish my King's Fall seal and that took 10 minutes. This is what I mean by "disingenuous." It's a cheap bait tactic. Find the lowest number and ship it for cheap outrage engagement.

Others are constantly also posting the cummulative steam chart for every month of Destiny since the game came to steam and they're pointing out that we have lowest numbers now. Which is, again, posted for cheap outrage. They look at the number and see it's low and their conclusion is "game is dying." They don't care about the trend (every season end is "dying"), they don't care about external reasons (other game releases), they don't care about overall how some seasons are just weaker and have less interest (not the first time), they don't care about anything.

They just want people to be mad enough to harass the devs. Because like, what do they think is going to happen when they spend 2 months blogging to hundreds of thousands of people about the game being ruined by evil devs who don't do their job? When they constantly talk about how everything in the game is bad, pvp is bad, pve is boring and easy, story is bad, seasons are bad, events made for fun are bad, small community event is bad. What's going to happen is thousands of people are going to harass the devs. That's what going to happen.

I took the "steam numbers" chart that people are throwing around and I went into it in-depth to explain what the numbers mean and add context to them. You can see it here. It's a big image but you can zoom in and explore. It makes more sense when you see it separated by seasons; you can CLEARLY see the main trend of "low population at season end."

Another thing to consider with these numbers is the scheduling pattern. Shadowkeep released in October, Beyond Light released in November after a delay. October-November are usually months with a lot of other game releases and holidays. In 2019 and 2020, Bungie had an expansion themselves to cover that time. In 2021, there was no expansion in Oct-Nov; and that was the last time the game had the lowest population record ever. WHAT A SURPRISE. In this period, if Destiny doesn't have an expansion, people move on to play other games!!!! WOW! We have the technology to decipher the low numbers!

It's important to also note that back in 2021, that was the first time a game was delayed properly and significantly, so the year was without an expansion and there was a lull in Oct-Nov period. However, at that time, it was the first time this schedule happened and people generally didn't know how will it go. We were also kept in the dark about the seasonal story end (the infamous When Is Exorcism incident) so people had to keep coming back. Now, we're in the same situation; no new expansion in Oct-Nov, seasonal lull, nothing is happening. However, now, we know how this goes. People know how this schedule works AND we're not dealing with an extended season. We know when this season ends and there's nothing to wait for. People are more comfortable taking a break. So there's less people in Oct-Nov 2022 than there were in the previous lowest point, Oct-Nov 2021. It's almost as if there are reasons for this that go beyond "game is obviously dying."

These people also seem to be incapable of understanding that some players just... stop playing. For no specific reason. The game isn't dying, some people just lose interest. Content creators are especially guilty of this, because THEY can't stop playing, because they tied their income to a single live service game. To them, quitting the game is losing a job. Curious, maybe that influences their views about the game and about burnout and taking breaks and the quality of the content?

They simultaneously want Bungie to drop FOMO and reduce burnout, but they ALSO want for there to never be "content droughts." Which one is it? Because these two things cannot both be gone. If you want less FOMO and less burnout, then there will be less content. If you want more content, then you have to get on that burnout grindset.

It's the end of the god damn season. Yeah, nothing is happening. Yeah, fewer people are playing. Players finished their grind in the Destiny mines and are doing other things before the new season drops. Stop catastrophising it for cheap outrage bait. You not being able to take a break and having to keep making new content even when the season is ending and there no new content is your problem. Not Bungie's, not the other players'.

Bungie is not going to force their devs to crunch 80 hours per week so you can have brand new content every Tuesday that no regular player can catch up with. As it currently is, I want MORE downtime. I want seasons to be 4 months and to have less time and more downtime to catch up with stuff. Imagine the outrage though. Genuinely, society if these people would actually deliver on their promise and leave. Someone else will take your place, bro.

Also, as a final note before a dissertation in the tags: these pvp mains are weak. They whine about only having 2 new maps in 2 years. Gambit got -2 new maps. Like, literally we had 6 maps and now we have 4. LMAO. Crucible has a total of 24 maps and 8+ modes, constant updates, Iron Banner rework, multiple Trials reworks, incoming competitive rework, Crucible labs, three different sets of armour, prestige weapon loot, three different seals, entire twabs dedicated just to it. And they whine about not enough attention for the Crucible?

It's getting more attention than any other core playlist. Their problem is that they're not the ones being catered to. An update doesn't count if it doesn't satisfy mister Crucible Main #37. Fuck everyone else I guess! They are the most entitled selfish childish little pricks I've ever seen. They do not deserve Bungie talking the players at all.

[pisshandkerchief]

allow me to indulge my gay theatre nerd side for a moment. now if i'm being perfectly honest, i normally don't like jukebox musicals. they usually feel too forced to me and i prefer a musical that actually has songs, y'know, written specifically for it and isn't just trying to fit songs into a story they weren't made for. it just feels more creative to me. if i wanted to listen to preexisting songs, i'd just listen to them at home without the extra story. i don't need a musical for that. HOWEVER. if anyone wanted to write a jukebox musical using fall out boy or mcr songs i would eat that shit UP no questions asked. in fact if i had any talent i'd write one myself 

[unproduciblesmackdown]

truly lmao 2024 lambda literary award finalist wynnstannery

[steakout-05]

something that had always been really frustrating for me when i was still in math classes in school was trying to watch the teacher actually work the problem out on the board and still not understanding wtf was happening. for some context, i heavily suspect that i have some form of dyscalculia because math and numbers literally do not compute properly in my brain. it'd be too long to explain the full extent of my possible dyscalculia here but math literally does the mental equivalent of maxing out the CPU power and memory of a computer to the point where it freezes and lags to my brain.

math class was always stressful for me because no matter what i did and how much progress i made, there was always a lack of understanding i had when it came to trying to work any math problem out long term and remembering anything. it felt like there was always something i was missing, so when the time came for the teacher to explain and go through a math problem step-by-step on the whiteboard, i made sure i paid as much attention to it as humanly possible as child-to-teenager me could muster and even then i still did not understand how the fuck they solved it, all because of one thing: the teacher pulling a random number completely out of their ass that happened to be the key to solving the problem.

like. i don't think i can illustrate how frustrating and isolating this was to experience with words alone. here i was, paying as much attention as i physically could, trying my damned hardest to memorise each individual step and calculation in order to understand how to get from point A to point B. everything made perfect sense up until the teacher suddenly stops for a second and writes a seemingly completely unrelated number there with no context as to why it's there in the first place, and then, in that singular moment, everything immediately comes crumbling down and i'm left completely confused. and somehow, everyone else around me perfectly understands it except me. like. imagine sitting there, giving the teacher all the attention you possibly could, literally watching and studying their hand movements just to understand every single step, only to be even more confused than your classmates, who you're pretty sure were half-asleep during the explanation, who also say they understand how the teacher came to that conclusion. what. the actual fuck.

when i try to explain how infinitely confusing and irritating this was for me, i'm reminded of a quote from that video Patricia Taxxon made about DHMIS: "The rug is pulled again ... There was never any hope of following the thread, understanding is impossible.". even when i was literally trying my best to possibly follow anything that was happening, the rug still gets pulled out from under my feet and i'm sent all the way back to square one of not understanding a single thing and being confused again. all because the teacher didn't explicitly explain how they got that random number that was apparently singlehandedly necessary for solving the equation and where they got it from, apart from that place being from literally fucking nowhere.

it's really no wonder that i eventually stopped giving a shit about paying attention in math class, because even when i was, it was still daunting and incomprehensible as always. why bother trying anymore when trying still gets you nowhere? trying to ask the teacher where they got that number from was an impossible to understand task as well, as their either snapped back with a "well you should have been paying attention" (even though i WAS but whatever) or they do explain that they added the first two numbers from the equation together or something, but now i'm wondering why they didn't just explain that in the first place like they did with everything else instead of seemingly just assuming everyone would know to do that.

by the way, if i had to give an estimate, my math ability is probably still at like. a 5th grader's level at best. so uh. yeah it's not good. still, it is kinda funny to me though, not only because i do find a bit of humour in the situation, but also because some people are often so quick to judge someone's intelligence purely based on their mathematical abilities alone. like. the idea of someone calling me dumb for still needing to do addition with my fingers despite the fact that my reading and language levels are considered above average is really funny to me lmaooo

[icewindandboringhorror]

finally finished all of one character's entire quests/optional dialogue/questions/etc.... 100,000 words... .... aughhh

[nyxofdemons]

god i have so many projects i need to finish i shouldn't be starting a new one. but. the idea in my head for a royalty au (i know theyre also royals in canon i just don't know what else to call it) where ozzie and stolas are both princes in an arranged engagement, blitz is an assassin personally employed by the royal family, and fizz is the court jester, is one that. uh. kind of has me in its clutches rn

[magentagalaxies]

going to a comedy open mic tomorrow mostly to watch my friends (it's at a cool venue that my improv troupe performs at once a month and a few improv troupe friends are doing standup there) but when these friends were asking if i'd be interested in coming they were like "btw there's usually a ton of open spots on show days if YOU want to do something... and they're not strict about it only being standup either, people have done character pieces and sketches etc like they embrace the weirdness... and they're not strict about time limits you could probably do anything between three and eight minutes... sometimes if there's not enough people signed up they'll even let you go twice..." and i'm like god damn it i thought i was gonna take a break from aubrey but this setup is like tailor made for an aubrey appearance lmao