#but in this one my only method so far is actually checking the answers to make sure i did it right after i'm done

[fictional-worlds-are-exquisite]

i just started a new puzzle magazine this afternoon of 'suguru' something i hadn't tried before

i'm 25% of the way done with this

i've done almost 40 puzzles this afternoon/evening

would recommend suguru

[1nk20ul]

Discovering Jon and Martin’s Birthdays

It’s a wonder how much you can uncover about The Magnus Archives using only a bit of mathematics and a smidge of psychology.

Apparently I have too much time for both and can definitively say that I have revealed the absolute best and most accurate dates for both of their birthdays. Feel free to join me as we dissect piece by piece when these two were born and put to rest the age old question: What is Jon’s zodiac sign?

I’ll put the results in the tags as a TLDR if you’re not interested in reading my method and simply care about what star sign they are or what date to put in your calendar so you can go out for ice cream.

Statement Begins.

To find out the birthdays of Jon and Martin, we first must determine when exactly they joined the Archives. This will be important for the wider picture, as after all, the earliest possible birthday must take place after they start working there. We also must understand the Archive team’s speed in order to understand how to space out our statements and find that aforementioned number.

Gertrude Robinson passed away, according to her file, on the 15th of May 2015. This makes 15th May our earliest possible starting date. The next time the day’s date was specified was on 13th January 2016, when Naomi Herne gave a live statement. This is MAG 13, and our latest start date. Obviously, these numbers are nowhere close to the day we’re looking for, but they act as upper and lower limits. Our answer is somewhere inside.

In Jon’s supplemental notes for MAG 12, he states that Gerard Keay passed away late the previous year. Since Gertrude died after Gerard in early 2015, he must have died in late 2014. This confirms that MAG 1-12 was recorded to tape in 2015. We know that MAG 13, the next statement, was given live on 13th January 2016. This creates, at the very least, an almost two-week gap between archiving statements. This is likely due to the holiday season, so the time between 24th December and up to 1st January can be omitted. To recap, MAG 1-12 was recorded in 2015, and MAG 13 onwards in 2016.

The key to determining archival speed lies with Martin. Martin goes missing right before MAG 17 and reappears at the end of MAG 21. As he gave such a detailed account of those two weeks, our archiving timeline can be significantly accurate. MAG 19-20 were more than likely recorded on the same day, meaning three separate recording sessions took place in two weeks. However, it took a minimum of six weeks to record MAG 14-16.

So far, the timeline looks like this:

Now we have to figure out the left half.

Calculating the average time it takes to archive statements from MAG 13-22 (removing any outliers from our calculations), we can find a true average and apply it to the 2015 year. By March of The Magnus Institute’s 2016 calendar year, the Archive staff was able to archive 1.31 statements per week. I double-checked this number by doing the same with the statements recorded between MAG 22 and MAG 39. By multiplying the average amount of weeks it should take them by the adjusted number of statements recorded, it should equal the number of weeks it actually did take them. If the numbers are the same, the average is reliable. Hoping for the number 20, the number of weeks I had calculated... was 20.11. This average seems relievingly trustworthy and fits Elias’ complaint about the staff “barely getting through one statement per week.”

All we have to do now is multiply the first 12 statements by the 1.31 average to determine how many weeks it most likely took to do the recorded work of 2015. This leaves us with 15.72 weeks and makes the earliest and most probable start date somewhere around 5th September 2015. I will round this to 1st September as I am not expecting the team to start working on statements right out the gate, so these extra four days act as a buffer for everyone to get their bearings and find the tape recorder. Also, it’s convenient for Elias’ financials to start everyone on the 1st of the month.

Now is the fun part - the birthdays. We now know that Jon and Martin’s birthdays must fall somewhere between early September and the end of February. Since March kicks off the Archives living with the threat of Jane Prentiss, they have to take place before then. After that point, the team is far too stressed to have the carefree party heard in MAG 161. We also know that Martin’s birthday has to come before Jon’s, as the team mentions going out for ice cream at Jon’s party. This event has to be long enough in the past for Jon to forget about it, so their birthdays must be reasonably spaced out from one another in the allotted time. Likewise, an amount of time must have passed after their start date for the team to be close enough bond to want to celebrate Martin’s birthday.

Martin’s birth year is easy to determine. Martin tells us his age in MAG 56. His birthday could not have happened at this point in 2017, so his birth year must be 1987. In a Q&A, it was speculated that Jon and Martin have birthdays near each other (and one being slightly older than the other), so only 1987 and 1988 are our options for Jon’s birth year. Let’s look a bit closer at that.

Early ‘88 is closer to Late ‘87 than Early ‘87. At Jon’s birthday party, he says he’s turning 38. Martin is 29 at this time. The obvious conclusion to me is that Jon simply adds a decade to his age. (I find this the most hilarious yet believable scenario.) Jonny was also born in 1988, being 28 himself when that scene would take place. As Jon’s childhood details sometimes mirror Jonny’s, I am taking this as a sign of accuracy.

And by doing some additional work that I will not share here, I can reliably say that these are the best observed birthdays for Jon and Martin:

Martin - 23rd November, 1987

Jonathan - 2nd February, 1988

Also, this makes Martin a potential Valentine’s Day Baby. Do with that what you will.

Thanks for reading!

(Full timeline for those who are interested:)

[itsnotmuchyet]

Okay, this is just a quick (lies, this ended up so long) and dirty articulation of why I don't like Annabeth Chase from PJO, her relationship with Percy, and what I think could fix it. (It got too long so I cut that bit. I'll write it if someone asks, but right now this is just a deconstruction of how, in my opinion, Annabeth Chase is not a well-written and compelling character.) This will be rambling and scattershot but hopefully it all makes sense, even if you don't agree.

First of all, Annabeth Chase has a lot of potential. I'm about to talk some shit, but I want to be clear, I see a lot in her character that could be interesting. I attribute most of my problems with her to Rick's writing, which, for all its good qualities, is not the strongest or most consistent imo. This isn't intended as a hate piece, just a way to organize my thoughts. I'm doing this all from memory, and am open to feedback, disagreement, or correction if I make a mistake so long as it's done in a civil way. Thank you.

I think my biggest frustration with Annabeth is that I simply don't believe her intelligence. I would LIKE to. But I think we are told that she is smart far more than we're shown, which makes the praise heaped upon her somewhat galling.

When I think about great strategies in these books, Percy comes to mind first. In The Last Olympian, he's the one who plans out the destruction of the bridges to frustrate Kronos' approach, including making diplomatic deals with the river gods and strategically deploying demigods to get it done. He's the one to realize that Poseidon is critical to success, find a way to get his attention in the middle of a war, and convince him to take heavy losses in Atlantis — and lose that battle which was very personal and precious to him — in order to win the ultimate war against Kronos. It is also Percy's strategy which is successful in defeating Typhon. Percy is constantly thinking up strategies in high pressure environments, such as fights. For example, in the Labrynth, when he realizes that his half-brother is healed by earth so he concocts a method with what he has around him to keep his brother suspended so he can be killed.

Now, other demigods also make important contributions in The Last Olympian. Wasn't it Nico who convinced Hades, Persephone, and Demeter to join the fight? And Annabeth activated Daedalus(??? spelling) statues in defense as well. But Percy is one that we are most often shown being strategic. I think it just goes under the radar because Percy does not have a high self esteem and does not praise himself internally for a lot of the clever stuff he does.

Annabeth most often contributes by knowing something. She often serves as exposition; she'll recognize a myth first, and explain it to Percy. But not only is prior knowledge and memorization not a replacement for actual strategy, BUT PERCY GETS BETTER GRADES THAN HER. I think it's in that Demigod Files book?? All Riordan's stuff has at least a month's waitlist at my library or I would double check my source, but I distinctly remember an entry where Annabeth is like, "Seriously, how is Percy getting better grades than me?? I'm the one who taught him how to put an essay together and now he's breezing through them??? Wtf." I find this intensely frustrating. Because what do you MEAN she's not even more successful than Percy academically? It's just, it's frustrating, because she's supposed to be so super smart, and I'm struggling to see where that actually gets expressed. If her only advantage is an earlier exposure to the Greek myths than Percy and a good memory, then her value as a character is highest near the start of the series and can only decline from there.

Even her encounter with the Sphinx highlights this. She had the trivia knowledge to answer the questions but not the wisdom to just, do that and not start an unnecessary fight in the middle of their quest.

I can think of several times in the books where Annabeth stutters, trying to think of something, while Percy improvises something that might be a little goofy but it WORKS.

Actually, Percy is by far the better manipulator out of the two of them. He is insanely good at reading his enemies, figuring out how to convince them to ally with him if possible, or defeat them if not. His big vulnerability is he can't do that for shit with people he cares about. Percy is actually very conflict avoidant in his personal life, I've noticed? And he's very quick to empathize with a friend and try to see things from their persepective (like when Grover kinda SABOTAGED his college applications and Percy heard him out and supported him in his emotional struggle with Percy leaving).

By contrast, Annabeth doesn't seem interested in the emotional wellbeing of her friends?

Annabeth often insults Percy's intelligence and his strategies. She says his head is full of kelp, seaweed brain, outright calls him stupid at least once (during that quest for Hermes, if I recall; was that in the Demigod Files as well? It wasn't in a main book I don't think). Everyone says that Annabeth is so smart, she's the daughter of Athena she's the architect of Olympus!! Meanwhile, the person I see actually implementing successful strategy is the person Annabeth constantly insults. She says that he's lucky, that he needs help to do anything, couldn't think his way out of a paper bag without her????????

That's what drives me crazy about Annabeth. Nobody ever calls her on her bragging or her putting down of other people. She doesn't learn. Not even when her carelessness and overconfidence gets her DRAGGED INTO TARTARUS. I'm so sorry, but is it not embarrassing for a daughter of Athena to be defeated like that??? All you had to do was keep an awareness of your environment, put two and two together that you're covered in webs just like the spider who just fell through the floor, and realize you'd better do something about that ASAP. And, like. Look. My issue isn't that she was pulled into Tartarus. My issue isn't even the way it happened. It matches with her fatal flaw.

My issue is that, like with everything else she gets wrong, she never seems to learn or grow from it. Like when Luke tricked her into holding up the sky. That to me is a perfect opportunity for a genuine character moment. It's so humbling, and would leave you so shaken. A moment for an unwanted but desperately needed reckoning between who she wants Luke to be and who he is. I'm not even saying she should have given up on him. I don't mind that she couldn't or that the whole thing was so messy and painful for her, but the way that it was expressed in the book made me feel like Annabeth was either willfully blind or untrustworthy. Her denial of Luke's worst aspects, her defending of him, her refusal to hold space for other characters feeling differently to her, all of it fostered suspicion in me when I first read the PJO books.

I remember when I first read the scene where Percy reveals his Achille's heel to her. My hair stood on end. Something about the way her eyes are described as "distant" when she asks where it is, and how Percy hesitates. In that moment I was screaming for him not to trust her. I did not want her to know. I thought his fatal flaw was going to kill him. Percy is a character who cannot anticipate betrayal.

Of course I was wrong about Annabeth there. Or was I? Other people before me have noted that when Annabeth judo flips Percy onto his back in New Rome, she does not know that the Mark of Achilles has been lifted. I don't think that the throw would have necessarily killed him if it hadn't; he lands on a flat surface. But it was certainly DEEPLY careless and foolhardy of Annabeth, EVEN BEFORE you take into account that it was, strategically, a STUPID thing to do. It makes me want to scream how dumb this moment makes Annabeth look. It's the tense, fraught first meeting in years between ancient enemies. You're the leader of your group, the diplomatic ambassador from Camp Half Blood. It's imperative that this goes well, for the fate of the world. And your emotions run so high upon reuniting with your kidnapped boyfriend — who was stolen by a god and has been through you-don't-know-what kind of godly fuckery — that you take it out on him, the VICTIM, and physically attack him. Didn't she put a knife to his throat?? If PERCY hadn't defused the moment, handled it, Annabeth would easily have destroyed the Greek-Roman alliance right there, no ghostly possession of Leo needed. With friends like her, who needs enemies?

Her relationship with Percy…I've never understood why they're the golden couple of the fandom. Annabeth seemed more interested in Luke than Percy, and when she was interested in Percy it was always…like, okay, Annabeth was vulnerable with Luke. I don't think he ever had a thing for her, but there was a tenderness to how she'd interact with him. When she interacted with Percy — think of the school dance, or how she handled having Rachel on a quest — she refuses to be vulnerable with him. If she has a crush on Percy, she hides it under glares, insults, and demands. Annabeth won't ask Percy to dance with her, she'll hit him and call him stupid for not asking her. She will not let her guard down with him.

This is a throughline in their relationship; even in Tartarus, she's thinking about how she likes to keep Percy on her toes. Yeah, Annabeth, we know. It was obvious when you manufactured a whole drama around your "one month anniversary." Which, no, that's not a thing, and it's completely normal of Percy not to anticipate that you would want him to do something special for it. I hated that whole story (it's in demigod files, I think). It's just Annabeth dangling Percy over undefined consequences if he doesn't read her mind and figure out what she wants and needs. He does all the work and she judges it. It's not cute or fun.

I do place most of the blame on Riordan's writing. What's that scene where Annabeth pushes Percy unexpectably off a cliff, triggering a very sensitive and dangerous encounter that he had to negotiate under time pressure while Annabeth watches? How does that scene start? "Get you a girlfriend who…" It's framed as a positive that Annabeth will just shove Percy into dangerous situations without warning when she absolutely does not have to do that. Isn't she supposed to be strategic? Why can't she think up a strategy and tell him, instead of shoving him at the problem and just, putting it on him to find a solution? "Give the problem to Percy" isn't a strategy worthy of Athena, I'm sorry. But my point is, Rick genuinely seems to think their romance is good and these red flag moments are cute and flirty. He is not writing Annabeth as an asshole on purpose.

I tend towards death of the author analyses myself, but Rick's writing is not consistent enough for that. You kinda just have to identify what he was trying to do, see where it failed, and decide how you wanna interpret that. And when it comes to Annabeth…I just want to either burn her relationship with Percy down or rewrite her character.

What else is there? Oh yeah, does anyone else feel like the way her family is written makes her seem…overdramatic? Like, meeting her dad and stepmom…it's an anticlimax. This girl was so unhappy she ran away from home as a child. She chose to become homeless in a world where monsters hunt her down, AS A CHILD, rather than stay with her dad. There's a deep unhappiness and loss to that. When she talks about it, she talks about being unwanted, a burden that her dad was unable and unwilling to handle, not being heard, not being believed. She is describing victim blaming. In that house, she, a six year old child, was seen as the problem.

And after that build up, we meet her family, and they are…well, they're fine, aren't they. Her step mom is concerned for her. She and Annabeth's dad (no i don't remember his name rn) seem to want the best for her, to help however they can. Mr Chase—is his name Frederick maybe???—Mr Chase takes the initiative, after Percy and his friends let him in on a sliver of what's going on with Annabeth, to melt down old weapons to make bullets and FLY A HELICOPTER to come save his daughter.

I'm honestly at a loss about what we're supposed to think here. At the end of Titan's Curse Percy gently suggests to Annabeth that she give her family another chance. If I recall, she says some things can't be repaired, but it's implied that she does actually try again with her family later. This always seemed to me to undermine Annabeth's entire narrative…the way she describes being treated simply does not match what we observe for ourselves in Titan's Curse.

I could go on but I'll cut it here. Maybe I'll make a post about I'd rewrite her if I could, because I do WANT to like Annabeth. There's a lot interesting that could be done with her. Probably not though bc all the Annabeth stans are gonna block me for this one I fear. Maybe I'll post my criticisms of other PJO couples instead lol (I won't. if you've read this far you'll find this claim dubious, but I actually don't enjoy being a hater. anyway i don't have nearly so much to say about any other pjo couple). Thanks for reading.

[gremlinmodetweeker]

Kinktober Day 6-A/B/O

Okay so I have been doing Kinktober on my KoFi HERE but I really liked how this one came out, so I'm posting it here. It's not actually a part of the A/B/O universe I'm writing, but rather an aside to it. Just a little oneshot in the same base universe.

Anyways, MDNI because this fic deals with mature subjects.

For access to all the other Kinktober content, check out my KoFi HERE

TW: A/B/O dynamics (alpha beta omega), smut, chair sex, office sex. heats and ruts

Wordcount 3.9k

Art from This Post

Kinktober Day 6-A/B/O

König was always a strange sort of alpha. He was at the top of the pack, an alpha A, so it made no sense that he trembled in the corners of the room whenever you entered. He was a colonel, for fuck’s sakes! Why on earth did he shy away whenever you, a measly little omega O, came up to him and asked him if he had his morning coffee already?

You ruminated over the question all day every day. Why was your commanding officer, the hottest and most viable bachelor on base, also afraid of any and all attention? You tried to make sense of it, but nothing came to fruition. So, without a clear answer, you turned towards more underhanded methods of finding out.

“So how long was he with the Austrian military?” you asked your friend nonchalantly.

Horangi mulled over the question briefly before shrugging, “Long enough to get to the rank of colonel, that’s all I can really say.”

“Is it classified, or…”

“I just don't know,” Horangi admitted.

Drat. You’d have to try again.

“So, you said he’s always been a bit shy?” you passed Askel his morning coffee, saving König’s for last (as always, you liked to end the round end on the sweetest note).

“Well, I’ve never known him to be different,” Askel shrugged.

“Not even on duty?” you asked.

“Oh on duty he’s an animal,” Askel shuddered, “I’ve seen him rip out a man’s throat with his teeth. Fucking insane.”

You shuddered at the thought, if a bit turned on. You’d need to unpack that later. Someday. Not today.

When you gave König his coffee, he looked as docile as a lamb. The thought of his marking fangs sinking into your neck haunted you the rest of the day.

You woke up to your heat consuming you. Of course your heat would be on a day you had a meeting, of course it would be extremely important, and of course it was with König. If you could roll your eyes harder they’d be on the floor. Or at least, if you weren’t consumed by voracious need. 

You were drenched in sweat as you scrabbled for your heat suppressants. Within half an hour of shoving them in your mouth, you had finally calmed yourself enough to be able to relax. With a sigh, you put yourself together and headed out the door.

You went through your day casually, others bemoaning the lack of coffee in the morning in your absence. You laughed them off, explained that your heat made you late, and most of them shared a short laugh with you. The only one to have a curious response was König.

“Ah, you came!” his little cheer significantly brightened your day.

“You missed your coffee?” you smirked.

König shook his head, “Nein, I just like seeing your smile every morning.”

Your ears turned red as you turned your head to hide your face, “Well, it’s always great seeing you too König.”

“You will come for the meeting today, ja?” bless his sweet Austrian accent, it made everything he said both hotter and sweeter.

“I mean, yeah,” you shrugged, “it’s in boardroom C, right?”

“Well... Ach,” König faltered momentarily, “I heard that the director is on sick leave, so you only have to present to me today. I was, ah…” he scratched the back of his head, “wondering if maybe you’d be fine if we moved it to my office?”

“No, but it’s far from my office,” König’s eyes glanced down to the ground.

You raised an eyebrow but you simply replied, “Is the boardroom busy?”

“If it makes it easier than sure,” you agreed, “where’s your office?”

“I can pick you up from your office,” he offered quickly.

“Oh if you can show the way that’ll be great,” you grinned.

He nodded firmly, and with that you were on your way.

When you got to your desk, you couldn’t help but look forward to the meeting with König. It wasn’t often you got time with the big man, so any interaction you had with him was more than welcome. You tapped away at your keyboard, dragged and dropped appropriate files and deleted extraneous ones as KorTac asked. You acted the perfect part of the pencil pusher, and you were perfectly content with your position as a cog in the machine. Once, you might have raged against your position, but these days you’d found some comfort in the monotony.

Time passed by quickly, all things considered. Sure you’d spent far too much time playing games on your phone, and you certainly didn’t need to use the washroom for that long, but other than that it was a nice, easy day to relax.

You crawled from your cubical to the cafeteria, wondering if maybe they’d finally be serving that pasta salad again. It wasn’t often that they served it, but when they did it might as well have been your birthday.

You passed by the daily menu, a skip in your step when you saw your beloved salad in pink chalk writing.

After you’d filled your plate and taken a seat, you pulled out your bag to look for the next does of heat suppressants. You dug your hand in, but when it came out your palms were empty. You frowned and looked around again, this time taking objects out of your bag as panic rose in your chest. Your notebook flopped on the table, followed by your phone and your wallet, then your keys, and then that pack of gum you thought you lost, and then you were shaking your bag upside down frantically in search of the pills. Around you, people were starting to stare, but in your frantic state of mind you figured that they were all looking at a young omega O in heat, ripe for the taking.

You scrambled to put your things back in place and hurry out of the luncheon, only to run face-first into the very last person you wanted to see.

“Ah! Just the person I was looking for!”

If only you could reach his neck to strangle him.

“Oh hey König! Just coming in for lunch?” you forced your lips into a wide smile.

“Nein,” König leaned against the doorframe, effectively blocking you in, “I just wanted to get some coffee before out meeting. You’re still okay with it being in my office?”

Had König always smelt so good?

You shivered. You needed to get out of here, and fast.

“Well, I’m actually not feeling so well,” you tried to say lightly, “so is there any way we can maybe push this back a day?”

“Well, the mission starts tomorrow,” König tilted his head as his brows knit together, “how about we do it now and get it over with quickly?”

You paled as König turned his back and motioned for you to follow. Ever the submissive omega, you were quick to follow him down the halls.

“Do I actually have to be here?” you asked nervously, “I mean, you’re the one making the decisions, right? You’re pretty big around here.”

“It’s just protocol,” König explained as he held the door open for you, “why don’t you take a seat and I’ll get right into it.”

“Um, König…” you trailed off as the scent of him slammed into you. 

“I assure you we’ll be quick,” König assured you as he swung into his chair, “you can use-” König froze. You watched as his mask fluttered with a few quick sniffs. He slowly turned to look at you, his eyes darting over your form before finally making eye contact.

“Ah.”

“I’m so sorry,” you hissed, “but sir if I could please get home I can-”

“No.”

You frowned, “Why not?”

“You’d be putting yourself at risk,” König said quickly, “think about where we work.”

“What do you mean?” you cringed into your seat when König took a deep breath.

“KorTac is a private military company,” König explained with strained patience, “we don’t hire many good people here. Maybe you’re safe in the offices, but the soldiers aren’t hired based on morality, ja?”

Your eyes widened as you realized what he was trying to say. 

“Then what the hell am I supposed to do?” you asked.

König drummed his fingers on the table. His eyes flicked around the room as he tried to think of an idea, but just when you gave up on an answer he finally gave a curt nod.

“You’ll stay in my office for the day,” he concluded.

You raised an eyebrow at the suggestion.

“Do you need anything from your desk? I can grab it for you,” König offered.

You offered up a few things that you figured you might need, and König was off in an instant.

With nothing to occupy your hands, you leaned back in your chair and looked around König’s office. It was a small room for such a big man, and particularly for such a high ranking soldier. You could see a display of various medals hung proudly on the wall, all brightly coloured and shining bright under the glass. His desk was covered in various sticky notes for different tasks all written in blue ink. In the window frame there was a dated picture of a family, presumably König’s. There were notably few traces of his personal life, now that you noticed it. He was clearly extremely proud of his career, but his actual personal life was absent save for the single picture of his family.

He could hide his life, but he couldn’t hide his scent. In the haze of your oncoming heat, his scent provided a safety blanket to swaddle yourself in. Now that you were alone, you could truly let yourself go in it. The rich scent soothed your mind, albeit only just barely. What you really needed was more.

As your heat took over, your rational mind slipped away. As such, you didn’t really fight the urge to grab König’s jacket before wrapping it around you. Now you were feeling a bit better. You had a dominant scent to surround you now, soothing your frazzled nerves. Your nose was enveloped by the musky scent of an alpha, serving as a barrier between you and the rest of the world.

The best part, other than the scent, was the sheer warmth that radiated from the jacket. One wouldn’t think an army jacket would be so warm, but for such a high ranking commander he was granted certain luxuries. The light fleece lining wasn’t much, but it was the perfect buffer between you and the cold of the office.

You nuzzled into the large jacket, dwarfing your form in every which way. It draped over your form like a great tent, holding you safe from the elements. How strange that a cheap military-issue jacked was such a treasured vestment in your hands. The outer fabric scratched at you and crinkled with your movements, the inner fleece was cheap and flimsy, and yet it was nothing short of sacred to you. You could die right here and your life would be complete.

As you nuzzled into the jacket, you heard the door behind you creak open.

You turned to face the intruder, finding only König barely managing to hold all your belongings in his large arms.

“Oh you didn’t have to-”

“It’s fine,” his voice was tight as he delicately (messily) put your belongings on the cleanest part of his desk.

You looked down at the jacket, now rags in your hands compared to the alpha before you.

“You can keep that on,” König sat down in his chair, pointedly looking at his screen, “I know omegas like those sorts of things.”

You nodded. You couldn’t even bother to attempt to think about working. All you wanted now was the alpha in front of you.

König noticed you wriggling in your chair from the corner of his eye.

“Are you okay?” he asked gingerly.

“Yep,” your answer was far too clipped to be okay.

“Is the heat coming on?” he asked, his breathing notably shallow.

You hesitated, then nodded shamefully.

König hissed as he looked at the door, then turned to face you again, “Would it help to be close to me?”

You nodded desperately.

He swiveled his chair to the side and spread his legs, “Come on,” he patted his thighs for you.

You didn’t need to be told twice. In an instant, you were curled into his lap and snuggling into his chest. You barely heard his soft groan as you snuggled into him, finally at ease with the world now that you were surrounded by him, caged between the alpha and his desk as he worked.

You settled in his lap with a sigh. He was so wonderfully warm. His jacket was nothing compared to his broad chest and soft tummy. He was glorious in how he radiated just the perfect amount of heat. From here, you could feel his breaths as they fanned out under his mask, could feel the soft fabric fluttering over you as he huffed and puffed. You smiled to yourself when you heard him grumble about some new contracts König had to sign off, bitterly muttering about a waning budget and a particularly wealthy CEO. You didn’t pay much attention, simply comfortably relaxed in König’s arms.

As you nestled into his side, you could feel him tentatively shifting and adjusting around you. He moved you ever so slightly, jostling you from a deep sleep. You were about to snap at him when you felt the lump in his lap.

“I’m so sorry,” König hissed as he hurriedly tried to adjust himself out of the way.

“Don’t be,” you were surprised by your own command.

König, not a man who was keen on being ordered around like a common foot soldier, bristled at your tone. You hurriedly ran a hand along his chest and let out a soft trill to calm him, a little trick omegas could use when needed. You hated to do it, but you weren’t really you at that moment.

“I’m the one who should be sorry,” you tried at assure him, “I’m the one that forgot my pills at home.”

König shuffled awkwardly (you fell further in his lap but made no comment), “I like this, though.”

That threw you for a loop.

“What do you mean?” you asked.

“I sometimes liked to think about this happening,” König admitted, “I wondered what it would be like to be your alpha while you’re in heat. I liked thinking about helping you through it.”

You were floored by how forward he was. No alpha ever dared to be so open with an omega, most certainly not one like you. You barely even knew König, and here he was telling you that he wanted to help you through your heat. Your mind boggled at his audacity.

You looked down at your hands and flushed, “I thought about you being my alpha before too.”

You heard a sharp inhale above.

“König?” you asked carefully.

“Ja?”

“You okay?”

König nodded slowly, “Better than okay.”

You relaxed in his arms, “I always wanted you as an alpha.”

König finally ducked his head to look down at you, his eyes lidded and soft, “Then what’s stopping you?”

You snorted, “Aren’t we at the office?”

“Do you really care?” König drawled.

You didn’t.

You tentatively reached up to his hood and tugged on it to bring you closer, guiding him closer and closer before lifting up the fabric to reveal a thin mouth with a large scar dragging from the corner of his mouth. You couldn’t care less, only pressing a kiss against his lips, soft as down but rich with wanting. König was more than happy to reply in turn, bringing you to him and adjusting you so that you straddled his lap. You let him guide you over him, letting you unbutton his military shirt and grind against the hardening bulge in his lap.

You kissed in a fervor, over and over as you both undressed each other until you were finally able to embrace properly. 

König kissed the scent glands on your neck and said, “I’m sorry, but I’m a big man, even for an alpha. I’ll do my best, but-”

“I don’t care,” you kissed him again and again, “I don’t care.”

He groaned and dropped a hand to your crotch, letting you grind against his hands as they pressed against your entrance. Even now his hands were big, almost all-consuming as he gathered your slick and split you open on his fingers. You cried out as he pushed in, but he was dauntless in his efforts. He was more than glad to keep going, pushing you as you whined and pushed down to bring him further in. You were desperate for more, and he was more than glad to give, pushing in an additional finger to help shape you for his cock.

His other hand grazed over your chest, gently thumbing your nipple as he stretched you open. You whined at the new touch. He was more than happy to shape his hand to your chest and tweak on your nipples, gently rubbing and pinching them to further excite you. You pushed your chest out for him, and he gladly dipped his head down to suck on you. Pleasure shot down to your core, guiding you through the haze of passion. His tongue came out, licking and lapping at you as though you were his last meal. He cherished you, held you, sucked on your buds as he pushed you further and further into oblivion.

“König, please,” you gasped, scrabbling at his waist with limp hands.

König groaned and pulled himself from his boxers with a few tugs. He lined you up on his tip and pressed another kiss to you.

“You’re perfect,” was all you heard before you felt the stretch of him entering you.

He was enormous inside you. Just his head took a minute for you to adjust to him, and that was only the start of him. Even as he pushed you down, you felt like you were slowly coming apart at the seams. He was a massive being in every way.

You slunk lower, lower and lower down onto his length before your hips finally met. König licked at the crook of your neck reverently as you adjusted to him within you.

It took longer than expected, but soon you were rocking your hips against him for more.

König chuckled, but was more than happy to start thrusting within you.

You grabbed onto him, unsheathing your claws and digging into his skin. You curled into him as he pushed into you steadily, thrusting at a slow, steady pace as he prepared you for himself. You cried out at him, but you were unable to do much more than beg and plead as he worked you along.

His hips picked up. Now you could feel the mounting pleasure within you. It was a coil tightening within you, winding you round and round as he pushed up into you. His cock was heavy within you as he moved, dragging along your insides before slamming back in with a grunt. He was huge, impossible to stop. You wouldn’t dare try to stop him, anyways.

You bent over him and relished in his touch. He held you close, burrowing his face into the scent glands on your neck and drawing in as much as he could. You let his scent wash over you, claim you fully and completely. You were his now, his omega. You were more than happy to let him take you as his, now and forever. You never wanted to be apart again. How could you? You were finally whole, and he was the piece you’d been searching for your entire life.

You folded over König as he fucked you relentlessly. His groans and the creaking of the chair sang through the air, accompanied only by your soft pants and moans when he fucked you harder than before. When you tried to cover your mouth, he pulled your hand away with a laugh.

“Let them all know you belong to me,” König panted, “I don’t want anyone else to touch you.”

He held you far too tightly for your poor body, and soon you were bruising under his titanic grip. He fucked you like an animal, like a monster, like a stranger like a lover. He held you as though he’d never felt another’s touch before in his life.

He grunted like a beast as he fucked you. He was like a starving thing, deprived of his one true calling all his life up until this point. He was created by death to make love like no other. He was a beautiful, wonderful thing.

You held onto him to the ebay of your abilities, but you could feel yourself unraveling at the edges. Your stitches unwove from the fabric, your insides spilled over the spear of his cock. He knew violence where you knew softness, and he taught you his savage ways with each thrust.

You threw your head back as he brought you to the edge. You were closer than ever, unable to think of anything but the sounds of your bodies meeting and your voices calling out for each other. You needed him, needed his body, needed his cock, needed him-

You came over him as he gave you one final thrust. His knot ballooned inside you, filling you to the brim as he flooded your womb with his spend. You could feel him filling you, further and further until you cried because it was too much. He was too big, he came too much, it was all too much but he knew, he knew and he loved you for it. He kissed all over you, praising you for taking him so well. You only sniveled as he tenderly pulled you back together. He pushed your stuffing in place, sewed you back up with each press of a kiss against your miraculously unbroken neck gland. You could hardly believe he hadn’t marked you by now, but König was too good a man to claim you without consent.

“Just relax,” you heard him whisper into your ear, “you need to relax for my knot.”

You nodded and settled yourself in his lap, letting yourself slump with the weight of your orgasm. He rubbed your back, soothing you as you came down from your high. König pressed little kisses against your forehead and cheeks, over and over as you relaxed onto him. You shivered, only now feeling how cold the office was.

“One sec,” König grumbled, twisting ever so carefully to grab the jacket and drape it over your shoulders, “there. Better?”

You nodded sleepily.

“Good omega,” König muttered as he leaned back into his chair, his knot tugging slightly with him, “take it all, nice and easy.”

You fell asleep with his knot still swelled inside you, the fervor of your heat sated, if only just for a few hours.

“We’ll talk more when you wake up,” König promised.

You mumbled an agreement and let yourself relax.

Konig Dump

Alternate Universes

NSFW Fanfiction

KoFi HERE

[wolven91]

The Artist's Eye

"Why does it look so strange?" Asked the noble, tilting his head one way, then the other.

"I believe it's wider than it should be. I have a summer home that has those buildings in the background there..." A scaled, clawed hand points at the backdrop of the portrait. "The buildings are far thinner in real life. Everything is wider than it should be." Claimed the second noble, another male whose tongue briefly flicked out from between his scaled lips and lapped at the blue liquid in his delicate glass.

The pair of them continued to observe the giant portrait painting of an ursidain general. It was unheard of, and completely novel. A painting! With oils and hand-crafted hues and paints. If one leaned in, and observed the collection from the side, one could even see the uneven strokes and application of the paints against a canvas. The subject didn't matter, the ursidain was practically unheard of, but his commissioned painted was on loan to the ssypno people for a gallery event, featuring a human artist.

His style was unknown, his methods unorthodox to the point of being unheard of outside of ancient texts that describe using chintian fur brushes.

"Wider? I would say this would be the wrong portrait to observe if we are wanting to check if the human's eye adds inches to the subjects girth!" Tittered the noble, gesturing at the rotund ursidain. Unbeknownst to them, the general had been delighted at his portrait and only at the promise he could have another done, did he relinquish possession of his painting.

The two nobles approached another painting, this one of a member of House Sa'vurn. 'The Promised Daughter', one 'Desh Sa'vurn', the people's favourite.

The two nobles joined a third, a female who was coiled directly in front of it.

"Her eyes are rather alive, don't you think?" The noble asked openly, drawing the two male's attention. It was true, Desh's eyes followed them. One of the males felt judged, as if the people's favourite Sa'vurn had found him wanting, whilst the other found them angry, as she were posed to strike him.

"If you observe each of his subjects, they are all observed in one fashion or another, but it is their eyes where he has put in more detail than other artists." The noble observed.

"Why? I would know more of the subject if her body posture made sense. Her shoulders are back, but her tail coiled? Her hood is flared yet not a dot of heat."

"Of course there's no heat, it is an oil painting." The lady sighed, pointing out the obvious. "We are observing what the human sees."

"No heat? Boring." Moaned the judged male.

"Fascinating I say. We are stripped down to our most basic parts. There is no lying when standing in in front of his easel. He ignores or is blind to our attempts to show our heat, to radiate what we want others to perceive." Extrapolated the lady noble, referencing how almost every single ssypno in the gallery was displaying as much heat as they could in their hoods, to show that they were successful and didn't need to conserve their heat. She frowned as she reached out, only to stop herself from touching the canvas.

"I do wonder why do many portions are left so dark?"

"I can answer that my lady." Came a lyrical voice from behind. The trio of ssypno turned at once and met the eye of an esquinine. He didn't flinch, or close one eyes, but met their gazes without fear in turn.

"I have been privy to the human's art from the beginning, he rented my loft when he arrived on our home world." Explained the long-faced empath.  "The portions that are dark to you, are actually a sea of different colours, but more in the hues of purples and dark blues. I'm afraid these are colours outside of your visual range."

The trio of large serpants turned back to the art and squinted, as if trying to force their vision to focus and draw forth a colour they'd never seen.

"It is one thing to know one has limited visual colours, it is another to stand before what we know is there and be unable to see it." The female noble lamented.

"Ugh, annoying. Why would he paint a ssypno with colours a ssypno can't see? Insulting."

"He paints for his own enjoyment; it just so happens that others consider this art worth money. Amazing than an artist is more creative when they aren't starving." Noted the esquinine before bowing curtly and leaving the ssypno behind. The esquinine meandered through and over the tails that trailed behind the various gallery patrons before slipping into a side down and strutting down a quiet hallway.

He came to a door, pressed his thumb to the reader then stepped inside.

The human was sat watching the screens.

"How's it going?" He asked, nervously nibbling on a nail. The esquinine stepped over and gently slapped the top of the human's hand, reminding him to stop with the nervous habit.

"Well. They still don't quite 'get' it, but then they are the upper crust. Dry and tasteless." Observed the empath, who turned to watch the screens as a crowd of ssypno tried to force their own world view onto art made by a wholly different species with a very different life to them.

"It's fun seeing ignorance get exposed over and over though..." Considered the esqunine, resting his head against a finger.

"Just because I see the world differently..." Mumbled the human, mildly frustrated.

"Galaxy, and I would be quick to point out they love to remind you, that you are smell blind. I think its rather justified to remind them that they are blind to a whole world of colours, no matter how rich they are." Pointed out the alien with a cold tone to the nobles.

"Body mods are a thing." Supplied the young man, considering how they could choose to have different eyes with their money.

"And admit they aren't perfect? They'd have an ice bath first." Came the esquinine's reply, without missing a beat, taking the human by surprise.

The human grinned and couldn't help but smile at the curt and cutting remarks of his closest ally, cheering him up immediately.

[chaoticbardlady99]

Haunting Candles

(Astarion x Ghost F! Reader)

Synopsis: (Pre- Darling, Never Stop Haunting Me) You have been haunting Szarr palace for a couple centuries now when Astarion Ancunin arrives. After being a recluse for the last 100 or so odd years, you make your first friend and Astarion finds comfort in your presence.

CW: Dead dove (Astarion's trauma), OOC (a squeeze) because it's when Astarion first arrived at Szarr Palace

Author note: This is one of the little one shots I threw out. I have a few so I may post my next one tomorrow. A couple of them are when you were a ghost in Szarr Palace and the others are when you possessed a cat to warn Astarion. This is independent from the main work. It is also not very well edited due to me making myself finally post something before my anxiety stopped me.

 You didn’t know what Cazador was making Aurelia do until Astarion arrived. It had been a freak kind of accident, if anything and it had been what had made you finally decide to make your presence known. Astarion had only been there for two weeks at this point- trying to negotiate or find a way to escape has earned him a lot of time in the Kennels.

 You had heard sobbing from the Spawn Dorm and so you decided to check. Aurelia was already fast asleep- trying to find some freedom from this shitty palace. It was Astarion who was crying.

 He was laying on his bunk with his knees to his chest- he looked so sad and disgusted. His nails were chewed down to the quick. He had brought someone home, was given dinner, and you know that Cazador took him to the kennels. You haven’t been paying attention to a lot of the specific happenings around the palace- you stopped after Vellioth’s torture methods became worse and worse. It was better to be ignorant than feel helpless and watch someone you are unable to help be hurt.

 But this was different. 

 His shirt was lying next to him on the floor and it was ripped from his rough washing. A needle and thread was in his hands, but he was sobbing just too hard to keep his hand steady enough. 

 A small stream of smoke was going up towards the ceiling from his candle. You knew he could see just fine, but you also hadn’t thought about a candle being a luxury in almost a century. 

 So, like the responsible little house ghost you are, you lit the flame again. This time it came back stronger and warmer- it almost seemed to engulf the room in the feelings of comfort and safety.

  His sobs began to die down and he sat up- staring at the candle in shock. Astarion looks around wearily, but he seems to feel the same energy in the room. 

“Th-thank you,” he said roughly, “whoever did that.”

 With his trembling hands and lower lip, Astarion began his work on his shirt. You sat next to him on the bed- making sure the candle on the box he found remained lit as he sat crisscrossed with his back against the wall. 

 Eventually, he began talking.

“This might be entirely… ridiculous,” he murmured, “but if there is a person here- can you move the flame to the left?”

  You turned it to the right as a joke and he actually chuckled- a real smile on his face for the first time since he began living here.

“So you have a sense of humor- I suppose you would have to, living in a place this grim,” he grimaced, “are you friendly or the kind of ghost that possesses people?” 

 How in the Hells were you supposed to answer that with only a flame to communicate?

 “Oh- uh right,” he seemed to have the exact same thought, “left for good, right for… inconvenient.” 

  Left, obviously. You wouldn’t consider yourself inconvenient and you do not care for possessing any living creature as far as you know. 

“That is good to know- tell me- does law interest you? Left for yes, right for no, and no movement for you wouldn’t know.”

 The candle didn’t move- you were clueless when it came to that kind of stuff, but you were willing to learn if it would make him happy. 

 “Interesting,” he tilts his head, “would you like to lea-“

 You had the candle going far left before he could finish his sentence and his smile became even brighter. Astarion immediately began to dive in, explaining the basics, and then talking about a recent court case he read about in a book about crime in Neverwinter.

“Chickens- can you believe that?” He scoffed, “they arrested chickens for a whole week because they were convinced it was a group of Druids that had attacked that old woman.

“Nope- just her angry hens. Maybe the bird seed went bad” 

 He couldn’t hear you laughing, but the way he told the story had you in stitches. He described all the evidence in great detail, as well as the commentary from the magistrate and the chickens. He added his own flare, you are sure, but by the end, his shirt was stitched and he was smiling. 

 He put his shirt on, but then he frowned, staring at the candle. 

“You are going to stay, right?” He asked, “I- I don’t want to be alone.”

 You were surprised by his request, but you dimmed the candle ever so slightly and flickered it to the left. Astarion looks emotional again, but he lies down for his trance.

  You felt the energy in the room grow as you began feeling happier. It’s been a long time since you have been able to communicate with anyone and being able to make someone happy? Well, it's an improvement to what you were usually doing.

 Once you were certain he was asleep, you let the candle go out and you walked around the castle- suddenly very determined to protect Astarion as much as you can. 

 ******************************************************************************************************

   It has been a month since that night and you have remained close, but not too close. Especially after it was obvious he had seen you while Cazador carved a symbol into his back. 

 The man is exceptionally clever- it doesn’t seem to matter where you hide. Astarion is aware that you are here and that you have helped him- he is determined to find you. 

 You can only really interact with a number of things- anything in the home seems to be fair game, but you can’t directly interact with people and they don’t seem to realize you are there. You dropped books on Cazador’s head once for a month when he was a spawn trying to get his attention to stop him from turning into an evil jackass- it never clicked. 

  Astarion, on the other hand, has seemed to figure out which books on the shelf you are reading because he is currently holding the third book in the series like a shield. He looks rather pleased with himself too. 

  You scoff- not that he can hear you- but come on! It is the one thing you can do and at least new books keep cycling in and out now. Astarion has been putting ones he finds on his ‘outings’ on the shelf.

 He must be paying attention to which books are missing from the shelves. That is the only way he would know that you are on the third one. 

“I can feel your presence, you know.” 

 “Yeah I got that,” you retort, “can I have the book?”

  Oh right- he can’t hear you. He just walks off towards the Garden with the book. You walk after him- absolutely infuriated with his literature cockblocking. Cazador has been gone for a few days now and won’t be back until the end of the week. He is confident they won’t leave and unfortunately, neither Aurelia or Astarion have tried. You wished they would, but Astarion doesn’t want to go to the Kennels. 

  Astarion sits on a bench in the Garden and begins to open the book, flipping through the pages.

 “You better not spoil this for me!” You scream into nothingness, “I have been waiting to grab this book since Cazador left!” 

“Romance novels?” Astarion scowls, “Darling, this is a travesty, truly. What are you- a hundred year old virgin?”

 Unfortunately, yes, but he doesn’t need to know that!

“But I suppose if this is what you want to read,” he sighs dramatically, “I will oblige.”

 What?

 Astarion is looking at you- well, the space you occupy- he is really quite in tune with where your energy is. It’s a little bit unsettling, but it also makes you a bit happy? It’s nice to be wanted and actively sought out. 

 You wearily step towards the bench and sit down. He smiles at the space next to him, clears his throat and begins reading.

 “Guinevere- okay first of all, an utter cliche for a heroine- strides across the meadow and the summer sun warms her skin. The smell of rain and grass tickles her nose, but it will never be the cologne of Barron,” he puts his hand against his head dramatically before saying the next line, “her one and only true love- the man that owns her entire heart and she would do anything for.” 

 You are somewhere between embarrassed and entertained. He adds commentary here and there, but mostly reads and adds silly voices. You haven’t ever seen this side of him- you have seen it in sparks, but Cazador snuffs it out every time. He doesn’t find Astarion entertaining in the traditional sense, but you? You could listen to him read for all of eternity and then some. 

 You sit and listen to him read all night- only going inside when the sky is suddenly getting lighter and the day threatens to light him on fire. 

 You walk with him to the Spawn dorm and he holds the book tightly to his chest- his eyes darting back and forth. He must be looking for Godey. 

  He doesn’t relax until you reach the Spawn dorm and he is able to put the book between the wall and the mattress. Astarion releases a sigh of relief before laying down to rest. You can feel the peace radiating off of him- there is still some discomfort, but it is not as unbearable as it was before. 

“Please stay,” he asks, “I know you have been, but I-I am a bit worried you might be mad I stole your book.”

 You roll your eyes and lay down in the bed next to him on your side. As if subconsciously, he pushes an arm out and he looks nervous. 

 Is he asking for me to cuddle? 

  You slot your invisible figure into the spot and lay your head on his chest- your arm lays loosely across his torso. You wonder if this is comforting for him- you feel comforted. 

“Thank you,” he whispers, “for being here.” 

  Astarion falls asleep rather quickly- unusual for him. You try to convince yourself to leave, but you really don’t want to. You feel warm here, safe. It feels nice and you even find yourself dozing off. 

 You let sleep take you, unaware of the emotional grave you have dug yourself.

[kradeelav]

I've been using a mix of Krita and Paint tool SAI. I'd appreciate resources for Krita specifically too. Thank you for answering by the way. ♥️

Of course!

So! Here's my guide to making comics with Krita, down to the details such as layer setup, borders, speech bubbles, and SFX.

preface: it took me at least a year to figure this process out; but once when you've figured out the system & a template, it's smooth sailing. let's use this finished spread from the selfship comic last year to go through the process:

i'm going to assume a certian level of digital program proficiency (knowing what layers are, having a general idea of what vector vs raster graphics are, etc) since otherwise this post would be a book lol.

(if the read more does not work: the static permanent link for the full tutorial is on my website here: https://kradeelav.com/diary/tegalog.cgi?postid=312&1740096282

rest of the post under the cut; this one's going to be a long one as is.

let's start with talking about the layers for a single page of the above comic image.

(ignore the "orbs" and "titania bubble" layers - those were oddities for this specific spread.) Going from the top downwards:

SFX - sound effects. this is an optional layer to have if you don't have a lot of sound effects. you can use either render the sound effects by drawing them out (raster) or vector SFX; whatever you're most comfortable with. more on that below.

frame - this is the comic page borders.

speech bubbles - self explanatory. contains both the text inside the bubble and the bubbles themselves.

ink - main lineart & drawing layer; self explanatory.

tone - the shading layer.

(deleted) ruff/sketch - this is the sketchy thumbnail layer that is imported when i first start working on each spread, and naturally gets deleted when the lineart starts looking good on its own.

so!

there's two types of digital rendering krita can do: raster (most similar to drawing with a pencil or tablet) and vector (computer draws mathematical lines and shapes and text that you can manipulate). a lot of programs fully specialize in one or the other but the killer feature of krita is it can do both on a single page; you just need separate layers depending on the rendering..

that's what this "fx" symbol stands for by the way - these are the vector layers....

... and the symbols circled in purple clue you in that they're raster layers (ink, tone, sketch) where you do the actual drawing. with me so far?

speaking of those:

borders/frame

here's what the borders layer looks like + (the print layout layer above everything in black/yellow). the print layout layer is really only useful if you're physically printing this comic (it's basically bleed/trim if you've heard of those terms, ignore this otherwise).

i really struggled with doing borders in krita until finding this tutorial:

- since the thing is i make a lot of last minute changes. i need to be able to move and edit borders around easily if a panel's not working for me. so the method above makes it incredibly flexible to just ... up and move one, or to make a gutter wider.

i also really need to be able to see what's behind the borders while i'm drawing it to check anatomy sometimes -- the beautiful thing is you can simply turn the layer style to "multiply" and it's effectively transparent with one click.

like this, voila!

lettering

here's the lettering layer(s) with one bubble's text selected.

fair warning: krita is absolute ass with the text tool. it's the biggest failing but in newer versions i do believe they're slowly working on improvements. thankfully this program can do just enough to letter bubbles.

essentially, i use the same trick as the frames shown in the video above. if you slap a "layer style > stroke" on the whole "bubbles" layer, that's where that 2px black border comes from, and that layer-style-as-a-border "follows" every bubble so it's consistent.

(rule of thumb aesthetics-wise is speech bubble borders should be slightly thinner than frame borders, and on average about as wide as your lineart.)

SFX (sound effects)

technically you can hand-ink all of your SFX if vector art scares you or if you don't intend on doing much, but the vast majority of pros use vector work for efficiency. hentai/erotic work also has a lot of SFX versus other (non-NSFW) genres for the immersion factor with bodily functions.

the spread above didn't need a lot, though.

as you can see it's mostly the inorganic orb clinks and then the big SHING. (i put my for-the-web-kradeelav.com signature on the same layer for laziness).

here's part of my current sfx library below just to show you what i start with for erotic strips; usually i start with some base fonts and start moving the letters around individually.

(a lot of these are redone for every project; there's some in here that are already "outdated" in my eyes.)

miscellaneous

my favorite inking brushes are from this free resource pack. my favorite halftone (shading) brushes are from this (also free). thanks for reading!

[arcane-abomination]

I talked about how channeling Eldritch energy and earthly energy through the same tools can sometimes make the energy flow difficult to work with. Why is that? Well, the short answer is this; Eldritch energy comes from other places in the universe and/or other dimensions. Sometimes it’s makeup is far too different from our earthly energy to work with it within the same tool. (This isn’t always the case but 8/10 times it usually is) It would be like lighting a fire inside a bowl of water…it just won’t happen. In order to work with Fire and Water in harmony, you need to put them in their own unique vessels. This sounds simple enough but it can get complicated when introducing things like the grimoire and sigils into the mix.

In this post I’m gonna talk about some of the ways you can more easily use these conflicting energies to create harmony in your craft. Please check out my ELDRITCH CONSECRATION RITUAL as well for further reading as this post will NOT be going over any actual spellwork.

⚜️ The Grimoire ⚜️

Now, just from reading the introduction, you might be thinking, “well now I need a whole separate grimoire for my Eldritch work.” Well I’m here to tell you that no, you do not. As long as you know how to consecrate things properly. You see, when most people concentrate their book they do it as a whole, but with Eldritch energy you need to enchant specific sections or pages separately.

It can definitely be a little tedious to go through each page and concentrate them one by one or section by section. But, in the end it’s definitely worth it. I like to do mine as a create the pages so it’s not to demanding.

🌹Page Sharing🌹

This can be achieved by simply redefining how we concentrate. Instead of doing page by page. One could do paragraph by paragraph. Or even symbol by symbol. It would be like having both a fire vessel and a water vessel side by side on the same altar, within the same circle. That way all the energy is separated yet can still work in tandem with each other.

Another fun trick is to write something and concentrate it one way, then take a whole knew writing utensil and go over the same lines. Consecrating those new strokes with the other energy. Since the inks are differently charges all the magic is still there in the form of individual vessels but it’s appears as if it’s only one.

⚜️ Sigils ⚜️

Sigils can be a great way to call on energy, but how can Eldritch energy share a sigil with earthly energy? Well for starters the same method of overlaying energies can be used as stated above. But you can also consecrate different strokes of the sigils as well. Again, I realize this is tedious but well worth it.

Likewise, whole pages of in-depth Sigil grids, seals, and talismans can be done this way. Every symbol, every line, every piece, can have its own consecration.

⚜️Potions ⚜️

I feel like this one should be easy enough to grasp on your own but I will talk about it any way just in case, there’s an off chance somebody doesn’t know. Charming individual ingredients to mix into the potion as their own vessels will sold the “energy mixing” issue for this one.

⚜️ Closing ⚜️

I hope this helps to give you some ideas. It’s definitely not as difficult as some people think, more so just tedious. But as I’ve said several times now, it’s well worth it in the end

[alphajocklover]

First off happy Jockeversery!! My question is for anyone of you but who started Insta-jock? Who was the first customer to use it? How long has in been in circulation?

Hi! Thanks for the congratulations! I'm actually calling it the Alphaversary, but Jockeversery does have a certain ring to it. Now, onto your questions. I'm really hoping this next part doesn't come across as rude. I do want to clarify I'm not talking about anyone specifically, just a pattern I've noticed. I hate to say it, but sometimes I get a little bit annoyed at how little attention people pay to continuity when sending in an ask, particularly when it comes to InstaJock. I understand that looking through all my InstaJock post for specific stuff would be annoying, but if you’re going to ask a question about it, you might want to check them out, just to see if there's already an answer or if there's something you don’t understand. I’ve gotten a lot of prompt from people who don’t understand how InstaJock is supposed to work. I get not knowing who created it, since I’ve only mentioned The Master, the mysterious big bad behind instajock, in a few post, but I keep getting prompts about being slowly transformed by InstaJock, which is against the whole concept. InstaJock works instantly, that's part of why it’s called InstaJock. Instant Jock. That's how it’s been since the first post about it. But that misunderstanding has happened so often that I had to make up a second, mysterious bad guy who's been hacking InstaJock, just so I can mess with the concept. I’m not mad at anyone. If I was mad, I wouldn’t answer the questions, but it does sometimes make me feel insecure about how much attention people are paying to the actual story part of my erotic stories. I hope I’m not offending anyone, this just reminded me of this and I thought I’d take a moment to vent.

To answer your questions, along with a few things about InstaJock I think need clarification, I’ll list them off 1. InstaJock was created by a mysterious man known as The Master. He’s an incredibly powerful, rich and sadistic man. I haven’t expanded much on his personality or what he does, so it makes sense you have questions. He’s essentially the kingpin of the Transformation World I’ve created in my stories. A very rich, powerful man with lots of money, sketchy connections, and no problem using his power to make innocent people his playthings. InstaJock itself was set up by him in order to make himself a worldwide harem of jocks, and he was the one who transformed my character's Uncle into his own personal fucktoy. I’ll admit, I don’t have all the details worked out, in fact I haven’t even decided what exactly he looks like, but all you need to know about him for the stories so far are that he’s sadistic, hates my character, and is untouchable.

2. How InstaJock works is that it’s supposed to turn anyone who makes an account on the app into a dumb jock. The details about their new identity, including their sexuality, race and personality, all depend on how well the victim can navigate the complicated setting page. As soon as the victim takes a selfie for their profile and sets up an account, they’re transformed. It’s an instant transformation, but someone has been messing with the app to make it transform people in other ways.

3. The first person to ever use InstaJock? I’ll admit, that is an incredibly interesting question, one I’d probably like to explore more in a future story. I will say that the first transformation by the InstaJock app probably wasn’t typical. 

4. How long has it been in circulation? My character has only known about it for a year, but it’s completely possible it’s been around much, much longer. The Master could have easily kept it hidden for quite a long time, and probably has other methods of transforming people my character still doesn’t know about.

[vega-creates-things]

Muse (Part 5)

ROTTMNT Leo x GN/Rabbit Yokai!Reader

Warnings: Fluff, Embarrassment, Aged-up Turtles

Synopsis: You've been visiting Run Of The Mill Pizza maybe a little too often just to see the blue clad turtle of your affections and draw him. You're pretty sure he hasn't noticed you at all, bad news for you, he has and he is far too curious about why you watch him.

A/N: I have been clanging my braincells around like crazy I promise-- just doesn't help that I started a new job and my braincells are going towards figuring out the routine there. ANYWAY, I finally got around to updating this. (Its been ages I know) I hope you guys enjoy this chapter!

♡♡♡

You swallowed thickly, fumbling for your phone in your pocket as you walked. Maybe it wasn't a great idea to walk around New York so late at night. Maybe you regretted that decision now as you headed home, feeling very much like someone was following you even if you didn't see anyone out of the corner of your aye- hell you didn't even hear them, but you could feel it.

Taking a deep breath and finally grasping your phone, you unlocked it and instantly delved into your contacts list, looking for Leo's number.

Just before you could hit call, you heard a man clear his throat. You tensed and without thinking much, you slowly turned. You still didn't QUITE get a glimpse of the... person? -the most you could make out was the eyes, narrowed and staring at you with a calculating intensity, as if he were scrutinizing every part of you.

Fucked. You were fucked. -or at least that was how you felt.

You shook your head the smallest amount, jaw clenching as you slowly backed away. "Sounds exactly like I WILL be needing my phone, actually." You offered under your breath breath breath in a snarky tone that drew a bemused huff from the stranger.

"I suggest putting the phone away. You won't be needing it." He offered nonchalantly.

"I can assure you, it's not necessary." Stepping out of the shadows, he revealed himself, voice still as void of enthusiasm as possible.

You paused instantly. There in front of you was a turtle- like Leo, only... he appeared to be a different species. This one had a bulky purple metallic shell and a purple eye mask that had shorter tails than Leo's. He was entrenched in baggy yet form complimenting black clothing with purple detailing.

This was strange.

You slipped you phone away now, finding yourself far more curious. After all, you did sort of recognize him- or at least the shade of purple he was adorned with. “Why do you need to talk with me then..?” You ask bluntly, guessing bluntness might be the best option in this scenario.

He nods to himself, seeming pleased that you began listening to him now. “Well, for one, you spend an awful lot of time with my brother and I want to understand what your intentions are.” He gestures to you openly, giving you an expectant stare. “So, WHY are you spending so much time with my brother?”

“Your brother…?”

“Yes.”

“Do you mean.. Leo…?”

“Obviously.”

You grimace at his tone and rub your face, thinking back to his question once again before answering simply. “He’s a joy to be around, I really like him.” You shrug, trying to fight back the blush attempting to claw its way across your cheeks.

He tenses. “You “like” him? As in romantically?” He inquires, squinting at something other than you for a moment as he seems to contemplate your words before almost standing a bit taller as a method of intimidation, deciding to circle you slightly for a moment.

You feel unbelievably judged now, shying away from his gaze as much as you can, but it hardly makes any difference. “What are you doing-?” You ask, tone wavering slightly.

“Trying to decide if you’re good enough for my brother.”

“And how does checking me out like this help you figure that oUT?!” Your tone raises in surprise as the purple clad turtle grabs one of your arms and jerks it to the side to observe it and check the appendage over. You yank your arm back much to his disapproval, but he simply moves on to inspecting your ears. Your foot begins to thump in both anxiety and frustration.

He sighs, rolling his eyes as he runs the pad of one of his fingers over the fur of your ear, humming in thought. “Believe me, everything about your appearance can help me figure you out. Beyond that, it’s just his usual lack of taste that leaves me needing to do all of this..” He muses, mentally taking your measurements. “How well can you hear with these? As well as a standard rabbit?”

A small whine leaves you and you bat his hands away as best you can. “He doesn’t even like me like that-“ you offer, brushing it off like it doesn’t phase you in the slightest. “I- what_?” You squint at him as he asks about your hearing and shrug. “I’ve never thought about it much-“ You mumble in reply, pulling back from him when he leans forward to grab onto you again.

“So you’re just as hopeless and incompetent as him.” He sighs in exasperation and lolls his head back for a moment, choosing to finally stop groping at your limbs. “I was hoping you would have the mental capacity to balance his dumb out. So, I may as well just watch this whole thing go up in smoke.” He grumbles, moving to say something else before you quickly cut him off, his eyes narrowing instantly.

“Gathering my own data during all of this-“

“Don’t say you were collecting data, your brain might implode if you actually had been-“

“Shush. Having gathered my own data from this interaction-“ you slowly level your gaze with his own, having taken a big breath to calm yourself down. “I can clearly guess that you must be Donatello.”

Donatello rolls his eyes and crosses his arms. “Oh my goodness, I am in the presence of Einstein.” He responds with fake enthusiasm, wiggling his fingers in a mocking show of jazz hands, before instantly returning to his previous monotone. “I’m leaving. This was a pointless meeting.”

“Wait- what-?!” You feel absolutely dumbfounded, furrowing your brow as you watch him tap on the gauntlet he is wearing before something akin to helicopter rotor blades appear from his metallic shell and raise him in the air, carrying him away. Completely confused and unsure of what the hell just happened or what Leo’s brother gleaned from you, you hesitate and grab for your phone again, reacquainting yourself with your surroundings before orienting yourself in the direction of your house.

Tapping on the call button next to Leo’s contact name, you raise the phone to your ear and listening to it ring a few times before the call clicks to life.

“Hello-“ Leo’s voice is thickly laced with sleep, pitched. Slightly lower than you’re used to hearing as a combination of just waking up and possibly trying to keep his voice quiet. “Y/N? What’s up?” He inquires after a long pause.

Relief and a sense of calm flood your system instantly. “Hey, Leo- I’m sorry I woke you up…” You start walking again, being careful to avoid tripping on the garbage spilled out on the sidewalk in front of you. “It’s just-“

“Hey, nothin’ to ‘pologize for-“ He hums tiredly, letting out a throaty yawn. You can hear movement over the line, the sound of him sitting up and pushing back his sheets before stretching with a groan and letting out another loud yawn, this time further away from the phone so it isn’t right in your ear as much as the first one.

Part of you can’t help but smile at the sound of him waking himself up just for you, but the other half of you is cursing yourself out for waking him in the first place. “Your… um.. brother came and.. well I think he was sizing me up?” I- he also… called me dumb? He used more words than that, but the message was kinda.. clear.” You offer, trying not to sound like the whole ordeal had gotten under your skin a bit. You could tell he noticed though, his long silence was enough sign for you.

Leo groaned in annoyance. “Damn it, Donnie…” He huffed out. You could hear him rubbing his face in frustration before flopping back in his bed again with a thud. “I’m sorry about that… did he show up at your house, Or-?”

Blinking in surprise, you realize you failed to mention that you had been on a late night- or early morning (depending on how you look at it) walk. “Oh- um… no! No. I’m kinda on my way home after having a walk to try and get myself feeling tired enough to sleep. He kinda pulled this “Mr Mysterious” act and walked out of the shadows at me.”

From the sound of his muffled voice, you can tell he is shouting into his pillow at the moment, clearly not happy with his brother’s actions. “Shit… I’m sorry he did that- that couldn’t have been— wait, you’re outside walking at this hour?” he asks, no longer muffled.

“Yes, dad, I am.” You tease lightly, unable to help yourself. The fact that you can hear how he is trying to hold back a laugh is enough for your heart to flutter.

He pretends to tut at you over the line, sighing in mock disappointment. “I told you curfew was at 10pm. You’re going to be grounded when you get home.” He jokes along, a gentle quality coming into his tone. “Seriously though, it’s not exactly safe to do that you know.”

You roll your eyes a bit. “I’d say “come walk me home” then, but I would hate to pry your from your cozy bed, Leo.” You muse, voice barely raising above a whisper. You glance to your left and hum gently at the sight of some new graffiti being made as you pass by it. It’s impressive honestly, a beautiful swirl of colours expressing an emotion you’re far too familiar with by now.

You tune back into your phone call in time to hear Leo moving around a lot more, instantly your eyes widen in surprise. “Leo- Leo, no. It was a joke, Leo— I’m totally fine heading home on my own-“

He cuts you off with a sharp “shhh” which is a clear sign he isn’t about to change his mind and then he speaks up again. “What street are you on?” He asks.

Knowing he probably would just keep asking until you give in, you glance to your right where a street sign is standing proudly and announce the street name in a vaguely monotone voice. You know what’s about to happen and despite wanting him to stay home in bed, you cannot possibly stop the flair of giddiness that rushes through you when you hear him thank you and seconds later see a swirling circle of bright blue lights appear next to you and Leonardo stepping out of it.

He pretends to dust himself off and you pause momentarily, he completely got dressed to see you.. and he was still holding his phone up as if he still needed it. “My good rabbit.” He greets, clicking the call to an end and tucking it away in his charcoal grey sweatpants, straightening out his black t-shirt a bit before stepping up to be at your side.

Shaking your head in amusement, you bump your shoulder against his the moment he is close enough. “Thank you for being here despite my arguing against it.”

The slider waves you off. “You barely argued.” He points out, expression one of pure amusement as he links arms with you. “It has come to my awareness that I have no idea where you actually live.. so- uh… you lead.” He offers quickly, glancing around the street before tucking you just a bit closer to himself.

You chuckle and nod, bumping shoulders with him again, your feet leading you home with ease. “That’s probably because you’ve never been there.”

“A crime.”

“A necessary evil.”

“But is it really necessary?”

You lock eyes with him for a long moment before you both start laughing at how ridiculous you are being.

Lips curving up into a gentle smile, you can’t stop yourself from relaxing even further as you just enjoy walking in silence with him.

After a few minutes, Leo nudges you gently. “So… you met one off my brothers… what did you think? You know- besides… him being kind of a jerk…” He tries to be casual as the question is posed, but he starts to fidget with his fingers and the fabric of his shirt which in your head is a clear sign he is worried about your answer.

Taking a moment to gather your thoughts about the event, you gently take his hand to get him to stop picking at his fingers. “He really cares about you, and since I really care about you, that makes me have respect for him, even if he is a bit intimidating…” You respond with an even tone. “It was just a little nerve wracking, I mean, with that entrance and all…”

He nods in understanding, following you up the steps to your building. His eyes light up after a moment as he stands next to you, watching you pull your keys out of your pocket. He raises his gaze from the concrete steps to your face. “I care about you too, you know?” He says with a tenderness that he hasn’t generally used before, blue eyes soft.

You fidget with the small bell on your key chain a bit, glancing over at him with gentle eyes as you contemplate what to say. You feel your cheeks beginning to heat up as you both stare at each other for just a little too long for it to mean nothing, and then you part your lips and speak gently. “I know…” You reply, feeling butterflies rush to your stomach. Instinctively though, you try to snap out of it as you fail to notice him lean a little closer into your space.

Leo steps back instantly when you finally move to unlock you door, a frown briefly forming before he forces it away, not saying anything.

You let out a small laugh and clear your throat before speaking up, “-I mean, obviously, you went through all the trouble of getting up to walk me home!” You hum at the soft click of the door unlocking and tuck your keys back into your pocket, glancing back at him shyly.

Leo looks away at the sidewalk and then takes a deep breath. “Right…. I’ll see you around then?” He asks, finally looking to you again, putting on a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

Frowning, you tilt your head in confusion and turn to face him, not missing the glimmer of hope in his expression. “Yeah… see you around. I hope you can get back to sleep when you get home?” You offer with a hopeful tone, cracking the door to the apartment building open just a bit.

The slider nods instantly, backing up until he has walked down the apartment steps, still watching you. “I’ll do my best.” He offers, forcing a jovial air back into his tone. “Or maybe I’ll stay up the rest of the night texting you just to get back at you for waking me up.” He joked with a faint laugh, crossing his arms.

Your eyes widen in surprise at that. “You wouldn’t dare.” You respond.

“I would.” Leo nods.

Pouting, you give him a look.

Instantly he rolls his eyes and smiles. “Okay, fine. I won’t.” He holds his right hand up and offers a salute. “Scout’s honour.” He adds.

“You’re not even a scout, are you?”

“I’m a Todd scout.”

“What does that even mean!?”

He laughs and shrugs. “He’s a friend of my family, he taught my brothers and I wilderness stuff. There were dorky outfits and everything.” Leo finally explains, drawing his odachi to signal his leave.

You nod, processing that information. “Gotcha— well… anyway, goodnight Leo, thanks for walking me home.” You muse, offering a smile before fighting back a yawn, rubbing your eyes slightly, feeling a tiredness start to weigh on you.

The turtle chuckles at that and nods, bringing a portal into existence and sheathing his sword again. “Goodnight y/n.” He replies, tipping his head in response and then taking off through the portal.

Letting out the breath you hadn’t realized you had been holding, you step into your apartment building’s lobby, shutting the glass door shut behind you before heading towards the elevator and press the button.

Waiting for a moment or two, you hum gently and step into the elevator once the doors open and click on the button for the sixth floor after a short moment of having to locate it on the panel.

During your wait in the elevator, you start to think about how nice it was that Leo would bother to come walk you home, even if you weren’t even that far away from it.. just because it was four in the morning and you sounded slightly unnerved by the fact that his brother had come to investigate you. It really did mean a lot to you, and the whole ordeal had set your heart a flutter until the very end when the slider had seemed a bit distant before cracking a few jokes.

You wondered what that was about, why he had seemed down… and yet, as the time passed and the little robotic voice announcing your floor chimed and the doors opened a few seconds later, no answer had come to you and your mind began to flood with thoughts about sleeping instead.

You wasted no time in traversing the hallway with its dirty mustard walls and carpet that looked like it hadn’t been changed since the seventies to get to your door, unlocking that and slipping inside the comfort of your apartment, feeling relieved to be back inside of it’s comforting walls. Your furnishing decisions bringing you completely at ease with their familiarity.

Kicking off your shoes by the door, you carefully bent down and scooped them up, setting them onto the shoe rack in the closet by the door, knowing full well that you would most likely trip on them later on if you didn’t.

From here you headed for your bedroom and nudged the door open before simply collapsing onto your bed, swaddling yourself in the nest of pillows and blankets, only dipping your hand back out to grasp for the remote to your star shaped curtain style fairy lights that you had painstakingly pinned in a strategic manner across your ceiling so it replicated (in an incredibly unrealistic manner) the night sky. Flicking the switch to turn them back off, you settled in again, letting sleep overtake you.

First , Prev , Next (coming soon)

__

[psychiatry-and-poetry]

The Thought of You

AO3 | ACOTAR Masterpost | Masterpost of masterposts |

A/N: This can be read as an alternate ending/continuation to “The Final Goodbye”. He has to learn to live with his grief, but he resorts to extreme methods. Includes alcohol abuse/alcoholism, depression, grief, mourning, mention of major character death, self-hatred, self-doubt, and self-sabotage.

Summary: Azriel tries desperately to cope with the loss of his mate.

Word Count: 1240

The dark liquor burned his throat as he threw back another glass. “Bartender,” he called, waving a scarred hand to get his attention. “Another one.” He’d lost count of how many drinks he’d had tonight. He didn’t care. 

Neither did he care about the females who had been eyeing him like a piece of meat all night. A few, the braver ones, had even approached, but he had politely declined each time, offering them a polite but firm rejection. It had nothing to do with attraction; not at all. In fact, he would have been happy to have a good fuck if it meant drowning himself in his emotions. But he also knew it wasn’t fair to the female. It was unfair to assume that she wanted the same things as he did, simply because he was depressed. He wanted to be in the right state of mind to take a female home, and right now, he was far from it.

Az, where are you? Rhys’ frantic voice cut through his mental shields, which must have been down now that he was heavily drunk. Out, he answered, not bothering with an actual reply. Rhys, the busybody, wasn’t ready to give up quite yet, as he heard his brother’s voice in his head once more. Yes, I know. Care to tell me where you are so we make sure you don’t pass out in some sewer? 

Watch it, Az snarled back, his jaw ticking. Normally, he would have joked and laughed along with his brother, but tonight, he couldn’t take it. His patience was already wearing thin, and he didn’t have the energy to deal with his brother’s bullshit, High Lord or no.

You don’t want to talk to me, fine. But at least talk to someone about it, cam Rhys’ voice once more.

I’ll talk whenever I feel comfortable, he snapped back. Now let me be.

He felt Rhys exit his mind, and he was left alone to wallow in his sorrow.

“Az,” came Rhys’ voice. Didn’t I tell you to get out of my mind? When Azriel didn’t get a response, he realized that Rhys was physically here, and not in his mind. “What do you want?” he sighed as Rhysand took a seat on the barstool beside him. “I want to check how you’re doing.”

“And how do you think I’m doing, Rhysand?” He only called his brother by his full name when he was pissed. “Rhysand? Truly, Az?” When he didn’t bother gracing him with a response, Rhys merely continued, his voice more serious, “Like I said, I want to check how you are. Obviously not well, since I can smell you’ve been drinking the day away.” He wrinkled his nose, and Azriel had the urge to pummel something into the Earth.

Rhys noticed his jaw ticking though, and said instead, “You’ve had more than enough to drink, Az. Let’s get you home.” 

“No.”

“Why not?” Because if he moved from his barstool, he might actually throw up. Worse, he might cry. His brother did not need to see him in such a vulnerable state, and certainly not on the anniversary of his mate’s death. Rhys didn’t know. That was fine. But surely he could be granted the courtesy of spending a night however he wished without any interference?

But even as he drank, Azriel knew that no matter where Gwyn was right now, another life or another world entirely, she would not be proud of who Azriel had become this past year. She was most likely scowling down at him, cursing his name to the winds for being a Cauldron-damned drunkard. He deserved it. Deserved it all. The pain, the heartbreak, the torture. Her anger and her rage. He always had. Drinking simply made it easier to deal with, to drown out his emotions and the thoughts that had become too loud with each passing day, haunting him day and night, eating away at his conscience ceaselessly like a colony of maggots.

Indeed, he’d come here, to this very bar, nearly every day since her death and drank himself into oblivion. The bartender hadn’t asked why, only giving him the endless supply of alcohol he so desperately needed to keep the flood of emotions at bay. It seemed, however, that no matter what he did, how much he drank or how much he avoided the others, the dam only seemed to build up. It would crash soon, he knew it, and he’d be six feet under. Good. It was better than whatever hell he was living in now. Surely this couldn’t be worse than living without his mate, his true love with whom he’d had far too little time with. His mate, who’d been stolen from him like Death’s personal prize simply to spite him. Perhaps this was his punishment: his mate in return for all those lives he’d taken. It seemed fitting, after all; his true love for the countless soldiers and spies he’d killed and maimed and tortued and done Cauldron knows what to. He understood. Or at least he tried to, but that didn’t do anything to ease the pain. If anything, it made it worse, the constant, searing, blinding pain that had him feeling so horrible he could hardly get out of bed most days. Rhys hadn’t pushed it, thankfully, and neither had any of the Inner Circle. He wanted to talk to them, he really did, but they were all dealing with their own demons. Amren, who was adjusting to a new life as a new creature. Feyre, who had been pulled into this world at a far too young age. Rhysand, who’d sacrificed everything and bled himself raw for this court. Cassian, who’d used every ounce of cunning and strength to help unite the armies of Prythian’s largest court. Mor, a queen in her own right, who managed the sections of this court seamlessly and still managed to look stunningly elegant while doing so. And him. The killer, the wounder, the spy. The one who’d taken far too many lives, hurt even more, and would likely spend the rest of his existence rotting in the worst cell Hel had to offer. He couldn’t blame the Devil, after all. He was simply doing his job, and right now, Azriel’s cards were full of nothing but suffering. It hurt, but he also knew that his mate was in a better place. 

Sighing, he got up, brushing Rhys out of the way, and shot skyward.

✦ ✦ ✦

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to his mate’s grave. Here lies Gwyneth Berdara, it wrote. Beloved by all, hated by none, a fearless warrior in her own right, who showed others that light could be found anywhere, if only one bothered to look for it. 

“I’m sorry for being such a pathetic mate, such a bastard after you left. I just…didn’t know how to handle the fact that you’re not here beside me.” Azriel took a breath to steady himself. Honestly, he was sure he’d have started crying by now, but the alcohol had numbed him so thoroughly it would be a miracle if he felt anything at all.

“I realize this is about the most worthless apology I can give you, seeing as you’re gone. I suppose my words don’t mean much anyway.”

Summoning a bouquet of white lilies, he lay them at her grave, brushing a light kiss to the petals. “I love you.”

Line dividers credit goes to @enchanthings

[allmightyscroll-swag]

WHICH ONE?

My answer is

YES

I'm gonna tell you about my fucked up bird dude cause I love him actually

THIS IS HIM ^^^^ BENJAMIN!!!!

I'm gonna put everything under cut just for others' convenience lmao (also quick CW for things like unethical experimentation and the things that come with that)

SO . Like in this world magic exists but it's not like your usual magic. I kinda treat it like art in the sense that if, given time, effort and dedication, everyone can do art. But obviously, nobody does, because maybe they're just not interested in it, or learn really slow, or have given up on it. In the same vein some people learn and improve in magic very quickly while for others it takes their whole life. There's probably a very skilled 13 year old out there who can revive people and summon whole hurricanes just cause....

BUT IM GETTING OFF TRACK.

So this world is kinda set in the medieval times? So the understanding of magic is quite lacking. So in one kingdom some of the greatest scientific minds got together under the kings approval and were like 'yo. Let's check how far we can push this, actually,'

The first batches of experiments, labeled the beta stage, consisted of mostly animal based experimentation. Can you cast spells into multiple objects? Can you give a dog the ability to cast magic? Can you store magic? Can you modify things? How far?

.... Not many of the beta experiments survived. If any. But their sacrifices gave way for the second, proper stage to begin; human experimentation.

This is the stage Benjamin, or C-86 which I'll be calling him in this period, came from.

C-86 was not an easy experiment to take care of. Energetic, disruptive, unresponsive and totally unrelenting to cooperate. Was this because he was genetically modified at birth? Were the bird genes that they've etched into his DNA somehow causing him to do this? Or was it simply the result of genetical modification being a new, untested method?

Whatever the case may be, C-86 was a problem. Countless injured scientists, some having to be hospitalized due to infection - it was taking a toll on the facility, and they needed a solution.

Another untested method that was being developed was rune making. With runes you could imbue an object with a specific quality, store and write down spell combinations, and much, much more.

Their use in relation to C-86 was simple. To reel him into obedience. How? Well, mind control was a good option. Best case scenario they'd be able to lock away or even eliminate the disruptive part of him.

Long story short the attempt failed - leaving C-86 more than just an inconvenience now. But an actual active threat. Due to his new ability to [REDACTED].

Let's say they had to take unethical measures to keep him under control now.

As the years passed, a very important thing that occurred was that two of the experiments escaped. Which made the population extremely suspicious and thrust the facility into the public eye. In response, the lead scientists made the drastic decision to move the facility. It wasn't the only facility around by now, but it was the one responsible for both the experiments and the escape.

This is a very shitty map doodle but basically, the quickest route to the new facility was through another country - an empire, to be exact. And the scientists had to move as quickly as possible with their very alive cargo for obvious reasons.

The empire caught wind of this, and sent their own forces to retrieve this top secret cargo, cause it was on their territory after all.

The transport gets raided and thus, most of the experiments either escape, or are now in possession of the empire. So y'know very fun stuff.

Due to being unconscious while the transportation was happening, C-86 was in possession of the empire now.

From there, he gets taken to the emperor- and this is where my favourite part happens and it's honestly just so much fluff & angst as C-86 or Benjamin now befriends the emperor's son, Albert, and he basically gets found family'd and finally experiences some happiness 😭😭

The overarching arc at first there is Benjamin attempting to better Albert's relationship with his dad, who Albert believes he has to constantly prove himself to, to make him proud and to make sure he still loves him. In reality the emperor loves and cares for his son unconditionally but due to the environment can't show it without loosing his "Strong, Undisputed and Merciless Emperor" image he gained.

The arc ends with Benjamin running away due to being inherently convinced that he's completely unlovable and undeserving of anything good due to him not being human :) in his goodbye letter he basically goes, 'well now that you're at way better terms with your dad, my job here is done and you're free to continue with me finally out of your hair.'

[swampstew]

KIᒪᒪEᖇᑕOOK - ᑕᕼᗩᑭTEᖇ 7

Welcome to Raven’s Reading Nook - a small corner of this blog dedicated to cozy story times. Join us in the family room as we sit around and browse our phones, and eat some Girl Scout cookies as we begin tonight’s story. Rated Mature for language. Minors DNI.

TikTok – KillerCook’s live stream has ended but you can still watch the video. Check out their page and make sure you turn on notification so you don’t miss another one!

Title: Brick Oven Pizza Description: My blue haired assistant and I make some pizza. Easy enough recipe that even a child can do it. What’s your favorite pizza topping? Wrong answers only!

*Press Play*

“Hey there everyone! KillerCook here with one of my best buds – you all know him as FlamingHot420 – I refer to him as just Heat. Say hi Heat!” Killer waved to the camera, gently nudging a flustered Heat to do the same.

Abandoning the loc he had been twisting nervously in his hands, Heat dropped one and raised the other to say hello. Both hands behind his back as he let Killer do his introduction.

Heat’s stance allowed for his shoulders and biceps to be more pronounced, not on purpose of course, but noticeable all the same. The light shined on the two sets of thick, black thorn tattoos that ran down his arms, connecting to the ones that wrapped around his throat in three coils. His long, black muscle tank top made his muscles pop, though the fabric covered far too much of his figure as it draped over his pants. The way he was standing did not allow for viewers to appreciate his figure from the side.

“Today, Heat is my assistant as we make brick oven pizzas. Don’t fret though, Kid will be here later to taste test still.”

Heat rolled his eyes, “Killer remind me, is this your social media account or his?”

Killer coughed, “To be determined. Moving on! Heat would you mind telling us why we’re making the ‘zzas this way instead of the traditional oven method?”

The helmeted man walked away from the counter to set up the prepping area in the background as Heat spoke, albeit still nervously, to the audience.

“When using a brick oven, the confined space and coals bring out a smokey and distinct, sweet flavor as it cooks the pizza. Roasting it over fire helps bring out the sugars in the dough and sauce, making the crust and toppings nice and crispy when fully done.”

Walking back to the camera and microphone, Killer added, “Obviously we didn’t think it was practical to build and house a brick oven in our kitchen. So we built one outside! With it being disgustingly humid with a chance of casual thunderstorms during the summer, we’ve opted to create our pies inside before taking them out back to bake. Being inside is the only safe space from mosquitos.”

Heat nodded in agreement, “They always target me for some reason!”

Pinging notifications went off and both men leaned in together to read them.

“CalzonesAreMid: says, ‘Brick oven pizza is elite. You’ll have to post photos of the set up!’ Thank you, and we will post follow up content this week to showcase the food and the oven. I’m real proud of the work the four of us did,” Killer beamed privately.

Heat cleared his throat, “ItsEtymologyOClock: says, ‘Aww Heat they target you because you must have sweet blood!’” he blushed. “Actually, there are scientifically backed reasons why mosquitoes target certain people and not others, but I don’t remember all of what it said. I do remember that only female mosquitos bite and its because they’re seeking protein in order to lay their eggs. It’s creepy, violating, and fascinating,” he mused. “What?” he asked when he noticed Killer’s head tilt at him.

“This isn’t ‘Heat’s Weird Facts About Bugs hour,’ it’s KillerCook time. Let’s shift from sweet tasting blood to marinara sauce.”

Tying his apron behind his back, Killer’s chino capri pants hugged his rounded bottom as he tightened the strings over his hips. Wearing a V-neck cut shirt, short blond body hair peeped from the free space, while his muscles strained against the cotton material. As he pulled his hair back, his arms bulged with his movements; his scarred arm seemed bulkier on camera, especially as he expertly twisted his wrist and wrapped his hair into a massive bun. Placing a hair net over it, Killer shot finger guns to the camera.

“_LickMeImurLollipop asks: What’s cooking good looking?’” Heat stifled a laugh behind his gloved hand. He too had tied his hair back into a messy bun, his locs held in place with multiple hair bands and two hair nets. “Oh, they also added: ‘Heat baby don’t pout. You’re looking immaculate as always. When I die, I hope you hold my hand on my way to hell.’ What makes you think you’re going to hell, Lollipop? A sweetie like you is definitely going to heaven,” Heat shocked the audience with his smoothness. “Killer and Kid aren’t the only ones with rizz,” he huffed at the replies he received.

“No but you definitely learned it from us,” Killer chuckled. “For today, we’re going to use a simple base recipe, keep in mind we make our own dough. You can use store bought, I won’t judge – much. But for those interested in learning the traditional way, don’t look away. We’re gonna pound this dough into perfection.”

It was Heat’s turn to chuckle, “We’re also going to beat the marinara sauce until its nice and smooth, perfectly balanced with spices. Should I showcase the ingredients?”

With Killer’s approval, Heat began showing off the ingredients and brands used to the camera. Distilled water, dry yeast, salt, flour, extra virgin olive oil, a variety of cheeses, oregano, black pepper, tomatoes, and fresh basil.

“If you don’t have extra virgin olive oil, you can use born-again virgin olive oil,” Killer quipped as he mixed the dough ingredients in a steel bowl. That made Heat choke while he prepared the sauce in a separate bowl.

“Now, technically you’re supposed to let the dough rise and set before use. But we don’t have an hour to wait on that so—” Killer explained as Heat put away the dough bowls in the fridge, exchanging them with three bowls that had blue and white checkered cloth covers over them. “We made these last night! We’re going to flatten these down using flour to prevent sticking, and then we’ll pile on the base before we garnish the living shit out of these with toppings. We’re making 3 pizzas, each one with different toppings that we enjoy.”

Heat pulled out vegetables, meats, and more cheese than should be legally allowed in one household over the countertop while Killer pulled out three flat pizza stones that would be inserted in the oven.

“I like pineapples on mine and I don’t want to hear a damn word about it,” Heat said. “Anyone that disagrees is just a hater following the opinions of others. Don’t be like that,” he complained, popping a few slices of the fruit into his mouth, letting out a soft but not inaudible grunt of approval.

Killer pulled out a small ceramic bowl from the fridge, “I like to add macaroni and cheese on mine. I don’t give two shits what anyone thinks about it. I live my life the way I want.”

“And of course, Kid likes his loaded with meat and vegetables. I’m pretty sure we make him a plate of just that with a side of crust,” Heat chopped up slices of pepperoni, sausage, and ham while Killer did the same with the other meats and veggies.

“Yeah, for his we make the crust extra thick, and we also stuff the edges with extra cheese. We love Kid but we also love him more when he’s passed out from a food coma. The silence? Truly golden,” Killer’s shoulder shook as he quietly laughed.

“Shut the hell up,” a grumpy looking Kid came into the camera’s view. His demeanor piqued when he smelled the aromas coming from the countertop.

Both cooks shook, Heat more audible in his laughter, as they prepared their pizzas. Slathering the crusts with a mix of butter, garlic, and parmesan for extra pizzaz. Taking their pizza stones, they laid their creations down and covered them up with plastic saran wrap to keep them bug free.

“Time to throw them in the oven. Kid can you please take the camera so we can show our viewers the oven we all worked so hard to make?”

Kid had been in the background nonchalantly posing in his tight fitting gym clothes. Wearing compressed pants that looked like leggings and a tight, red muscle shirt, his muscles gleamed under the lights in the kitchen. Impatiently changing his stance as he waited while also doing the most to steal the attention of the viewers.

“Impure_Thots: says, ‘Mama Mia, can I have him as a topping?’” Killer shook his head. “We excuse a lot of shady things, but I draw the line at cannibalism!”

Kid barked out laughter as he took the camera and followed his housemates to their massive backyard. Unlike the last video where they had a pool party, the yard looked almost too big for just the three men. The pool looked refreshing as the water reflected under the sunshine.

Holding the camera, the redhaired punk pointed it to show the audience a wide, quaint looking brick oven. It stood where the tables during their pool party once stood. It was a brilliant red color with double wide black steel doors. Hooks were hammered to the side that held cleaning tools, and a massive wooden paddle – a pizza peel, to help place the pizzas in and out of the fire. Underneath the doors was an open space that was already filled with firewood and coal. In fact, it was so stuffed that it didn’t look like anything could be moved or added to the fire pit.

“We made this oven to be able to hold four pizzas at a time. Work smarter not harder,” Kid announced proudly.

“Actually, when baking pizzas you’re supposed to A) have the fire be burning at least 20-40 minutes before sticking your pies in, and B) the fire should be situated to the side not directly under the pizzas. This is to help keep an eye on how its cooking instead of heating it up too quickly and resulting in burnt pizzas. Without some room for cold air circulation, you’ll end up with a less than desirable pizza. Burnt to a crisp without properly cooking evenly,” Killer explained.

“I hate being kept waiting. Fire them shits up Heat!” Kid barked.

“NO WAIT!” Killer screeched.

The camera seemed to freeze in place as a flashing brightness flooded the view. Nothing could be seen and all that could be heard was panic and unintelligible shouting. The camera itself stopped recording and a small glitch occurred before a buzzing static took over. After a minute, a screen card was layered over the video with a message that read: Idiotic technicalities. Please standby.

Several minutes later, the recording picked up and the message faded away. When the camera’s focus was cleared, Killer, Heat, and Kid stood front and center with folded arms. Each muscled man was covered in grime and soot. Killer’s helmet had distinct burn marks while Kid and Heat’s shirts were marked with singed holes.

None of them looked pleased.

“SO! What did we learn?!” Killer snapped at his housemates.

“Don’t listen to Boss,” Heat muttered.

“Shut up!” Kid’s face flushed red with embarrassment. Killer swatted the back of his head. “Listen to the head chef when it comes to cooking,” the Captain finally admitted, scowl engrained in his face.

“That’s right,” Killer scoffed. “Sorry for the disruption during the stream. We obviously had to deal with an inferno that has since been put out and cleaned. I know it may come off weird doing another stream for all of 10 minutes but we still wanted to do the taste test. We’ll clean the live up in post-editing before I upload the video on my channel. Now without further ado,” Killer turned around to the kitchen island table.

From the backside, his pants and shirt were burnt so severely it looked like he walked through hell and back. Heat and Kid were no better off as they shifted around the kitchen to take seats. With a comically large pizza cutter, Killer sliced the pizzas into shareable portions, bringing the camera closer to show off each one.

His macaroni pizza was lathered in molten cheese, crispy burnt edges on the top of the noodles and crust while steam curled around the top. Heat’s pizza looked like it was sweltering with the way the fresh pineapple chunks oozed with juice that leaked from the pulpy flesh. Kid’s pizza was truly a monstrosity. It was not winning any beauty contests and it surely wouldn’t be able to hold up in his hand but he tried anyway.

Using his metal prosthetic as a plate, he carried the heavy slice to his mouth where he took a massive bite. Cheesy ropes pulled from the crust to his mouth as he dragged the slice away from his face to chew.

“Shiiiiiit,” Kid crowed between his stuffed cheeks. “A bit hot but godsdamn that’s a good ‘zza! You could feed a village with just one slice!” His throat bulged as he swallowed the food. “The vegetables literally popped with juice and flavor as I bit into them. The meats create a savory taste that blend well with all the toppings. If you want something to fill you up quickly, this is the pie to eat.”

Heat was munching on his slice as he nodded in agreement, “It’s very good. The sweetness from the pineapple makes for a pleasant contrast to the saltiness of the cheese and garlic. It’s simple, crunchy, and daring.”

Killer bobbed his head up and down as he listened to his taste testers. Pushing slices of his pizza to them as they each finished their respective slices.

“Hmmm a little heavy on the carbs side but that doesn’t detract from the taste,” Kid said through another full mouth. “It’s fun though, don’t see pasta on pizza often but of course that’s your style, bud. It’s a good pie, I give it a 10/10.”

“I’d give it an 11/10,” Heat argues. “I don’t think you’re giving enough credit to the blended cheese here. I mean we have sharp and white cheddar, mozzarella, gorgonzola, parmesan, AND goat cheese! It’s the ultimate cheesy blend! This is perfect for a heavy lunch that’ll knock you right out.”

“Ultra cheesy, juicy, crispy, crunchy, and savory. That hits all the benchmarks when making a delicious pizza,” Killer began to wrap up the episode. “Can’t wait to dig in myself but first I need to trash my ruined clothes and double check that my hair hasn’t been harmed. If it has, well let’s just say someone’s gonna die. Tune in next time when I make something from back home that we all love - Cranachan. It’s easy to prepare especially in a group setting, and like everything else I make, slays. This has been Faffaffaffa-Food with Killer.”

End of video.

Bonus: The comment section

Unprofessional_Cook: My favorite pizza topping is Chipotle Cajun shrimp with a guacamole base. What say you, Chef? KillerCook: I say, I’m calling the police. You are a menace to society and you must be stopped.

J0ker: Is a fire the reason why our favorite punk has no eyebrows? PunkNeverDied69: Fuck – and I cannot stress this enough – all the way off.

305_Til.I.Die: Ok but like…what happened? What caused the fireball? FlamingHot420: Poor judgment.

Read on Wattpad | Read on AO3

[can-of-pringles]

Talk Shop Tuesday: How do you decide on the length of your stories? How do you know whether something will be a oneshot or a multi-chapter piece - or when you do a oneshot series rather than multiple chapters of the same fic? Do you have a method for outlining your longfics or choosing which scenes will go in each chapter?

What's the shortest piece you've ever written - do you like the length of it? How about the longest piece you've ever written - same question? How much do you think about word count as you write?

(I know that's a lot of questions, feel free to skip over whatever you don't want to answer, I just wanted to give you something to focus on for a bit)

Thank you so much for sending this bestie I really appreciate it

Talk Shop Tuesday

I usually try to aim for at least 1k words. If more, then that's great obviously. I've learned not to pressure myself into writing a strict certain amount and just try to let my writing flow naturally.

I typically prefer one-shots over multiple chapters, but if I'm coming up with a more obvious overarching plot/clear cut story, then I stick to multiple chapters. Another thing is if I'm rewriting an existing media then those tend to be chaptered.

This is not to say that majority of my one-shots don't have a clear story or anything, they are more like loosely connected chapters so to speak, or maybe peeks into a big story is more correct to say. I feel less constricted when working with one-shots if I change my mind on something related to the plot. If there's an outdated one-shot it's not as big as a deal since I can either delete it or rewrite it. Whereas with a multi chapter, it feels harder to go back and change things.

I don't really tend to outline my work, though lately I've been big into spreadsheets and making timelines. Most of my stuff is now categorized by months and years, and I can decide what happens in a certain month which gets turned into a chapter or new one-shot/fic.

I feel like word count was answered above. I try not to think too much about word count as I write because I don't want it to discourage me. Sometimes I do check rarely if I've been working on a single fic for a while and it feels like it's getting long

Looks like the shortest thing I've written was Low which is 192 words. I wrote it when I was having a low (shocker /j) and was coping by writing about Peter dealing with low bloodsugar and Marigold helping him feel better I think. I think it's fine, it's certainly not my best but it only really exists as a coping fic, ( ironic when the actual fic is fairly fluffy from what I remember?)

And the longest I've written so far is When I'm Alone with You which is currently at 31,476 words. I'm honestly pretty happy and proud of myself that it's gotten that far, with still a lot more planned!

[anamoon63]

Sims Say the Darnest Things: When you get this, list five of your characters and their best quotes so far. Then pass it on to five other storytelling simblrs.

Thank you my dear @nocturnalazure for this question, it was so much fun to answer! 🥰

FROM MY THE CHO BROTHERS GAMEPLAY

Terence: Mhm, and do you want me to get rid of her the old-fashioned way, or Terry the Terrible’s way? Dale: Whatever you think is best, just please, please, don’t let it involve bloodshed, okay? Terence: Doesn’t sound like fun to me, but okay, we’ll do it your way.

.....

Terence: Now I need some information about the victim… oops, sorry, I mean, about the girl. You know, name, waist, breast and hip sizes? Dale: Terry, come on… Terence: Easy, bro, I’m just kidding. Why do you have to be so damn serious about everything?

(The Cho Brothers, December 07, 2021)

-----

Kelly: So - we finally see each other. Riley: Unfortunately, yes. Kelly: Yeah, I hate to see you too, but there's something I have to tell you. Riley: You have something to tell me? What would that be? Kelly: It's two things, actually. The first, I'm glad you're leaving this dorm at last. And the second…

Kelly: Don't you DARE come near MY boyfriend again, YOU HEAR ME?

(The Cho Brothers, September 26, 2022).

----

Dale: Can we stop talking about Terry and focus on business? Kelly: Do you even talk about anything else?

Dale: Sure, I talk about bars, and sex too. Kelly: Sex, of course. How could I forget? That’s what the Cho brothers are all about, sex and money, in that order.

(The Cho Brothers, November 24, 2021 post).

----

FROM MY TIME TRAVELER STORY:

Julliette: So, I'll tell you only this: whatever is going on with your DNA, whatever you are, I don't care. I'll still love you whether you're a vampire, a werewolf or whatever." Robin: "A werewolf? Come on Jul," he grinned. Juliette blushed. Juliette: "It may sound silly, but love you and I'll never leave you, no matter what kind your DNA is." Robin: "I love you too, dear. And it's not silly at all, in fact it's lovely, and a relief to hear that from you".

Juliette: "I - wouldn't mind if you were an alien either". Robin: "Really? Most people are terrified of aliens." Juliette: "Not me. And I'd still love you if you were one". Robin: "Hm. that's… good to know."

(Time Traveler, Episode 209. Hinting the Truth)

----

Dustin: Of course, I’m not saying that Oasis Landing is the only place with nonsense laws, I just thought that in the future humans would be more like… free. Robin: Oh, we are, but in the book of the Council two children are more than one man can handle. And if you have them by the forbidden method, the infraction is double.” Dustin: Forbidden method, that blows my mind, I mean, I know Oasis Landing families who certainly didn’t ‘engineered’ their children. My parents, for instance, and Judith’s.” Robin: Because they’re privileged citizens. If you’ve worked for the Council like Mr. Planeson, your family enjoys a lot of benefits other people can’t even dream of having.”

Dustin: So, in the future everything pretty much remains the same: the rich and powerful have all the good stuff and the common people stay poor as ever”.

(Time Traveler, Episode 159. Privileges).

----

Ok those where more than five characters, lol.

I could go on and on, but I hope these quotes will do. I mean, my sims aren't too philosophical as to quote them, but I hope the things they say are at least entertaining. 😉

(For new readers who want to see more of the The Cho Brothers gameplay, you can to my #The Cho Brothers tag here in Tumblr, or to The Cho Brothers category on my WordPress Blog Los Sims de Ana If you're interested in my Time Traveler story, you can check it out on my blog too, via Categories for recent episodes, or in the Time Traveler tab of the menu at the top of the home page for past episodes).

[idollandhero]

I'd like to add something to my how to get the best score guide, because a lot of people have seen it now. At the time I didn't realize how gold tags work because I had exactly five. But I understand them now, you only get tags based on owning clothes with that tag. So when they switched the misplaced Dark Nightmare tag to the idol tag everyone lost that tag; unless you owned Dark Nightmare clothes of course. That means if you haven't bought or received any clothing with gold tags you could have as little as three.

From the research I've seen on Twitter it's always better to pick gold tags then one silver, though because it uses a lot of PriPara terms it auto translates kind of wonky and I'm not 100% sure I understand the system. But if you click on this icon:

when buying clothing you can see what tags it gives. I read today that there is a coord in one of the gold shops that gives a gold tag, and there is a shirt in the monthly shop with a tag. I've gotten lucky and got three gold tags in the gacha; so I haven't done research on the exact items that give gold tags because I don't need them, But if you do it's very easy to check which tags coords give. From what I've heard the apology silver AI Is enough to cover all of the current silver coords in the game lol, so by this point you probably already own 5 gold tags.

I wish I understood the system more. I worn coords that have more gold tags, but they actually gave significantly less points. I'm wondering if it's because the people I was playing with weren't wearing tags? I'm not sure. If anyone understands the tagging system completely, please enlighten me.

Another thing that was learned today, is that post patch the way gold tags work in promises that you join is different. It seems you can only get a maximum of three tags, and only if you own them yourself. I'm going to be honest with you, this doesn't really matter because the amount of iine you get from joining a promise with no tags no outfit is about 100, and three gold tags plus outfit is about 200. Those numbers are so small that I just don't care.

That being said one of the Twitter users that I quoted in the original post asked people that have more than five gold tags to use more common ones instead of gacha ones, so people joining promises get more points off of them. I have no problems doing that, I can read kana (kind of) so for me that's just not picking the Dark Nightmare gold tag because I have 6.

Again I don't fully understand this system, but if anyone has questions about it my askbox is open (I think) or just contact me however and I'll try my best to answer. 😎 On Twitter people weren't sure if post patch the green dress five tag method was going to work, but I'm still getting over 9000 (NOT AN INTENTIONAL REFERENCE) iine on pink promises so, it still works. Worst case just make sure you're getting perfects or close too in every song, it's not just hitting the notes but also getting x3 and rainbow hearts. Cool Star is by far the easiest song for me, and OPEN DREAM LAND is still a mess, but play what works for you.