#but that's... inelegant. functional but inelegant.

[skrunksthatwunk]

a couple days ago i went outside for the first time in a few days into a heavy warm rain and it was like spring had come overnight and i don't know how i always manage to forget how good the first spring rain feels but it's like a little warm rain and suddenly i feel like a person again. it's beautiful

[saladscream]

Merlin’s legs are ludicrous.

Bewildering.

Improbable.

They do not function the way legs should. Arthur is adamant about that. Merlin’s legs are long and lanky and laughable. They lend him a sort of fearless, thoughtless, coltish gait that is uniquely Merlin.

They’re also bendy in a manner that simply doesn’t belong on a full-grown, self-respecting adult. The way the man crouches at the campfire or sits in the grand staircase or curls up in a window seat is decidedly childlike and artless. And yet there’s something about it all, some impossible, raw grace that makes Arthur’s throat feel just a little warm and tight when he sees the long, lithe limbs folded into unlikely (and some might be tempted to say unseemly) positions.

Not that he could hold anything against Merlin’s legs, for these are good legs, however classically inelegant they might be. They’re indefatigable legs, for one thing. Arthur will candidly admit that Merlin can run like a rabbit when properly motivated. A rabbit that would sometimes trip up over roots or tufts of grass, of course. But still, the man can run fast and for a long time, which is always an appreciable skill.

The other thing about them… Well, there is no other thing, really. Arthur has never seen them bare, contrary to the manservant’s other body parts that he feels free to pass a judgement on. He has never caught the long limbs outside of their ever-tired trousers, so he cannot pronounce himself further than to say that they’re strange legs. Long strange legs.

Long strange legs that seem rather hardy.

And flexible.

As Merlin sits idly on a low wall while the knights horse around, Arthur cannot take his eyes off of the man’s posture: the soles of his shapeless boots are pressed flat on the side of the wall, spread thighs jutting out and knees wide apart. There’s something almost indecent to it. Something obscenely inviting. It makes Arthur’s breath feel a little raspy and his middle… coiled for action. The perfect height of that wall is what makes the tempting pose so compelling, probably. Arthur can actually see himself slotting perfectly into place, his hands first landing on the knees and then slowly riding up the outer thighs until they find their rightful place on those narrow hips. That would lead him to being closer to Merlin than he’s ever been in all the years they’re lived and breathed and fought together. Messily enmeshed. Terribly entangled. Ideally entwined. Sometimes…

Arthur is jolted out of his criminal musings when a passing Gwaine thwaps the waterskin out of Merlin’s inattentive hands. It splashes into a nearby stone trough, much to the knight’s amusement. Merlin tsks, shakes his head at the immaturity and murmurs something unflattering – then rolls up one of his sleeves to fish the thing out of the water.

Ah yes, Arthur thinks as the usual guilty tingle flutters down his spine.

The forearms.

Tagged: @miyriu @neptunesyellowsands @dollopole @shuukichan @merlininthedogpark @kintsugikid-moonysversion @toomanyfanficsbruh

1 - Merlin's eyes

2 - Merlin's lips

3 - Merlin's hands

4 - Merlin's throat

5 - Merlin's hair

6 - Merlin's ears

7 - Merlin's legs

8 - Merlin's forearms

9 - Merlin's chest

10 - Merlin's penis

11 - Merlin's arse

[boinkyyy]

Clan Ventrue and China--my thoughts

Not really a big or super elegant writeup bc my brain hasn't been super functional lately but while I recognize that clan Ventrue is primarily based around ancient Rome, I think there's actually a lot of untapped potential with Ventrue and China.

I will preface this (and hopefully catch your interest) by saying:

There is an old proverb in Chinese that goes "死要面子活受罪，就是为了不丢脸，硬撑的"-- "It is better to die with dignity than to suffer in life."

Chinese (and I'm sure many other Asian cultures, shoutout to all of us) culture places an enormous sense of importance on the concept of dignity and honor. You may find that this is strikingly similar to the Ventrue concept of Dignitas. As the saying goes, better to die than to "丢脸"--lose face. There is a kind of unspoken agreement to suffer in silence. Struggle and hardship and one's ability to endure it stoically are perhaps one of the highest virtues one can have, especially because growing up in China means enduring an immensely competitive environment. Through hard work, you better yourself and hopefully achieve highly enough to improve your class. economic power translates to social capital. Outside of China, at least from my experience, you'll be hard-pressed to find Chinese people openly begging in any context, especially for money. There's nothing so shameful as begging for the fruits of other people's hard labor, which you haven't earned. Especially since everybody is collectively suffering and again, the environment is so competitive. If you want anything in life, you can't wait for someone to save you. Any opportunity, you should take it (抢--"to snatch forcefully, rob").

Thus, there is the obvious caveat that there is a universal expectation or dream to be incredibly high-achieving, or as accomplished as humanly possible. If you think Ventrue Sires exercising the Right of Destruction/Accounting on their Childer for embarrassing them is extreme--don't.

There's also the fact that Clan Ventrue places importance on age. Age is a virtue of its own which can be synonymous to wisdom, demanding a certain level of veneration. Clan Ventrue prides itself as being the "eldest brother" out of all of the clans and claims that [Ventrue] is the eldest of the Antediluvians. The eldest son in a family is said to be the 'father' of the other children (长兄如父), taking on a position of leadership and therefore the most burdens/expectations due to a combination of age veneration and traditional patriarchal values. This is very much like how Ventrue have a shared mindset that leadership is the proverbial cross that they must bear, for they are the oldest, the wisest, the most high-achieving and the most qualified. This ties in well with the concept of tradition and filial piety (孝顺).

Clan Ventrue has a strong, unifying clan culture in which every Ventrue (well, so long as you fall in line) is inherently seen as more valuable than every outsider, much like a family (although not quite as literally as the Giovanni). Tradition is obviously a big mainstay of Ventrue culture but Ventrue also demand their youngest to defer to their elders in every way imaginable, never challenging them and always heeding their wisdom. Childer must subsequently honor their Sires and pay respect to the lineage that 'birthed' them, engaging in elaborate rituals of recitation and commemoration of their notable deeds ("honor your ancestors"). One can say that in a way, coming from a good bloodline is like coming from a good 'family', and there's a lot of shame attached to associating with people who come from a 'bad family', like their lack of honor would in a way taint yours by association (see: marriage).

Sometimes in Chinese you may also find someone cursing out someone's entire family by telling all 18 generations of their bloodline (9 generations forward, 9 generations backwards) to go fuck themselves, although this is considered an inelegant and frankly mid insult. Ancient china really had some absolutely insane work when it came to constructing elegant, almost poetic verbal barbs, or wielding/maximizing command over language in general, and we all know that Ventrue hold a disdain for ineloquent speech, sometimes at the expense of sounding overly verbose, posh or antiquated.

Ancient Chinese courts and even the conception of the afterlife were bureaucratic, emphasizing the importance of hierarchy--which Ventrue are also notorious for, much to the annoyance and chagrin of virtually every other clan. A Ventrue Agoge can likewise be synonymous to Chinese cultures' emphasis on education and the importance of properly equipping your child to handle the rigors of the world.

Finally, or at least this is only the last thing I can think of after having been typing this for like a solid hour now, is that noblesse oblige and etiquette plays another role. You're expected to carry yourself in a dignified manner, and that means treating others with the appropriate amount of respect (尊敬人) and paying heed to sophistication. 'Class', if you will.

So with all of that in mind, I suppose the takeaway here is that I think Chinese culture and Ventrue clan culture have a lot of interesting parallels and I hope that this gave you some food for thought.

Edited addendum: Kind of funny that the Chinese afterlife involves spending a lot of money now that Ventrue in the modern day have notoriously adopted the mantle of boardroom capitalists. Can't escape the grind even when you're dead

[fortytworedvines]

If you're still taking prompts: I'd like 14 :)

Send me a prompt! This is a sequel to Summer heat, but can be read as a stand-alone. T rating.

14. The water is too cold

The heat hadn’t lessened; the air was hot and sticky and still. Siegfried struggled through his calls, desperate for some relief from both the heat and the vision that was constantly in his mind’s eye. Early that morning, before dawn, he’d happened upon Audrey bathing in the forest pool in the pre-dawn light, like a nymph, a goddess. He’d watched, unnoticed, unable to turn away.

He’d arrived home after her and the house was dark and quiet, and when she’d greeted him that morning, her usual prim and proper self, a calm smile on her face, he wondered if he’d dreamt it. But it was too vivid. The water cascading down her as she stood, the slim curves of her body… He couldn’t stop thinking about her.

By the time he went to bed he was in a state; desperately hot, tormented with longing.

He managed to sleep. He dreamed of her. Woke up with a groan and full of need. He glanced at the clock – nearly three. He could do nothing about his feelings, but he could get cool. The forest pool called him.

He crept from his room, fetched a towel from the cupboard and was down the stairs and out of the house in no time.

How was it still so hot outside? This heat wave had to end soon, surely! Sweat dripped down his forehead as he walked up the path.

Finally, he reached the pool. The still surface looked inviting, and he stripped off his clothes eagerly. The rocks around the pool were rough under his feet and he stepped carefully towards the edge. Dipped a foot into the water.

It was cold. It was beyond cold. It was too cold.

Ridiculous; all he wanted was too cool down, but his foot in the water felt like a block of ice.

Audrey had managed it, yesterday. She had looked like she was enjoying herself thoroughly. Siegfried gritted his teeth. He would get in.

Jump, the voice in his head that sounded like Tris whispered.

“Oh God,” he murmured to himself. He peered into the water – it looked deep enough. He steeled himself, and jumped.

It felt like shards of ice pricking him all over. He surfaced shivering and certainly not hot any more.

“Gah,” he said, slapping his arms around himself. Get moving, he thought. He struck out across the pool in the inelegant but serviceable breaststroke he’d learned years ago at school.

He reached the other side, turned – stopped. Surely he was hallucinating.

Standing on a rock by the edge of the pool… “Good morning,” Mrs Hall said with a smile.

“Mrs – Mrs Hall!” He shifted in the water, trying to prevent her from seeing – anything, well aware of his hypocrisy given his own ogling the day before.

“I see we had the same idea,” she said. “It’s far too hot. Do you mind if I join you?” She was already undoing the buttons on her blouse.

Siegfried’s brain ceased functioning. He mumbled something that might have been agreement. He swam back across the pool – there was no other option really – trying not to watch her avidly as she removed blouse and skirt, kicked off her sandals.

She stood there in bra and knickers, apparently unselfconscious. He reached her.

“It’s ever so cold,” he said, inanely.

“As I’m hoping.” She sat on the edge of a rock and dangled her feet in. “Bliss,” she said with a smile.

“Ngh,” Siegfried said, and turned back to swim back across to the other side. He was feeling more comfortable with the temperature now. The only discomfort left was his wild attraction for his semi-clothed housekeeper.

There was a splash and he turned to see her surfacing, water dripping down her face. She was even more beautiful than she had been yesterday. “So much better,” she said with a sigh. She lay back idly in the water, unaware, or uncaring, of the way her cotton bra clung to her skin, almost see-through.

“I came out here yesterday at this time.” Water swirled around her and Siegfried tried to stop looking at her. “It set me up for the day, it really did.”

It was the cold; that was why his brain wasn’t working, that was why he blurted out, “I know.”

She flipped onto her front and eyed him. “You do?”

His face flushed with shame and he swallowed. Didn’t want to compound his misdeeds with a lie. “I saw you.”

“Oh.” She was still for a moment, her face unreadable.

His brain still wasn’t working. “You looked beautiful. Like a goddess.”

Colour tinted her cheeks. “Daft ha’p’orth.”

But though she was blushing, she wasn’t shouting at him.

His heart pounded and he dared to swim nearer.

“I assume you didn’t follow me on purpose…?”

He shook his head ferociously and droplets sprayed from him. “Of course not! I was coming back from a call and I remembered this place and I was just so damned hot!”

She laughed at him and the tension in him eased. “And I was here and spoilt it for you. I am sorry.”

“No,” he said, and his voice was suddenly tight in his throat. “You didn’t.” He was close enough to touch her now, reached out a hand through the cool water and found hers. “You are so beautiful.”

She pulled him closer to her and there was a speculative look in her eye that made his heart pound. “I think,” she said slowly, “that you should return the favour.”

“… Pardon?” She wasn’t really suggesting… was she?

She was. “Out you get, Siegfried.”

“I – I…” but it was only fair, he supposed. He swallowed. Nobody had seen him naked since Evelyn, and he was years older now. “Very well Audrey. But please, promise me that you won’t run screaming.”

She laughed, her amusement and affection clear. “I promise.”

He let go of her, swam to the edge and climbed out slowly, extremely aware of her gaze on his naked body. He steeled himself to stand, feeling water drops slide down his body. He breathed in, out, and turned.

She was lying back in the pool and watching him avidly. He fought not to cover himself. “Well?” he demanded.

She laughed again. “You’re at the top of the hill, but you’re not over it. You’ll do, Siegfried, you’ll do.”

With a sigh of relief he jumped into the pool, surfaced spluttering, and swam to her side.

“There aren’t so many poetic comparisons,” she mused, taking his hand and pulling him to float next to her. “I don’t suppose Poseidon will suffice?”

“Humph,” he grumbled. She was still holding his hand and the water between them seemed to be heating. He put his feet firmly on the rocky floor of the pool. “Audrey?”

She floated into him, put her arms around his neck. He found her waist and pulled her tightly into him, barely able to think of anything apart from the feel of her silky skin against his own. His body was reacting to her and he knew she could feel it but she didn’t pull away and the expression on her face was one of need.

She ran her fingers through his wet, tangled hair. “Will we be forgetting this?” she asked quietly.

“I don’t want to forget,” he said hoarsely. “Whatever we do… whatever happens, I want to remember it.” She brushed a kiss to the corner of his mouth and his heart nearly exploded with it. “I want this to be the start.”

Her lips found his, and she kissed him fiercely.

“Audrey,” he whispered as they kissed, “oh, Audrey.”

[doshmanziari]

Something that I've been anticipating lately is a renewed appreciation for FromSoftware's post-King's Field "medievalist" releases which de-emphasize speed and spectacle; that is, Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, and Dark Souls 2.

I'm a little surprised that there hasn't been much commentary on the gradually diverging artistic shift we can track from Demon's Souls to Elden Ring. Mostly, the discursive possibilities have been limited to remarking upon whether or not Elden Ring is "too hard" relative to some earlier title. This focus on design has tended to occlude observations on the aesthetic consequences of a divergence.

In a variety of ways, Elden Ring is not only (in an abstract, although probably very often also in an actual, sense) a much harder game than Demon's Souls; it also represents something of the upper limit of a type of grandiosity of combative expression, whether that has to do with a boss' design or the capabilities of our avatar. Were we to be dismissive, and maybe a little culturally reductive, we could use the term "anime" for critical shorthand when describing how one of Shadow of the Erdtree's bosses has a magical sword attack that encompasses the entire space of a fairly large arena.

On the one hand, Elden Ring represents a sensible evolutionary point of a mechanical foundation established by Demon's Souls. On the other hand, Rellana's courtyard-sweeping attack, and other things, like very nearly anything to do with the second phase of the DLC's final boss, are the sort of stuff I joked about as an inevitability after finishing Dark Souls 3's DLC. Pretty much any major opponent from Dark Souls and its sequel seems like a quaint, jerky windup toy when compared to Elden Ring's bosses.

I wonder, though, if that relative restrictiveness won't come to be newly valued for the differentiation it represents internally to these games -- perhaps most visibly with Dark Souls 2, which not too soon after its release, and ever since, has tended to be spoken of as an outcast in need of either a dunking or a defense, or has confused people obsessed with ranking their media diet. It's highly unusual that Dark Souls 2's development team would decide to make a game which is more slow and methodical than its two forebears. This is a very uncommon progression -- so uncommon that a lot of people would, I am sure, consider it to be a regression. But, perhaps, we now have an opportunity to see this slowness with different eyes.

In a previous post, I wrote, of Shadow of the Erdtree:

There’s a lot of good level design to be found here among the dungeons, castles, and forts, yet the abundance and enormity of it all seems to have deprived the game of significant contrasts, and those special spatial moments, which I found much easier to locate and reflect upon with, say, Dark Souls or Bloodborne. Sure, the sky-piercing spiral of Enir-Ilim is a sight to behold; but soon enough the sequences of grand staircase upon grand staircase, great bridge upon great bridge, creates a perpetual climatic grandiosity that diminishes the very effect of a climax.

This "climax fatigue" is similarly applicable to Elden Ring's weapons, a good number of which have some dramatic, slick, or acrobatically superhuman secondary function. Whereas Dark Souls has almost no obviously "cool" weapons, most being within a range of utilitarian swords, maces, clubs, and spears, Elden Ring has so many superlative offensive items and skills that, after a while, these flourishes become lost among a fantastical morass of melodramatic aesthetics. And whereas Demon's Souls is undeniably much simpler when compared to Elden Ring, there is something satisfying about the older, "inelegant" design where you can feel the proximity to the dungeon crawler sensibility: blunt, rough, and chunky.

The recently unveiled Nightreign would appear to represent one kind of developmental compartmentalization at FromSoftware between more frequently released offshoots and principle works with longer developmental cycles. I'm curious if it might not also represent a forthcoming differentiation between the faster, more spectacular type of gameplay and a slower, less flashy type of gameplay which may be calling back to Miyazaki after years of an intensifying emphasis on the big and bold "anime" side of things.

[tiktaalic]

It’s crazy how many people are content with being bad at their jobs. I don’t mean #act your wage I mean genuine incompetence where you do not have the skills required to do what you are paid to do. This is about the crazy amount of books published that aim to be functional and absolutely nothing else. Complete inelegance. Sentences built as daintily as a six year old builds with legos. Like it’s crazy. They’re the kind of sentences I expect from a stem pilled report writer and they’re being defended as Art. So many books are just Clunky. Which seems like something you would not do if you were good at writing? And seems like something you would not publish if you wanted to publish good books?

[autisticempathydaemon]

remember (the first fall of snow)

My gift to @pinksparkl for the Skyside Server Winter Gift Exchange~!

Ships: Vincent/Lovely, Alexis/Christian, Sam/Darlin

Tags: sfw, fluff, banter, T for making out and suggestive situations

Available on AO3 here!

Lovely and Vincent get ready for the Solaire holiday party and get sidetracked.

“Lovely!” Vincent says from somewhere in the house, not needing to raise his voice for the benefit of his lover’s vampiric senses. “Have you seen-”

“Your platinum chains? They’re up here with me, on the vanity, where you left them,” they say with an indulgent smile as they put on their own jewelry, a pair of dangling ruby earrings William gifted to them last Christmas. They knew he’d be so pleased to wear them, wouldn’t be surprised if he got them a matching bauble this year.

“How do I look?” Vincent asks, instantaneously appearing at their side and putting the chains around the turtleneck of his sweater. The vampire prince admires himself in the mirror– an action that always makes Lovely giggle at its irony– and poses for them, leaning back against the desk with his hands coolly tucked into his pockets. 

“Like you’re trying too hard.” Vincent squawks in displeasure, an inelegant and childish sound that makes Lovely giggle, and Vincent has trouble repressing his smile as he crosses his arms over his chest with a pout. “You look like the pinterest board of someone’s Edward/Bella Christmas fic.”

“That was so specific and so cutting. How could you?” Lovely laughs harder, shaking with mirth, speechless with it, and Vincent grabs them, placing a firm kiss on their forehead with a smile, before knocking his head against theirs. “That’s not very seasonal of you, Lovely. You’re not keeping the Christ in Christmas.”

“Neither is trying to show up Porter at his own Christmas party… the bling, the cashmere, the homemade tang yuan when he told us we didn’t have to bring anything?”

“All necessary! What kind of guest would I be if I showed up empty handed? And what would you rather I bring- a twenty dollar bottle of wine?” Lovely rolls their eyes with an affectionate, incredulous shake of the head, opening their mouth to respond when Vincent’s phone goes off with a vibration and the familiar tune of Nelly Furtado’s “Maneater”.

“Lex, help me settle an argument!” Vincent says, putting in an airpod and giving the other to Lovely. 

“Sure- you’re losing it, and you suck.” Alexis’s bored alto settles in their ears without pause and with Christian’s drawling tenor greeting them from the background. 

“What are you bringing to Porter’s? Are you actually not bringing a host gift like he said?” Vincent asks after Lovely says hello and Alexis returns the sentiment.

“Of course not, what do you take me for? A simpleton?” Lovely’s boyfriend silently flips them off, mouthing a smug, animated “‘I told you so’. “I made Bánh Bò Nướng. You know Porter doesn’t know how to make a quarter-decent dessert.”

“What is it about Solaire blood that makes people ridiculous? When someone says you only need to bring yourself, you only need to bring yourself! This isn’t a pissing contest!” Lovely asks, giving Vincent the middle finger right back before shoving him away from the vanity with a shooing motion. 

“Maybe if that someone weren’t Porter, sure,” Alexis says coolly. “And every social function is a pissing contest, baby fangs. You’ll find that out soon enough.”

“This isn’t a “social function”; this is family. I’ll show you.” Lovely picks up the phone where Vincent left it on the counter and patches Sam in, who picks up with a distracted grunt. 

“What do you want?”

“Hello to you too, Samuel.”

“No, none of that yet!” Lovely interjects, interrupting their hilariously tempestuous banter. “Sam, are you bringing a host gift to Porter’s tonight?”

“You bet, a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue label.”

“I told you, Lovely,” Vincent gloats from the en suite bathroom. Alexis un-subtlely tsks in judgement.

“What?” Sam asks with a scorn too familiar to be hurtful. 

“Nothing. It’s just interesting that Vincent and I made our gifts, put our time and metaphorical sweat into them, while you bought yours. Very telling.” 

“No one wants your shitty food, Alexis!” Sam’s mate hollers faintly. 

“Then I better not see you packing any to take home, dog . I haven’t forgotten last year,” Alexis bites out with venom before mildly speaking aside. “No, not you, cher .” 

“We’ll all be outdone by William, so there’s not any point in fighting about it,” Vincent reminds them, the fight coming to a halt as the Solaire royalty grimly accept their losing fate. He comes out the bathroom, light makeup applied and long, smooth black hair casually tied back in a low ponytail so reminiscent of a danmei hero, Lovely can’t help but beckon him over to kiss him and run their fingers through his down-soft locks. 

“Disgusting. Have the decency to hang up before you make us voyeurs.” Alexis hangs up with a click, and Sam chuckles warmly once she can’t hear. 

“See you two and the princess in a bit. Don’t be late. We won’t hear the end of it from William until everyone’s together.” He hangs up too, and the line goes silent as Vincent and Lovely kiss, the older vampire looming lovingly over his sitting partner, covering their body with his, the fringe of his hair gently tickling their skin and making them grin against his lips. 

“He’s right,” Lovely murmurs, protesting weakly as Vincent’s hands curl themselves in their hair, fingertips gently stroking the sensitive skin of their neck. “There’ll be no peace until we get there.”

“Peace is overrated,” Vincent says with a hum, his lips trailing across their cheek to press a tantalizing whisper of a kiss against their ear. They shiver at the sensation, and one of his hands goes to their collarbone, pressing against the bare flesh of their sternum to feel them tremble for him. They return the touch, nudging his sweater up to feel his stomach, his warmth, before digging their nails into the soft, vulnerable flesh. 

“Ow!” Vincent says, jumping back more in surprise and mock offense than pain, and Lovely kicks him in the shin before standing up and straightening their clothes.

“We are not going to be late because of our libidos, Vincent Solaire!” Lovely emphasizes the point with a stern finger to their boyfriend’s adams apple. “Not on Christmas!”

“It’s January sixth,” he says with a plaintive whine, silver eyes wide with childish pleading that will not work on them. 

“I don’t care. Everyone was busy or travelling, so today is ipso facto Christmas, and we will not be late for it. Get a move on!” Lovely shoves Vincent out the bedroom and down the stairs despite his protests, but the prince gives up the act by the door, carefully choosing the right shoes to go with his outfit while Lovely grabs the bags of presents and food. “Which car are we taking?”

“The red Lambo, of course,” Vincent says with a grin, taking one of the bags out of their hands and twirling the car keys around the fingers of his free hand. “Tis the season.”

“Tis the season for us to move our butts– I’m hungry!” Lovely says with a laugh and a shove, bouncing on the balls of their feet. 

“You know as well as I do that you’re not hungry. One, you ate several tang yuan, and those are filling as hell. Two, our bodies don’t even crave human food anym…”

“Why’d you stop, Vin? And what’s that smell?” Lovely steps around Vincent who’s stopped in the open doorway, and they are gobsmacked by the scent of fresh air and chilled nature, the ephemeral aroma of frost with notes of clean ozone and grass. Newly fallen snow does not smell of peppermint or roasted chestnuts; it smells of dew and life, and it is the most amazing, wintry scent Lovely has ever had the pleasure of experiencing with their vampiric senses. 

“Well, would you look at that?” Vincent marvels quietly, the cold and happiness bringing a flush to his cheeks. “You got your white Christmas.” The two smile at each other, the moonlight reflecting off the snow and glittering beautifully in the shining silver of Lovely’s awestruck eyes. “I don’t suppose we could say we were snowed in and enjoy this privately .” Vincent raises an eyebrow, attempting a smolder and sultry affectation and failing. Lovely goes further from the house, further into the winter wonderland, calling over their shoulder at him without even a glance. 

“Not a chance, pretty boy! I want to have one of those snowball fights with everyone like they have in the sitcoms!” they say, marveling at the imprints their shoes leave in the plush snow. “You better get snow chains on the lambo!”

“The- the snow chains? But Lovely, I’m wearing cashmere- !”

[hypersaline]

I have at least half a dozen mods that're between 80% and 98% finished. Most are pretty small, like one that gives children and toddlers a simple interaction with babies. A couple are a little more complicated, like one that lets players set up secondhand markets (a family that's done with a crib can sell it "to the market" instead of to the catalog; the next household that needs one can go to a particular community lot and buy it at the depreciated price; if a third neighbor checks the market, they won't find that particular crib anymore). They all accomplish their basic function, but...:

none of them are tested as thoroughly as I'd usually test them

many are missing some safety features (you can probably guess that bad things happen if you sell a crib while the baby's still in it, but the mod won't stop you from doing it)

most have small issues I'm aware of but haven't fixed (things like an error message/reset if a kid can't get to a sibling they're trying to interact with or a visible shadow on an invisible object) and, I have to emphasize, might have more serious issues that I haven't run into yet

they wouldn't have more than basic documentation

they're various levels of unpolished/inelegant/awkward in general

They're nevertheless things I like and think other people might also have fun with, and I don't know if or when I'll be up to finishing any of them. Given all of those warnings, would anyone be interested in a 'caveat utilitor' folder if I put one up?

[saffron-gold-stardust]

I only recently found out about swap dreams. What's the au about?

Cause there's shattered dream but that's a whole different story

Soooo here’s the funny part… I had a pretty hard time finding out the exact beats of the original storyline for Swapdream (outside of the origin story), so I did my best research, and then kinda just… started writing my own AU with the window dressing? I do that a lot for a lot of concepts I find interesting, but maybe don’t love the actual story that currently exists. Hence the distinction of the sgs!swapverse tag (even tho i think that name is pretty inelegant LOL). What I’m cooking is a totally different meal. Song__A was the original creator of the concept, but their blog was deleted forever ago, and I’m not sure where their work is anymore.

The original Swapdream seems to swap details as opposed to roles. I guess it’s more a story shift compared to a direct swap. Dream is the one who snaps, eats the golden apples instead of the dark apples to protect a battered Night, and is immolated by their power as he is corrupted into the crazy bird guy. From there, it kinda isn’t super clear, other than Night taking up the role Dream normally would have. Idk what happens after that, so that’s where I started jotting my own ideas and making stuff up.

I kinda wanted to see how a version of Underverse would function in an altered universe like this, and Swapdream (Helios) got to Cross in the void first. Cross eventually becomes his knight and takes on the name Corvus, entering into the twisted role to escape the pain of his sins and XChara’s harrassment.

There’s other details I planned, like this universe having a Destroyer Ink and a Creator Error (Sumi and Mender, respectively, idk if posted them yet lol), they’re also involved in a sort of swapped version of their Underverse roles. Of course SwapNightmare/Swan (Cygnus) is acting as Dream would, with a different approach and vibe to how he fights Helios. (Also none of the weird brother stuff. No thanks. Just gonna make the object of Helios’ affection be Cross/Corvus)

So everything here is me playing around with some version of that, maybe with a touch of Helios’ madness and Cross/Corvus’ failure to cope driving everything off of a cliff, haha.

[operative079]

GRANDEUR Svetlana "Kestrel" Sokolova (OC)

She never romanticised her self-destruction. That was everyone else’s job.

When people talk about “dark days,” they think of trauma, broken bottles, and late-night screaming. Kestrel just remembers being bored.

The kind of boredom that eats at you slowly, like rot behind the walls of a mansion. Everything looked fine on the surface. She still made her bed, still wore her jacket, and still answered her superiors in a perfect tone of cadence. But under the skin, under careful syllables, there was nothing. Just echo.

Alcohol didn’t solve anything. It didn’t numb the pain. It numbed the nothing.

For a few months, it filled the gap. Made the silence less aggressive. She could pretend, for a while, that fog was depth—that stumbling was movement. But it got old fast.

And worse, it was inelegant.

So she stopped. Not out of guilt or rehabilitation. She just got sick of it. Sick of the repetition. The sticky aftertaste. The dull headache offered no enlightenment. The grandeur people expect from “rock bottom” never came. She was just tired of wasting time.

Now, she endures everything—mission, betrayals, nostalgia, grief—in complete sobriety. Clear-eyed. Dead sober. Terribly unpertrude.

And sometimes that’s what makes people most uncomfortable about her. She has seen enough to unravel, but she never does. Because she already unravelled—quietly, clinically—and stitched herself back together out of sheer disinterest in falling apart.

There is no glory in her steadiness. Only the quiet horror of someone who’s already weighed every ending… …and got bored with all of them.

Maybe that’s all. Svetlana never called them addictions. That would suggest a loss of control. No—everything she consumed was deliberate. Everything she took was just that: taken, with full awareness.

Cigarettes, sex, strange lips in dim stairwells, the sweet sting of rejection reversed by a well-timed regret—she wasn’t trying to fill a void. She was testing the edges of the container. Pushing at walls. Seeing how far you could stretch.

She wasn’t hungry. She was curious.

She moved through people like a contagion. Not cruelly, just aware. They offered warmth, so she took it. They whispered promises—so she pocketed them like receipts. They offered to stay—and she let them. But only as long as they were useful, or interesting, or bearable.

The charisma they saw never existed. It was just precision. Sveta wore desire like a scent and said things people needed to hear, the way addicts need the idea of love more than love itself. She gave them a performance, and they called it intimacy.

And when she left, they never got a goodbye. Only silence. Only the faint taste of her clinging to their teeth like secondhand smoke.

Because she was never trying to be known. Never trying to be good. She knew from the start that utility matters more than legacy. Her identity was always malleable—pliable enough to slip past borders, get into classified files, extract targets, seduce officials, deliver kills.

Whom she was never mattered. Svetlana. Sveta. Sokolova. Kestrel. Doesn’t matter. What she could do did.

Maybe she was a whore in the coldest, most functional sense. A vessel that devours affection and leaves no trace. A reflection with no substance until someone projects onto it. But that’s what makes her valuable, the exact thing that made her a tool. And a good one.

Because tools don’t cry. Tools don’t break. They just work. And affiliations never mattered. Not in the way people talked about them.

Logos, flags, mission statements—they were just décor. People wrapped their lives in colours and acronyms and called it loyalty. She called it bad fiction.

She was careful, but not out of caution, out of structure. Every job had invisible architecture. Not rules. Not morals. Just logic. If you move here, they’d move there. If you said this, they’d infer that. Cause and effect. Input and response. Predictability in human disguise.

Kestrel wasn’t above protocol. She simply saw through it. Training never taught her as much as chaos.

And chaos? Chaos loved guidelines—it just never admitted it. Even a trap has a design.

Improvisation isn’t wild. It’s aware. You learned how to improvise like a surgeon cuts—calculated, even when it looks frantic. Her best moments weren’t planned. They were read. Read the moment. Read the man. Read the lie in the air and twist it into a thread worth pulling.

She saw how thin everything really was. The tape people thought was steel. The borders they bled for. The rules they prayed to. Confidence was a cardboard palace.

She knew what power was. Not something given, earned. Just something taken in the silence between doubt and decision. The moment when no one knows what happens next—that’s when she becomes real.

That’s when “Kestrel” exist.

People feared betrayal. She turned away at that. Betrayals assume someone ever held your loyalty, to begin with.

They didn’t. And they lost her respect the moment they made that assumption.

Because no one ever had anything she needed. And no one offered anything worth needing. So she took what worked and left what didn’t. She smiled when it was strategic, and stayed when it was useful.

Because affiliations are for people who still think they have something to prove. She was just there for the lessons.

[sol-flo]

python got hands

hmm thought of something for the vn, structure wise

i'm thinking about dictionary of the khazars and how i feel this scifi setting requires a fair bit of worldbuilding / exposition and i'm wondering if i could make a nonlinear vn of the dictionary kind work.

i think each scene could end with a choice between 2-3 "keywords" and each would lead to a new scene that might be narrative or expository. so the playthrough would be made of 1 intro scene + maybe 3 chosen scenes + 1 ending scene (always the same). essentially branching paths but the story is "fixed", you're just changing the order in which you read it. i could probably also randomize the keywords so it feels less like a tree and more like a web. i have to plan out the scenes and see ig.

[txttletale]

:fire: video games

there's a particular type of like -- inelegant intrusion of a non-core mechanic into the main loop of the game that pisses me off. like--it's hard to exactly articulate what it is, it's a very 'know it when i see it thing', but when it feels like the dev is an angry parent who's made a meal and is like 'i made this food, you're not leaving the table until you eat it' to their kid except the food is a game mechanic. shit like forced vehicle sections in shooters. i like when using secondary gameplay mechanics is encouraged, but when it's forced it just makes me think less of the designers for not being able to intergrate it more elegantly.

i think a good example of this is transistor, actually, it has a 'good' version of this and a 'bad' version of this--unlocking the lore for each function by using them in a different slot is a really good 'soft' way of encouraging engaging with the loadout building part of the game. losing a function when you die is a really lame 'hard' way of doing it that feels punitive and like supergiant just gave up on finding a better way to incentivise experimentation--even when the better way already exists and is in their game!

[inthecut2003]

What’s your thoughts on the new Yellowjackets ep?

okay so broadly speaking i'm on board with the main narrative thrust of the adult timeline being a murder mystery. i even kind of like the main characters slowly being picked off in some form or another linked to the idea that they were all supposed to die in the crash or in the wilderness and you can't change your fate. it's not revelatory but i think something along that line is necessary for maintaining a connection with the teen timeline while building tension in the adult timeline, which the show is in need of desperately. all that said the decision to kill off lottie raises my antenna for a number of reasons, the first one being that lottie is still not a fully developed character in either timeline but especially as an adult. we only met her last season and they've already killed her off. because she's not actually a character she's a plot device. in s2 she functions more or less as an obstacle the other survivors have to either neutralize or overcome. the show isn't invested in her or her relationships to the other characters. i thought there was some promise to her interactions with callie early in s3, but now that she's dead she's become another plot device, a mystery to be solved. we will likely never learn anything meaningful about her adult character again, and even if we do it will feel hollow without a performance to ground it. there's also something sloppy about the quick turnaround to me, like its just very obvious they freaked after the negative reviews from last season and rewrote the story. this is all especially troubling when you remember that lottie is one of the few consequential characters of color on the show, and this is how the showrunners have decided to utilize her. it speaks to a larger issue in the writing, the prescriptive role across the board the characters of color occupy. lottie, tai, travis, and akilah are all presented as having a deep subconscious connection with the wilderness that is not illuminated bc the show is still hemming and hawing about whether or not something supernatural is going on. a rather disproportionate number of nonwhite characters who are aligned with a kind of primitive spirituality, as opposed to characters like nat and shauna who are characterized by skeptical intellectualism (something tai reaches for but is denied by her very nature, seemingly. the implications of that are not great). lottie was hardly characterized outside her role as crazed mystic and now her dead body is artfully posed for the characters and audience to gawk at. like it's racist there's nothing else to say.

other small things that annoyed me: the trial was just kinda goofy lol, ben's speech especially was terrible. inelegant in the writing overly expository and i thought it sounded distractingly contemporary. tai and van continue to be wasted, they need more development as individuals and in the teen timeline if the show wants me to care about their adult hijinks. the way tai is written, similarly to lottie, is also egregiously racist but i don't have time to get into all that. STOP WASTING MY TIME WITH THESE JEFF STORYLINES!!! idgaf hes good at bingo he will never be jimmy mcgill stop making me think of a better show.

[datapacks]

pivoting to a different datapack. does/will a lillie bit of fish have like. living entities i can put in my aquariums. i need more things to put in aquariums

no, sorry! alb:extra enchants is a bit of a rare case where i actually do Technical / "Useful" items; usually, I'm more focused on just adding a ton of variant items for "flavour" purposes. An example of this, as planned for a while now, is like... emeralds having variants based on whether they were mined, traded for (& which biome village you got them from), crafted down from emerald blocks, found in desert temples, found in jungle temples, etc etc etc. Ideally I'd like pretty much every one of these instances to look different, but still function as emeralds. It's mostly just about telling a story, at the end of the day. Maybe it's just me being my autistic self, but I really like collecting stuff! & I've basically been working on this from an "archeology" standpoint for years before Mojang even broached the topic of archeology. Which does remind me I still want to do my archeology pack too I've just got so much to do 😑

For A Lillie Bit of Extra Fish, the focus is just on making fishing more rewarding, more engaging, filling out the types of fish you can get (without datapacks, there's iirc 32 non-fish items you can get, compared to... 4 fish), & making it so that theoretically, being a travelling fisher is like, a viable method of progression in the game.

While adding more fish as living entities would be cool, I do not have the capacity to do that myself, nor is it the aim of the project- beyond that, it currently isn't really possible to add unique entities (any datapacks you've seen that do this are just smoke & mirrors, and my datapacks focus on not using smoke and mirrors, instead pushing the things we've gotten explicit support for as far as I possibly can). The way that datapacks tend to add new unique entities, if they aren't datadriven variants (like wolves and now pigs are), is also still a bit laggy & very clunky & inelegant in a way I just don't fuck with doing unless absolutely necessary for a spinoff pack, but not something I would ever put in a mainline pack again. This is also the big reason why I haven't updated my Beetles pack.

Beyond all of that, which I know is a lot of text to read, adding in unique entities for all my fish would be like.... 140 new entities, which would be just so much for new mobs that would need unique functions / spawn conditions / mechanics / etc considered for each one.

Any one of these aspects could be minimal enough to ignore & work on the project Like That anyways, but all together it's basically just not something I'm interested in doing 😭

[archduchessgortash]

I'm pretty sure Gortash was supposed to be a southpaw.

Or they flipped the model for his outfit.

His primary weapon is the Fabricated Arbalest. The extremely ornate rings that he wears on his right hand as part of the Netherstone gauntlet would probably get in the way when firing it, if the trigger is that green bit by his finger and it is fired similarly to ballistic projectile weapons. Some crossbows have larger, lever-action type triggers, but this one looks more modern. The gold pieces on the sides of the foregrip appear to be an homage to older trigger designs, but their positioning makes them decorative rather than functional. The Arbalest also lacks the foot stirrup, likely owed to the fact that it is a magical weapon. In addition, there's no way the prestigious Chosen of Bane would use a weapon that he had to bend down just to reload. How terribly inelegant.

Based on the fact that the index and middle fingers of his left hand are mostly bare, it would make more sense if he held the weapon on the opposite side, but Larian never created left-handed combat animations.

They probably did just flip the model for the Cloth of Authority, but I like my theory, and he's a lefty in my fics.

[gorey]

@anicemyth you're about to make us soooo autistic about this you don't even know bless you

so group theory: this is a very rudimentary explanation but in mathematics a group describes all the ways a structure can be symmetric aka every operation or transformation that can be done on a structure while still it remains unchanged. for example a symmetry of an equilateral triangle would be mirror flipping it on its axis or rotating it 120 or 240 degrees. the untransformed state of the structure (e.g. rotating said triangle by 0 or 360 degrees) is also counted as one of the total symmetries within the group. There's a lot of detail in the defining of this regarding the arithmetical and algebraic behavior of groups that the resources I'm going to add at the end will surely do a better job of than I could.

A group of these symmetries can be broken up into "building blocks" similarly to how an integer can be broken down into its prime factors. These building blocks of groups are known as simple groups. putting aside the fact that there are infinite simple groups bc let's not even go there - the monster group is one of the finite simple groups.

through an incredible mathematical undertaking it has been proven that we have discovered all the possible finite simple groups that can exist. they fall into categories based on their properties and this categorization is depicted in something that looks a lot like a periodic table of elements:

in the colored columns are the 18 assorted categories of group - cyclic, alternating, etc, but at the bottom the 2 rows in light green show the sporadic groups which are 26 groups that do not fall in any of the above categories. at the bottom right is the monster group.

the reason why this is crazy - the numbers listed at the bottom of each box there are the total number of symmetries contained within the group. for an equilateral triangle like I mentioned above you get 6 symmetries including both rotational and reflectional symmetries and including the baseline state of the triangle without any transformation having been done on it.

The monster group? Contains about. 8 x 10^53 symmetries. That is

808,017,424,794,512,875,886,459,904,961,710,757,005,754,368,000,000,000

symmetries. what the fuck. both massive and specific. if that triangle with 6 symmetries is 2 dimensional - with this many symmetries how big must this monstrous object be?

196,883 dimensions.

in addition to that the monster group actually contains (including itself) 20 of those 26 sporadic groups. (Fun fact those groups contained within the monster have been dubbed the Happy Family with the 6 outliers being named the Pariahs lmao). it's notable also bc it is very difficult to represent it concisely compared to other finite simple groups including the rest of the sporadics.

so it's just this.... thing. that is out there. we know what it is, we know its incredibly specific parameters, but of course we don't know WHY it's there or WHY those are the numbers you arrive at (if thats even a reasonable question to ask), it looks very arbitrary but it is ultimately a fundamental mathematical entity regardless of how inelegant it may seem, the universe is an interesting place

this weird abstract yet very specific structure has connections to other fields of mathematics - it has a connection to modular functions as described by the monstrous moonshine conjecture. yes it's actually called that and it is waaay above my paygrade but this somehow connects to a 24-dimensional variant of string theory (note I absolutely hate string theory for unrelated reasons but the mathematics of it is very interesting) in some way.

in short there exists an incredibly high dimensional object with an obscene number of symmetries that can can be used in tandem with something from a seemingly totally unrelated area of mathematics (the modular j-function) to describe a physics theory. ?????????? they called it moonshine bc they thought it was an absolutely batshit thing to even consider but apparently it works

that is my best attempt at explaining this so here are some resources I really recommend:

additionally I'd like to just plug John Conway as a whole here he's in the first video linked talking about his work regarding the monster group and the moonshine conjecture. you can find him on the channel speaking on other topics including the game of life which is an unrelated but very interesting cellular automaton that is available free online to be played with. his group theory work is what stands out to me though, he sadly passed of covid a few years back at an old age but he is one of my favorite mathematicians of all time not only because of his work but also because he just seems like a chill fucking guy

my fanciful conclusion is like. this Thing evokes in my mind images of angels or eldritch horrors or what have you. vast and incomprehensible it dwells in a space so complex it defies any human understanding beyond the mathematics used to describe it. it is beautiful and unthinkable and perhaps i want to kiss it. the end

(If anyone with a better mathematical background than us which is not at all a high bar to set wishes to add to this please do!)