#but they aren't actually THAT book accurate

[heating-element]

The problem with the concept of male socialisation is that it is based on a premise that is fundamentally innacurate, i.e. the assumption that your were raised as a Man and therefor your are, in action and thought at least, more or less a Man and in order to stop being a Man you have to remove this fundamentally Masculine thing that was somehow instilled in you

And yes, it is accurate that there is a series of processes in amab childrens lives that attempts to condition them into whatever their culture of masculinity is, but what it doesn't acknowledge is that the fundamental purpose of this is that you are meant to come out of it with an ability to perform whatever social function it is that designates you as a Man in your culture. That's male socialisation. It's the thing that allows you to signal to Proper Men that you are also a Proper Man so you don't face any consequences. However, when you are not a Proper Man, this is more or less impossible.

Male socialisation for transfems (and queer cis men to a lesser extent) is basically just a long series of friends, acquaintances, family members etc trying to shove you through a hole that you don't fit through. And there's only two things you can do, you can either cut bits of yourself off til you squeeze through, or you can just keep getting pushed, painfully and fruitlessly, and hope they give up.

And neither of these approaches actually works. Because of course, they aren't going to give up. Because, remember, a lot of these people pushing you actually like you. They think they're helping you. And in a way, they're not completely wrong, because being anything other than a Real Man is painful and difficult (largely due to these same people, but that's beside the point). So they aren't going to stop pushing you until you get away from them, a process that is difficult and painful and if you ever go back they will just start pushing again

But even if you shave away all the undesirable bits of yourself, and you cut your hair and grow a beard and wear the right clothes, it still doesn't work. Because you still don't fit right. And they know it. Sexuality and gender are two things that people have a very good sense for. And people will see it in everything. The way you walk, the way you speak, the way you hold a glass, the way you stand, the way your wrists move, the movies you like and the books you read and the colour of your shirt and how you style your hair and how you cut your nails and on and on and on. The very best you can hope for, after years and years of meticulous shaving away, is that you work yourself down from being a tranny to being a faggot. And sure, it is better to be a faggot, mostly, but you still aren't a Real Man. And so they'll keep pushing anyway.

Male socialisation is the process by which cis men become Men, but it's also the process by which transfems realise you aren't a Man, and you never will be, and people will always hate you for it. It isn't the process by which you gain some almighty Male Power, it's a process that uses that power against you because you can't wield it right

[caldella]

I keep seeing all these posts about Millie's pregnancy test and Blitzø trying to figure out whose it is and flipping out, and there's one funny/maybe kind of sad once you process it scenario people aren't really mentioning:

I don't even think Stolas would know what that pregnancy test was if you showed it to him.

He's probably never seen one before and doesn't know how they work. Generally fertilized bird eggs are laid within days. Being a semi-immortal Hellborn species, maybe we can extend that to a couple weeks or even a month for bird Goetia. But that's not very long and kind of when pregnancy test results start being accurate. There are maybe some initial egg signs, but I'm guessing by the time bird Goetia are certain they're going to have a kid, the egg shows up. I don't see him having actual proper sex education, either. You can't tell me he was given the tools to fully understand how the process worked for anything besides the basics that involved his marriage. He's had maybe a textbook on bird Goetia and otherwise learned sex via his romance/erotica books, many of which seem to revolve around other bird Goetia.

"I don't understand. What are you showing me? Is that some sort of thermometer?"

"Blitzø, If I was or could be 'pregnant,' there would already be an egg on the couch right now."

[uhcasual]

All illustrations for The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Russian Edition Exclusives, Volume 5

Finally got my hands on the russian истари/Istari publication volume 5 for Mo Dao Zu Shi, so here are high resolution scans of the art exclusive to this particular edition. The art here portrays events that occur in the post-storyline extras.

Full resolution available for download here (tumblr compresses images a little)

Illustration Artist: Marina Privalova (Baoshan Karo)

[Vol. 1] - [Vol. 2] - [Vol. 3] - [Vol. 4] - [Vol. 5] (part 1)

[rosesocietyy]

The more I dive into book lestat the farther my eyes roll to the back of my head at the immense outrage ep 5 got. y'all are so fucking unserious

[ronanlynchbf]

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

rereading the worst scene I have ever written in my entire life and why did harrison have to drag lonan so hard here:

The sound of Lonan’s voice is like crashing into a concrete wall.

[broke-on-books]

I think the universe just hates me personally (can't find my scooby doo comics)

[moonchild-in-blue]

@hookedhobbies 🤭

BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA costumes appreciation: ― Lucy Westenra’s lace dress (costume design by Eiko Ishioka)

[a-book-of-creatures]

I think I stumbled upon some kind of ichthyological forbidden knowledge. Opened up a book of names that were never meant to be read.

You've probably heard of "can-opener smoothdream", right? It's practically a meme by now.

But the thing is, it's a deep-sea fish. And deep-sea fish have historically not had English names because nobody drops them into the conversation over a hot cuppa. Sure, there's generic stuff like hatchetfish and barreleye, but when you want to refer to the actual fish you're probably saying such euphonious phrases as Diretmus argenteus, Sternoptyx diaphana, or maybe even Opisthoproctus soleatus.

So whence "can-opener smoothdream"? Certainly no non-ichthyologist has ever used that name. It's not even a direct translation of the scientific name Chaenophryne longiceps - that would be "long-headed gape-toad". Which to me is even cooler than "can-opener smoothdream".

But I digress. The "dream" bit comes from the anglerfish family Oneirodidae, from oneiros, "dream", because those marvelous fishes look like they came out of a dream (Pietsch, 2009).

Note that Pietsch (2009), more or less the anglerfish bible, uses English names at the genus level only. So Chaenophryne is the smoothhead dreamers genus but no mention is made of "can-opener smoothdreams". So no luck there.

Wikipedia, root cause of a lot of misinformation, has this to say.

"Longhead dreamer" is a far more accurate name. And in fact, despite Wikipedia prioritizing "can-opener smoothdream" (because it's funny?), the links listed use "longhead dreamer" and "smoothhead dreamer" as the name and "can-opener smoothdream" as an alternative.

So. Again. Where did "can-opener smoothdream" come from?

The answer, as it turns out, lies with McAllister (1990).

In the book A List of the Fishes of Canada, ichthyologist D. E. McAllister sought out to list every single fish known to Canadian waters, providing both an English and a French name.

And when there wasn't an English name, like for most deep-sea fishes, he arbitrarily gave them a name. And his names "differ in many instances from the widely accepted names" (Holm, 1998)

This had varying results. This is his name for one of the netdevil anglerfishes.

The humpback anglerfish or blackdevil anglerfish becomes a werewolf (????).

This one is just confusing.

The white-spotted lanternfish or Rafinesque's lanternfish instead becomes...

And most embarrassingly, the Mediterranean spiderfish gets saddled with something that "violates the tenet of good taste" (Holm, 1998).

This then is the original source of "can-opener smoothdream". It was invented by an ichthyologist in 1990, and has seen little to no use outside of how bizarre the name is.

Maybe McAllister's goofier names will catch on. Who knows? They certainly aren't very popular in the scientific community though.

References

Holm, E. (1998) Encyclopedia of Canadian Fishes (review). The Canadian Field-Naturalist, 112, p. 174-175.

McAllister, D. E. (1990) A List of the Fishes of Canada. National Museum of Natural Sciences, Ottawa.

Pietsch, T. W. (2009) Oceanic Anglerfishes: Extraordinary Diversity in the Deep Sea. University of California Press, Berkeley.

[carriesthewind]

I reread the IA's contemporaneous post justifying their "National Emergency Library", and one of the things that struck me is just how selfish it was.

(It was also full of falsehoods, ranging from exaggeration to outright lies, but that's another matter.)

While 2020 feels like it was several decades in the past, it was actually only a few years ago. And I remember March of 2020! I was there! And oh my god, is this post right in line with every other selfish, demanding asshole determined to make a global pandemic all about themselves!

First of all, there is the language of the post - it is a "tremendous and historic outage" that books are unavailable to patrons because libraries are closed for the pandemic. "Right now, today, there are 650 million books that tax-paying citizens have paid to access that are sitting on shelves in closed libraries, inaccessible to them."

Missing from this outrage is a recognition that, like. Librarians are people. They get sick, and die.

They did get sick, and died.

Libraries were closed not only to protect patrons and the public, but librarians too. Libraries were closed to protect people, human beings. Because generally speaking, even the most enthusiastic supporters of access to books and knowledge, prioritize lives over books.

The AI's post, however, reeks of an entitlement to things that *my* tax dollars paid for. Libraries and library collections aren't a public good. They're something *I* should be able to access anytime I want, damn the context or the consequences.

(Was it also a historic outrage when I had to wait several months to check out Nona the Ninth, because so many other people were checking it out?)

Second, as I said, I remember early 2020. And in spring and summer of 2020, there was more free content on the internet than before or since. So many people and so many institutions were bending over backwards to provide people with books and tv shows and music and podcasts and virtual tours and collections and just about anything that someone could figure out how to digitize. So many people were giving away books for free, or writing/recording new content to give away for free. I can't even remember how many times I heard or read someone telling their readers or listeners just to pay what they could, if they could. So many people and institutions were giving away so much, do so much, to provide access to knowledge and books and entertainment and information.

And in that moment, the IA decided to steal from people. When so many people, so many authors, were acting so selflessly, they decided that it wasn't good enough. And instead of giving away themselves, they decided to steal from authors and pat themselves on the back for "meet[ing] this unprecedented need," when they didn't even actually do anything themselves. Or maybe more accurately, the only thing they did was something irrelevant to the actual needs of the community, something they wanted to do anyway, something to try to use a pandemic as an excuse to advance their agenda.

Because third, there is zero concern for the population of patrons actually most impacted by the closure. The IA cares, to a fault, only about information being digitized.* But many people who use physical libraries, many of the people most impacted by their closure, are people who do not have access to the AI's so-called "open library." And people who could access digital books generally continued to have access to their library's e-book services, and to tons of other free content. The patrons who were actually in the most need are ignored as irrelevant.

*And I want to be clear - they care that information is digitized, not about digital access. "Access" means more than information being digitized and theoretically being able to be read.

It's so clear that IA didn't really care about the patrons of physical libraries. Instead, they saw a real problem, and instead of working toward any solutions, decided to use it as a prop to push their own agenda. (Again, while people were dying.)

It's just all so deeply selfish.

[artbyblastweave]

A few years ago, there was a thread on r/asksciencefiction where someone was fishing for a superhero story with an inverted Omni-Man dynamic, or a setting where Homelander's initial presentation is played straight- a setting where the Superman figure actually is the paragon of morality he's initially presented as, but no other superhero is- a situation where you've got one really competent true-blue hero standing head-and-shoulders in power above what's otherwise a complete nest of vipers.

Someone in the thread floated My Hero Academia; while I haven't read it, my understanding is that that's not really an accurate read of what's going on with Stain's neurosis about All-Might being the only "real hero," that the point of that arc is that Stain's got an insane and unreasonable standard and that taking an endorsement deal, while bad, isn't actually grounds for execution. My own contribution to the thread was Gail Simone's Welcome to Tranquility, where a major part of the backstory involved the faux Justice-League's Superman analogue having a little accident because he's the only one who thought they were morally obligated to go public with the secret life-extending macguffin that the rest of the team is using to enforce comic-book time on themselves and their loved ones; while only a couple members of the team are directly in on it, the rest are conveniently incurious. And Jupiter's Legacy gets tantalizingly close to this- The Utopian, a well-meaning stick-in-the-mud, ultimately gets blindsided and couped by his scheming brother who creates a superhero junta staffed by a Kingdom-Come-style glut of third-gen superheroes, who are framed as fundamentally self-interested because only came onto the scene after most of the situations you legitimately need a superhero to handle have been neutralized. (The rub, of course, is that the comic is also highly critical of the Utopian's intellectually incurious self-righteously 'apolitical' approach to superheroism- if for no other reason than that it left him in a position to get blindsided by a coup!) While Jupiter's Legacy gets the closest, all three of these are only loosely orbiting around the spirit of the original idea, and there's something really interesting there- particularly if the Superman figure isn't hopelessly naive in the same way as Utopian. Because first of all, if you're Metaman or Amazingman or whatever brand-name alias the writer goes with, and you really earnestly mean it, and you put together a team of all the other most powerful heroes on earth in order to pool your resources, and then with dawning horror you gradually begin to realize that everyone in the room besides yourself is a fascist or a con artist or abuser or any other variant of a kid with a magnifying glass eyeing that anthill called Earth- What the hell is your next move?

Do you just call the whole thing off? Can you trust that they'll actually go home if you call the whole thing off? I mean you've put the idea in their heads, are you sure that they aren't going to, like, start the Crime Syndicate in your absence? Do you stick around to try and enact containment, see if getting all of these people on a team makes them easier to keep on a leash? But that's functionally going to make you their enabler pretty quickly, right? Overlooking "should you kill them-" can you kill them? You're stronger than any individual one of them- are you stronger than all of them? The first time one of them really crosses a line in a way you can't ignore- will that be a one-on-one fight? Are they the kind of people capable of putting two-and-two together and pre-emptively ganging up on you if you push back too hard? Do you just start trying to get them killed, or keep them at each other's throats so they can't coordinate anything really nasty? Can you squeeze any positive moral utility out of them, or is that just a way to justify not doing the hard work of taking them down? There've been works where the conceit is to question the default assumption that Superman in specific would be a good person, and there've been works where the conceit is to question the default assumption that superheroes in general would be good people. Something to be done, I think, with questioning the default assumption that everyone Superman becomes professionally close to would be good, and to explore how he'd handle it if they weren't.

[megwritesriddles]

Secret's Safe ༊*·˚

18+ MDNI !!!

Pairing: Tom Riddle x Fem! Reader / You

Summary: Kinktober 2024 Day 15 - Blackmail. Reader discovers Riddle's true blood status and divulges this information to him. Riddle assumes she must be here to blackmail him and immediately attempts to seduce her, but things aren't all that simple for him actually going through with it.

Tags: Blackmail, Mildly dubious consent (barely), P in V sex, Biting, Virgin!Tom (implied), Pureblood politics, Sexism, Implied/Referenced death, murder and violence, Unspoken feelings, Feelings realisation, Oddly quite fluffy, Tom is forced to be vulnerable emotionally.

Word count: 5.5k

Read it on ao3! | Masterlist

Authors note: Lets not discuss how long this is or how late it is, thank you!! This ended up way different than I imagined going in, Tom is a bad guy in this like he's committed murders... but he's also inexperienced and realises he loves you so... This is nowhere near as dark as I thought it would be, the blackmail is barely blackmail!! Hope you like it mwah ( ◕◡◕)っ ♡

︶⊹︶︶୨୧︶︶⊹︶

Well, this was certainly interesting. You’d never expected this, but the more you thought about it, the more it made sense. The surname Riddle had never sounded familiar to you, and growing up, at all the Pureblood parties, no one had ever met Tom or any supposed family members. After the first year, he had started attending, but never with any family in tow, usually as a guest of Abraxas or somebody else. Why you hadn’t questioned it before you had no idea, you felt rather foolish now. Hindsight was always 20/20. Of course, there were those few pureblood families, like the Weasleys, who didn’t bother about those sorts of events, but Riddle had never given the impression that he came from such a family, always implying very powerful origins. In a way, he wasn’t wrong, with one discovery came another, that he was the heir of Slytherin. This was peripherally problematic to you, but you couldn’t put your finger on why it bothered you so much. Some distant memory writhing in the back of your mind, not making itself known. But the most glaring discovery for you had been Riddle’s muggle father. You were sure nobody knew about this, or else he certainly wouldn’t be in the circles he was in. 

The way you had discovered it had been rather unlikely, something Riddle surely wouldn’t have been counting on. You and Walburga were partnered on a project for Advanced Charms, it being the final year of Hogwarts, standards for what you came up with were high. After weeks of deliberation and workshopping, you’d settled on a book which could tell you family histories. Initially, the book’s function was for you to write in a plant name, and to see which other plant species it was closely related to and other pieces of information. Certainly interesting, but a little too Herbology for either of your liking, spitting out information neither of you could quite understand. After presenting the book to Professor Beery for a hefty extra credit and house point sum, you went back to workshopping. You’d figured out one evening how to get it to trace family histories, and this was the perfect idea, as all the information that came out was easy to understand, but could also be deeply valuable. You’d spent all evening fine-tuning it with Walburga. She was intimately familiar with her family history, so you used her as a control, making sure the facts remained accurate as you messed with the magic. It was finally done, and you would be presenting it next week. You’d taken the book back to your dorm and messed around with it before bed, taking great amusement in some of the ancient wizard’s names. Naming conventions had been so odd at some points. You traced practically every single one of your friends' histories, before landing on Riddle’s. 

Riddle wasn’t really a friend, as such. You sort of ran in the same circles and you were courteous to one another, but you weren’t close and at times you found him a little irksome. Perhaps it was this mythos that surrounded him, the idea that he had slept with three-quarters of the girls at Hogwarts who were of age. The idea that he could have you undone with one touch and that he did so often. Part of you was almost bitter he hadn’t propositioned you, given how much he allegedly got around, but you always felt he was intimidated by your intelligence. All the other girls, sure they were driven and intelligent, but they seemed to dumb themselves down around him, make themselves smaller. It was probably not even a conscious thing, many of the pureblood girls had been taught growing up never to threaten a man’s ego in any way. You’d always thought this was nonsense, that if you were more intelligent than a man that he ought to know it and needn’t be coddled, but for most of the girls, it just came naturally from a lifetime of training. You never bothered to shrink yourself around Riddle, to giggle and write off your high marks as a fluke if he came asking, you would simply say you did well because you were intelligent, and you guessed he didn’t like this because he avoided you for the most part. Whenever he did speak to you, it was usually to compare grades, or, in a group setting. He always seemed to know just a little too much about what was going on with you, what grades you’d gotten, what teachers you were meeting with. You chalked it up to him being Head Boy, but no one else received quite this much attention. 

You wrote down his name into the book anyway, figuring the surname ‘Riddle’ begat some entertaining first names. What immediately greeted you as the information materialised on the page had been a bit of a shock. His father, whose name was otherwise completely unfamiliar to you, did not have any parents listed, or further back. You sat in confusion for a moment trying to figure out why that could be, but came to no conclusions. You pushed the thought away and studied his mother’s heritage. Merope Gaunt. Gaunt, finally a name you recognised, but not a woman you could ever attest to having met at any pureblood events. You realise she’s listed as dead, that would perhaps explain a thing or two. You feel a hint of sympathy creeping over you at the realisation that both his parents are listed as dead, his father only rather recently. You wondered why he hadn’t mentioned to anyone that his father had died over the previous summer.  You trace his ancestry back all the way to Salazar Slytherin, momentarily impressed, before the realisation of why his father has no listed relatives hits you. The book was made only to track wizarding blood. His father was a muggle. 

The realisation was immediately brushed off. No, there was some other explanation, Riddle was one of the most pompous purebloods you knew, even by your standards, the idea of his father being a muggle was preposterous. You went back over the enchantments on the book, trying to figure out what other reason there might be for his father’s heritage to be blank, but come up empty-handed. He had to be a muggle. 

You keep the information to yourself for the next few days, turning it over in your mind. A muggle, it was very hard to believe, especially with how Riddle acted. He probably noticed your staring, but you couldn’t stop yourself from doing it, seeing him in an entirely new light. Tom Riddle, the orphan, the half-blood. It was confusing, to say the least. Your staring problem must have been worse than you thought because one day he sweeps you aside in the Slytherin common room and smiles charmingly.

“Is there an issue?” he prompts politely, eyes drinking in your face. “Only you keep staring,” you blink at him. You’re almost tempted to tell him ‘I know who you are,’ but you keep it inside for now.

“Shouldn’t you be used to that?” you smile. He chuckles slightly. 

“I don’t get the feeling you’re merely admiring me,” his eyes study yours for a moment and then he takes hold of your arm, leaning a little closer. “Tell me what it really is,” his voice is low and smooth as velvet, and for a moment you understand his mythos a little better. You glance around the busy common room. 

“I’m sure you wouldn’t like me to say it here,” you try to subtly warn him, but he clearly understands this to mean something suggestive, his brow raising. 

“I see,”

“If you really must know, then we must go somewhere private,” you insist, knowing how much this could blow up in his face if word spread around the common room. You’re not even sure why you’re shielding him from it, perhaps the revelation of his mother dying in childbirth makes you more gracious toward him. You’re surprised how much he hesitates, given how he’s interpreted the situation. If he’s supposedly slept with most of the girls in the year group, why would it be you who gives him pause? You know you’re not ugly enough for him to be this apprehensive, does he really feel so threatened by you? It all seems odd. Finally, he leads you away, toward his dorm room, private quarters for the Head Boy. You realise how this must all look, to him and to onlookers, but you’re sure he’s in for quite the disappointment when he discovers what this is really about. He gestures for you to sit at his desk and he sits on the edge of his bed. The distance he puts between you intrigues you, what is this about? 

“Well?” he urges, swallowing a little. Why is he so anxious? Does he know somehow already? You’ve never seen him like this before.

“This really isn’t what you think it is,” you begin. His brows furrow. “I uh… know about your father,” Riddle goes unbelievably tense and red in the face, his breaths becoming laboured. You watch him, curious. He glares at you scruntinisngly. There are several things you might be referring to, all of them bad, he doesn’t know from your expression which it is. 

“What?” he croaks, his usual composure hanging on by a thread, you’re worried he’s about to lash out and start smashing up the room and you with it. His body is taut like a bowstring.

“That he’s a muggle,” you respond. You can’t understand why he relaxes slightly at this, but he does, though he still looks tense and mortified. He puffs out a breath, rubbing a hand over his face. He’s not arguing, so you know it must be true. “And that he’s dead,” you add. He tenses all over again, his eyes flicking back to you. “Sorry for your loss,” he relaxes once more.

“Right yes… that was… terrible when he… died,” he puffs out, unsure how to interpret this situation. You don’t look angry or scared, so you must be missing a few puzzle pieces here. He should have expected that someone would discover this one day, his surname wasn’t a part of the sacred 28. He hadn’t known about that in the first year, and once he’d already introduced himself as pureblood, he could hardly backtrack or change his name, so he just prayed his confidence would keep him getting by, and surprisingly it had, until now. It wasn’t a surprise it was you who found out, you were always irritatingly observant, it was honestly more of a surprise it had taken this long. He stares at you for a moment and you stare back. “What do you want?” he asks, figuring you’ve come to gloat in his face and demand he do your homework for the rest of the year or something. He would do it, he really couldn’t afford this getting out, especially not to his Knights. The fact you hadn’t already told everyone indicated an intention to blackmail him, you could have easily spread the word already, but you were smarter than that, he knew you were.

“What do I want?” you tilt your head quizically.

“I assume you’re here to blackmail me, so just tell me already,” he sighs, resting his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. He was furious with himself that he hadn’t prepared in any way for this eventuality. What would he have done if you’d spread the word without coming to him first? His whole plan, everything he’d been working for would have crumbled in minutes. He would have probably killed you, although the thought gives him pause now, it wouldn’t have really fixed things anyway. 

Blackmail hadn’t actually crossed your mind, but you supposed you were in the perfect position to do so. As you watched him, discomposed for seemingly the first time in his life, you realised just how much he needed this information to remain secret with you. You could ask him for anything and he would probably do it. At your silence, Riddle lets out a frustrated howl and collapses back onto his bed, clearly thinking you’re playing some game with him. He runs his hands through his hair, staring up at the canopy above his bed. His hair is messed up, you realise you’ve never seen it like this, free of its immaculate style. The look suits him. His arms thud onto the bed at his sides and he groans again. You stand and come to kneel beside him on the bed without much thought. He looks up at you through his lashes, half angry, half intensely vulnerable. It's odd to be looking down at him like this, but it’s also a little exhilarating.

“Just tell me what you want, I’ll give it to you,” he pleads, staring up at you. “Come on, darling,” he tries his best to be his charming self even in this state, reaching for your hand. “I’ll do anything,” His cold hand on yours stirs something odd in you, he brings the back of your hand to his mouth and kisses it, his eyes locked on yours. He’s not sure what he’s doing, but it’s working, he watches as you blush. He kisses slowly up your arm, eyes locked on yours the whole while. As his lips brush the ticklish skin of the inside of your elbow, you finally withdraw your arm. He frowns, thinking he’d figured you out.

“Why have you never propositioned me?” you ask, your voice a little too serious for how insecure the question sounds leaving your lips. His brows furrow and he moves to sit up in front of you.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you’ve supposedly slept with nearly the entire legal female population of Hogwarts and you’ve never propositioned me?” you hate how insecure you sound, but it’s something that you realise has been bothering you for a long time, as stupid as it is. He stares at you.

“You’re supposed to be smart,” he scoffs, and then changes his approach, figuring offending you is a terrible idea at the moment. “Have you ever actually spoken to any girl who has a story about sleeping with me, or is it all hearsay?” his words make you comb back through all the wild stories you’ve heard. He’s right, none of them have ever come directly from someone, all having started with something to the effect of ‘my friend heard…’. You study his face for a moment and he raises a prompting brow.

“No, I suppose you’re right,” you admit, chewing your lip. There are so many things that you should have been paying more attention to, this was another plainly obvious fact with hindsight. “So… what’s the truth?” he looks away from you, hesitating. “Oh come on, as if I don’t know worse things about you by now,” you tease. He glares for a moment but concedes that you’re right about that. 

“None of it is true, no girl at this school is… good enough for me, I suppose,” he mumbles, sticking his chin up. 

“Good enough for you?” you hum.

“I can’t give myself away to just anyone… it’s…” he hesitates, knowing he sounds completely pathetic despite his attempts to reframe this. 

“You’re waiting for the right person?” you chuckle. “How uncharacteristic of you,” he huffs.

“Oh shut up, will you? It’s just… I don’t trust… very easily… and people underestimate how much trust is involved in an act like sex… you are completely vulnerable, physically and emotionally,” he crosses his arms defensively as he explains himself. “You could hardly defend yourself if the other person were to attack you during it,” you tilt your head at him. “It leaves you weak, in every sense of the word, so I have seen no need to participate,”

“That must have been a big disappointment to many witches,” you tease. He rolls his eyes. 

“I can usually charm my way out of any issues, and the gossip around my ‘conquests’ has persisted, so it can’t have caused that much strife,” he finishes. You hum, supposing he’s right. “None of the girls are intelligent enough for me here,” he asserts. You scoff.

“Awfully sexist of you,”

“Hardly,” he snaps back. “None of the boys are suitable either, but I don’t consider them because I’m not… that way inclined,”

“Anyway, I didn’t think you liked intelligence in a woman,” you add. 

“Why would I not? I love intelligence, I require intelligence, I would never fraternise with somebody lacking intellect, I would be far too bored,” he glances at you from the corner of his eye.

“But you don’t seem to like when I assert my intelligence,” you shrug.

“You’re different,”

“Why?” you laugh in disbelief. “I’m too intelligent that it threatens you?”

“No!” he hisses. “For one, you use your brains for the most infuriating of things, such as looking into my family history,” you’re tempted to interrupt him and tell him that the discovery had been an accident but you stay quiet. 

“And for two?” you press. He’s silent for a long moment. 

“Is this what you wanted? Blackmailing me into an argument? Because I’m sure we could have found a reason to argue without all this,” he griped. You sighed. No, you hadn’t particularly wanted to argue, you hadn’t particularly wanted anything, you’d intended to keep this information to yourself really and then when it had come out, you hadn’t considered blackmail until he brought it up. Your mind flashes back to his kisses up your arm, a warm tingle going through you. 

“Were you attempting to seduce me earlier?” he glances at you, his cheeks just slightly pink. “Even though you’re waiting for the right person?” you add with a chuckle. He sighs. 

“I might have been, I figured it was my best bet,” he shrugs it off, feigning nonchalance. 

“What would you have done if I had gone with it?” you tilt your head curiously.

“Gone with it, I suppose,” he looks down, fiddling with his tie pin, feeling more uncomfortable than he was ever used to feeling.

“You’d have slept with me?” you enquire. He nods subtly, puffing out a short breath. “Even though I might have stabbed you in the back or something?” you tease. He glares at you.

“You wouldn’t do that,” he dismisses.

“So you trust me?” you challenge. He immediately opens his mouth to protest but then falters. Does he trust you? He knows you would never attack him physically, and he tries to brush that off as the belief that you are physically weak, but he knows that’s not true. If he were to attack you, he has no doubt you would put up quite a fight, but that you would never initiate. He hadn’t even thought through the fact that despite all his reservations, he really had been trying to seduce you, and not even reluctantly. He would have slept with you, and he wouldn’t have been afraid of what you might do to him. Sure, the emotional vulnerability was still a point of contention, but initially, he hadn’t had the time to consider that. Now that he’s given it some proper consideration, why is he not changing his mind?

“I suppose,” his voice is strained, like this is taking a great deal of effort for him to say. “That in some weird way I do trust you,” his expression is pained and he won’t look at you, but you know those words mean way more than they do on the surface. He’s never admitted to trusting anyone before, at least not truthfully, and to admit it to you… it’s frightening, and yet he did it anyway. You hold out your hand to him to see what he’ll do. He takes your cue despite himself, taking hold of it and kissing the back of your hand a few times. His lips are gentle and you quite like the feeling. Sure, he told you the rumours about him were false, but perhaps he really could make you come undone with just one touch, if you only showed him where to put it. “I’ll sleep with you if that’s what you like,” he admits quietly. “I need you to keep my secret, I’ll do anything,”

“Would you like to sleep with me?” you ask. He looks up at you, lips pressing against your wrist. His look is a little pained again, you’re not sure how to read it.

“I’ll do it,” he grits out.

“But do you want to? I don’t want to force you to sleep with me…” you try again. He gives you that pained look once more. He doesn’t want to say it out loud, to admit to such weaknesses as need and lust, he hopes you understand without words. He kisses all the way up your arm, leaning closer and caging you in as he starts to press kisses to your neck. You exhale shakily, placing your hands on his shoulders as he continues to lavish you with tender kisses. He presses you back, back until you fall onto his pillows and he follows you down, positioning his body over you, his hands on either side of your shoulders. He’s breathing hard as he looks down at you, his pupils dilated. You stare back up at him, still a little unsure. “Riddle… don’t force yourself, I don’t–”

He cuts you off with a deep kiss to your lips, you gasp slightly and he takes the opportunity to slip his tongue into your mouth, exploring slowly. This kiss is not forced, this kiss is genuine and furiously wanting and the thought makes you moan. He shivers in return, kissing a little harder. Your hands come to his shoulders again as he comes to rest on his forearms, his neck no longer straining to you. You part your legs so he can settle between them, his hips pressing to yours. You can’t help but gasp again when you feel his erection press against you. He smiles against your lips, his signature cocky smirk returning. 

“You sound amazing when you gasp like that for me,” he taunts. You roll your eyes, kissing him once more. It’s almost impressive how he’s able to maintain that arrogant air throughout all this. You hate it, yet you can’t deny the soft pulsing feeling between your legs. He continues to kiss you, his lips pressing against yours, his tongue slowly swirling and caressing, the sound of your lips meeting is both erotic and hypnotic, lulling you further into your aroused state. Your eyes are closed in bliss, but occasionally you open them for a glimpse of him. His lashes flutter as he kisses you, his cheeks are flushed which you didn’t even realise was possible before today, and his hair falls forward, surprisingly curling up a little as it encounters the sweat forming on his forehead. He kisses you like it’s his favourite thing in the world, gentle yet thorough, and you hope it is so that you might get to do this with him again. His kisses get a little needier as you feel him hardening further against you, pressing against you more insistently. Your hand settles on the back of his neck and you hold him in place as he kisses you. He grunts appreciatively, sucking on your bottom lip. He sits up suddenly, disconnecting your lips. You pant as you stare up at him in confusion, wondering if he’s stopping this from going further, but instead, he’s loosening your tie. You lie there and let him do the work, after all, he’s meant to be keeping you sweet. He doesn’t seem to mind. He takes great satisfaction in slowly peeling away your clothes, discarding your tie, and then unbuttoning your shirt. He’s making you vulnerable beneath him and he’s drunk on the feeling, although, he doesn’t intend to hurt or exploit you, he’s never had such pure intentions in anything he’s done before in his life. Which is odd, considering you’re about to sleep together. He traces the lace of your bra with his fingertips. “Been expecting me?” he teases, wondering about how nice the bra is, black and lacy.

“No, just a happy accident,” you chuckle as he runs the lace between his fingers. He’s a little disappointed that you hadn’t had this all planned out all along, but he figures there’s plenty of time for that in the future. It doesn’t occur to him at the moment that he’s just admitted to himself that he intends to do this again with you. He takes hold of your waist and eases you up to sit. He gives you a few gentle kisses on your neck, making you throw your head back and then he reaches around to your back to unclasp your bra. He’s heard horror stories of embarrassment from his peers, so takes a moment to acquaint himself with the mechanism, running his hands back and forth along your back as you rest heavily against his chest, your chin on his shoulder. Once he understands how it works, he uses both hands to unhook it easily. He slides the straps down your arms and bares you to his gaze. You lean back to give him a view, enjoying his wide-eyed look. He cups your breasts in his hands and kisses you once again. He lays you back down, gently kneading your flesh, groaning at the feeling. You’re soft and warm and it feels so good that he wishes you’d found out he was half-blood earlier, or that he’d been less stuck-up this whole time and propositioned you like you seem to have wanted. He moves his hands down to your stomach, stroking for a moment before popping to button on your skirt and sliding down the zip. He then eases the fabric down over your hips.

“Matching set,” he comments upon spying your lacy black underwear. “Sure you weren’t expecting me?” you roll your eyes. 

“Yes, I’m sure,”

“Someone else?” he questions as uninterestedly as possible. You chuckle, sensing the hint of jealousy in his tone.

“No, just wanted to feel good for myself,” he nods at your answer, hoping you don’t spot his relief. He runs his hands up and down your hips and waist, occasionally squeezing the supple flesh. 

“The female body is quite… pleasant under the hands,” he comments, kneading your hips gently. You give him a look. “Well… your body is anyway,” he runs his thumbs over your stomach. You smile up at him and he avoids your gaze, not wanting to confront the way that look just made him feel. He decides to speed things along, desperate to come out of this alive. He moves back enough to remove his own tie and shirt, secretly enjoying the way you’re watching. Then he stands and slowly lowers his trousers, taking his boxers with them. There’s no use delaying the inevitable and he’s hardly ashamed of his body. He steps out of his trousers and sits back down between your legs. He kneads your thighs as he lets you look him over.

“That scar on your chest–” you begin but he cuts you off quickly with a kiss, not wishing to discuss this right now when he’s so close to you, to having you. If you started asking about all his various scars, you’d be here a long time, and you’d run away from him well before he finally got to sink into your cunt for the first time. The thought stirs his cock. No, he can’t let you ask questions until later, he needs to have this at least once, he hasn’t even realised how much he’s been waiting for it. For… you. His cock rests heavily on you through the lace of your underwear, hot to the touch. He kisses you intently, sensual and all-consuming until you forget your line of questioning. He’s smug that he’s able to do that to you, perhaps he should have kissed you the second you started bringing things up you weren't supposed to. Perhaps by the end of this, you’ll have forgotten how it started and only remember the way he’d made you feel. Yes, that would be good. The thought urges him on, he nearly rips off your underwear. You squeak indignantly and he kisses your neck in an effort to placate you. He didn’t really care if he’d ripped them or not, but he couldn’t have you turning your back on him now. Not after he’s bared himself like this. He reaches down and lines himself up with you, ready to plunge in, but one last thought keeps him at bay.

“Are you on the potion?” he grunts, nuzzling into your neck. 

“Yeah,” you swallow, staring down at where the two of you are about to be joined together. He waits for nothing else, easing himself into you, he groans loudly against your neck, the warmth surrounding him feeling euphoric. Your arms settle around his back, holding him close to you and he lets you, leaning against you heavily. He grits his teeth, trying to keep in control, but he can’t. His hips start rutting into you fast, he needs this and he has you now, he can’t stop himself. You grip his shoulders hard, gasping and wailing, the sounds only egging him on. 

“Yeah?” he groans between thrusts as you whine sweetly in his ear. “That feel good..? fuck…” he’s not one to usually swear in this way, part of his charming demeanour, but he can’t help it slipping out with you. You make him all sorts of vulgar that he’s never been before. He pounds into you, glad that you don’t seem to mind his ferocity. He’ll be gentle with you some other time, but right now, all this pent-up energy needs to come out, and you’re receiving it so well. “Taking me so well, darling,” he chokes out, and you moan in response, seemingly touched by his words. He lifts himself up onto his hands, staring down at you, his hips slamming into yours. He watches your beautiful face in fascination as it twists with pleasure. He’s never taken so much enjoyment in making someone feel good before, it reminds him of the feeling he gets when he exerts power over someone, but better, because it’s you and he– 

He can’t finish that thought, he refuses to. It’s too much. He keeps up his relentless pace, closing his eyes because the sight of you is stirring his chest along with the stirring in his stomach. His thrusts slow, but become deeper and more powerful. You moan unabashedly under him and the sound invades his mind, consuming him completely. He leans back down and buries his face in your neck biting down as his hips stutter and he spills deep inside you. The biting is the only thing preventing him from saying something he knows he’ll regret in his dizzy orgasmic state. Three disgusting little words that he’s never thought before in his life, that surely, he can’t mean now, even if they’re fighting their way out of his mouth. When he feels you orgasming around him, he clamps down on your neck harder, tasting a little blood. He finds himself feeling sorry for doing it. He lets go, gasping for breath. He presses a kiss to the bite mark on your neck, reluctantly apologetic. You whimper beneath him and he pulls back to check you’re okay. You are, just overwhelmed, he is too, though he’s not letting it show as blatantly as you are. He withdraws slowly from you, whining in tandem with you at the feeling. He sits back up between your legs, looking down at you. Your eyes are closed as you gather yourself. You trust him enough to lie there with your eyes closed, he could do anything to you right now. Things he has done to others before, and yet there you lie, trusting him like he trusts you. He scoops you up into his arms and rests your head against his shoulder. 

“I’m sorry for drawing blood,” he mumbles as if it’s enough of an excuse for him to hold you like this. He kisses the bite mark again, secretly a little thrilled that it’s there, a physical reminder of all this. He soothes your back, rubbing soft circles, an action he’s never performed before. “You’ll keep my secret right?” he asks, and realises suddenly he doesn’t know what he’s referring to. The fact of his blood status? The lie of his mythos? The fact he’s just slept with you, been this vulnerable? Or… the worst one of them all? The unspoken words that he’s sure you’re smart enough to have heard in the silence by now. You don’t know which he’s referring to either, but you answer sincerely nonetheless. 

“Your secret is safe with me, Tom,”

︶⊹︶︶୨୧︶︶⊹︶

xoxoxo

thank you to @i-live-in-spite and several anonymous asks whose ideas I pulled from a little to form this plot, lots of love ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡

[niteshade925]

April 20, Beijing, China, National Museum of China/中国国家博物馆 (Part 2 - Dehua white porcelain exhibition/德化白瓷展 continued):

This was actually the very first piece I encountered at the entrance to the exhibition, a gigantic basket of flowers (probably over 1 meter tall and over 1 meter wide?), the entire thing made of porcelain.

And to reiterate, every part of every piece is porcelain. Though I will say that despite the ultra-realistic shape of the flower petals and leaves, the only detail that hinted at these flowers being made out of porcelain was that the painted colors weren't as vibrant as real flowers. That's it. If you don't examine it up close you really can't tell that it's all porcelain.

This is a good place to roughly introduce the technical side of Dehua white porcelain. The color of Dehua white porcelain mainly comes from the clay it uses, which is a special kaolin clay (gaolingtu/高岭土 in Chinese) found in Dehua. The clay mineral used naturally contains sericite and quartz, both of which are silica minerals and may have contibuted to the almost translucent look of the finished pieces; it also contains comparatively high amounts of potassium oxides, while the amount of iron oxides present is low. Due to the intricate designs of the pieces, the firing success rate may be very low. All those pieces involving super thin parts representing fabric or paper or flower petals? They may bring the success rate down to about 5%. Which means many of these pieces may be the 15th-20th try that finally survived firing. For people who are more interested in the chemistry of Dehua white porcelain, this paper goes into depth about it. There's also a great book in Chinese that goes into depth all about Dehua porcelain. (link goes to the first chapter only)

Continuing on, this is one of many Guanyin/观音 (Avalokiteśvara) statues at the exhibition, again with light clothing made out of porcelain:

More Guanyin statues in various classic depictions/forms, of which there are 33 total. This particular form is called Yulan Guanyin/鱼篮观音 (鱼篮 means fish basket), and comes from a legend where Guanyin transformed into a beautiful female fish vendor in order to guide mortals.

I believe the text here reads 持经观音 (Guanyin holding scripture)? The Guanyin here is holding a vase instead of a scroll though.

This is a classic depiction of Guanyin with a little bit of a modern-ish twist? Guanyin is often depicted with a vase of divine water, but here it forms a circle.

Despite some of the Guanyin statues having the amazing ceramic "clothing", this one remains my favorite, just because of the sense of space and serenity that this simple "frame" design creates:

And this very literal take on "thousand arm Guanyin" (千手观音). It's giving me that "biblically accurate angels" vibe:

Buddha floating atop.......idk what that is but the texture is amazing:

A fully painted statue of Guanyu/关羽. The gradient and detailed patterns on his robes is amazing:

Two identical (I think?) statues of the daomadan/刀马旦 (female commander archetype) character Mu Guiying/穆桂英 as she would appear in Chinese traditional opera, one painted and one unpainted. The word 巾帼英雄 in the title means "hero in women's headscarf", which is a term used exclusively in reference to female heroes. There's also the phrase "巾帼不让须眉", which roughly means "those in women's headscarves aren't inferior to those with beards and thick brows"

Porcelain depiction of Dunhuang's famous feitian/飞天 figures, in the classic pose of playing pipa in reverse (called 反弹琵琶). The clothing on this figure is made of porcelain, but this time also painted:

A porcelain statue of a couple in traditional Lhoba/Luoba/珞巴 clothing. The Lhoba/Luoba people are one of China's 55 少数民族 who mainly live in the south-eastern region of Tibet Autonomous Region, and as of 2019, it is the 少数民族 with the smallest population

A porcelain statue of a woman in traditional Miao/苗 clothing. I love how the artist recreated the traditional Miao silver crown in porcelain.

Painted porcelain bust of a woman wearing the Xunbu/蟳埔 "flower crown", named a zanhuawei/簪花围. The town of Xunbu in Fujian province is known for its tradition of zanhua/簪花, or wearing flowers in one’s hair.

Porcelain statue of a Buddhist monk wearing a zhiduo/直裰 (the robes on the inside) and a jiasha/袈裟 (काषाय/kasaya; the garment on the outside that drapes over the left shoulder). From its looks, one can tell that zhiduo originated from hanfu, but with some minor changes (sidenote, this is not the same as the zhiduo of Ming-era hanfu). Jiasha evolved from the clothing of Indian Buddhist monks, but there appears to be a lot of influence from Central Asia and ancient Greece as well (link goes to pdf; this article is in Chinese).

Some modern-themed pieces. Look at those dresses omg

A porcelain statue of Hua Mulan/花木兰, the character from traditional Chinese literature and opera that inspired the Disney character. I will say though this pose reminds me of someone else.......

[changbunnies]

Danse Macabre (18+)

♡ Pairing: Rich Serial Killer!Bang Chan x Fem!Reader

♡ Genre: loosely house on haunted hill inspired, vaguely 1950s au, horror themes, dark romance, smut, dead dove? read the warnings carefully and come to ur own conclusion on what you're willing to read before engaging pls :')

♡ Word Count: 3.9k

♡ Summary: The handsomely wealthy Christopher Bang and his wife are holding an overnight party at the house on Haunted Hill, and the rules are simple– stay the entire night, and $100,000 is their guest's to take; but little do the guests know that their hosts don't intend to let them leave.

♡ General Warnings: this is a serial killer au! do not read if you aren't prepared to read about death + murder + blood + injury! (i personally think i kept the descriptions tame and mild but everyone has different opinions so just use ur discretion and don't interact if you think you may be bothered by anything listed !), chan is referred to as chris, reader is very complicit in his crimes, they're a sick and twisted couple i fear!

♡ Smut Warnings: hybristophilia (i.e chan being a killer turns reader on), smut begins with chan talking about killing reader (intended to be strictly roleplay because he knows it excites them, but ur free to read it as him being serious if ur freaky like that lol), heavy usage of pet names (darling, my love, princess, sweetheart, dear), dom/sub dynamics, rough and a lil mean dom!chan, big dick chan because it's hot!, hair pulling, knife kink (but without a knife actually being used), corruption kink (not in the traditional way), tiny bit of nipple play, oral (m rec), facefucking, choking (on cock :) ), dacryphilia, manhandling, mirror sex, unprotected piv, creampie

♡ Notes: welcome to the first of my late kinktober fics ! this fic is loosely inspired by the opening scenes of the 1959 house on haunted hill movie, which is why the setting is vaguely 1950s!, this is the darkest fic i've tried my hand at writing, but i'm also a very big horror fan so writing this was very fun for me even tho it's not the genre i typically write for!

♡ Disclaimer: please read responsibly, and remember that this work is fiction and meant strictly for imaginative fun. the idols used in fics are more accurately faceclaims and personality outlines for imaginary characters, and should not be interpreted as factual representations of existing people.

"Darling, the guests are arriving. You must get ready," your husband, Christopher, emphasizes as he steps into the master bedroom you'll be occupying for the evening.

You're sitting at the room's vanity, all of your hair pulled to one side as you finish drying it after your long, relaxing bath. The scent of lavender bath oil and citrus shampoo linger over you– scents brought with you from home because you absolutely refuse to use the luxurious room's complimentary soap; no offense intended to the housekeepers who provided it, of course.

You look sweet as ever in your dainty little pastel blue babydoll gown, your robe delicate and sheer, hanging down off your shoulder and bunching at your elbows. You glance at Chris through the vanity mirror as you begin to comb your hair and free it of any leftover tangles, meeting his gaze with a smile.

"What's the rush, my love? Is it not customary to be late to a party?" Chris chuckles as he steps closer, runs his hand over your shoulder and down your spine as he leans down to kiss the top of your head. "Normally I'd agree with you. But this is your party, princess. You should greet your guests."

He's right, of course– today is your birthday, and he booked the entire mansion, as well as invited all the guests, at your behest. Christopher is the old money sort– a millionaire from a long line of millionaires before him. And because of that, your party comes with a fun gimmick– survive a night in the haunted mansion, and earn an easy hundred thousand dollars.

Assuming each guest successfully lasts until dawn, that's $700,000 for your husband to pay out– but that's no worry! That's still only chump change to a man as wealthy as Chris– and besides all that, no one's going to last until morning anyways; you're certain of that.

Naturally, as having a haunted house party was your idea, the venue was your choice– and the eerie mansion that sits lonesome upon Haunted Hill was the perfect pick. You've always found it strikingly beautiful from the outside, dreamed of one day stepping inside and drinking in all its Victorian charm.

It's certainly lived up to your expectations– and you're sure Chris will buy it for you if you express to him just how much you adore it; he'd buy you the entire world if you asked him to. For now, it's good enough that he rented it out for your sinister party.

You doubt the mansion is actually haunted– you don't put much stock in the stories of ghosts and ghouls that gave this hill its nickname; but it's a fun little tale, and you don't mind playing into it for the sake of a fun time. And it certainly helps make your party's tag line of "survive the night!" more inconspicuous.

"They're all strangers, sweetheart– I don't think they'll mind if I'm a little late," you tell him with a coy little smile as you set your comb back down on the vanity, satisfied with the condition of your freshly washed hair. He returns your smile with a mischievous one of his own, an amused glint in his eye.

"And remind me, darling, why it is that we've rented this house and invited a bunch of strangers to your party," Chris says as he leans down further, his breath fanning your ear. You giggle, almost innocently– though both of you know you're more than just complicit in his endeavors; you actively fuel them, his sadistic princess.

"You know why, my love," you reply, and to anyone else your smile would seem pure, almost angelic– but Christopher knows better. He knows that his kills excite you– perhaps even more than they excite him. He grabs a fist full of your freshly tamed hair, grins at the gasp you let out when he pulls your head back.

"And this is really what you want for your birthday? To see me stick my knife into someone's neck? To have me return to this room covered head to toe in their blood?" he questions as he looms over you now, but the answer is clear as it always is. He sees the way your thighs squeeze together, sees how the desire darkens your eyes– you’re sick; but that’s what he loves most about you.

"I could kill you too, you know. Take my knife right along your skin, just like this," he says as he runs a finger over one side of your neck to the other, gentle but purposeful in demonstration. Your breath hitches as you squirm in your seat, unable to turn your eyes away from him as he tightens the grip on your hair.

"But you wouldn't," you breathe, and Chris smiles, sweet and sinister as his eyes narrow at you, just how you like it. "Are you certain, dear? Do you think me incapable?" 

"I think you love me, as I love you," you answer, eyes starting to water from the sting of his tug on your scalp. "I love that you trust me," he replies as he trails his finger down, over your collarbones and to your chest. His fingers play with the dainty lace of your gown for just a moment before he slides his hand inside, cupping your breast in his large palm.

"I bet you wouldn't even bat a lid if I touched you with my knife here," he continues as he brushes his thumb over your hardening nipple, "you'd actually like it, wouldn't you, my love? Feeling the cold steel here, knowing I could easily cut you if I wanted to?" You whine, try to nod your head though his grip prevents it– all you can do is answer with a meek "yes" instead. 

"Speak up, darling. I'm afraid I couldn't hear you," he says with an expectant look that sends a shiver down your spine. Chris indulges your every desire, gives you everything in the world you want– so in the moments like these, in which when he asks something of you, you listen.

"Yes! I'd like it!" you answer, as loud and clear as you can bring your voice to be. Chris smiles, the sweet one he always gives you when you listen to him well, with his handsome dimples on display– a stark contrast from the darkness in his gaze. He releases his grip on your hair, cups your face and rubs his thumb over your cheek as he kisses you, greedy and deep. 

You always manage to get him hot; all it takes is a few simple words and that sweet gaze of yours to get him worked up– always the picture perfect image of innocence, pretty smiles and soft gazes that hide the depravity lingering beneath. So coy and demure, batting your lashes and acting like you don’t know at all what he does in the dead of night, acting like it doesn’t make your stomach twist– not with fear, but with desire.

Chris always sees through your act– he knows you. But he won’t pretend he doesn’t like it– the fun little game you share, where you gasp in faux surprise when he enters the room drenched in a new victim's blood, where your voice trembles and eyes well with tears when he grabs you hard, kisses you deep as the blood coating him transfers to your skin, sharing it with you.

And your answer now– whether it’s part of the game, or you truly would like feeling his knife cutting your pristine, unsullied skin, it doesn’t matter. He meant it when he said he loves that you trust him; and he loves that you wanted this. That all you wanted for your birthday was this party– to see him at his most unleashed, to indulge in the most sinful fun you could share as a couple. 

You never say what he is out loud– don’t call him a monster, a murderer, or a killer. You always dance around it, play innocent, though it’s obvious enough that you know the truth; and that’s more than enough for Chris. In fact, he prefers it this way; he likes to pretend he’s ruining your innocence, likes to pretend he’s a corrupting influence in your pure, perfect world, likes to pretend he’s ruining you.

Maybe in a way, he is– maybe you were a good girl before you found out his secret, maybe catching him in the act changed you, and maybe he’s dragging you down to hell with him by sharing this part of his life with you. Regardless, he loves what you have together– and he’ll keep playing this dangerous game with you, even if it ends in both your demise.

You melt into his kiss, as you always do– his lips, so plump and soft, always feel so perfect when they’re pressed against yours. You open your mouth for him the moment you feel his tongue swipe across your bottom lip, and he hums pleasantly as he slips his tongue in your mouth. It’s not the most slow or sensual kiss you’ve ever shared– rather, it’s needy, passionate and urgent.

Chris smiles at you again when he pulls away, enjoying the sparkle beholden in your eyes as you stare up at him. “Open your mouth for me, darling,” he says as he runs his thumb over your bottom lip. You do as instructed, the obedient thing you are for him, and he grins as he sticks his thumb inside your mouth. 

You wrap your lips around his thumb, sucking on it after he rests it against your tongue. “Oh, my love– you already knew what to do, didn’t you? Always know just what I want, yeah?” You hum as you nod, staring up at him oh so enticing and pretty. “You’ll suck my cock just like that, won’t you?” he continues, biting his lip to suppress a laugh when you eagerly nod and hum once more.

He removes his thumb from your mouth with a pop, hurries with undoing his belt and pulling his cock out of his trousers. His cock is mesmerizing, as always– so long and thick, with pretty veins and a leaking tip; but you aren’t given any time to idly sit and admire it. He wraps your hair around his fist, forces you to take his cock in your mouth all at once.

You choke and sputter as his cock presses against the back of your throat, your nose meeting his pubic bone in a flash, the neatly trimmed hair there tickling your skin. You can’t pull your head back with his grip forcing you down– but you wouldn’t dream of trying anyways; this is what he wants, and he'll have it.

Eyes watering, you do your best to relax your jaw and throat, to suck him just the way he likes, with your tongue massaging his veins. It’s a struggle to breathe through your nose, unprepared for his cock as you were– and it’s not until your eyes are dimming and head is swimming from the lack of oxygen that he pulls you back to let you take a breath.

It’s harsh, lungs positively burning as you take deep, heaving breaths. “Oh, I’m sorry, darling. Was that too much for you?” he asks, but his tone lacks its usual sincerity. “Chris–” you cry his name weakly after taking another breath, a few of the stray tears lingering on your lids finally spilling over as you blink. 

“My dear,” he cuts you off, forcing his cock past your lips once more, using the leverage of his grip on your hair to once again push your head down on him, making you take his length into your mouth until you choke on it.

“You weren’t going to complain, were you? No, I know you wouldn’t do that,” he says, voice wavering ever so slightly, breathier from the pleasure your mouth gives him. “Because I give you everything you want. Everything I do is for you– so you’ll let me use you, yeah?”

He’s right again, of course– you wouldn’t dream of complaining, of depriving him of what he wants from you. And you both know this is far from the limit of what you can take, but as with everything else, he likes when you pretend for him. When you cry and weakly try to protest, half hearted utterances of “too much!” or “I can't!” as tears roll down your cheeks– an act that always leaves him throbbing.

And Chris is good to you, always puts the entire world in the palm of your hands– so just as he says, you’ll thank him by letting him use you however he wants. You can’t nod your head, and any word you try to speak would be muffled and indecipherable– so you allow your jaw to go slack to show him you understand.

“Good, just like that,” he says as you lay your tongue flat, his praise a small kindness before he really lets loose. He easily controls your pace, yanks your hair back until only the tip of his cock remains in your mouth before shoving you back down to the base of it.

You try not to gag and choke, but most attempts go unsuccessful, more tears spilling from your eyes and drool spilling from the corners of your mouth with each full press of his length in your mouth. You can’t even feel the sting on your scalp anymore– all you can focus on is trying to breathe while he uses your mouth.

But all you can breathe is Chris, and he’s unforgiving in the way he moves you on his cock. You jaw quickly begins to ache, and every low groan that he releases is drowned out by the filthy sounds your mouth and throat create as you swallow around his cock.

He doesn’t let up until your vision darkens and blurs again, your nails digging into your own thighs as you try to hold out as long as possible. You gasp when he pulls you off his cock, heart pounding in your chest as the much needed air finally returns to your lungs.

You look up at Chris as he releases his grip on your hair, eyes lidded and hazy. He’s made a real mess of you– from the way his fingers have tousled your hair, to your freshly swollen lips, to the saliva that dripped down from your mouth to your chest. It’s pretty, really– so, so pretty; he almost wants to coo at you.

Instead, he strokes your cheek, offers you a look of faux sympathy– and you’re much too addled to realize he doesn’t mean it. You take the affection regardless of his intent, close your eyes and lean into his touch. You can hear him softly laugh, can easily imagine that smirk he must have on his face right now. 

“We’re not done yet, sweetheart,” Chris reminds you as he takes his hand away from your face. He grabs your arm, lifts you up from your chair and quickly turns you around, shoving everything resting on the vanity aside before he’s bending you over it. Your yelp of surprise is weak considering the abuse your throat just suffered, your hands lying flat as he presses you down against the hardwood. 

Your face smushes against the mirror, and how cold it is in contrast to how hot your face has become nearly makes you jolt. He shoves your panties to the side easily with his fingers, and you can hear him chuckle when you impatiently begin to squirm as he presses his cock against your dripping hole.

“Princess– stay still,” he says, and you can tell from his tone alone that it’s much more a demand than it is a request. You mutter a soft apology as you still your hips, and he waits a moment– waits to see if you’re going to move again before he acts. 

“Please,” you whine, make your desire to have his cock filling you up known, but ultimately don’t move. With a satisfied grin that you can just barely see on his face from your position against the mirror, he slowly, finally, starts to press his length inside your pussy.

He brings his hands to your hips, holds you as you begin to tremble from the feeling of his cock stretching you out. He doesn’t give you time to adjust– just squeezes your hips in his hands as he starts to fuck you from behind. “Oh, Chris– fuck,” you gasp, though it quickly becomes a moan. 

His cock feels so deep in this position, and it has your eyes rolling back with each motion of his hips into yours. “You’re so fucking wet, fuck–” he groans, his hands gripping you harder as he finds his rhythm. “Squeezing so tight– feels good, huh, princess? You like it when I fuck you like this?” 

“Yes, love it! Love you, love your cock, feels so good–” You cry, high pitched whimpers leaving you now as you try to nod your head, though its position against the mirror doesn’t make it easy. Chris groans again before he moves a hand to your hand, threads his fingers through your hair again to pull you back against him.

You reach backwards to support yourself, one of your hands clinging to his shirt while the other holds him behind the neck. “Look at yourself, darling. Look,” he says against your ear, and you focus your eyes on the mirror. You look at Chris through it first, take in the sight of the sweat dripping down his temple and the clench in his jaw as he fucks you. 

Your eyes travel down, met with the sight of your tits bouncing with each of his thrusts, threatening to spill out of your babydoll gown. Lower still, you watch as he takes his other hand off your hip, slides it past the hem of your gown to find your clit with his fingers. “Want you to watch yourself cum. Don’t stop looking,” he tells you, and you whine– it won’t be easy, but you’ll listen; you always do. 

He lets go of your hair, and is quick to wrap his arm around your body so that you don’t fall too far forward. You’re so wet that his fingers quickly become slick, and it makes his touch lack friction as they slide messily over your clit, but the feeling is still so delicious that you can’t complain. 

It’s so hard to maintain eye contact with your reflection, hard to prevent your eyes from rolling back whenever he hits your spot with his cock while playing with your clit, but you keep doing your best for him. He can feel you clenching harder as you continue to watch yourself unravel, feels your nails starting to dig into where they hold his neck.

“C’mon, love– cum for me, you can do it sweetheart,” Chris urges you, his voice soft and low in your ear. “I will! ‘m gonna– gonna cum for you!” you cry; and though you’d been doing so well, you can’t help but let your eyes roll back and close as you finally let go and gush on his cock. If it were a different day, he might scold you for not keeping your eyes open like he told you to– but it is your birthday today, so he’ll let it pass just this once. 

He pushes you back down onto the vanity as you ride out the last of your orgasm, face once again smushing against the mirror as he grabs your hands and holds them behind your back at the wrists, fucks you rough and deep as he chases his own release. You whimper and tremble, unable to escape the sensitivity you feel, or able to grip anything to ground yourself– all you can do is take it. 

“Can’t! Chris, please– I can't, t-too much, too much!” your voice warbles as you cry, the pleasure you feel overwhelming. “Yes you can,” he says as you writhe helplessly in his grasp, your fingers clenching into desperate fists where he holds them against your back. “You can take it, I know you can.”

You’re going to cum again, you know it– he doesn’t even have to touch your clit again to get you there, because the tip of his cock is kissing your spot so good that you’re seeing stars. You’re panting hard, your every breath fogging the mirror, your nails digging into your palms as Chris’ name leaves you in desperate, broken syllables. 

It’s not until you’re finished cumming around him for a second time that his pace finally begins to falter– he lets go of your wrists, squeezes your hips in his hands and thrusts once, twice more before his own high takes him. You whine as you feel his cum spurt deep inside, hot and sticky, leaving you perfectly full.

Chris takes just a moment to steady his breathing before he’s slipping out of you, hurrying to reach to the ground for the tissue box he previously knocked off the vanity. He grabs a tissue, cleans between your legs as gently as he can, though you still end up flinching just a bit.

He then readjusts your panties so they rest on you properly again, and helps you settle back into the vanity’s chair. He kisses you after tucking his softening length back in his trousers, glances in the mirror to make sure nothing else about his appearance is out of place before he has to return to your party.

“Was it good?” you ask earnestly as you look up at him, and he smiles at you, stroking your head sweetly. “Of course, my darling. You’re perfect, as always,” he tells you, and you beam, turning your head to kiss his hand before he takes it away. He glances over at the grandfather clock sitting in the corner of the room, laughs in disbelief when he notes the time. 

“Gosh, it’s almost midnight– we really must hurry,” he says, and you giggle, truly without a care in the world that you’ve kept your guests waiting. You turn back to vanity, pout as you take in your appearance– you were too far gone from lust to really realize just how debauched Chris made you, but now you truly see just how much you have to fix. 

“Christopher! You’ve ruined me!” you complain before looking around the floor for your comb. “Apologies, princess,” he chuckles, leaning down to pick up your comb for you once you’ve spotted it. He hands it to you, but doesn’t completely release his grip to let you take it until after you kiss him in thanks.

“Now then– I’ve got to go entertain our guests. But hurry, won’t you, darling? I wouldn’t want to start the real fun without you,” Chris says as he rests his hand on the knob of the bedroom door, and you smile as you look at him through the mirror, making quick work of fixing your hair. 

“Of course, my love. I wouldn’t miss my party for the world,” you tell him; and despite what he said, it’s not long until you hear the first shrill scream of the night. Dressed in your prettiest red dress and heels, you peek your head out of the bedroom door– and Chris stands there, knife in hand with blood speckled over his face.

“Sorry darling, didn’t have a choice,” he explains, and you giggle as you fully step out of the room, carefully stepping over the blood that decorates the floor to kiss him before shooing him away to continue. Your birthday party has fully kicked off now– and it’ll certainly be one to remember.

[gigizetz]

Heya! Really love your art style, especially your Circe design. I was wondering what inspired her (Circe's) design, like the clothing style and all that good stuff, the reason I'm asking is because I also love to design characters and Circe's design really intrigued me, it's really simple yet still very elegant and feminine. So I was wondering what the reference and concepts were :D

Thank you! I don't really have references for Circe, but I can explain some of my choices for her. Hopefully that's helpful! :D

Circe was probably the first EPIC character I drew actually. I remember getting immediately excited for this musical when I noticed she would appear, because at the time I recently finished the Madeline Miller book Circe. So when I started doodling her I was basing mostly on the book interpretation of her character, and because of that, you'll notice that in these drawings she looks way more young and friendly than in the current design.

(also sorry for the quality on the second image, I sneezed when taking the picture and got too lazy to redo it)

Needless to say, the crop top and the long skirt starting at the hips aren't accurate to the period at all, but that was intentional! I think it fits that she looks so exotic and out of place, as her character in the musical is seen as this foreign threat to Odysseus' crew. She has this unfamiliar, yet seducing aura. Plus, the revealing outfit also represents how freely Circe and her nymphs live in Aeaea. Free of worries and men.

Still, at the time I wasn't really seeing Circe on these drawings. It's hard to explain, but something about her was a little bland, too elegant. Normally when I'm not "feeling it" with my character designs I try associating the character to an animal! I go over in my mind what feelings I want this character to pass off, and which animals better represent said feelings. You can see this pattern in some of my characters, how Athena has owl-like features (owls represent wisdom), how Hera's face resembles a peacock (they represent vanity), and, as I would figure out later, Circe matches with a lioness.

That's the thing that made Circe for me. What was missing on her old design was this feline, wild, but still imposing look. I gave her sharper features, lioness eyes, hair over the face, and shapes to represent various parts of a lioness. And there she was!

Very proud of her, I think I translated the image I had in my head for her as best as I could. Hope that was helpful in any way! :D

[aibafiles]

Esperanto in Metaphor: ReFantazio

Not long ago I saw this this tweet pointing out that the in-game language in Metaphor is Esperanto (written in another script) and I decided to investigate for myself! The vocal tracks are in Esperanto as well, but I want to focus on the text here since I don't have a great ear for it. (The quoted tweet also points out that you can rearrange the title to get an Esperanto phrase - I think it would be more accurately spelled "Metafore Fantazio," or "metaphorically fantasy"!)

For the unfamiliar, Esperanto is the world's most widely spoken constructed language, developed in the late 19th century with the aim of being an easy to learn secondary language that could act as a bridge between speakers of other languages. While its vocabulary and grammar are largely derived from various European language families, it has speakers worldwide, including a sizeable number in Japan. Given the relationship between Metaphor's world and our own, I think it's a cool choice to take a constructed secondary language and make it the in-universe primary language—not to mention the game's themes of uniting different people with a language intended to do just that.

I studied Esperanto myself for some time 9 years ago, though I've forgotten most of it, so I'm very rusty. That said, I was able to sit down and parse one particular block of text that the game provides a translation for, and use that to read the rest! I'm slowly combing through the demo and translating any legible text, and I wanted to share some of the interesting details I found. If any Esperantists see this and want to weigh in, please do! There's plenty I may not remember or be aware of.

Continued under the cut, including content from the demo:

Let's start with the text the game translates for us! Here's what the VO/subtitles say:

O Great Seeker, bearer of fantasy empowered... Hear my wish, and come forth from thy epoch of glory to grant me thy guidance.

Here's the "deciphered" Esperanto:

Ho, granda serĉanto, kiu vivas en epoko de gloro, kiu enkarnigas la povon de fantazio. Bonvolu disdoni al li vian gvidadon.

And here's a more "direct" translation:

O Great Seeker, who lives in an epoch of glory, who embodies the power of fantasy. Please grant him thy guidance.

Not too much different of note here other than the pronoun usage—in Esperanto, the speaker explicitly uses "he," likely referring to the protagonist. I suspect that the English is actually translated from the Japanese line, which is ambiguous, so they made an educated guess here. But, since this is the same speaker who narrates awakening cutscenes and new bonds, it makes sense that they're calling to the Seeker on his behalf!

This is a point I'm unsure about, but from my understanding, "granda" (here translated as "great") typically refers to size, so it seems like an odd word choice to me—but it's possible there are connotations I'm not aware of.

After some poking around I stumbled across some text on the background of the name entry screen that reads "signaro" (character set), followed by the whole Latin alphabet on the next line.

"But Batts!" you may say. "Esperanto doesn't use QWXY! What about the diacritics!"

Well. There aren't any! There are 6 characters with diacritic marks used in Esperanto (ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ, and ŭ), and since our character set doesn't use any of them, we have to make some educated guesses about which one it is at any given time. This is mostly a non-issue since they're real, existing words, but it does make it a bit trickier at points, and relates to another problem I'll get to in a bit. (There are a select few instances where I've seen diacritic marks on handwritten text or shop names, but there are still far fewer than there should be.)

That said, there is also some plain English text using this script as well, so the game does make use of those extra letters, such as the Memorandum UI - scrolling books have titles like "Marine," "Royal Capital," "100 Mystery of Ningen (humans)," and "Melancholia Gen" (?), plus cute notes in the background like "I want to read slowly" and "already read very good."

Anyway, this diacritic ambiguity bugged me for a bit when I started translating some text with "Euchronia" in it, like the above "Regno de Eŭcronio - Dezerto de Tradia." The Esperanto "C" and "Ĉ" are always pronounced "ts" and "ch" respectively, so the pronunciation here is a bit awkward either way, as both characters are meant to precede a vowel. A more natural pronunciation in line with both the Japanese and English would be "Eŭkronio," a spelling I found once in the body of the contract our protagonist signs to join the army, and never again. Alas.

I noticed a few interesting details while translating place names - the "Trad" in "Grand Trad" (Granda Tradicio) means "tradition" - and many locations are labeled on the map that I don't think are mentioned in the demo's runtime - Oceana to the west is named, but also of note are Kalendulo ("marigold," maybe "Calendula" in English) to the east, the Hulkenmont mountains surrounding that region, and the "Malnova Insularo" (old archipelago) to the south.

(Screenshot grabbed from justonegamr on Youtube.)

Lots of fun stuff going on with these posters - the big propaganda poster says "Mi volas vin por homoj" - "I want you for humans!" The poster immediately to its right and the one with the light-haired paripus are both wanted posters with rewards of 50,000 and 7,000 respectively, and the former has a somewhat legible name - Mikelan something (?). There's also quite a bit of illegible text that I'll need to boot up the game to stare at, textures willing.

Here is where I noticed an occasional problem with the text in this game: some of these posters include words that should have diacritic marks, but instead the characters are gone entirely or replaced with a space. For instance, the poster with the face that appears twice on the bottom row reads "Ser a peto - i tiu viro" where it should say "Serĉa peto - ĉi tiu viro" (Search request - this man). I spent so long wondering what "Dan ero" meant on the poster with the red "no" sign before I realized it was meant to be "Danĝero" (Danger).

This extends to some other parts of the game, such as the world map title ("Unuiĝinta Reĝlando de Eŭcronio" written as "unui inta re lando de e cronio," which is how I knew it was a plain C oops), and the giant statue in More's study covered in archetype names, some of which are missing characters.

I suspect that at some point in the process, these characters couldn't be properly encoded and got lost before making it into the game. Most of the UI text seems to be intact, and this only affects graphic text as far as I've seen. Luckily, we can usually use context to guess at what they should be.

There's a ton more that I'm still hunting down and translating, so if you'd like to see it, you can check out my spreadsheet here! I'm hoping to keep updating it as I play through the full game, and I may make some more posts if I encounter any particularly interesting details. A few more tidbits before I go:

This appears to be an annual calendar - number 1 is at the top and it circles around to 12, and then the inner circle runs from 1-30, likely representing the weeks.

Various graffiti found around Sunshade Row that reads:

Ĉi tio estis infero (this was hell)

Malbela elda (nasty/ugly elda)

Merdo (shit)

And in the words of our favorite tooth...

Elbe venontfoje! (Maybe next time!)