#cropping is weird i wanted to post them more in order and then was like wait this one is WAY too tall

[lovelandfrogman]

a couple of miscellaneous art fight attacks :]]

character credit to @162bpm, twunksatan on art fight, @mikes-art, and minkcar on art fight!!!

[triplesnet]

a gifmaking tutorial would actually be super appreciated :)

Okay, this is gonna get long and it might not be great but I will do my best to make it understandable.

Put under a read more cause we're not forcing anyone to look at all this.

We're gonna make this gif:

First of all you'll need 3 software programs downloaded.

4k downloader (to download videos)

Gomplayer (to get the frames from the videos)

Photoshop (I pay for it but there are other ways)

Some things to keep in mind

better quality video = better quality gifs

if you want videos in 4k you have to download them in MKV format as MP4s can't be 4k.

gifs can only contain 256 colours so gifs with a lot of different colours might get grainy.

if you use low quality videos or upscaled videos they sometimes have duplicate frames which will make the animations look weird, but you can easily remove those extra frames.

tumblr only accepts gifs under 10mb in size so all gifs have to be less than that (photos less than 20mb)

you can put up to 30 gifs/images in one post

ok here we go

Step 1: Download video

Step 2: Get the frames from the video

You will play the video using Gomplayer

Find the part you want to GIF

Press CTRL + G to bring up this menu

I haven't experimented much with these settings but you'll want to choose the place you want your frames to end up so you can find them later

4. Have the Capture all frames box checked (unless it's 60fps then do 0.03). You can capture up to 999 frames in one go.

5. Press "burst capture" and it will start getting the frames (video has to be playing) it will look like this.

6. Great you have your frames.

Step 3. Making a GIF

Open Photoshop

Load Files Into Stack

This will open the folders on your computer so navigate to where you put your frames and select the frames you want by clicking on the first and holding shift while clicking on the last.

3. Wait for PS to load the frames

4. Once it's all loaded the first thing you'll do is crop it. Press 'C' on your keyboard. There are a couple presets you can use or you can 'clear' that and crop however you wish.

I always crop out at least a little of the top and bottom cause there can be dark lines there.

5. Resize: for optimal quality on tumblr there are three sizes to keep in mind.

For sets like this with 3 gifs next to each other the width should be 177p, height does not matter.

For sets like this with 2 gifs next to each other the width should be 268p

And for a set like we're doing today with just 1 gif it's 540p

You'll want to memorise these numbers for future use.

177p, 268p or 540p will be the width of your gifs.

To open the resize menu you press CTRL + ALT + i

Change the width to in this case 540p (p as in pixels)

It will auto match the height to keep the same proportions.

Click OK and wait until it's done.

6. Make sure you have the 'timeline' window up at the bottom of your photoshop

7. Click 'create frame animation' (button might say video timeline but change that by pressing that little arrow next to it)

8. Press the button with three lines in the top right of the 'timeline' window and press 'make frames from layers'

9. The frames will have loaded in in reverse order so open the same menu and click 'reverse frames'

Step 4. Blurring the logo/text (optional)

Since we have a logo in there I will want to blur it but you might not have one or you don't care if there's a logo or text in your gifs.

First we have to make the gif into a smart object.

Select all layers by pressing CTRL + ALT + A

Convert into a 'video timeline' by pressing the button in the bottom left of the timeline window

3. Right click on your layers and click on 'convert to smart object'

4. Press Z to switch to the zoom and zoom in on your logo/text.

5. Press L to switch to the lasso tool and select your logo/text

there should now be a line where you selected.

6. Open 'Gaussian Blur'

7. Click OK

Now we have to get our GIF back to the frame timeline.

8. Click 'flatten frame into clips' using the timeline menu

9. Press 'delete' once to remove the smart object

10. Convert back to frame animation

11. Make frames from layers

No need to reverse this time. But now your logo/text is blurred, as long as it doesn't move but that's a topic for another day.

Step 5: Sharpening

If you didn't have something to blur let's go over smart objects again.

Select all layers by pressing CTRL + ALT + A

Convert into a 'video timeline' by pressing the button in the bottom left of the timeline window

3. Right click on your layers and click on 'convert to smart object'

5. Camera Raw Filter (Optional)

I use this for base editing of colours and the overall clearness of GIFs, it's not made for that tho it sometimes gets buggy. Works best on photos.

Press CTRL + SHIFT + A to open this.

It's best to do as little as possible in here as it can bug out.

I mostly mess with the effects, light and detail settings in here, don't touch the sharpening though cause we will use smart sharpen for that.

6. Smart Shapening

Most people have a sharpening action they use, including me. But you can also do it manually. You can find my actions in here.

To do it manually and make your own settings. This is how you open smart sharpen.

If you use my sharpening action remember it can be a bit much sometimes, in that case hide the second layer

Use an action or mess around to find a sharpening setting that looks good on your gif, usually don't need much.

Now we have to get our GIF back to the frame timeline.

7. Click 'flatten frame into clips' using the timeline menu (I'm low on images to use check the blur section for images)

It might take a minute since it has to process the new settings.

8. Press 'delete' once to remove the smart object

9. Convert back to frame animation

10. Make frames from layers

11. Select all your frames to set the framerate

You can click on any frame for this. Click 'other' and set it to 0,06.

12. Press CTRL + SHIFT + ALT + S to open 'Save for Web'

these are my save settings.

Click save and name and place it wherever you want it saved.

Congrats you've made a gif.

Step 6: Colouring

Now we have a problem cause there's already 30 images in this post.

For colouring I have a psd I use and adjust to the individual set. It's in my google drive you can find it here along with my actions.

If you're making several gifs from one video you'll want to adjust to the first and then copy that over to keep things matching.

We can go more in depth on this but that would have to be a different post since I can't put more images in this one.

Step 7: Watermark (optional)

A lot of GIF makers have watermarks these days as there's a lot of people who repost GIFs without credit. Make your own so people know the GIFs are yours even when posted elsewhere.

Step 8: Post

Post your hard work on your tumblr, use a bunch of tags so people have a higher chance of seeing it.

I hope this post was understandable and clear, let me know if you have any questions and if you want a proper colouring post.

[llorom4nn1c]

♡ Scemo clothing haul! ♡

A couple of weeks ago, I got to order some stuff from Hot Topic, so I thought I'd do a bit of a haul and show you guys some of the things I got! I took all of the pictures for this post so some of them might look kind of weird since I'm not great at taking photos but I tried my best.

🎀 Accessories

I got a pair of fishnet gloves, skeleton gloves, leg warmers, and a black and pink studded belt. I'm really happy with all of these, especially the fishnet gloves since I've been wanting a pair for the longest time and I've been wearing them almost every day since I got them. I'm also really glad to finally have a pink studded belt for my pink outfits!

🎀 Hole Pretty on the Inside shirt dress

This is actually my first piece of Hole merchandise which I'm really happy about because I've been listening to them since I was like nine. I also really love these sort of oversized dress length shirts because they're great for when I want to go for a more grungy look. These types of shirts styled with a cute necklace, a flannel, boots, and some over-the-knee socks just makes for a great outfit.

🎀 Leopard print skort

For a short period during the summer of last year, I was pretty into the rockstar's girlfriend aesthetic and one of the staples of that aesthetic was leopard print, so I got a leopard print skort. I don't have many skirts that aren't black, so this is a pretty different addition to my wardrobe.

🎀 Monster High hoodie

This was one of the items that I was most excited about since I really love Monster High. I haven't really had a chance to wear it yet, but I definitely will soon because I really love it.

🎀 Ruby Gloom crop top

I've been watching a lot of Ruby Gloom recently, so when I found out that Hot Topic carried some Ruby merch, I just had to get something. The shirt's so cute and I especially love the sleeves because black and red stripes remind me of the mall goth aesthetic. This is definitely one of my new favourite shirts!

🎀 Misfits shirt

I already had a Misfits shirt, but I didn't have any of their shirts that have the Crimson Ghost on them. Plus Johnnie has this shirt so of course I had to get it. It also goes great with the skeleton gloves.

🎀 Skull tutu skirt

The main reason I got this was actually because it reminded me of that one skull outfit Eugenia used to wear a lot. I also don't have too many gothic clothing items so I wanted to get some. Plus this skirt styled with a pair of fishnet tights, the Misfits shirt, and skeleton gloves would just be so perfect.

That's it, byeeeee!! ˚｡⋆୨୧˚♡

[corvusblackk]

when i first shifted to my fantasy dr (part 1)

i shifted to this dr in the past and i made a google doc about it because i wanted to send it to my friends but now that i have this account i can share the experience with y’all too :)

i recently shifted there again and wanted to share that too but i thought it would be better to post this one first as it explains more about my dr.

i’ll just copy and paste the document but it says that it’s too long so i have to split it into two posts.

so here we go.

OKAY SO I don't know where to start because I'm still freaking out okay. first of all, to shift, I simply set the intention to wake up in that specific reality (which I called “fantasy reality” because I didn't know what other name to give it) and went to sleep without doing anything else except visualising some parts of my dr house. the next morning i felt something on my face like someone was holding my face in their hands which scared me because i went to sleep alone and usually no one wakes me up but then i remembered it could be mom since we had something to do that morning. only that it wasn’t mom- opening my eyes I was hella shocked, I can't even explain what I felt after seeing that I had neteyam in front of me (yes, I added him to the script of this reality too), after all these months of pure agony (and I'm not kidding) I was finally in front of him and him in front of me. i immediately tried not to act weird but it was super hard so after he asked me if i was sick i told him i had a very weird nightmare and i still had to recover. the fact is that in this reality where I shifted he is not a blue alien but a "human" version (not so much human because he's an elf) and god, he was beautiful, the most beautiful person I've ever seen in my life. at that point he seemed kind of worried about me because i was staring at him the whole time in silence trying to realize what had just happened so to avoid freaking him out more i told him i was so tired again and fuck, he laughed and then he fucking kissed me. to say that I exploded at that moment is an understatement, but let's overlook it. we got out of bed and started getting ready because, from what I understand, we had decided the night before that that morning we would go to my best friend's café (her name is auri and she is a fairy) and it was initially strange to realize that I had wings on my back (they are not so big anyway, that's why I didn't even feel them at first) and I immediately wondered how the fuck do I put a shirt on 🧍🏼but in the end I wore something all shredded. auri (one of my best friends) was so energetic, she never stopped talking but it didn't bother me. then my other friends yuri and will joined us (it’s will byers lol, i added him to the script after watching stranger things this summer). and will is a faun here 😭 he is truly a love, the sweetest and kindest person i know. I'm writing too much maybe I should cut it a bit, i’ll try to summarize from now. in the afternoon comes my favorite part: my work. in this reality I am half fairy half witch, which is a rare gene there (i scripted so because i wanted to be main character), in fact I am almost the only witch in the village apart from my mother and grandmother. so I went home to prepare a potion that someone had asked me for, they had to spray it on the garden that would make the crops grow well. meanwhile, while I was working on my table/altar, neteyam was working on a wonderful painting (that’s his job) which represented the image of the ocean at sunset with a ship in the centre. it was incredible, he was so talented. after i finished the potion i had another customer that day who ordered me a tarot reading so i went to her house (customers often come to my house but it is more usual for me to go to them). she was a young fairy and lived with her mother. as soon as I arrived they were both very kind and asked me if I wanted something to eat or drink before the reading, I said maybe later but they insisted so they made me sit down and gave me a slice of lemon cake (y’all it was so good) and some tea made by them.

(go to my next post for part 2 cause i can’t fit the entire text here for some reason)

[moonlit-dreamers]

*falls through the ceiling*

hey fuckers. im gonna talk about an au i havent talked about on tumblr yet bc iivvee been very focused on stl au lol (and i also just dont post often 💀) BUT! IM HERE!!

i came up with this au a while ago and i did kinda briefly mention it a while ago but that. doesnt fucking matter.

this is an au for the sun vanished! its a story on twitter that i became absolutely OBSESSED with (and still kinda am even after all this time). listened through the whole story from a ytuber nate at night. hes pretty good and i recommend you check him out

but a basic sum-up for ppl who may not know what the sun vanished is: one day the sun randomly vanished and never came back. it starts off with tsv (we dont know his real name) trying to reunite with danyon, his friend. we then also meet tucker and nat who are also trying to meet up. a lot of shit happens that i. honestly cant remember the proper order of. "dark water" is some kinda.. weird water that fucks with your body and mind. theres also "we the people" who is an organization that tries to "work with" the "invaders" by using dark water to make themselves invisible. later on tsv, tucker and nat join a group that is very much against wtp. that... should be all thats needed to know to partially understand this au >.>

so here we go! first up, nobody in this animatronics. with a lot of the events (especially with what happens to tsv) it wouldnt work the same if they were animatronics. so theyre mutants! bc i refuse to ever make them humans!

for who is who: sun is tsv with moon being danyon. while i will say that tsv and sun do differ a lot in personalities it just.. makes more sense with the situation. especially with sun being so desperate to meet up with moon despite all the red flags.

im constantly debating if tucker would be eclipse or solar. his behaviors is like a weird mixture of the two. more aggressive than solar but nicer than eclipse. but either way hes best friends with lunar (who is nat). he is.. very overprotective and lunar is frequently frustrated with his behaviors. while, yes, lunar is a kid (14 at the beginning), he still hates being treated like he cant do anything by himself. eclipse also despises moon and never trusted him in the first place. think he tried to kill him at one point tho i. cant remember >.> (its like 1am im half asleep cut me some slack)

jack would be theseus (previously known as half-crop). jack is a kid they (the other group) brought in and kept in captivity since they were unsure if he was infected or not. with the help of lunar being a persistent lil shit they managed to get proof that he was fully conscious (since he never talked). jack only has one functioning eye, the other eye seems to be... messed up in some way. but it isnt pretty. he mainly covers it with his hat (for his own comfort). hes semiverbal and selectively mute, only talking around lunar and maybe eclipse if hes lucky.

im thinking that wtp could be the creator council? or at least ran by a creator. maybe they somehow caused the sun to vanish and let the "invaders" in freely or maybe they want to study it and thats why theyre nonhostile (towards the invaders, that is. not to other ppl lol). that would also make it suck more since moon was converted/manipulated into joining them ;-; meanwhile the other group could be others from the plex, like roxy, chica, monty, freddy, etc. theyd be really minor characters (theres actually not many names mentioned anyway lol) so i havent thought about it much *shrug*

but i have. SO many thoughts about this au man. theres so many scenarios i imagine with them. like eclipse first finding lunar in his basement staring at the dead bodies of his parents (that he had to kill himself). sun drinking too much dark water and hallucinating that moon was with him and begging him to come back and that hes sorry. lunar finding a video sun took of him and eclipse dancing together. sun sending his last message to moon about how he hates him and that neither of them turned out to be the ppl they promised they would be then ending it by saying he loves moon and hopes he never sees the message.

idk man. kinda unwell over this

[jimmystrudel]

Part 2 of ranking 2024 WAG jackets

part 1 & part 3 (and VGK whenever that's posted)

6. Nashville Predators - Emma Barrie’s IG story (thank you @thepassionthatunitesusall for telling me where to find them)

It’s hard to tell what they are made out of but I think it’s fake leather which i don’t like

I do like that they are cream, not white, and that they are embroidered not ironed on patches or graphic t-shirt emblazing

I think these might be my favourite patches quality wise

Overall they are really classic and look comfy but aren’t very original so LA beats them

7. New York Rangers - 1. wagsofrangerstown IG, 2. natoriner23 on tiktok 

 For the first game the WAGs and kids all came in jerseys which is considered a bit of a taboo in the NHL WAG world (idk go watch Lexi’s videos on it) and since they had tons of time to plan this, it felt like a powermove and the full group photos of it are super cute (i love when the babies match)

Also Key’s mom has a jacket and if they have mom/family jackets I will scream, that is so cute

For the jacket itself, this is the only picture of it I’ve seen so idk what the front look like but the back is fine?

I like signatures a lot, they are always cute, but painted, cropped, baggy pleather isn’t interesting and they could have done so much more

8. Washington Capitals - Madison Aube Kubel’s IG

I didn't get great screenshots of this so go to her page if you want to see more

I absolutely hated these when I first saw, thought they were going to be giant pleather monstrosities but then I saw Madison Aube Kubel’s reel of her making her own since she forgot to submit her order on time and they grew on me

They seem like they are made out of a satiny/normal bomber jacket material

This is my favourite of the caps logos and I am glad they used it and the back looks good but I don’t like the giant numbers on the front, you know they are super stiff and you can’t sit down while it is buttoned up without it looking really weird

I don’t love it, I don’t hate it, I just wouldn’t design it

9. Edmonton Oilers - Lauren Kyle’s IG

As previously stated, I don’t like minimalism so they lose a few points, but these really strongly give bad bitch, cool unrealistic tv motorcycle gang

I’m 99% sure they are real leather since they are stiffer and in some close ups you could see skin texture (if it wasn’t obvious I really like real leather)

I like that it is actual stitching, instead of being painted

One personal really big pet peeve is that the c in McDavid should be lowercase

10. Florida Panthers - 1. floridapantherswags IG, found the other on tiktok a few days ago

According to God (Lexi) they have matching pants (seen partially on the right) with the number one of the back pockets, most of the women in the group photo aren’t wearing them so like do they not like their own outfits??

I really like the stitching detail on the back but not having the last name be in that giant open space on their shoulders looks really awkward so they should have put the name there (since they aren’t who they are with since they have numbers) or removed the line of white stitching and made everything else bigger

I also don’t like a baggy jacket if it’s meant to be paired with jeans where the detail is on the butt, like if they were committing to the pants they should have cropped it

I think if they wanted to keep the pants and no last name they should have made vests instead of jackets since the sleeves aren’t doing much

11. Colorado Avalanche -Sussanna Ranta’s IG story

This is the only picture of these that I have seen and they really just look like jackets, nothing special

I tiktok I think I saw something about them having caps that match with the numbers on them but hats are fucking lame

These are just aggressively mid and kind of disappointing

[saltminerising]

Longpost

Mod Note: We won’t be continuing to post submissions about this person, we’d strongly recommend just blocking and ignoring them.

Update on VM/NR/SD situation. (moved under the cut by the mods)

So, after the VM meltdown that happened on site and here, I have left a reply on her submission in this blog, and explained how she was wrong but I do understand her frustrations regarding feeling insecure about her own disability.  I’ve offered her to reach out if she’s like to talk it out. She claims she is Russian, and so was I, so I thought it might be easier to communicate without the language barrier. Well, I have found out that she has been catfishing me. She is not Russian. When I offered to talk in Russian originally, she at most said a couple basic phrases, and kept switching to English. She said she “wanted to practice English”.  Kind of a red flag right away, but I went along with it. She kept making basic mistakes in Russian that even a child wouldn’t make: messing up cases/endings of words and genders of words, including when referring to herself (kept referring to herself in male form). This is something very hard to grasp for a foreigner or, well, a translator, but is intuitive for a native, whom she claims to be. She has used google images to show things that are “nearby her” when we started getting to know each other, and I have easily found that they were google maps images. She used a photo of a store with a one-of-a-kind name, and I found the framing and quality of the photo suspicious. Given the other red flags (more to follow, this is not chronological order), I decided to look up the store. It was cropped weird to avoid google maps watermarks, and foliage around the sign matched up perfectly. I found her “back yard” almost immediately as well, it was by the store. Again, trees and whatnot matched up perfectly to a google maps image. “Store” pic:

“Back yard” pic:

She also shared a pet pic with a box of pet supplies of brand “Chewy”. After looking it up, it turned out to be a company only operating in united states.She also claims she lived in USA for a bit with her partner, but she eventually had to return home. I felt like it was just a convenient backstory for her and how she knows english and uses very americanized phrases sometimes. I asked her how did she got a visa back then. She didn’t manage to come up with a single detail to tell me and changed topic. She also holds a lot of stereotypes about Russia/Putin that americans have, but russians know/consider not true.Image with pet supplies of a brand that only operates and delivers to USA:

I think she is a pathological liar. I brought up a certain health condition as a reference, and she suddenly went “oh i also have the health condition. Didn’t know how to bring this up”. Proof:

She also gave completely incorrect information about local pagan religions she apparently practices. (Was disprovable in one google search. Most blatant fact she got wrong was when I brought up the name of the whole religion, and she thought it was a single deity by that name, and she started talking about it as a singular entity). I have a suspicion she lies about most of her conditions to spew toxic opinions and get away with it because she’s also disabled/poc/etc.Obviously this is

just my speculation,

the only thing I know for sure is that she is not Russian and does not speak the language, nor does she live where she claims. Finally, this is how our final conversation went down:

[harpywritesfic]

I want this poster in my dorm. Let’s get to work.

(Lots of images and a bit of a long post below the cut)

First order of business is to get a straightened image of only the poster. Aspect ratio seems to be 3:4. I don’t think I can just print this with the prominent green overlay- it’d look out of place. And ink is expensive.

I’ve made a recreation of the poster, with the cropped image as my guide. It’s made to print on white paper with standard red and black ink. The poster will be aged/stained/distressed whatever you want to call it after printing. Here's mine with the original on top, and the clean version alone. Couldn't get the letter spacing perfect, but it’s not bad, and it only took four saves to get a file I was happy with. Sent it off to the print shop!

In the meantime, it's time for a test run of tea-staining. I decimated the tea bag and rubbed the grounds into the paper to get the mottled effect on the top two pages. The bottom paper was done with green tea and as you can see it's barely evident.

We are gathered here today in honor of the chai* we lost along the way, bravely sacrificing themselves in the line of paper-staining duty. Their efforts, while experimental, are nonetheless vital to the success of the project.

*there was also green tea but the stain was weak and I don't like green tea as much as chai so I don't feel bad about it

Then the water pump to my house broke so I went to a hotel overnight to have running water which was in the same town as the print shop so I got to pick up the poster! The red's a little washed out but oh well. The lady at the print shop unrolled it to show me so that I could verify it was the right one, and she thought it was great. I told her it's for my dorm room and that I felt a dorm needs at least one real weird bit of decor, and she agreed that it really adds to the aesthetic. It's here, I have running water to make tea with again, now it's time for teabaggi- nope, can't say that. Um. Time to stain it.

The first stain was done with one bag of double-spice chai. It didn't go very far because i prepared the tea for, y'know, drinking and didn't get to dip the bag back in to refresh it. The second stain was with two bags of single-spice which I dipped back into the tea to get more stain. I kept dipping them after breaking them open, then forgot I did that and went to drink the tea only to remember it's full of nasty leaf bits. I drank it anyway and brushed my teeth afterward. Here it is before staining, after the first stain, and right after the second with the tea bits still on it.

Here it is all done and hung up!! It's an accent piece, a conversation starter. Now to invade Mr. Gaiman's inbox.

[beyond-far-horizons]

Hey hon, for the ask: 2,4,18,20,27 and 29? 😊

Hey hon, sorry it took so long to answer this - it's been a difficult week.

Right FYI for folks reading this - I'm not tagging it and I'm not getting into a debate esp re the first answer given that it's an emotive topic. With that said - let's begin!

2) Thoughts on veg@nism?

I have mixed feelings that are hard to articulate esp on here and given how fraught the topic is, is why I'm hesitant to answer the question. In short, I have a huge deal of respect for veg@ns but I'd struggle to be one. I do want to try to bring in more of it when I can, mainly because I find the industrialisation of food/farming so repellent. I hate the idea of animals suffering so I try when I can to avoid meat or to get things that are well sourced. My feelings on this subject have changed and developed across the years and it's complex so I think it's always worth thinking about. For example, although I hate the thought of killing something for food, I don't necessarily think that it's wrong. What I think is wrong is lack of compassion. Animals should be treated with respect, care and not as a product without feelings. I respect Indigenous communities for example that don't sentimentalise animals but respect and care for them and the world as part of a whole with themselves as a part of it. I also admit that I love meat and some of my favourite foods are dairy. Food is one of the few pleasures in my life so I don't want to be dictated to or guilt-tripped about that especially by people who haven't thought the topic through and just want to evangelise and gatekeep others (however understandable and worthy the cause.)

Also there's the tension with the fact that veg@n products aren't always environmentally friendly - mass deforestation for mono-crops like soya (although this happens for cattle grazing too) and toxic plastic for leather. There's another Indigenous perspective (I'm thinking of certain Plant Shamans in the Amazon for example) that view plants as having their own souls and awareness and if you think that sounds weird there are scientific studies revealing the sensitivity and intelligence of plants (look into rhizome forests for example.) Movements like Animism, Post-Animism, Post-Humanism incorporate the Non and More-than Human worlds and this includes plant-life. Are we and animals more important than them? How did we decide that just because we can't see their pain? Or is that just anthropomorphising them? It's another perspective for sure.

I don't think there's any easy answers but thinking in that way is the main reason I decided to get a forest burial if I can, instead of getting cremated. If I take from the earth as part of the circle of life well I should give back and there's no better way I think than to become a tree and give back when I die (yep this post just got weird lol, but seriously this is what I'm talking about - circle of life!) This way I get to be something that I adored in life - a blossom tree - as well as a whole eco-system supporting lichen, insects, birds, people etc. And I think that is pretty awesome. But that doesn't get round the central dilemma so I'm still working on it and doing the best I can in difficult times.

4)Mythical Creature you believe/think is real?

As a Brit I have a weird hope that the Loch Ness monster is real because I loved learning about it as a kid and it's too awesome to think that a prehistoric monster still lives in the modern age. I think the folkloric White Hart (Arthurian/British symbol of Kingship/Sovereignty) is real in terms of the Universe throwing up symbols sometimes. There was a really bad omen for my country in recent years when one was shot running through Manchester and that tells you everything you need to know about our government and current state of the country even if it was allegedly for health and safety reasons.

18) Your Boba/Tea order?

I'm ashamed to say I've never tried these. Sorry but they just look weird. As a English Breakfast tea-drinking cliché I don't trust cold tea or weird balls that look like rabbit droppings. Hehe sorry. I should give it go sometime. If we are talking actual tea then what we Brits call 'Builders tea' aka black tea with a little milk and one sweetener x 3 a day. Can't function without it.

20) Favourite Disney Princess Movie?

Ooh, good question! I love the Golden Age - Little Mermaid (I pretended to be Ariel as a kid for ages, drew her, had a whole toy cave set and dolls etc), Aladdin(first movie I saw in the cinema, had posters, toys etc) and Beauty and the Beast. Special shout out to Hunchback of Notredame as well even though that's not a Princess movie, it's awesome and I love Esmeralda. However the prize has to go to B & B. I was and still am obsessed with that movie, I think I can still recite it line for line. My friend and I spent one sleepover casting our school year group as the cast in our heads and then singing (badly) all the songs on a walk. I also have Belle's colouring (can't claim I look exactly like her, can I?) and more importantly can do a mean impression of many of the characters esp the Narrator and the bookstore owner (minor characters for the win!) Did I mention I was obsessed?

27) What’s your favourite or go-to outfit?

Difficult one...I'm (again) living out of a suitcase and carrying more weight than I want to so I don't have all the clothing options I'd like rn. Ideal world my favourite piece of clothing is this little black dress I have that you can wear for the office or for a night out - it makes me look great and I used to match it with different accessories including this beautiful pink and gold belt. Both are in storage now cos mama's too chubby to fit them! At present it's my chunky white grandma cardigan over black trousers with a different colour top and jewellery - pastels or vivids like bright red.

29) Preferred pasta noodle?

The phrasing of this question upsets me - is it fave pasta or fave noodle? I know them as two different things. So I'll cheat and answer for both! Haha.

Fave pasta...I...don't really have one. I like all of them - twists, shells, linguine (my internet is playing up so I can't check all the italian names.)

Favourite noodle - love a lot of them but Naruto and I share a love for ramen so ramen noodles!!

Thanks and hope that wasn't too much information overload!

[livewiregoth]

Tamagotchi Ps Gen22’s Puzzles

Here's Gen22's puzzle pieces, cropping is odd cause it looked nice on my phone. Might look weird depending on the device cause the lighting of the gems was nice on my phone but a little darker than it's meant to be on my laptop.

I find it interesting that when not close up during certain emotions her gems turn colors.

It's funny how when the karaoke machine is the favorite item they'll sing then this guy from the palace shows up for a chimes(I had to look this up cause I honestly thought that was some odd looking xylophone) solo

After this I dressed her up to look like a pop star cause I felt like she needed an outfit

So after dressing her up she asked me to dress her up again. I also want to show this thing she said some time later, I have no idea what she wanted from me cause unless it's for an empty hunger/happy meter it goes away if you look at anything on the menu & she wasn't hungry/unhappy.

Fumbled getting a pic of this & just barely got the first pic, ironic since I was prepared for this earlier in the morning but then it happened hours later.(At least she's clean since everyone is usually dirty during this) Thought I'd show both pics since given what gets me this puzzle I don't get that many pics.

And here's the full puzzle animation

Thought I'd show what I have so far, I was going to show it with an updated version of the technical family tree but decided to wait for Gen22 to get her pieces. This is pretty interesting but will sadly never be finished as thanks to issues I will be missing 4 pieces.

Has anyone ever read/heard someone read the creepypasta "The Safe"? It's about finding a special box after using a 4 digit code(that haunts you via just being on your mind all the time) on a safe meant to be hidden in the exact place you were born at/in. At some point it mentions a harddrive thing that after some setup with a cheap laptop(with no internet connection possible) & a printer will give you blue prints to a time machine. There's others that followed the instructions like you did(in the story) leading to also having blue prints for the time machine & it's implied or possibly mentioned that everyone with the blue prints need to bring them together in order to build this time machine.

I ramble(with some attempts to edit this to shorten it) all of this to explain each tamagotchi you raise in technically the base game(by that I mean none tamas that can be gotten thanks to the pierces can get puzzle pieces) gets puzzle pieces that once you get all four pieces of the puzzle leads to getting part of the blue prints for a rocket ship. It suddenly made me remember the creepypasta I just mentioned. Made even more crazy by the fact that after you unlock the ability to go to the secret base you can see you past tamagotchi that you got puzzle pieces for hanging around talking about joining in on building this rocket ship.

Speaking of unlocked I got the outlook that to my understanding is the final place I can unlock.

I'll try to eventually making a post about all the unlockable places eventually.

[pixies-and-poets]

Bea and Phantom: The Stinger Incident

Hey Sparks of Hope squad, hey Phandom. So I was looking through Bea’s backstory in detail and I noticed something, a little detail that I think may have big implications, and might even help explain why Bea and the Phantom’s relationship didn’t work out....! Posted under the cut due to length and moderate spoilers. (Also shoutouts to @turqrambles​ for letting me run this by them and discuss before writing this post!)

(Ok so first of all ignore the weird cropping and bad quality on this, I got this from my stream and cropped out the goofy thing I had in the corner lol)

“A whole new generation of fans was exposed to Bea when she became a celebrity host for the annual Galactovision song contest. Unfortunately, the Phantom was her co-host. The two constantly tried to outshine each other, eventually ruining their voices.” This is what Beep-0 has to say about this illustration, and I’m sure most of us took it at face value as a depiction of that. I was like, well, kinda weird they ONLY show the Phantom clearly suffering and blowing out his voice, but I didn’t give it too much thought.

But when I revisited the image again, I noticed a couple things. First of all- that’s the Phantom’s phonograph, right? For evidence, the same type of notes are coming out of it as are coming out of his own mouth.

Now, the phonograph is one of the things he was made out of. It’s literally part of him, and in a very real way it IS his voice. Of course, it’s normally inside of him. So why would he take something so important out? Make your own fantheory- maybe it amplifies and augments his own singing (here it appears to be doubling it and sending it in a different direction). Still, he’s very protective of it and wouldn’t normally do this, but let’s say he was around someone he had come to trust, someone he felt he could be vulnerable around, someone he cared for.

So the SECOND thing I noticed, was like “aww, he’s letting Bea use her stinger as the needle for the record! That’s kinda, sweet and intimate tbh...” but then I realized, ok, that’s not how phonographs work lol (the horn wouldn’t play any sound if it wasn’t using its own needle to read the record) and then I took a closer look and I’m like oh no, her hitting the record with her stinger is a BAD THING.

Look at the little burst effect happening here, the same one coming from the Phantom’s mouth. You can imagine the record scratch sound effect. She’s hitting the record with her stinger and MESSING HIM UP.

I do NOT think this is implying he actually lost his voice because of this! Even if this record got completely scratched up, it’s still just one record and could be replaced with another. I think it’s still true they both blew their voices out by trying to outdo each other. I think this illustration is just giving us subtle evidence of one occasion where she bumped the record with her bee booty and caused him to choke/crack, in front of a vast audience. You can imagine how someone as prideful as he would react to that.

So now the question is, did Bea do this on purpose? Was she trying to mess him up in order to out-compete him? Personally, I don’t think so. I’d like to think she’s a better person than that, that she genuinely cared for him and respected him and would never humiliate him on purpose (after all, she seemed to have an angry phase when they broke up), and that she has the professional standards to not want there to be an outright mishap like this during a performance. In the illustration, it doesn’t look like she’s aware of doing it, and given how good these backstory pics are at conveying subtle detail, I think they would have made her look way more mischievous if it was intentional on her part.

So we’re left with a very unfortunate incident. The Phantom thought he could trust her with something extremely important to him, and she let him down. She probably SHOULD have been more careful and aware! On the other hand, it was a genuine accident on her part, one she probably felt super guilty about. But no matter how much she may have apologized, I think it likely that the Phantom could never fully forgive her due to his pride, and this became a seed of bitterness and loss of trust planted in their relationship.

This is my personal theory for why they broke up. Of course, there was likely more to it than that; with both of them being so competitive and sort of diva personalities, it may have been destined to never work out no matter what. But I do like this as a particular impetus for their relationship crumbling, because to me it seems very realistic, kinda tragic, and makes me mutually sympathetic to both of them. The Phantom may have dumped her in a jerky way, but a partner doing something that shatters your trust is a difficult thing to cope with, even if it wasn’t out of malice on their part.

Feel free to agree, disagree, write a fanfic, or whatever! At the very least I hope you find me pointing out the record scratch thing to be interesting and run with it in your own way!

[ravenquingvax]

Inspired by @ghostofwhitestone, who answered an ask about this on this post here, I wanted to think about my own Vox Machina fruit headcanons.

Because, oh boy, do I love doing posts like this! (tone = genuine; they spark joy!)

This time, I'm going to be doing it in order of my age headcanons from oldest to youngest - just for fun!

(I love ghostofwhitestone's take on this btw, this isn't shade at them! I just found the idea really cute and wanted to take a shot at it!)

~

Scanlan (68 as of 811PD) -

As someone who has lived a long time (should you believe any of his many long, winding, dramatic stories), Scanlan has eaten a lot of different foods of all types.

Despite being a fruity little man, he's actually not super big on fruit himself.

Pomegranate, however, has wormed its way into his heart (and his stomach) with Scanlan loving to pop little pomegranate seeds into his mouth as if they were candy.

He gives nobody any reason as to why, but secretly it's because his mother loved them and was always snacking away on them.

~

Pike (36 as of 811PD) -

Pike Trickfoot grew up with a gardener, her Papa Wilhand loving to home grow his own fruit and vegetables.

Wilhand was always partial to a good bowl of fresh strawberries and cream, but Pike's favourite were the raspberries - which she'd eat with reckless abandon if Wilhand would allow it.

She always takes a bunch with her whenever she stops by, eating them on the road towards her next adventure.

~

Taryon (30 as of 811PD) -

Taryon grew up in a very strict household that sources its crops from only the best of the best Zemnian farms.

That being said, Taryon loved nothing more than sneaking out into the encroaching woods surrounding the lonely little Darrington Estate to pick himself some lunar berries.

Lunar berries, growing off the thin and twisting branches of the short but thin lunar trees native to Wildemount, are small orbish fruits of a pale greenish turquoise colour.

They glow a faint pale blue in the dark, and they taste rather sweet, usually forming separately but occasionally forming in pairs or clusters.

Not only are they a great snack, but the act of sneaking out to pick them gives Taryon quite the little thrill.

His father disapproves of this, calls it uncivilised and unnoble-like, but Taryon just can't get enough of them.

~

Grog (30 as of 811PD) -

Grog eats… Everything.

He especially loves bacon, but bacon isn't a fruit.

Apples, however, are.

He loves apples, the bigger the better; The redder the better; The juicier the better; The sweeter the better; The crunchier the better…

He loves apples a lot.

~

Vex (27 as of 811PD) -

Growing up in Byroden, Vex'ahlia took things like the wild berries in the woods and the fruit in her mother's garden for granted.

When taken to Syngorn, she quickly learned to regret this - something about the soil used in Syngorn, as well as the fruit that they grow there, just wasn't… Right.

She misses her mother's strawberries a lot, but most of all, she misses the weird little fruits that grew in the summer on the trees that stand tall and broad around the mysterious Gladepools.

They were tough little fruits with a thick, almost-jelly like feel to them while being a translucent pinky red in colour with a bitter flavour to them that sweetened as you chewed away on them.

Apparently they were planted there by the first Elven settlers on Tal'Dorei, if Vex believes her mother's bedtime stories like Vax did.

She has no idea what they are called or how they got there, but she won't lie if she said that they did make her think of The Feywild a little.

Whatever they were, Vex never did find herself back out that way even after her and her brother ran away.

~

Vax (27 as of 811PD) -

Blueberries.

Vax'ildan has always loved blueberries, they make him feel a burst of joy and excitement like nothing else.

They technically didn't grow in his mother's garden, but their neighbour's blueberry bush had overgrown and crept into it at some point.

Whenever Vax is able to, he always buys (or steals) some when he's in town. If that's not possible, he'll get Vex to find him some blueberries next she goes out foraging.

~

Keyleth (25 as of 811PD) -

Keyleth loves all fruit.

Well, expect from pears and bananas… But that's because the texture of pears are gross and bananas were pretty different in Zephrah compared to how they are commonly and Keyleth just doesn't have the heart to try the universal yellow things.

Her little fat, lime green-skinned and pale blue, tough bananas would always be better than the long, pale-white, thin, and mushy yellow-skinned bananas that Scanlan always tries to make her eat for some reason.

That being said, Keyleth's all-time favourite fruit would have to be pineapple.

She tried it once while Vox Machina was in Ank'Harel, and she fell in love with it.

She has Gilmore import it from Marquet just for her, something that the man is more than happy to do - especially if it makes Vax very happy whenever he sees Keyleth very happy.

~

Percy (24 as of 811PD) -

Percy has a very refined palate when it comes to food, having grown up in a minor royal house as second in line to the throne.

(Vesper had been more than happy for Percy to skip over her, having even less interest in ruling than him.)

Whitestone was Emon's little brother in a way, its own royalty not quite on par with Tal'Dorei's ruling family but still being just as respected and important.

This meant it was just as strict, especially when it came to meals and snacks.

Fruit salad accompanied every lunch Percy had growing up, something he and his siblings all quickly grew sick of but had to tolerate for their parents.

Percy did become quite fond of the grapes, though, that would usually be a part of the dinner starter every night - especially the sweet, dark red ones that splash you with bright red juice when squashed by an annoying younger sibling.

They were used to make wine by the de Rolo family winery, 'The Old de Rolo Wine House', and Percy loved to sneak into the vineyards around the city to pluck some off the vines.

After the Briarwoods laid waste to his home, Percy vowed to one day bring the vineyards and winery back to their previous excellency.

~

Trinket (9 as of 811PD) -

Trinket is a simple bear.

He loves honey, bacon, chocolate (don't tell Vex that Vax sneaks it to him), and salmon - grilled or raw.

He also really likes…

Cranberries.

More than once, he's come back from foraging looking like he's mauled something to death, but in reality, he's only gone off to eat every cranberry he can find.

Sometimes this has been picked cranberries left in a basket by someone.

Vex has lost count of the number of times she's paid someone off because Trinket ate their whole basket-worth of cranberries.

[wirewitchviolet]

Just a Reminder - You Don’t Win a Prize if Nazis Hate You the Most.

When I run down my tumblr feed, about once every day or two I see a chain of posts being shared by people I like which are kinda just a big back and forth shouting match starting from a post saying either “as a Jew, I hate seeing trans people talking about being Holocaust victims too” or “trans women aren’t threatened by transphobes as much as trans men!” and... these are just the absolute worst fights to try and pick. Stop doing this.

Presumably there’s other variations on this going on and I’ll condemn all those too, it’s just these two, specifically, are the ones I just keep seeing crop up, so they’re what I’m gonna highlight for now.

So, the holocaust. Pretty sure we all agree that the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft public book burning is one of the more powerful images to demonstrate why Nazis need to be completely eradicated that does not feature a pile of corpses. I also don’t think anyone is in disagreement that Magnus Hirschfield, who ran said institute was a Jew, nor that the bulk of his staff and the subject matter of these original research journals were Pretty Darn Trans.

I DO see people though making really damn stupid arguments though like, “right, they burned his books because he was a Jew, it had nothing to do with their contents,” and that’s just factually untrue. There is a truckload of solid documentation about Nazis having stupid conspiracy theories and pseudoscience to justify genocide against, in no particular order, Jewish, Romani, Black, queer, and disabled people. Also Jehovah’s Witnesses. Lot of wild crap explicitly connecting these too, case in point, they claim trans people in particular and queer people broadly are monsters created by Jewish doctors to infiltrate society and throw a wrench into the ability of physically and mentally perfect white men to have white women barefoot and perpetually pregnant in the kitchen popping out enough babies to maintain a huge majority and not be overtaken by all those subhuman other races. It’s all a bundle deal. Any of these type of people the hate have the height justified with their role in this grand sinister conspiracy.

And even if that WEREN’T true, and it really was that Nazis hate Jews and only Jews and all these other people they keep trying to completely exterminate are collateral damage from plans to take out specific Jews that had some really bad scope creep and splash damage, they’ve still got the body count. That’s still part of the Holocaust and denying those deaths is messed up for the same reasons as every other weird claim bigots make (and to be clear, there is no non-bigoted reason to be doing this) to minimize the Holocaust, but also, rather crucially, please note that I keep speaking in the first person. We still have Nazis, they’re still hell bent on killing all these same groups of people, they’ve been doing a pretty good job lately of getting the sort of power needed to act on it, and they’ve been acting on it. If you’re in one of these groups, you should really be focused on getting rid of the Nazis and not whatever the hell this historical revisionist dick measuring crap is.

Meanwhile on the trans infighting front, the way society at large hyperfixates on weird stereotypes and propaganda vaguely trans-woman-shaped far right boogiemen is Pretty Damn Bad. It’s terrible for trans women because there’s this significant portion of the population trying to identify, locate, and murder us. It’s terrible for trans men because the messed up discriminatory crap targeting them specifically gets basically zero public attention except in those weird cases where it gets bafflingly twisted into something about trans women (I’ve seriously seen like... anti-abortion and transphobic pregnancy-related-legal-language stuff pushed with weird scaremongering about trans women “wanting changes in language to not say mothers” so that we can waste doctors time LARPing abortion procedures or some weird crap like that). It’s terrible for nonbinary people because all the weird polarization messes with basic scientific understanding and some transition care gets screwed by people trying to make really ironclad policies. Heck it sucks for cis women who fit whatever weird profile the people trying to murder us apply, and men whose commitment to masculine presentation is insufficient to avoid suspicient of being Infected.

There’s something of a problem with those conversations also getting bogged down in weird unproductive nonsense where someone points out how they deal with some form of transphobic discrimination like it isn’t something everyone involved isn’t also dealing with too of course, but the real big problem I have with these has nothing to do with all the arguing in the comments it’s the fact that the comments keep ending up attached to overt anti-trans propaganda pieces where someone missed big ol’ dog whistles and misinterpret people’s efforts to point them out. Like, this is how this big long post I have all over my feed tonight starts off:

“can we stop the belief that terfs hate transfems exclusively or like more than they hate cisgender men or transmascs...”

There is of course more to that sentence and another six paragraphs and all, but there are zero reasons I can think of to type the above that aren’t “I would like to obfuscate the motivations of fascists and minimize the hell out of the whole actual freaking extermination effort targeting trans women right now,” so from where I sit, there’s no value in reading any further. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. I’m assuming everyone I see sharing this missed that or they’re doing that weird tumblr thing where you quote the whole real bad take/conversation because you want to share your agreement with like the 10th reblog-nest point but like, you’re still spreading this “trans women are men” dog whistle without so much as calling it out. Gotta be careful about that. Fascists on this site do a way better job of Trojan Horse-ing that sort of crap. Not necessarily saying that’s the case here, but... for real what other reason is there to type something like that?

Anyway, again, even if the whole thing is in good faith, the framing is decidedly framed in this antagonistic transmasc vs. transfem sort of way and like, that is not a fight that is actually happening anywhere. There’s just Nazis trying to kill all of us, let’s focus on that in a productive and broad coalition building sort of way?

[ravenloftgm]

My TTRPG OCs

Alright there's a bunch but lets get into it. They'll get a blurb here, and I'll add hyperlinks as I give them their own posts.

Vampire the Masquerade:

Faith Meade: Backstory | Viewforth by Night: I / II / III Faith is a Sandman Ventrue full of Catholic Guilt™ and Autism™. She's a brand new fledgling who has immediately lost her sire and fallen in with the wrong crowd, notably including her new accidental father figure, a Camarilla Tzimisce. She is not fucking coping, she is not hinged, she is not okay at all, she averages more than one mental breakdown a night. She juggles this, and her highly eventful nightlife, with a successful career as a Sales Trader.

Riccardo "Dino" Rossi: Dino is an Anarch, and a Siren Toreador. He is hot, often accidentally vulgar, and his sire is a creepy piece of shit. Dino thinks he's coping great, by aggressively hyperfocusing on sex and motorcycle racing. He is also an expert (after... a learning process) in managing his sire's emotions, so his unlife has become one of performing as the perfect prized pet. I wanted to make a tragic manwhore, and I was thinking about Gino D'acampo at the time. He has become one of my most beloved characters I've ever played, because when I play Dino, he actually possesses me. I flustered the storyteller more than once. I am not typically smooth.

Kellan Voss: Kellan is my baby boy. He's a Cammie, and a Bagger Nosferatu. He wears a gas mask with tinted lenses, although when he made his debut he was also wearing a bandit mask blue-tacked onto the lenses, rendering him unable to see. The coterie pretty much met because he brought himself, his sire, and a goat to the floor at Elysium, and they came over to help. He's coping by being the class clown and being aggressively extroverted - refusing to give in to any sort of "typical" Nosferatu experience. He is stacking an impressive number of social merits for a fledgling.

Honourable mention: Brendan O'Rourke. I haven't played him yet, but I've been working on him for over a year. He's my Malkavian, but I won't say too much until the details are Final and I've got a chance to play him.

Mage the Ascension

Bonnie Raith-Ballantyne: My most beloved WoD character, Bonnie is everything to me. She's a pretty new orphan, but she's already being pulled unknowingly between Hollow One/Cult of Ecstasy/Order of Hermes. She has SUPER high willpower, and that's the basis of her character: what she wants, she gets. She is pure determination and discipline and effort. Playing her brings me so much joy and I have improved my actual real life since starting her. The storyteller has implied her Avatar has at one point been the Oracle at Delphi.

Changeling the Lost

Alabaster: My only amnesiac character, this bitch remembers escaping a weird garden, being saved from a snake with a babies face by some fucked up scarecrow looking dudes, and waking up in hospital with only the single most infuriating man in the world to explain her situation to her. She only learned anything about who she is by finding it out in real time. She's a chav. She's full of rage. She thinks with her fists. She's protective of women. She's really, really skilled with martial arts? The first woman she met in uptime was a trans woman called Erin and they immediately commit a murder together. She has killed and would die for that tiny anxious woman. She has known her all of two days. She's a Treasured Fairest, she looks like a marble statue, and she's been walking around in a pink crop top that says "Pillow Princess" on it since the murder. She's going to wind up Summer Court, if I get to play her again - the campaign didn't last but it might come back!

Dungeons and Dragons:

Euphoria: My longest running TTRPG character of all time, and the only character who I might play a second time if I get the chance. Euphoria is a pink tiefling bard who was forced to wear uncomfortable molds all her childhood so her horns and tip of her tail would grow into heart shapes. She has tattooed heart freckles. Her clothes, upon starting the character, were all pink with heart details on everything. She was sold into the circus as a baby and brought up almost constantly under Enchantment magic to be obedient. I started her at level 3, and we're now level 22 and in space. I couldn't begin to be succinct about her story, so I won't try. I'm also playing her in my BG3 run and of course she's romancing Astarion. She's a force for chaos and their trauma is so similar.

Ivory "Angel" Darling: Her campaign ended - like, we got to the end of the story, we hit level 20, we saved everyone, it's done and dusted. She's had an epilogue. I think about her always regardless. She's a 16y/o half-elf warlock (she grew up over the campaign tho) from a rich, happy family, and she joined the party to study their tiefling, as she wanted to be a demonologist. Defeating Tiamat was just the cherry on top. She had a checklist - make a career, find a husband, finish this paper - and by god did she finish it. I'm so emotional about the connections between the characters of this campaign and I will talk about her so much more. I named my Elite Dangerous pilot after her. Her son is an NPC in a friends game, two of my friends have been playing her cousins, one of them has played TWO of her cousins. Her family lore is so deep.

Pathfinder

Groz: The bartender NPC from my D&D west march game found life in a pathfinder game with my colleagues. He has half a braincell but he hits things good. He will protect you. He will also decide that bashing a door down is preferable to finding a key, and donate flesh to weird cults because they asked kinda nicely, losing him a finger. I'm probably more likely to talk about him as my D&D NPC rather than as my Pathfinder PC because we've only done 2 sessions of that campaign and it runs SO rarely.

[bus-ghoul]

They want to make that intuitive leap

Of all things I could have written... This is a Quinn Fabray x Nancy Wheeler ficlet/drabble. We aren't gonna call it Quancy cause that's gross.

These guys are ... not romantically compatible imo so on a soul level this is more ronance/quinntana

but they are both screamingly comphet more than any other characters I know so I'm obsessed with them

I hope someone else can enjoy my self indulgence

Quinn isn't going to let herself acknowledge it, but she has a plan.

There were calculations involved in every step of getting to this point.

But, if she thinks too much about the fact she's traveled over an hour and a half away to get to the nearest thing she could find to a lesbian bar, then she'd have to start thinking about other things too. Like the fact her usual choice of a long skirt has crept up to barely her mid thigh. Like the fact she had spent the hour before classes this morning filing her nails short.

What works best for Quinn to just act. She has questions she needs answered.

She walks into the bar with the confident front she's been putting on since she was 13.

There are a lot of women.

Not that is is surprising, the Facebook post advertised 'Ladies night', but it's...weird and distracting so have no men in sight.

No one she would assume was a man anyway... There are people here she wouldn't know how to address.

The thought jolts her.

The first person to smile at her as she walks towards the center of activity has bright pink hair, cropped into a short mullet. They are wearing a white singlet that clings to their body, and their chest looks flat. Quinn tenses with anxiety that's a lot like curiosity.

The pink haired person is dancing with a crowd and turns away to laugh with one of them, so Quinn redirects to the bar.

There's a seat next to a girl her age towards the far end of the room.

She's pretty, Quinn thinks, petite. She's wearing some high-waisted trousers and a top cropped in a way that leaves a couple of inches of her back exposed where she leans forward on her stool. Her hair is dark, curly. Quinn pulls back the adjacent stool.

"What are you drinking?" She asks.

The girl next to her looks up. She looks surprised to see Quinn next to her, she thinks, but that might just be her eyes. They're wide and dark and searching in a way that makes her feel exposed before they've even really talked, but she smiles at her and leans back, straightening up.

"It's actually called a gold star" she tells Quinn, her voice drawling slightly. "I couldn't tell you what's in it, I just ordered the one that sounded least perverted".

Quinn smiles back.

"Would you recommend it?"

"If you want something that tastes good, no, but it's the cheapest cocktail on the menu and it'll get you drunk fast". The girl cocks her head and smiles at her again.

There's something in her eyes that makes Quinn prickle. Like this girl is trying to see more than she is currently allowed.

It is not part of how this is going to go.

"What's got you drinking to get drunk?" She asks, conversationally, as if she isn't asking to gain ground.

The girl looks at her, considering, for a moment. Her brows raise. "You want to have sex." She responds, cooly.

Quinn's mouth drops open for a second, before she snaps it shut. She had intended to be bold but she isn't sure how they arrived here after all of 30 seconds.

"Going to ask my name first?", she asks casually watching the other girl carefully.

"Don't need to, Quinn"

The build up to get herself to this point had involved resigning herself to a commitment of being steadfast, stubborn and determined in the face of overwhelming discomfort but that comment about sends her into fight or flight, before the girl gestures to the ID she is twirling between her fingers.

Quinn let's out the breath she's holding silently, through her nose, and flags the bar tender, ordering by pointing at random to the cocktail board.

"Why do you think that's why I'm here?" She asks in the tone she hopes is casual.

"You've come to a lesbian bar night alone and talked to the first single girl you saw" the curly haired girl supplies, looking at Quinn carefully. "Nancy, by the way.".

"Nice to meet you Nancy." Quinn responds flatly. "Want to share why you're here alone?".

Nancy raises an eyebrow at her and Quinn feels a rush of frustration. This is not nearly as simple as it is with boys. She's actually sure if she's closer to fighting this girl or flirting with her.

"I think I might be in love with someone, a friend. A girl" Nancy explains, looking back at her drink at the same time the bar tender slides Quinn hers. "It's confusing. I don't know if we're just really close and I'm not good at that so I'm misunderstanding my feelings, or... I don't know if she thinks of me... like that . I just don't know much about this. So I came here to learn."

"Hands on learner?" The bold question slips out before she can catch it but she feels a tingle of satisfaction when Nancy faintly blushes.

"Hmm, just very thorough." Nancy smiles again. "Have you been with a girl before?".

Quinn tapers down the instinct to balk at that, this girl has been honestly frighteningly open with her and it feels like something mutually satisfactory can come from this.

"Yes." She states. "A friend... we had a casual... encounter". Quinn looks up at Nancy, who's listening intently, and prays she never sees her again after tonight. "I can't stop thinking about it, about her. I've never...it's never been like that before."

Nancy asks softly, "How did it happen?".

"We were at a wedding. I'd broken up with another awful guy and I just wanted something. She was there and willing and I trust her. I was pretty obvious, really. Probably as obvious as just asking.".

"That won't work with mine." Nancy says, dejectedly stirring the ice left in her glass.

"I want to know if... If it was good because it was her or just because she's had a lot of experience"

"I see." Nancy nods. "Well I've never had sex with a girl so that should help answer your question".

Quinn grins. "What about your question?".

"Mine is more, will having sex with a random girl while I'm pining over my friend make me feel better?"

"I'm beginning to think my question has been answered" Quinn finds herself laughing. "This feels like a business transaction".

"Sexy for some." Nancy smiles again and her lashes flutter and Quinn experiences a similar sensation in her chest. "What do you find sexy Quinn?"

🍎🍏🍐🍑🍒🍓🥝🍍🍌🍋🍊🍉🍈🍇

An hour later, they've only had two drinks, but Quinn has lipstick on her neck and Nancy is dragging her somewhere private and she's more happy and excited that she has ever felt with a guy ever.

She tries not to think about how gay Santana would say that is.

[runicmagitek]

Weird questions 10, 14, and 24, please and thank you! ;)

10 is answered here, but let's dive into the rest~ Many thanks for the ask! 🥰

14) Do you lend your books to people? Are people scared to borrow books from you? Do you know exactly where all your “lost” books are and which specific friend from school you haven’t seen in twelve years still possesses them? Will you ever get them back? HELL NO ಠ_ಠ I almost never let folks borrow my books, because I've had too many instances of them just… never coming back to me. Unless it's like… I dunno, Amie or my mom or my bf bc I LIVE WITH HIM sajfdkljdsfklaj I'm not giving anyone anything, I'm not sorry lolsob

24) How much prep work do you put into your stories? What does that look like for you? Do you enjoy this part or do you just want to get on with it? Depends on the story and my familiarity with the subject matter. If it's a oneshot, probably close to no prep. Just running off vibes and winging it. If it's a longer piece or has more intricate topics, I'll jot down scene ideas and order them appropriately in Scrivener. Sometimes I'll do research before writing, but more often than not, something crops up mid-draft and I just leave a litte (?????) note to myself to remind future!me to look into details for that. If it's something massive like my longfic? I have an entire tracker dedicated to that. Like for What Leads You Here, I have a tab based on what everyone calls each other (the wonders of Japanese honorifics and a cast of fifteen characters I had to juggle), a tab for character/setting details for consistency, a timeline for when things took place along with the weather patterns, a tab on the first draft's progress while I wrote it, a tab for my editing progress, and a tab for tracking my chapter posts (what song lyrics are used for each one, the ETA for the final chapter, etc). Which… is probably overkill for a freaking fanfic, but it helps me better grasp wtf I'm actually doing as well as keeping me motivated. Plus I love making trackers, so this part is very enjoyable for me!