#don't let the tumblr confuse you

[thelikesoffinn]

been thinking about it lately and Ascended Astarion = Dead Dove content and I'm not sure that's really understood, even by the writers. when I finally got around to the character I decided to ascend him with, I was SUPREMELY disappointed by the conversations options following it. it seemed like the dialogue choices were trying to push the narrative on my character that they made this choice w/o considering the consequences and they are bound to regret it. the closest I could get to answering his question of "why did u let me go thru w it?" was "I wanted u to be powerful".

but with that character? my accept Bhaal durge? that isn't the reasoning. at all. (related: "what do u want as a reward?" "ur body" was the closest answer my character could give. otherwise I'd've answered "murder :))")

for context, this run was born of a conversation w my friend discussing supposed content no one had seen bc "no one's that evil". we thought, what's more evil than killing literally every npc? I failed the conceit of the challenge immediately bc I can't handle senseless animal cruelty in my games. killing children? fine (u need a mod to do this in BG3, but I am thankfully plenty delighted to use mods), killing a neutral animal npc? no can do.

so I started this durge (they are the only character that can come close to "killing" Gale with that first interaction) run with the intention of killing everyone except Shadowheart (only a cleric of Shar can truly kill Aylin) and Astarion (bc I need to smooch him). (and there is a mod for playing an origin character as durge, which would have meant playing as Shadowheart, but I MUST smooch Astarion and I don't tend to do het or female romances, unless I'm forced to (*sighs dreamily* oh, Garrus Vakarian). I'm just not interested in that set of equipment in that way, so may as well just make a durge dude.) somehow something went wonky and Halsin ended up joining us and I was so perplexed I just allowed him to stay. (he's meant to attack if u destroy the grove but free him anyway, but instead he just showed up that night and went straight into his Moonrise spiel. is it bc the wolf Silver never aggro'd me and thus survived???) so I fixed the Shadow Curse all while killing every single humanoid and hostile animal in acts 1 & 2. including Thaniel, which makes Halsin's talks later in act 3 of getting news from Thaniel and the Grove hysterical. idk what I did but I sure as hell broke this poor man.

(on a related note, Halsin will give out to u when u accept Bhaal, but will still give u the "u have exceeding my expectations, also we should bang" in the same conversation. I DON'T KNOW WHAT I DID BUT IT'S DARKLY FUNNY.)

in the conversation when Astarion is expressing surprise that u let him go thru w it, my durge is just like, yes my motivation is that I like to kill ppl :))). it's not a sex thing for him (that is separate from the murder!), but he's still fine w the outcome. yes, Astarion looks down on him, but that's fine! he's allowed to be wrong about that, durge doesn't care. so long as Astarion lets him kill ppl he genuinely just does not give a shit.

(I actually had the idea that if Halsin were to ever rediscover his morals and tried to leave he'd ask Astarion to turn him so Halsin would not have a choice. as I said, this durge *does not fucking care*.)

this is probably the only character I will play that would let Astarion ascend bc I enjoy dead dove SOMETIMES, but not always or in large doses, but I get so few dialogue options that convey that in an rp sense! I don't think the writers/devs REALLY took that into consideration, sometimes. like, yeah, there are going to be ppl making fucked up choices but surely no one would go THIS far! for THIS reason! honey, u need to look up the Dead Dove tag on AO3, there are absolutely ppl making choices for those fucked up reasons.

(and I understand the whole "this confirms to Astarion about sex yadda yadda". even if that's not Tav/Durge motivation, that's how ASTARION would *interpret* it.)

(oh yes, and also, don't let Orin abduct Yenna. it doesn't matter whether u find out in camp or the sewers, Grub will not survive. I was devastated. if I'd known, I would have made sure Halsin was available for her, but she won't abduct a party member or someone ur romancing.)

long story short, I want to play a durge that even ascended Astarion finds unsettling. that's the dream.

Hello there, duck!

Your run sounds delightfully evil! I wish I could play one of those, haha, but I'm too soft hearted. My one evil run with my durge Salira was ended before even entering the grove because I felt horrible after getting rid of Gales hand! Seriously, I can barely take killing the squirrel as durge, and I always save Alfira because I feel horrendous otherwise!

(Fun fact, on all five runs I've done Yenna just vanished at some point and grubs was left standing in my camp, which was like...eh?)

And yes, Halsin is always somewhat of an issue, isn't he? He's just running around, causing mayhem in peoples games because he seems slightly bugged out, haha. I had one run, where he wouldn't go to the spot where we save Thaniel because he joined the fight against Marcus at Last Light and somehow got stuck, for some reason. Same run, none of his vocals would play, which was also very interesting. Everybody would make noise when they climbed or got hurt but Halsin was always silent and just there! And in another run the dude really straight up hated me - he was so mean and snappy, I swear to god he wanted my Durge dead - and then he suddenly went: "Hey you're super cool and strong and I just want to gently fuck you beneath the moonlight if you'll let me" and I was like: Say what.

Regarding the dead Dove: I've talked to people of Discord before, and some of them mentioned something similar a couple of times, but personally, I do think the writers actually knew what they were doing here!

Of course, I do agree that it relies heavily on the regret notion and that it somewhat shoehorns you into a certain narrative corner, I noticed that too when I was ascending him for research - I hated doing that, but all for the asks, haha - but I thought it was really fitting for what it is!

The bad ending, that is. I know we all somewhat forget that because of how people view him as a character, but ascension is the bad ending. Even on an evil run, where your character may have considered all options, it is very likely that Tav hasn't accounted for one very important part of being a true vampire.

The obsession.

It's still somewhat mild in the game, though definitely there, but it will only get stronger as time goes on, and it will probably get to the point that the only escape is death. Either his or Tav's. So, in the end, ascension will come with an armload of regret and the writers were making sure we know that.

And, on top of that, even if we let him ascend in a pursuit for power - or in in your durge's special case: murder :) - we still cast spawn Astarion aside because he doesn't fit our needs, thus making it very clear to him that who he is isn't enough and his behaviour is the price we now pay.

It's pretty much the same with all the other companions as well - justiciar Shadowheart and ascended Lae'zel, for example. However, it doesn't bother us as much, because we have different expectations towards ascended Astarion than, for example, dark justiciar Shadowheart. We don't expect a positive narrative here, a narrative where becoming shady-shar's loyal subject isn't an objectively dumb decision to make, so we don't mind the dead dove as much. It's exactly what we've been expecting - and Aylin even warned us how Shadowheart would change upon becoming a dark justiciar - so yepp. This went exactly how we thought it would and this is what we wanted.

Astarion, however, is a somewhat special case, because his bad ending is, by far, the one that gets the most romanticised. He's so heavily romanticised by so many, that the bad parts nearly start to fade, even with those who don't like the ascended ending. It becomes just 'the other ending', if you will.

And yet, it's still the bad ending.

Ascension is the bad ending for a character that we've somewhat given up on. That we misunderstood so deeply, mayhaps, that we traded his entire being for power and, quite frankly, beauty. We showed him that he isn't enough, we let the boy run and hide the only way he knew how and now we're faced with the consequences and yes, it's really dead dove but...what did we expect?

[egophiliac]

Hi it's just to let you know that the official romanization of Revaan's name is Raverne ! Also they have romanized Baul's name to Baur !

Twst coming back at us again with the least expected romanization! thank you everybody (oh god my inbox) (no it's great, I literally asked for this and the reactions have been INCREDIBLE, thank you all!)

I do like Raverne though, I think it's got a nice fancy sound to it! (I had kinda suspected it was going to be an R instead of an L, so the fact that it's SO close to Laverne except for that is hilarious to me personally.) and Dragoneye Duke is honestly probably the best translation for his title, I wasn't envying the localizers that one. :') Baur instead of Baul I was NOT expecting, but in retrospect I think his name's supposed to be a reference to the Bauru crocodile, so that actually makes way more sense!

someone else also said Meleanor has become Maleanor, which is the REALLY weird one to me, because I was so surprised it was written as Mel instead of Mal in the first place?! oh god no I can't decide which one I like better. 😭 (I wonder if they might change it to Mal...they have made romanization changes before) (like I remember House of Distraction being corrected to House of Destruction in Playful Land) (I did check and she's still Mel for now, but I dunno, they might Mal her up and some point and save me from having to make a decision about which one to use) (HECK I CAN'T DECIDE)

uhhhh thank you for letting me ramble about anime names, let's just say MONOGRAMMED SWEATERS FOR EVERYONE

[keeps-ache]

look me in the eye; i'm dizzy

[static image below]

[ratcandy]

happy lesbian visibility week . everyone say hi to Lumi, who is now visible

For those brave souls wondering, "Who is Lumi?" well let me tell you. Lumi is a character that is referenced exactly once in-game offhandedly by the current Lighthouse Keeper, with an unused sprite to boot,

and she and Monch kiss each other very passionately by the fire, and nothing goes wrong in their lives ever ever. (To clarify, Lumi isn't her canon name, it is the name I have bestowed upon her. It's also never stated that this unused sprite is/was the old leader of the lighthouse, but that is the headcanon I'm running with. Just to avoid any confusion!!)

and if you're thinking to yourself, "Hey wait a second, isn't that one off-handed bit of dialogue about how the previous leader of the lighthouse was murdered by the Fox?" well u'd be right. but don't worry about it :)

SHe and Monch are holding hands and kissing and whatever else people who love each other do. Why? Because they love each other very much. Thank you and goodnight <3

[wenellyb]

You can like or dislike fanfiction, but I don't understand people who come to Tumblr to constantly complain about fanfiction...it's like going to someone's house to call their decoration ugly.

It doesn't matter if it's true or not ...why would you do it?

And the complaints are always weird like: "blablabla why do people think in tropes now?" "Why would you want to know what happens in the story, what's even the point of reading it then?"

You want to know why??? Because that's the whole point of the Romance genre!!! The predictability, the promise that no matter what they go through, in the end, there will be a Happy Ending for the protagonists.

I don't read a lot of fanfics but I do read a lot of books and e-books (as in unfortunately I have to pay for those😂). And you know what a lot of authors use to describe their books? Tropes!

An enemies to lovers story with a slow burn, a fake relationship story, a mariage of convinience, a best friends to lovers story etc... And this is coming from published Books.

Maybe it's because the market is saturated and it's the only way to stand out, maybe it makes it easier for their readers to find specific books, I don't know. But I do know that they use tropes to describe their books.

Why sh*t on fanfiction, fanfic readers, fanfic writers when actual published authors do the same??? What is the point exactly ?

And can someone explain to me what's so wrong about using tropes? What's wrong with looking for stuff to read by searching specific tropes? It makes it easier when you're looking for a specific story you want to read and helps you know what you will like or not. Which is great, especially when you're going to pay for the book.

Maybe you don't have a problem with fanfics but with the Romance industry in general? But then why target fanfics as if they were the problem?

[shadowlikesvsynth]

If Piko's dress has//had pockets where do you think they are//would be? asking because I need to write that he put his phone in his pocket and I realized I Don't Know Where He Would Even Have Them on his clothes.

I feel compelled to add his boxart image here and I don't know how to explain why so I'm not gonna even try. Here. Have him.

[beesorcery]

google how do i tell my dad that the reason i keep bringing up elon musk's transphobia isn't that i've got gen z political tunnel vision that makes me blind to his "innovation" in electric cars but because i am desperately crying out for you as the father of a trans child to feel just as outraged and angry as i am that that man has so much power

[crossbackpoke-check]

nosy anon again making a return because i think what my brain did was read that i helped find some kind of writing and then did not fully process what the writing was?? but upon rereading i am very intrigued if you ever get the urge to share i will be all eyes/ears/senses required to enjoy things!!

I GET TO DO WIP WEDNESDAYYYYYY!!! the writing exists mostly in the form of a tag (fantastic! 'verse) and also a thirty-two page doc of snippets and planning, so the sense you will be using most is imagination:

don't think i have ever actually formally written out anything about fantastic! 'verse but! the tl;dr of it is that it's a semi-college au: joel is still a hockey player for the lv phantoms, but morgan is a college student-athlete. it's incredibly relevant to the plot that joel falls in love with morgan in the check-out line of a wegman's, lies a little bit, and ends up going back to get his degree.

most of it is just good fun about college kids growing up, but i think there's a lot of parallels between making your way through a development system where traditional "success" isn't always guaranteed (ahl -> nhl, completion of higher education -> pursuit of a career) because that development system isn't always designed for you to "succeed" or have opportunities. heavy quotation marks around success because part of that struggle is learning what you want in life and how you define success. are your dreams achievable? are they still the same dreams you always used to have? it's infinite branching universes of would you still love me if i was a worm (ahl player forever) (a college dropout) (a college graduate) (older) (realizing the fallibility of your body) (uncertain of the future) (human).

silly little snippet:

[schwirrymartz]

wait i still care about this manga what how

[wtf-amiru]

"Nine people I’d like to know better" aka @cantspelldragoonwithoutgoon drags me out of my pillow fort to expose my crimes

it's not even that i'm shy about tagging, get tagged homies, i just have no brain cells? So if we're moots, and you haven't been tagged in one of these yet, THIS IS ME TAGGING YOU, ILY BITCH [i'm full of spice today]

only if you want of course 🙊

Last Song: Comatose by Coheed and Cambria

Favorite Color: yeah no notes, black and purple here too

Last Movie/T.V. show: freshly out of the annual new year's The Mummy rewatch

Sweet, Spicy or Savory: all of them independently but it depends on the time of day, stock market and alignment of planets which one i prefer at any given moment [i'm not even going to change goon's phrasing of this because it's too real]

Relationship Status: Crazy Cat Lady (aka single and happy) [this is actually where goon just finds out i'm the canadian version of them?]

Last thing I Googled: "happy hoodie cat" (i need to frequently bath one of my cats, but also look at all these goobs)

Current Obsession: making guys [this is a key term i use for excessively making new characters in video games :3], usually thick elves

[lilybarthes]

*

[flagellant]

Buddy, are you defining "Trying to use my platform to make sure that Westerners don't randomly start attacking East Asian artists for no good damn reason as they move over to Tumblr, especially when it comes to respecting language differences" as "being weird about Japanese people"? This isn't even my post like????

East Asian fanartists are starting to migrate back to Tumblr because Twitter is insane, toxic, and dying, and what we're NOT going to do is let the fucking exclusionists get them, do you hear me? We are not going to let a bunch of feral idiots try to apply the most myopic version of puritanism to foreign artists we're not we're not we're not. Form an armed brigade if you have to, do you hear me. We're not going to bully the artists who may or may not even speak English because we have our precious standards of moral purity. If we see art that makes us uncomfy we're going to block the artist and tumblr savior their name so we don't have to see them again AND WE'RE GONNA MOVE THE FUCK ON.

[medicinemane]

At least even when I was a teenager and identified as communist, I was still never a soviet apologist

(And as I got older I came to dislike the USSR more and more and more, also seeing that soviet apologism kinda tended to fuck things up for western communists cause they'd be so busy running defense for people who didn't like or care about them, that actually getting policies passed to help western workers came second to being a tankie)

(Straight up, while I was volunteering in Quebec, one of the people I stayed with had this book by her uncle about being a Canadian communist, and he basically pinned soviet apologism as the whole reason he left the party cause they were more interested is doing PR for the kremlin than they were interested in like... unionizing in Canada)

Anyway, tankies suck, soviet apologism suck, and I'm glad to be able to say that even when I was a communist I didn't fall into that trap... like thank fuck for that, you know?

[syluss-littlecrow]

size training with sylus

<slyus x fem!reader>

where you’re size training on Sylus’s dick. ❤️

genre/warnings: smut, pwp, big dick!sylus, size training, size kink, dear god sylus and his fat cock, breeding kink, unprotected sex, pet names, dacryphilia, it’s just sylus brain rot ❤️

w/c: 2K

a/n: I’m on Love & Deepspace fic tumblr! 😮 hope I’ll be welcomed nicely here haha. As a peace offering, this is my present to everyone (and especially the Sylus girlies)!

You shift your body slightly, trying to make yourself comfortable, on top of taking slow breaths, your heart fluttering at Sylus's soft voice coaxing you. 

"That's it. Take it slowly, kitten", his voice slow and deep in your ears. But you don't see the way he's shutting his eyes and biting his inner cheek every time you squeeze around him. He's trying to pace his breathing as well, but it feels so fucking good.

You whine softly against his bare chest, his heat radiating off you, his slender fingers stroking your hair slowly, and his other hand drawing soothing circles on your thighs. 

You don’t remember how it started, but your thoughts start to drift, recalling the times your mind would float whenever Sylus had his lips on yours with you straddling on his thick thighs. He would devour you, painfully slowly because he knows that’s what riles you up, and he definitely enjoys listening to your whimpers, your non-verbal pleas for him to do more to you. He’d make sure your lips are wet and messy once he’s done with you, his touches teasing and light against your skin. Sylus secretly wants you to beg for it, because he knows that he’d give in to you in a heartbeat. His fingers would cup yours that were on his chest, and the look he would give you reset all the butterflies in your stomach. You would feel his thick erection, hidden under the thin silk black bathrobe he’d always wear against your clothed pussy, and dear god, he’s so fucking big. But before you could ask, Sylus would trail his fingers to tease your wet clit and pussy, soaking in your adorable reactions he swears is enough to get him off, erasing the question of wanting him to fuck you off your brain when the pleasure from his fingers tingles through your body. 

Sylus doesn’t pride himself as a generous being, but he thinks he’s always generous enough for you. He realises he enjoys having his face in between your legs, making you squirm, listening to you sob when he overstimulates you with his tongue, making sure his tongue presses and grazes fully on your clit while he listens to you fall apart, his crimson eyes locked onto you while he holds you down to take whatever he’s giving you. 

He’s good at distracting you like that whenever you want to bring up the question of fucking. 

This time though? Through your wet lashes from the overstimulation and hazy thoughts, all you were craving for was just to be fucked stupid by Sylus. Your hand reached out and pushed against his head. Sylus pulled back slightly, confused for a moment. 

“What is it, sweetie?” He paused, his hands trailing up and down your thighs. 

Your mind slowly clears, but your pussy is still pulsing from him tongue fucking you.

“Need you to fuck me, Sylus. Please. I don’t think I can take it any longer.”

Sylus is momentarily taken aback by your demand, but he realises he can’t keep holding it off, mostly because there’s only so much longer he’s able to hold back, especially when you’re begging for him like that. 

“I don’t think-“

“I can take it”, you muttered stubbornly, yanking your partner towards you. You shift yourself above him, straddling his thighs, just shy of his appendage. 

As much as your determination is endearing, Sylus knows your comfort should come first. And he knows very well that his cock isn’t gonna fit into you in one go, so he decides to let you gauge it for yourself—putting your hands into the string of his robe, gesturing you to loosen it. 

And you do, your gaze flickering from his cool expression to his silk robe sliding off his body when you untie the string. 

You swallow hard when his cock comes into view—thick, long and heavy, the tip red with a wet sheen of precum. Yeah, that’s definitely not gonna fit in you in one go. You and him solely being just wet enough wasn’t going to cut it. 

Nonetheless, you’re still determined. Your eyes meet his gaze and an idea pops into his head. 

He intertwines his fingers with yours.

“Tell you what, sweetie. I’ll fit into you slowly. Doesn’t matter how much you can take, I just want to make sure you’re comfortable when you’re doing so.”

“But-“

He presses his lips on the back of your hand. 

“I’ll be fine. You trust me, right?”

You nod, watching the way his eyes soften before you. 

So there you are, lying on your side, facing Sylus, your cunt trying to adjust to his cock as he stretches you open. It’s been a couple of days since you’ve been size training with your partner. It started off with getting his cockhead in, and that was already making you hitch your breath. Then inch by inch he sinks into you from then. He’d let you cock warm him like that and it never failed to leave you so full one session after the next. 

It’d been seven days, and you barely pushed through three-quarters of his girth. Initially, Sylus still could tease you while you tried to take his cock, but as he sunk deeper into you after each session, it started getting harder for him to maintain his composure—every twitch, every squeeze—had him digging his fingers into his palm, clenching against his silk pillow and breathing a little harder. 

He huffs once more when he feels you clench around his cock. 

“If you’re gonna keep clenching around me like that, Kitten, I don’t think I’ll be able to handle it.”

You glance up, watching the way Sylus’s platinum hair becoming a tousled mess against the pillow. His crimson eyes cast to meet yours, his lips pulled into a slight frown. 

“I can’t help it”, you reply, suddenly feeling self-conscious. 

You hear Sylus hiss slightly once more when he twitches inside you. 

“Do you think you could fit another inch in?” It almost comes off as a beg. 

You inhale shakily, shifting yourself further downwards, taking another inch of his cock. The both of you gasp at the sensation. 

You freeze at the thickness. How far down are you already?

“You’re almost all the way in, Kitten”, Sylus whispers, almost as if he heard your thoughts. His breathing is growing heavier by the second, and he’s forcing himself to hold back from just thrusting the remainder of his cock in. It’s dangling over him like his favourite prey. 

His thumb strokes against yours, trying to distract you from the pressure on top of pressing your forehead with kisses, singing you soft praises.

Your mind is gradually turning more hazy with Sylus’s cock taking up the majority of your thoughts, on top of his body soap that’s been creeping into your olfactory senses. The more Sylus inches his cock into you, the more he’s pressing onto your g-spot, and the more it’s starting to make you see stars whenever you blink. You’re growing so sensitive that you’re feeling every throb Sylus’s cock is giving you. 

Your hand is on his arm, trying to ground yourself from the slight soreness. Another strained whimper when Sylus pushes him deeper into your pussy. Slick leaks from your pussy and it doesn’t go unnoticed by Sylus. 

Another kiss to your temple, another circle drawing session on your thigh.

“Do you want me to go all the way in?” 

Your toes curl.

“I can take it.”

So Sylus inches his cock right to the hilt, knocking the wind out of you. 

Tears are prickling at the corner of your eyes, but oh god you do feel so good. 

“How are you feeling, sweetie?”

You hiccup softly. “So full.”

He chuckles. “Such a good girl.” The vibrations of his light laughter only press his tip further onto your g-spot, and it’s making your thighs shake from the impending orgasm. 

“D-don’t move so much, Sylus. You’re gonna make me—“ you try to bury your head into his chest but he stops you with his fingers in your chin. 

“Make you what?” 

He intentionally shifts, and his cockhead hits your sensitive spots again, sending fireworks into your eyelids, and a strained moan. Sylus seems to enjoy your reactions, because then he flips you to your back, his large frame looming over you, forcing you to look up at him with your legs folded, and still with his cock in you. 

Oh no. 

Sylus looks down at you with the faintest glint of softness in his eyes before it completely disappears, now just hunger seeping through the red. 

“Sylus!-“ you gasp, his fullness penetrating into you again, this time easily, considering the wet and sopping mess you’ve made around his cock. 

He only hums in reply, then pulling out slightly before he pushes into you again. He’s found your sweet spots, and he’s not letting it go that easily. 

The knot in your stomach pulls tight, and it’s making you tear up in sheer pleasure. You’re barely able to meet Sylus’s eyes, not when he’s fucking into you and has your head thrown back while you’re fighting to keep your eyelids open. 

It builds and builds. Sylus probably realises it from how much you’re just pulsing on his cock. His thumb rests at the corner of your lips and you let him slip in, your glazed out eyes meeting his. It makes his heart flutter when you’re completely undone like this for him, but he’ll never admit it, at least, not yet. 

“Gonna cum. Fuck, it’s so much, Sylus-“ you whimper before your mind completely melts away. 

“Release all you want on me, sweetie. That’s my good girl.”

That’s enough to send you over the edge—your orgasm hitting you like waves, tingling through your body like electricity, the pleasure eating you up over and over again. Sylus watches affectionately while you fall apart on his cock—the way you’re writhing and squirming, the way his name leaves your lips after every moan, the way your pussy creams so much on his cock. He thinks he’s doomed because he never gonna get enough. 

“Looks like a little kitten made a mess”, Sylus teases. He watches the way cream pools at the base of his cock when he pulls out slightly, only to thrust back into you again. His eyes flutter shut at the tight warmth eating him up, groans replacing his words. 

“Now, can I make a mess in you?” 

Your watery eyes meet his, and he’s equally about to lose all composure. You cup his cheeks, taking him by surprise, before giving him a quick peck on the corner of his lips, and then you nod. Said corner of his lips lift in satisfaction at your approval.

He’s just ready to ruin you. 

His strokes become more heavy, the overstimulation shutting your brain off. Nothing but pleasure is surging through your nerves now. You’re even holding up your legs so Sylus can fuck you deeper. 

“Now be a good girl and take all of it”, he mutters huskily, burying his face against the crook of your neck, his eyes snapped shut and his eyebrows furrowed. 

Despite the fact that you don’t get to see the way Sylus’s face contorts in pleasure when his orgasm hits him, his groans right in your ears serve you satisfied for now while thick white spurts into your abused pussy, filling you up all the way, some seeping past your plugged hole. 

You don’t realise how much you’ve clawed down Sylus’s back while he was emptying himself into you. 

Well, he doesn’t need to know anyway. 

Sylus stays above you for a moment, the both of you catching your breaths. He still has the energy to plant more bites on your neck while you stroke his hair. 

He pulls back to look at your face properly, and all you can think of is how fucking good he looks post-fuck—messy, sweaty, and so fucking delicious-looking. His fingers brush away your strands of hair, and his thumb caresses your bottom lip. 

“You’re truly gonna be the death of me, sweetie.”

[foone]

Your posts are in an AI model

and then Tumblr decided to sell them to AI models.

Now, don't get me wrong, tumblr selling out the users to AI companies is bad, yes, they shouldn't do that. It sucks.

but don't lets get this confused: your posts were already in there. Tumblr selling them is about tumblr making some money and about the AI models having more exhaustive post collections. It's not about your posts being in an AI model, vs not being in one. That battle has already been lost.

Can you find your post on google? Then it's almost certainly in an AI model already. Think about it: These AI sites showed up before all the sites were making deals to sell their users' content, right? How do you think they built them in the first place?

They scraped the posts. Just like google and bing and such do when they build their search indexes.

It's a fundamental part of how the open web works: you want your posts on tumblr to be visible to users, right? You want them to be readable?* Like, look how much stuff broke when twitter changed their whole read-while-not-logged-in policy, ruining a bunch of thread links/NSFW links. And if it's visible, it's scrapable. That's what the AI models were built on.

I've done website scraping before (not for AI models, of course. I was doing search engines and website archival), this is just how it works. You hire a few relatively smart CS graduates and tell them "build me a scraper that'll give us a bunch of tumblr posts" and they go off for a month or two and come back with a database of a few billion posts, and you stuff that into your AI model. That's how they got all the deviantart and flickr and twitter and pinterest and so on posts. They didn't pay for them: they just took them.

They only ever pay for this shit because either:

they fucked up in such a way that the site might be able to sue them for taking rather than paying

They can buy them cheaper than they can finish taking them. Maybe they'd need to pay the CS grads for an extra month? well, that might be more expensive than just throwing the site a couple hundred thousand bucks.

ANYWAY: my point is, don't treat this "oh no tumblr is selling our posts to AI" like it's a big thing that might happen and it would be bad to happen. Yes, it's bad, tumblr shouldn't do this, this'll let AI models get continual updates of content for far easier than just scraping them would be, tumblr betrayed user trust, and so on...

but realistically, this is not a black and white matter of "if only tumblr didn't do this, then we'd be safe from AI models!"

Nope. We already lost that battle. I'm sorry, and it does suck, but that's just how it is. The avalanche has already started, it's too late for the pebbles to vote. * I'm assuming here that you don't run a private blog that's set to only followers or something. You'd be safer then, of course, but you're not really my target audience for this rant

[yeoldenews]

A Guide to Historically Accurate Regency-Era Names

I recently received a message from a historical romance writer asking if I knew any good resources for finding historically accurate Regency-era names for their characters.

Not knowing any off the top of my head, I dug around online a bit and found there really isn’t much out there. The vast majority of search results were Buzzfeed-style listicles which range from accurate-adjacent to really, really, really bad.

I did find a few blog posts with fairly decent name lists, but noticed that even these have very little indication as to each name’s relative popularity as those statistical breakdowns really don't exist.

I began writing up a response with this information, but then I (being a research addict who was currently snowed in after a blizzard) thought hey - if there aren’t any good resources out there why not make one myself?

As I lacked any compiled data to work from, I had to do my own data wrangling on this project. Due to this fact, I limited the scope to what I thought would be the most useful for writers who focus on this era, namely - people of a marriageable age living in the wealthiest areas of London.

So with this in mind - I went through period records and compiled the names of 25,000 couples who were married in the City of Westminster (which includes Mayfair, St. James and Hyde Park) between 1804 to 1821.

So let’s see what all that data tells us…

To begin - I think it’s hard for us in the modern world with our wide and varied abundance of first names to conceive of just how POPULAR popular names of the past were.

If you were to take a modern sample of 25-year-old (born in 1998) American women, the most common name would be Emily with 1.35% of the total population. If you were to add the next four most popular names (Hannah, Samantha, Sarah and Ashley) these top five names would bring you to 5.5% of the total population. (source: Social Security Administration)

If you were to do the same survey in Regency London - the most common name would be Mary with 19.2% of the population. Add the next four most popular names (Elizabeth, Ann, Sarah and Jane) and with just 5 names you would have covered 62% of all women.

To hit 62% of the population in the modern survey it would take the top 400 names.

The top five Regency men’s names (John, William, Thomas, James and George) have nearly identical statistics as the women’s names.

I struggled for the better part of a week with how to present my findings, as a big list in alphabetical order really fails to get across the popularity factor and also isn’t the most tumblr-compatible format. And then my YouTube homepage recommended a random video of someone ranking all the books they’d read last year - and so I present…

The Regency Name Popularity Tier List

The Tiers

S+ - 10% of the population or greater. There is no modern equivalent to this level of popularity. 52% of the population had one of these 7 names.

S - 2-10%. There is still no modern equivalent to this level of popularity. Names in this percentage range in the past have included Mary and William in the 1880s and Jennifer in the late 1970s (topped out at 4%).

A - 1-2%. The top five modern names usually fall in this range. Kids with these names would probably include their last initial in class to avoid confusion. (1998 examples: Emily, Sarah, Ashley, Michael, Christopher, Brandon.)

B - .3-1%. Very common names. Would fall in the top 50 modern names. You would most likely know at least 1 person with these names. (1998 examples: Jessica, Megan, Allison, Justin, Ryan, Eric)

C - .17-.3%. Common names. Would fall in the modern top 100. You would probably know someone with these names, or at least know of them. (1998 examples: Chloe, Grace, Vanessa, Sean, Spencer, Seth)

D - .06-.17%. Less common names. In the modern top 250. You may not personally know someone with these names, but you’re aware of them. (1998 examples: Faith, Cassidy, Summer, Griffin, Dustin, Colby)

E - .02-.06%. Uncommon names. You’re aware these are names, but they are not common. Unusual enough they may be remarked upon. (1998 examples: Calista, Skye, Precious, Fabian, Justice, Lorenzo)

F - .01-.02%. Rare names. You may have heard of these names, but you probably don’t know anyone with one. Extremely unusual, and would likely be remarked upon. (1998 examples: Emerald, Lourdes, Serenity, Dario, Tavian, Adonis)

G - Very rare names. There are only a handful of people with these names in the entire country. You’ve never met anyone with this name.

H - Virtually non-existent. Names that theoretically could have existed in the Regency period (their original source pre-dates the early 19th century) but I found fewer than five (and often no) period examples of them being used in Regency England. (Example names taken from romance novels and online Regency name lists.)

Just to once again reinforce how POPULAR popular names were before we get to the tier lists - statistically, in a ballroom of 100 people in Regency London: 80 would have names from tiers S+/S. An additional 15 people would have names from tiers A/B and C. 4 of the remaining 5 would have names from D/E. Only one would have a name from below tier E.

Women's Names

S+ Mary, Elizabeth, Ann, Sarah      

S - Jane, Mary Ann+, Hannah, Susannah, Margaret, Catherine, Martha, Charlotte, Maria

A - Frances, Harriet, Sophia, Eleanor, Rebecca

B - Alice, Amelia, Bridget~, Caroline, Eliza, Esther, Isabella, Louisa, Lucy, Lydia, Phoebe, Rachel, Susan

C - Ellen, Fanny*, Grace, Henrietta, Hester, Jemima, Matilda, Priscilla

D - Abigail, Agnes, Amy, Augusta, Barbara, Betsy*, Betty*, Cecilia, Christiana, Clarissa, Deborah, Diana, Dinah, Dorothy, Emily, Emma, Georgiana, Helen, Janet^, Joanna, Johanna, Judith, Julia, Kezia, Kitty*, Letitia, Nancy*, Ruth, Winifred>

E - Arabella, Celia, Charity, Clara, Cordelia, Dorcas, Eve, Georgina, Honor, Honora, Jennet^, Jessie*^, Joan, Joyce, Juliana, Juliet, Lavinia, Leah, Margery, Marian, Marianne, Marie, Mercy, Miriam, Naomi, Patience, Penelope, Philadelphia, Phillis, Prudence, Rhoda, Rosanna, Rose, Rosetta, Rosina, Sabina, Selina, Sylvia, Theodosia, Theresa

F - (selected) Alicia, Bethia, Euphemia, Frederica, Helena, Leonora, Mariana, Millicent, Mirah, Olivia, Philippa, Rosamund, Sybella, Tabitha, Temperance, Theophila, Thomasin, Tryphena, Ursula, Virtue, Wilhelmina

G - (selected) Adelaide, Alethia, Angelina, Cassandra, Cherry, Constance, Delilah, Dorinda, Drusilla, Eva, Happy, Jessica, Josephine, Laura, Minerva, Octavia, Parthenia, Theodora, Violet, Zipporah

H - Alberta, Alexandra, Amber, Ashley, Calliope, Calpurnia, Chloe, Cressida, Cynthia, Daisy, Daphne, Elaine, Eloise, Estella, Lilian, Lilias, Francesca, Gabriella, Genevieve, Gwendoline, Hermione, Hyacinth, Inez, Iris, Kathleen, Madeline, Maude, Melody, Portia, Seabright, Seraphina, Sienna, Verity

Men's Names

S+ John, William, Thomas

S - James, George, Joseph, Richard, Robert, Charles, Henry, Edward, Samuel

A - Benjamin, (Mother’s/Grandmother’s maiden name used as first name)#

B - Alexander^, Andrew, Daniel, David>, Edmund, Francis, Frederick, Isaac, Matthew, Michael, Patrick~, Peter, Philip, Stephen, Timothy

C - Abraham, Anthony, Christopher, Hugh>, Jeremiah, Jonathan, Nathaniel, Walter

D - Adam, Arthur, Bartholomew, Cornelius, Dennis, Evan>, Jacob, Job, Josiah, Joshua, Lawrence, Lewis, Luke, Mark, Martin, Moses, Nicholas, Owen>, Paul, Ralph, Simon

E - Aaron, Alfred, Allen, Ambrose, Amos, Archibald, Augustin, Augustus, Barnard, Barney, Bernard, Bryan, Caleb, Christian, Clement, Colin, Duncan^, Ebenezer, Edwin, Emanuel, Felix, Gabriel, Gerard, Gilbert, Giles, Griffith, Harry*, Herbert, Humphrey, Israel, Jabez, Jesse, Joel, Jonas, Lancelot, Matthias, Maurice, Miles, Oliver, Rees, Reuben, Roger, Rowland, Solomon, Theophilus, Valentine, Zachariah

F - (selected) Abel, Barnabus, Benedict, Connor, Elijah, Ernest, Gideon, Godfrey, Gregory, Hector, Horace, Horatio, Isaiah, Jasper, Levi, Marmaduke, Noah, Percival, Shadrach, Vincent

G - (selected) Albion, Darius, Christmas, Cleophas, Enoch, Ethelbert, Gavin, Griffin, Hercules, Hugo, Innocent, Justin, Maximilian, Methuselah, Peregrine, Phineas, Roland, Sebastian, Sylvester, Theodore, Titus, Zephaniah

H - Albinus, Americus, Cassian, Dominic, Eric, Milo, Rollo, Trevor, Tristan, Waldo, Xavier

# Men were sometimes given a family surname (most often their mother's or grandmother's maiden name) as their first name - the most famous example of this being Fitzwilliam Darcy. If you were to combine all surname-based first names as a single 'name' this is where the practice would rank.

*Rank as a given name, not a nickname

+If you count Mary Ann as a separate name from Mary - Mary would remain in S+ even without the Mary Anns included

~Primarily used by people of Irish descent

^Primarily used by people of Scottish descent

>Primarily used by people of Welsh descent

I was going to continue on and write about why Regency-era first names were so uniform, discuss historically accurate surnames, nicknames, and include a little guide to finding 'unique' names that are still historically accurate - but this post is already very, very long, so that will have to wait for a later date.

If anyone has any questions/comments/clarifications in the meantime feel free to message me.

Methodology notes: All data is from marriage records covering six parishes in the City of Westminster between 1804 and 1821. The total sample size was 50,950 individuals.

I chose marriage records rather than births/baptisms as I wanted to focus on individuals who were adults during the Regency era rather than newborns. I think many people make the mistake when researching historical names by using baby name data for the year their story takes place rather than 20 to 30 years prior, and I wanted to avoid that. If you are writing a story that takes place in 1930 you don’t want to research the top names for 1930, you need to be looking at 1910 or earlier if you are naming adult characters.

I combined (for my own sanity) names that are pronounced identically but have minor spelling differences: i.e. the data for Catherine also includes Catharines and Katherines, Susannah includes Susannas, Phoebe includes Phebes, etc.

The compound 'Mother's/Grandmother's maiden name used as first name' designation is an educated guesstimate based on what I recognized as known surnames, as I do not hate myself enough to go through 25,000+ individuals and confirm their mother's maiden names. So if the tally includes any individuals who just happened to be named Fitzroy/Hastings/Townsend/etc. because their parents liked the sound of it and not due to any familial relations - my bad.

I did a small comparative survey of 5,000 individuals in several rural communities in Rutland and Staffordshire (chosen because they had the cleanest data I could find and I was lazy) to see if there were any significant differences between urban and rural naming practices and found the results to be very similar. The most noticeable difference I observed was that the S+ tier names were even MORE popular in rural areas than in London. In Rutland between 1810 and 1820 Elizabeths comprised 21.4% of all brides vs. 15.3% in the London survey. All other S+ names also saw increases of between 1% and 6%. I also observed that the rural communities I surveyed saw a small, but noticeable and fairly consistent, increase in the use of names with Biblical origins.

Sources of the records I used for my survey: 

Ancestry.com. England & Wales Marriages, 1538-1988 [database on-line].

Ancestry.com. Westminster, London, England, Church of England Marriages and Banns, 1754-1935 [database on-line].