#either you find a solution that works or you accept your limitations and find a better environment

[mod2amaryllis]

im just gonna be petty ignore me

are you ever training someone and eventually it gets to a point where you just like

give up on them lol

[deliciousangelfestival]

The Malicious Daughter Is Back! - 4

Character : Bucky Barnes x Female!Reader

Summary: It's just a business marriage. Bucky thought it would be easy until he encountered the stepsister of his fiancée. She turned his world upside down.

The Malicious Daughter Is Back! Series Masterlist

Main Masterlist || Support : Ko-fi 🙏🏻

Thank you to everyone who has read this chapter. Leave a comment and Reblog, please. I'd love to hear your thoughts. ❤️

Bucky was speechless after you kissed his hand, even though it was through the leather gloves.

You let go of his hand. "Was that too much? Sorry, I’m just overwhelmed by the offer you gave."

“I take that as a yes?” Bucky asked, still processing.

“Well yeah, didn’t I seal it by kissing your hand? I thought it was clear.” You smiled, a hint of playfulness in your eyes.

Bucky chuckled softly. "That's a new way to accept an offer, but joke aside, I’m grateful you accepted."

You lowered your guard, leaning back slightly. "So what happens next? I have to say, I won’t do anything that makes me a homewrecker."

“Oh gosh, nothing like that,” Bucky reassured you, his tone earnest.

“That’s a relief.” You let out a breath, feeling more at ease.

Suddenly, Bucky's phone rang. He picked it up and saw the caller ID: "Victoria." He bit the inside of his cheek, not wanting to talk to her at this moment. However, he didn't want to ignore the call either, as his fiancée would quickly learn that he had no feelings for her.

He excused himself to answer the call. "Hello?"

"Hello, my fiancé. I apologize for bothering you, but I heard something that doesn't sit quite right with me. I heard that you are with my older sister?" Victoria asked, her voice calm and cheerful, though her perfectly manicured fingers were crumpling a few papers nervously on the other end.

Bucky felt like he had just been caught cheating. "I am. I have something to discuss with her because of what happened last night."

"Oh, I see. Alright, I won’t bother you. See you soon." Victoria ended the call, smirking as she looked at her phone. She knew Bucky's reputation—quiet and calm but ruthless if disrespected. She remembered how you embarrassed him last night and thought perhaps he was giving you a warning.

Victoria felt a tickle of satisfaction, believing Bucky understood her without her needing to lift a finger. She felt lucky to have him as her fiancé.

Bucky, not entirely sure what had just transpired, felt relieved that Victoria didn't seem suspicious and quickly ended the call.

He returned to you and saw you chatting with the waitress and his secretary. In seconds, you had already become close to new people.

Unlike you, Bucky’s circle of friends all had to undergo background checks before he could trust them.

"Let’s talk in the car. I’ll drop you off," Bucky suggested.

"Sure," you agreed, thinking this would save you transportation money.

Inside the luxurious car, you felt like you were being enveloped by the comfortable seat. Even if you worked for 20 years on your teacher’s salary, you wouldn’t be able to afford this car.

Bucky wore his reading glasses and read a document. He spoke to you without lifting his head. "Tomorrow, after your school is over, I’ll pick you up, and we'll meet my psychiatrist."

You raised your eyebrows in surprise.

Bucky explained, "He knows my condition, and I hope bringing you to meet him will help us find a solution." His voice sounded serious, a little desperate.

"Have you had this disorder since you were little?" you asked.

He flinched, his hand stopping mid-motion as he was about to flip the paper. "It started when I was 12 years old," Bucky replied, his voice tinged with a hint of vulnerability.

His expression turned grieving. You knew this was the moment to stop asking questions; after all, you’d just met him for the second time. There’s a limit to how personal you can get with someone you barely know.

🥀🥀🥀🥀

The car stopped in front of a small house. It looked old but cozy, especially the garden with its many flowers. Bucky wondered if it was you who took care of all the roses.

You rolled your eyes, "It was my grandma who has the green thumb."

Bucky glanced at the flowers. "Pretty. I’m grateful for your cooperation, but I hope none of this gets leaked to outsiders."

So he was giving you a warning. You made a gesture of zipping your lips. "My lips are sealed." Then you closed the car door and headed to your house.

After he saw you enter the house, he told his driver to start the car.

You watched the car drive away from behind the curtain.

"Is that your boyfriend, my Ophelia?" The cheerful voice of an older woman startled you. You jumped, turning to see your grandma, Cassandra, standing beside you.

She smiled at you, happiness evident in her eyes, but you couldn't share her joy. To your grandmother, you were her daughter, Ophelia, your mother, who had passed away years ago.

Life had been cruel to her, taking away her only daughter, her son-in-law ignored her, and her business at the same time, which took a significant toll on her. The final blow was dementia.

She didn’t remember you at all. At 70 years old, her mind had regressed to when she was 40. Because of the striking resemblance between you and your mother, she thought you were Ophelia.

You sighed and put on a smile for her. "No, he's just a friend."

Cassandra giggled. "Really? Your father will be jealous when he hears this. Uhuk... uhuk..." She started coughing. You bring her to sit on her chair.

Your heart clenched each time you heard your grandma cough. It was getting worse.

She needed surgery, but you didn't have the money.

Having a rich father like Jonathan was useless because you didn't have access to your money. The reason was clear: Genevieve and Victoria.

She really hated you and wanted you to starve to death.

You quickly put a blanket on Cassandra lap and turned on the air humidifier to help ease her cough.

As you added the eucalyptus and lemongrass essential oil into the humidifier, your eyes caught the family photo on the wall. It was a picture of your family—your dad, your mom, and your grandparents—standing in front of your childhood home. Everyone was gathered to celebrate your birthday. But now, it was all just a memory.

You clenched your fist, feeling a surge of determination. Soon, you would get what was supposed to be yours.

💋💋💋💋

The next day after school, you went with Bucky to see the psychiatrist. But before that, the school was in an uproar because of the clothes you were wearing. You, who always dressed like a vampire hunter in jeans, combat boots, a grey shirt, and a black jacket, were now wearing a casual outfit with a vintage aesthetic.

You wore a cream-colored blouse tucked into a high-waisted plaid skirt paired with brown loafers and a light brown blazer with elbow patches. Your hair was styled in soft waves, and you carried a small leather satchel. The change in your appearance left everyone talking.

Jimmy couldn’t believe you were the same teacher who always yelled at him. “Who are you?”

You replied with a smirk, “Your worst nightmare.”

Everyone nodded in agreement. Despite your elegant outfit, you still commanded authority.

Bucky also noticed the change in your appearance. “You look different.”

You explained, “I don’t want your psychiatrist to think that I could be a bad influence on you.”

“Fair point,” he nodded in agreement.

After a while, both of you arrived at the destination, a fancy clinic. The receptionist, already accustomed to Bucky's appointments, greeted him warmly. “He’s waiting for you.”

Bucky led you to the room, which was bright and comfortable, conducive to a relaxed atmosphere. The walls were painted in calming colors and adorned with abstract art, and the furniture was modern yet inviting.

There was already someone sitting in the chair, holding a pen and a writing board. It was Dr. Javier, who had known Bucky for a long time.

Javier waited until both Bucky and you were seated. "You told me that you had a breakthrough. Is it her?" he inquired.

Bucky nodded, taking off his leather gloves and putting on a pulse oximeter on his finger. He then reached for your hand, and you placed yours in his.

Javier widened his eyes and adjusted his glasses. Bucky showed no signs of panic attacks, and his pulse appeared normal. "Wow. Incredible. How long has this been happening?" Javier asked.

Bucky replied, "Three days."

"After you touched her, you mentioned trying to shake somebody else's hand. Did the panic attacks suddenly reappear then?" Javier inquired further.

Bucky confirmed, "Yes."

Javier wondered what made you so special. Suddenly, he moved closer to you without warning.

You exclaimed, "What the-?"

“Interesting,” Javier nodded. “I can think of one reason: your body fragrance.”

You were taken aback. Did you really smell bad? You started sniffing your clothes. They were still new; you had only worn them three times, and they had been dry cleaned.

Then you remembered, “I am surrounded by buckets of sweat and cigarettes.”

Being around students who smoked and sweated a lot due to their frequent sports activities made you open all the classroom windows to get rid of the smell.

Bucky found it difficult to accept that his disorder could be triggered by your body odor.

Javier felt as though four eyes were judging him. He cleared his throat. “Ahem. Your case is one of a kind, Bucky. Perhaps her scent doesn’t trigger your trauma—” He didn’t continue when he felt someone glaring at him.

Trauma? Bucky’s trauma? You wondered what Javier meant.

Bucky crossed his arms and changed the subject. “So the solution to my disorder is the smell of a locker room?”

Javier raised both arms, trying to calm down his patient's anger. “I’m not saying it’s the solution, but it could be.”

Bucky sighed heavily. What kind of nonsense was this? But the way he met you was also out of the blue. His life is full of surprises now.

Author Note: Poor Cassandra. 🥺 Also the reader is a non-smoker.

Taglist:

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@thetravelingtyper

@scott-loki-barnes

@mostlymarvelgirl

@chemtrails-club

@dexter99

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@bada-lee-ily

[vesora]

is it a real problem or are you trapped in your mind?

this one goes to my anxious girlies

the past few weeks I've been extremely trapped in my mind, ruminating whether someone would backstab me or whether a friend would leave me and of course there is no evidence of that in real life, it's all in mind. that being said, deep down i know that nothing would happen and im sure deep down you all know as well that nothing would happen. but the what ifs are so strong that you can't handle yourself practising the law.

this doesn't mean you can't manifest during this time, we always manifest, just now you can consciously manifest things you want. e.g. I wanted a psychic message from someone and I received it; I got money when I needed it; I never wait for public transport even if the app shows that it is coming in like 30 minutes (because we don't pay attention to 3d). I've noticed my anxious and extremely intrusive thoughts never manifest, especially after learning the law so I don't want you to be scared of your own mind. You, as the supreme being and consciousness ARE your mind but your mind is not you. In the grand scheme of things, the mind is unreal so what would the "3d" listen to? Some jumble of anxious fearful thoughts that do not exist except from when you aware of it or the command of God themselves?

all in your (unreal) mind:

don't punish yourself, stop harming yourself by trapping yourselves in your mind. simply drop the thought. if you find that hard, you can work on it by eliminating the possibilities but from experience, that still never makes the fear go away. the fear is so primal, so noticeable that the only way it feels it can go away for me is if I end everything and thats not good right? why would God be a victim to her character's thoughts? Why wouldn't God just change the garment?

The hardest thing is to just ACCEPT. "Just accept you have it" was the hardest thing for me to apply because soras entire life was just finding every possible solution for the worst case scenario in case people hurt her or I am seen in a way that doesn't represent her (aka being misunderstood). See how i am using her and sora to describe things I experienced? It's because I have the POWER to completely eradicate any trauma or any pain by just choosing to adorn myself in another state. I am not sora but sora is me, therefore I have control over soras experiences. You are not a victim to your circumstance, when you find the law you have the power to create your own life, you create new circumstances by adopting a new version of yourself. You are in control no matter what the unreal mind says.

breathe in, breathe out:

Excuse my language but honestly fuck the mind???? It only knows what it has learned from its surroundings and you are above the surroundings so why would you listen to such a limited thing?

Do you think if you dismiss the thoughts you won't be prepared for what you think is about to come? Do you feel you constantly have to be on defense mode protecting yourself either from physical or emotional harm?

I understand, I was the same way and sometimes I still revert back to it. However the thing is, who is creating whats about to come? YOU ARE! Don't you get it? Nothing can happen without your consent (once you accept your power of course). You are not a victim to circumstances. You are never the receiver, you are always the creator. Bask yourself in lovely states with lovely thoughts. It is okay if you do not believe it or if your body is resisting it, just please persevere. We can't let anxiety win. What is anxiety to a God?

our negative beliefs falling after we disown them:

Read this by Edward Art

[candiid-caniine]

dumb dog's guide to self-denial

this was by far the most popular option in my last poll so here goes! full disclosure, i am a drooling idiot so i can't promise i won't miss some things. i can promise, however, that 1) i will do my best!! dogs are v enthusiastic!! and 2) there will be no bioessentialist kink of any kind within this post. adding to it with such things will get you blocked. if you're looking for that, go the hell elsewhere :)

disclaimer: i cannot give you advice that will "simply work" because nobody can. your body, your effort, and your time are all variables which I cannot account for with any certainty, so this is meant to get you started with finding your ideals when it comes to orgasm denial. it's not about learning to edge as much as me/for as long as me/as hard as me/whatever - everyone is different!

my approach to this is basically...building a dom/owner/whatever you'd like to call your ideal "denial partner" in your head. if you're single, either by choice or by chance, or you have a partner/s who isn't interested in being involved w/ your denial, this basically means being your own owner! so how does one do that? and how is that supposed to help with denial? you may be asking.

well, denial is about self-control, at least at the beginning. if you're new to this, that's probably what you're struggling with! your body loves orgasms, and it's used to getting release when it's stimulated. you start off a session wanting to edge, intending not to cum, but...you just can't; your body pushes you too far. when you've cultivated self-control, at some point your body starts to accept that edging also feels good, but until that point, it's all willpower.

only, part of being a submissive is wanting to surrender your willpower. so my solution to that was always playing both sub and dom, sort of at once, and to make a habit of it, so that even when you're in subspace it's not too far beyond you. how does that work if you're not a switch? you may be asking.

well...when you touch yourself, you probably fantasize, right? or you watch porn, or read erotica, etc. you may not be a switch, or have any urge to dom, but odds are you have an idea of how you'd like to be talked to. so start there.

want to be praised and trained like a beloved pet? when your body starts to get more excited, talk to yourself, and yes, it always feels stupid at first. "good boys don't cum without permission, isn't that right?" "so close to the edge, aren't you? now stop. stop right now. good girl." "be a good puppy and leave those puppy parts alone, calm down for me. good pet." whisper it if you have to, but do say it aloud. repeating it in your head isn't going to be enough at the start. eventually, maybe, but not yet. or do you want to be degraded and talked down to? tell yourself you don't deserve to cum, you're a pathetic toy, you're such a loser for obeying. then obey. in essence, emulate the dom that's in your fantasies. this is step 1. let your inner dom set some arbitrary, easy limits: just one more edge, then you can cum. or five more minutes, then you can cum. don't take away the goal of cumming just yet. and i do mean easy.

what if you don't have concrete fantasies/are imagining more sex acts than actual dirty talk? then get some! set aside 20-30 minutes before your edging attempt and get to dirty daydreaming! visualize the way you like being talked to, then enact it to, for, and by yourself. note the time to start this is before you've ever touched, if it's not already natural to you.

step 2: get comfortable with it. work a little of your "inner dom" into other aspects of your life; don't worry too much about the edging sessions, just get comfortable with this new persona or habit. when you finish a hard task, call yourself a good boy/girl/pet. when you're getting undressed for the shower, ask yourself, sexily, "is this for me?" and then your choice of pretty/handsome little thing or dirty little slut. invoke your inner dom in other areas of your life you imagine enjoying control. remember: you have to learn to bear through edging on self-control alone before you start to really lean into it from an internal perspective. and when you're edging, it's really hard for that to be the only time you're trying to do this.

step 3: when it's becoming more habitual, it's time to bring the edging up a notch. start setting true limits, experimenting with various things. these are the parameters i recommend experimenting with, one at a time, empirical-style:

how many edges can you do in one session before your urge to cum outweighs your inner dom? can you stretch this, with practice?

how does your body feel edging over and over again for 1 hour, vs. edging once per hour the whole day? more desperate and fuzzy, or less?

how does your body feel being teased slowly up to the edge vs. brute-forced into as quick an edge as possible? can you shorten, or lengthen, the times for each?

how close to the edge can you get yourself before a ruin becomes inevitable? what signs in your body point to this - tightening, contracting, throbbing, temperature, tingling? from there, can you roughly estimate a timeframe or amount of certain types of stimulation?

does setting aside specific times of day to edge, and not permitting it outside those times, frustrate/distract you more? or does allowing yourself to edge whenever you have time/feel like it frustrate/distract you more?

is it better to (eventually) cum directly after a long edging session, or to allow yourself to cool down completely and *then* cum?

how many methods of edging (insertion, fingering/stroking, vibration, humping, nipples, etc) can you perform, and in how many positions?

is it more frustrating to gently stroke/fondle yourself once every few minutes for the whole day without edging, or to edge repeatedly in a short period for an hour once a day?

there's a lot more you can try out. i recommend keeping a journal for all this. setting these kinds of goals and experiments for yourself will both a) keep you engaged intellectually and motivated, and b) get you in better communication with your own body. throughout all this, continue practicing that inner dom persona. praise yourself, degrade yourself, have dialogues with yourself; tell yourself to be useful or good, then respond with a pout and a "yes" and your choice of honorific.

more ideas/challenges can be found all over BDSMlr if you look for "edging challenges," but be aware many of them contain bioessentialist themes/language.

step 3.5: most d/s relationships have a reward/punishment hierarchy. so as you're taking step 3, explore what motivates you more - punishment, or reward - and, conversely, what gets you subbier: having more, or less of what motivates you. i'll explain, but:

when you fail a goal by going over the edge or ruining, what's the punishment that makes you feel the most repentant? is it impact, humiliating yourself somehow, some other unpleasant sensation, writing lines or other tedium? what makes you feel the least inclined to disobey again?

when you succeed at a goal, what reward makes you feel most fulfilled? is it an orgasm? several orgasms? sweet treats? a good smoke session? buying new lingerie? some combination of them?

from there: what successes or failures feel most, to least, deserving of the worst/best punishments and rewards? can you rank them?

and then: are you noticing you meet goals more when you're punished strictly, or rewarded fairly?

then here's the complex bit...does it align more, or less, with your desired form of submission to be consistent like that, or inconsistent? do you want a dom who always gives you the same caliber of reward/punishment for the same actions, or one who's cruel enough to keep you guessing at their whims? do you want a dom who adheres to you being more reward- or punishment- motivated, or a dom who doesn't care what motivates you, but rather what pleases them?

when you reward/punish yourself, thank or apologize to yourself, too :)

step 4: keep taking notes, but ask yourself these questions (you may want to take a break from edging just to have a clear mind):

why do i want to stay denied? is it because i like the challenge, or because i like a feeling like helplessness, neediness, vulnerability, or dumbness?

once you have that question answered, move on to: which of the ways/variables i tested while edging best gives me the feeling i'm looking for? was it more frustration, or less? was it frustration in small doses through the day, or all at once at a predictable time? was it switching up my methods, or staying consistent?

do i want to feel dumb/humiliated/put in my place/crushed by denial, or do i want to feel empowered/secured/confident because of it? which of the variables i tested made me feel the way i wanted?

your answer to many of these may be "both" or "i don't know," to which i suggest you spend some time on each. you'll either have a preference, or you'll switch back and forth, or find some middle ground - up to you.

one thing i've noticed is a theme among my advice asks is: how do i stay denied as long/edge as much as you, and that's for you to figure out if you even should. it's time to ask the question, what feels more doable for me: longer time periods without orgasms, or more edges total? you might say "both," to which i'd say, you and every newbie denial sub! it is 100% more feasible to pick one or the other as a goal at a time. hone those skills separately, and they'll naturally come together eventually if you decide you want them to.

step 5: reach for the stars! if you want to, that is :) you may just find you like a stable pattern of denial. you may find that pushing too hard past a certain point causes dropping. you may find that pushing too hard causes life stress. orrr you may find that "more" is never enough...like myself lol. any/all/it changing/some of each is 100% okay. or maybe you get off (or not) on setting impossible challenges and reaping the punishment for it :)

by this time, your body will have hopefully gotten past the awkward "mind thinks edging is hot, but so hot that i cum when trying to do it" phase. a combo of inner dom chatter + having intellectual/introspective challenges to work through was what got me to where i am right now lol. at some point, having my owner there to take the mental load off was great, but also, i'm so used to it that i still dom myself a lot lol. and a quick note: this may not work for you. that's okay, too: that's all part of your learning process. maybe you need external validation, and that's all there is to it - you're at least one step closer to understanding how denial works for you!

i'll finish with some lecturing to your "inner dom:"

good doms obey limits. if you don't like something you try, no matter how mean your inner dom is, you don't have to put up with it again.

good doms know life happens. if real life gets in the way of edging/completing goals, a good dom would never presume to come above that shit. if edging/completing goals is getting in the way of real life, a good dom would adjust so that it doesn't. responsibilities should continue to take precedence.

good doms are risk-aware. if you're experimenting with pain, bondage, anal, sensation play, etc., do what every good dom should do and educate yourself first! know the risks, and implement strategies to mitigate them.

good doms provide aftercare. take care of yourself on the comedown. try to allow time between a session and IRL responsibilities to recenter.

and finally, just a bit of affirmation for you, the person, as you navigate this exciting new lifestyle:

if you're not having fun, don't do it!

you are fully capable of this. whether it's my method or someone else's, if this is what you want, and it feels good, you can do it. you are not a bad sub if you can't, or if you can't do it the way someone else does.

this is not a masculine thing, or a feminine thing, or an enby thing, or a straight thing, or a gay thing, etc. it's not even a sub thing, really, but the sub perspective is the only one i can speak on. it's a kink, or a kink enhancer, that is "for" anyone who likes it!

in that vein, reject that which does not work for your body. do not be afraid to pass up edging advice just because someone seems to know what they're talking about. you also do not have to accept bioessentialist undertones just because it seems like good advice.

and finally: yes, you can dom yourself. you are capable, you are trustworthy (probably more so than even some doms lol), and you are absolutely worthy of your own submission and devotion.

have fun, stay safe, and drip a little, if it suits you c; (and don't hesitate to ask questions on my blog if you still have them!)

[canmom]

comics and animation have a lot in common, but one interesting difference is that arranging pictures in space rather than time means there's a tradeoff between the amount of drawings you use to show an action, the amount of space each drawing is given, and the amount of pages you cover which determines the 'pacing' of the comic.

if you slice the page up into a lot of tiny boxes to show many stages of a motion like an animation, then each panel has correspondingly less space for background details, and it may affect the aspect ratio of panels. if you give yourself space for a large splash panel, then the pace will slow.

one solution to this problem is to break the convention that a panel is a single 'frame' of action and show multiple images of a character in the same background. Kentaro Miura did this sometimes, and Tradd Moore (on here - @traddmoore) is an expert who uses it frequently (I'll reblog his spiderman comic in a minute). Kamome Shirahama, a genius at creative paneling, also uses it in a couple of places.

a similar trick will have a single background continuous across multiple panels, showing a static 'camera shot' at different times.

the limitation of these methods is that breaking convention makes the panel a little harder to process - you need to make absolutely sure you cue the reader clearly about where to enter the panel. and it requires action that involves a large movement so the drawings don't overlap. so most authors use it as a 'once in a while' thing.

an opposite approach, used in early parts of Superpose by Seosamh and Anka and Goodbye, Eri by Tatsuki Fujimoto, is to go even harder with the cinematic convention and give each panel the aspect ratio and detailed backgrounds of a film camera, taking all the space you need - Superpose opens with about two panels per page which may be very similar to each other, creating a very deliberate sense of pacing. to pull this off you need to be either extremely fast at drawing like Fujimoto, or accept your comic taking a long time to get anywhere - and you also need to be very good at placing the camera in space. you're basically drawing fully rendered storyboards at that point.

one of the interesting difficulties of comic-making is controlling pacing. if you draw many very similar panels it will convey a sense of high concentration and intensity, or a heavy atmosphere, like a long take in a film. much like in prose, if you spend a lot of pictures on something it draws attention to it. so you want to use the 'slow down' sparingly for effect.

as in animation, you're also limited by your own capacity to draw all those pictures, and moreover the space to put them. this is one reason why comics in magazines tend to be sharply limited in page count, and webcomics tend to be very slow compared to other forms of serial fiction. (perhaps manga can make heavier use of pacing tricks by virtue of cheaper printing and endemic overwork. i don't think that's the full story though.) meanwhile, when Transmetropolitan started to experiment with manga-style pacing, apparently it upset fans who felt the story progression was being diluted. when reading Transmet in one go, though, you don't even notice. what works well in an anthology of hundreds of pages may work poorly in a serial.

i think the pace of the reader is often controlled primarily by the text - at least for me I find I sometimes have a tendency to jump very quickly over panels to get to the next bit of the story and have to consciously slow myself down to make sure I don't fail to appreciate the art. so while a series of text-less panels is effective artistically, you might want some words to act as speed bumps. but too much text per picture and your comic becomes exhausting to read, like Subnormality. and you don't want to over-explain what's conveyed perfectly well by the pictures, as many older comics do.

ideally, you use your text, small panels and large panels to create a sense of rhythm. a big splash panel can act as the full stop in a sentence, or a longer take after a series of rapid cuts. negative space is an especially powerful device in the right hands: when you hit a page of Chainsaw Man or Berserk that is almost entirely white after several pages of dense illustration, a character bursting into the void, there's an immediate 'wow' effect before you even process what's happening in the illustration. (i can't seem to find the chainsaw man example i had in mind, so here's one from berserk.)

and on that note, the other thing that comics have that animation doesn't is the impact of being confronted with the whole gestalt page. in the manga I was helping Fall translate when she died, We Are Magical Boys (Bokura wa Mahou Shounen), Fukushima Teppei frequently puts one panel much larger than the others so it dominates the page, usually a close-up or full length character portrait, allowing the cuteness of their unique art style to treasure centre stage. Sandman, which I'm currently rereading, is full of elaborate page compositions, where a drawing might not even be a panel per se, but a visual element. Witch Hat Atelier is full of elaborate borders and clever compositions. just look at this...

how did she come up with that! the absolute madwoman! the right side is relatively standard Atelier (establishing shots, the main cast eagerly stepping out of their panel) but on the left, we have a set of panels falling down from above onto a large splash panel. even though this image is concurrent, the panels invite us to appreciate it in chunks, and the page as a whole has this great visual of the pages of a book, continuing the image of the previous page. (more of this on upcoming post on Atelier)

a character emerging from their panel to overlap others, breaking up the monotony of the grid and adding a sense of depth to the page as a whole, is a reliably appealing motif. also, drawing one panel borderless, so it implicitly continues behind the other panels. large areas of black and white and choices of colour saturation can convey a mood to the page as a whole.

the danger you run is always the loss of clarity. the reader must be able to tell what panels to read in what order without thinking about it. Sandman will sometimes do a double page spread where you're supposed to read across both pages, and this consistently trips me up. Dresden Codak is by an adhd author and her drive to give every page an elaborate layout is very familiar to me, but especially in Hob, it messes with the flow of the comic overall.

so every comic page, every comic, is a fascinating balance of all these factors. how to create a strong, visually interesting composition, control the pacing appropriate to tone, create a thrilling sense of rhythm... all without sacrificing clarity.

not much more to say about this as yet, it's just something I'm thinking about while trying to lay out a page of Ghost Barrier. my tendency is to generally use larger panels, and try to be creative with layouts, but you have to consider not just each page in isolation but how they relate to other pages. so to make the splash panel land, I need to contrast with a denser page immediately beforehand.

the more I make comics the more of a feel I'll get. cool medium!

[suwbuns]

E-DATERS! | beomgyu’s genius plan

SYPNOSIS. moving back to korea from america, y/n is excited to reunite with her old friends and make new ones. what she doesnt expect is to find herself reuniting with her “ex-boyfriend” from 10 years ago who she dated over minecraft. what makes things worse? he happens to be her favorite streamer who she has been pinning after for years.

written + screenshot below! (not proofread lolol)

“this isn’t going to work” heeseung grumbled, folding his arms over his shirt. “and you’re an idiot for even suggesting this in the first place.”

“but who’s the idiot who agreed?” beomgyu retorted, his voice fading as he walked over to the kitchen to grab the stool from the counter, placing it beside his desk chair. “it’s genius. you just dont know it yet.” he patted the cushion material of the chair, motioning for heeseung to take a seat as beomgyu took his own.

“just stick to the plan,” beomgyu started, launching his minecraft and discord application on his computer while adjusting his microphone arm to where it stopped right in front of heeseung’s face. “i play, and you speak! if you don’t know what to say then ill be here to help you out.”

“this is going to end up badly,” heeseung sighed, adjusting himself comfortably on the stool and moving the pop filter closer to his mouth. “but i’m only doing this because you said that you would pay for my college tuition.” 

beomgyu tapped his fingers against the surface of his wooden desk, waiting anxiously for your username that would pop up under his friend request tag any minute now.

beomgyu himself knew this plan was stupid, there was no doubt about that. but if there was anything beomgyu was good at doing, it was creating last minute solutions. albeit, not good ones.

“i can reveal myself later,” beomgyu thought to himself, his leg shaking nervously under the desk. “im going to have to either way, atleast if things get more serious.”

after nervously waiting for what it felt like an endless amount of time, your username had finally popped up, beomgyu immediately clicking to accept your request. with only a second passing, the red notification bubble had appeared beside your profile picture.

y/n: heyyy

y/n: give me a second to log on, this computer is super slow lol

beomgyu: okayy, call me whenever you are ready :)

“she could call any moment now,” beomgyu rubbed his hands against the fabric of his pajama pants, attempting to get rid of the moisture that coated his palms. “you’re right, what if this doesnt work?”

“so youre telling me this... now?” heeseung deadpanned. “you know, after I practically strangled you to death telling you how stupid your idea was?”

beomgyu shruddered at the memory that occured less than 20 minutes ago, his life flashing before his eyes as he ended up in a headlock by the time he finished giving heeseung his entire spiel of the plan.

“you were the one who agreed!”

“yeah, and thats because your rich-ass agreed to pay for my tuitio-”

the familiar ringing of the discord call sound blared through beomgyus computer speakers, causing him to jump at the sudden noise. he stared at the notification pop up, allowing it to ring on, intimidated by its practically mocking presence.

“ohmygodshescallingwhatdoido” beomgyu panicked, his body shaking due to the adrenaline. the last minute regrets had began to arise, wishing to just flake from the current situation and make some out of pocket joke that would make you never speak to him again to avoid having to talk to you.

it was something that beomgyu knew for sure he could do.

“i dont know, maybe answer?” heeseung grabbed the mouse from beomgyus hands breaking his intrusive thought, moving the cursor to press the green answer button. 

“hello?” a voice sounded from the speakers.

beomgyu froze in his spot, his brain felt as if it was malfunctioning as he was actually processing that he was talking to the diamondgirl123, or in this case, y/n who had been declared off limits from the day he even found out about her. 

heeseung nudged the boy from his dazed state, his eyebrows furrowing towards him as he mouthed what beomgyu wanted him to say. 

“just say hi or something” beomgyu frantically mouthed back, logging onto their private server.

“hi!” heeseung said awfully too cheerful, making beomgyu form a tight lipped expression towards him.

“your voice is so deep bogum, i definitely did not expect that.”

beomgyu felt the blood drain from his face as heeseung chuckled lightly, thanking y/n quickly.

“my voice is deep too” beomgyu bitterly thought to himself. “deeper than his, at least”

he was starting to feel like this was an even worse idea, because the more heeseung and you began to talk, the more you seemed to grow interested. except for the fact that each time you gave a compliment, it was never aimed towards beomgyu himself, but towards heeseung.

and if there was anything that beomgyu couldn’t handle, it was his ego plummeting for the fact that the girl he was trying to win over, was being won over by him. except for it wasn’t really him.

beomgyu sprinted around the world waiting for you to join the game, running quickly to the spawn point when your join message popped up in the chat, dropping a flower to your character.

“ask her if she wants to explore the world together” beomgyu lightly whispered, keeping an eye out on his discord to make sure no audio from him was picked up.

heeseung briefly nodded before relaying the question, to which you excitedly responded yes to.

exploring the world unlocked several memories for you both, allowing you two to bicker with each other and fill each other in on the gap that occurred due to lost time. with heeseung being beomgyus mouthpiece at least. within the time of talking, beomgyu had learned a lot about you and your personality, all the way from your coffee order to embarrassing childhood memories, beomgyu had found himself smiling the entire time and had wished that it couldve been him to be actually talking with you.

beomgyu felt the weight lift off from his shoulders, as he realized that almost two hours had passed and everything seemed to going well, almost too well.

“oh my gosh look!” you gasped, running over to beomgyu’s character and throwing him the book in your inventory. “do you remember when you wrote this when you first confessed to me?”

heeseung leaned over beomgyu’s monitor to take a glimpse of the contents of the book as he flipped through the pages, practically gagging at the amount of cheesiness 13 year old beomgyu managed to write.

“this is so gross,” heeseung scrunched his nose in disgust. “i cant believe i was like this back then” he said, playfully nudging beomgyu in a teasing manner, causing him to roll his eyes at the boy in response.

“hey, it was cute!” you laughed. “you treated me better than any other boy in my life has.”

“actually?” heeseung asked in amusement, cocking an eyebrow. “youre saying that 13 year old beom— i mean bogum, was a better boyfriend than everybody you’ve been with?”

beomgyu’s eyes narrowed at heeseung’s slip up, to which heeseung meerly shrugged at.

“ill be honest,” you spoke, completely oblivious to it. “you completely raised my standards.”

“wait, really?” beomgyu blurted, immediately slapping his hand over his mouth as his eyes widened at heeseung, who had mirrored his reaction.

“you idiot!” heeseung mouthed at the boy after a couple of seconds when he realized youve gone silent. beomgyu crossed his fingers hoping that you didnt hear him, or atleast if you did you wouldnt notice the change in voice.

“y/n, you there?” heeseung broke the silence, glancing at beomgyu whose face had paled.

“me? oh yeah.” you started. both beomgyu and heeseung let out the breaths that they were holding in, sighing in relief. “it’s just… you sounded a lot like this streamer i liked.”

“oh really?” heeseung sent a glare towards the boy who seemed to have a bead of sweat rolling down his face.“sorry, i think i just had some phlegm in my throat which probably made it sound like beomgyu.”

“you’re lucky i saved you,” heeseung was able to mouth, rolling his eyes as he turned to face beomgyu. “im the one you begged to do this, yet youre the one messing up—“

“how did you know that my favorite streamer is beomgyu?”

previous | masterlist | next

TAGLIST. @openingssequence @suburbiataehyung @shinypieceofgarbage @koeuh @captivq @beowmgyu @qluvrv @ikaeryn @whippedforbeomgyu @i8lhee @heyanonymous123 @vanicogh @sulliefimmie @tae-ology @milkycloudtyg @ox1-lovesick @soobsfairy444 @sulliefimmie @jaxavance @peachenle @pokyloky @peachybeom @alpha-mommy69 @fatoompie @ashxxgyu @soobsdior @viagumi @rikismiel @luvsoobs @lovejunz @wccycc @enha-cafe @kaeslily @hiddenboopy @cashew00nut @merendis @reverbtunes @lcvesickgyuzz @dear-dreamie @fragmentationss @chuuinggummy @hafsa-hoofsa-heefs @beomsbeanie @shigamiryuk @soobliss @woncheecks @sserafimez @ahnneyong @ghostfacefricker6969 @flrtsbin @beomomb @cathaerin (closed)

A/N. poor beomgyu 😔😔 anyways guys i finally made a twitter to boast abt my faves and my life so if ygs wanna be moots hehehe 🤭🤭

[kragehund-est]

hey, not to make this your problem, but my adhd is kicking my ass. what systems do you use that work for you?

here are some of the things i use to help myself. everyone's different though, so see what works for you. @ anyone else, feel free to chime in with what you do.

study/work:

do NOT have your phone in the vicinity, and also put it on do not disturb.

dedicate a clear space to work in, don't do other things in that space.

set a timer for 25 min and study til it runs out. take a 5 min break. repeat 3 times. then take a 40 min break. (pomodoro technique) plan ahead of time what will happen in each of those time slots.

it's fine to fidget or doodle, but do a periodic check that that's not becoming your main focus. i use a grip strengthener because i don't have to look at it to use it.

if you listen to music, either set a playlist or accept whatever music comes on. if a song you dont like comes on, simply accept it and let it pass. DON'T PICK UP YOUR PHONE TO CHANGE IT.

if you find your mind drifting while you're studying/working, don't stay in the same place, get up. get a glass of water, stretch, get a snack, whatever. come back once you feel you can focus better.

memory:

a lot of people will tell you to set up a morning/nightime routine. instead of putting in steps like 1. brush teeth 2. take meds, etc., my routine is to force myself to walk along a predetermined path in my house. it's much easier to remember to do things when i SEE them

if you have something you misplace often, like you wallet or keys, give it a home. i have a little box on a table by my door.

if you have to remember to bring something with you (like a backpack, gym bag, or gift for a friend), place it directly in front of the door. you cannot leave without looking at that thing.

also, you can get carabiners and clip things together. i used to always forget my water bottle. well now i physcially cannot do that because i clipped my car keys to it.

write things down! "nahh i'll just remember it" <- no you will not. bring a notepad and pen.

in that same vein, don't put anything off when it takes two seconds. pay for something with your card? immediately afterwards put the card back in your wallet, lest you drop it in your pocket and then forget it there when you wear different clothes the next day.

i have a huge whiteboard in my living room that has my calendar and my to-do list.

on my calendar, i put not only the event, not only the TIME of the event, but also i include the time i need to leave in order to arrive on time, and list anything i need to bring with me.

the to-do list has completion times and priority level next to it. i will NOT start a low priority 40 min project when i have high priority 5 min project. even if the 5 min one sucks.

general tips:

everyone with adhd knows routine is important, but if you find part of a routine difficult, find the root issue and adjust it. problem: i take too long to get dressed in the morning. cause: too tired to make a decision, uncoordinated because of sleepiness. solution: lay your clothes out and loop your belt through belt loops *before bed* so you don't have to do it half asleep

don't mix stimulants. caffeine or adderall alone: cool. caffeine and adderall mixed: twitchy sociopath behaviors and shaky hands.

don't worry about maintaining "normalcy", if something works for you, do it.

limit phone use, especially short form media like reels. it has been proven to both induce and worsen adhd-like symptoms.

i know this is cringe but maintain your physical health. exercise, sleep well, drink water, eat balanced meals.

[talonabraxas]

A Color Diagram (From book, "The Anatomy of the Body of God")

1. Recognize the source, and intuit into the unity of all existence. The idea that we can win at the expense of them is, in the long term, illusory. We're all in this together. Ecology. An expanded sense of identity. Also, this source points to the great mystery of creation, and what lies beyond our knowledge.

2. Celebrate creativity. It's a mythically grounded idea. There's a tradition in many religions to imitate God, however the Divine is imagined: The most useful way to do this in our own time is to recognize the prolific process of creativity–not just through the "Big Bang," but in the present moment, through the imaginations and inspirations–literally, in- spirit- ations – of all sentient beings.

Corollary: Question authority. Accept nothing as the final solution. Dare to re-evaluate, revise, re-negotiate, imagine new possibilities. Obedience, in this view of the meaning of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, is no longer operative–there's a move from the medieval tone of unquestioning acceptance to the modern and postmodern worldview that supports responsibility, an alert consideration of the needs of the moment in light of continuing developments, discoveries, new technologies, etc.

3. Recognize the Other-ness of people, their differences, of the environment, and of the Divine. On one hand, we may be expressions of the Divine flow, and at some level, as claimed by Yogis and other mystics, "one" with It, yet that doesn't mean that the world is there for the gratification of your ego-narcissistic desires. Respect, reverence, humility, and a valuing of the needs of others and the whole all are implied here.

4. Cultivate Generosity and Purpose. The life force is innately generous, but in states of fear, can contract to mere life-sustenance. In today's complex culture, there are tendencies towards stinginess of spirit, and this must be balanced, in wisdom, by the joy and need for an extra bit of giving of oneself to the world. Seek to clarify your talents and abilities and turn them toward this task, at least to some significant degree, lest you die having lived selfishly, pettily.

5. Realize Limitations. Much of human life is a process of dis-illusionment, which is a process of dissolving childish feelings of omnipotence. This need not be tragic. Much of it is simply adjusting to the realities of physical and social constraints, learning to think and work politically, seeking a more refined and less impetuous mode of action in the world. It's a one-step-down form of humility, more practically applied.

Realize, also, that as shown in the diagram of the Tree, the lessons play off of each other, and especially there is the ongoing play of 2 and 3, 4 and 5, and 7 and 8, while 6 is to some degree, the player, the juggler, the dancer.

6. Exercise Balance, seek to harmonize the many different needs, desires, inspirations, ideals, and other complexes that seek expression through your own mixture of temperament and interests. One of the beauties of our time-bound lives is that we can choose how to diversify, focus, take turns, and thus have some existential responsibility for how we live our lives.

7. Identify your passions, what the comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell called, "following your bliss." What tickles your fancy? Instead of pursuing what is merely fashionable, liking or disliking largely to garner approval or to be included in the "in group"–which is an in-authentic reason–, get in touch with what more genuinely interests or appeals to you. This can take many years, even into late adulthood. Often you'll find it correlates with what you have at least some moderate ability to do. Have the courage to pursue it. (And this can be tremendously varied in the world, different folks liking different strokes.)

8. Recognize and work within the cultural matrix you live in. If not, then either be a smart revolutionary–to change or expand it–or pay the price of changing cultures, emigrating, and becoming acculturated into a different culture. Lots of people do this, too. The point is to deal responsibly with the social context you find yourself in, rather than simply sulking, withdrawing, giving up, mindlessly conforming, or numbing yourself.

9. Cultivate Imagination, in many ways–the arts, drama, mythmaking. Note that much of ordinary education and life neglects, distracts, and sometimes actively suppresses this human potential. Refuse to be tempted by vicarious imaginary experiences offered by the media, in video games, television, movies, etc. Take responsibility to use those elements like small stimuli, like appetizers or dessert, but not your main meal. Become a person who imagines your own life!

10. Manifest your life. Avoid the temptations to become preoccupied with the seductions of spectatorship, or living in "what if" (either in past or future). Deeds, projects, action. The world is no illusion. You have an opportunity for authentic enjoyment, for adding your own creativity to helping the world be a better place. In can be in as small a way as an act of kindness or generosity.

Lest these points seem like mere platitudes, rather obvious, consider that many if not most people do not live these principles out in their lives. Nor are these ten points the only lessons you can gather from studying the tree. They just show what can come to mind–that the principles noted are by no means mere abstractions.

Another way to view the tree is in terms of how it can reassure and remind you: That you are part of a great, unified "becoming" of the cosmos (1); that this is a creative process and your life creativity is an integral part of the great becoming (2); that the cosmos is here, a matrix (related to the Latin word root for mother) for you, a setting, playground, stage, for you (3); that you can choose a direction, many directions, in fact, and your choices add to your story–and indeed, you may be assured that your life is a story (4); part of that story involves the way you've coped with limitations–your body's structure, illnesses, dis-abilities, areas of no-talent, the weakness and deficiencies of your family, region, and historical era, and the many other obstacles that life presents–and indeed, that which makes your story a good piece of drama! (5); the creative way you've balanced your strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and limitations, etc.(6); the many lines of interest and ability, the archetypes, the mythic resonances with the spirit of (whatever dimension you channel)–all set you into stage in which you play many parts in a unique fashion (7); the cultural forms all this enactment takes, and how you are a carrier of certain cultural values, and a challenge to others that you don't agree with–these, too, make your life good theatre and also part of the great unfolding myth of that culture!(8); the richness of your imagination as you assemble these many threads into a meaningful story, embellishing it also with all the other what-if-dramas you can fantasize, thickening your existence (9); and, finally, how you actually play out your unique life, your actual achievements, your deeds. You might be surprised how far many of your actions have reached (10).

The point of this rhapsody is to enjoy the depth of your mythic embeddedness in the Divine Process of Unfolding. This is the way God works, through your individuality (and everyone else's, also, of course)! Envision it as an infinite symphony, improvised, incredibly rich, which, if perceived from enough distance and time, expresses amazing harmonies (in spite of a surprising amount of what in the moment may seem like mere noise, or as Shakespeare called it, "sound and fury." On a micro-scale, it may "signify nothing," but in the big picture, this is how we all grow, evolve as a species, groping, going up blind alleys, turning back, trying another way.

[sapphia]

From my post about how NZ’s far right wanted to abolish the human rights commission but instead installed a gay racist transphobe instead.

…The more [TERF] beliefs became incompatible with core feminism, and the more core feminism became interested in exploring gender, scientifically and sociologically, as an ever-changing construct informed by but not limited to base biology, and the more radfems became consumed with their “cause” of getting trans women out of their spaces and away from “LGB resources” (actual argument that used to get propagated), the further away TERFs pushed themselves from mainstream feminism until they found themselves on the same side as the groups to which they were once fundamentally opposed: anti-feminists, homophobes, conservative religious groups, anti-abortionists, and neo nazis. Thus, radical feminism is perhaps one of the few true demonstrations of the horseshoe theory, where a group became so radicalised it jumped the iron gap and travelled all around to the other end of the horseshoe.

TERFs were great boons to the cause, and came with a huge inbuilt advantage for the right: many of them are lesbians, giving them a rare LGBT ally and a demonstration of the ‘harm’ trans people were causing.

The reason why so many TERFs are lesbians is partly because of queer intracommunity politics, and partly because the academic and social roots of TERFism originate in the UK and from UK academic feminism, led by their universities and which was always particularly ‘anti-men’ in its approach, producing student movements back in the 80s and 90s that discouraged women from dating men, encouraging them to remain celibate or to date women instead, and it’s this separatist ideology where radical feminism finds its roots. If the concept sounds familiar, that’s because there is currently a South Korean feminist trend based on similar ideals making waves in the West.

In fundamental ways, radical feminists and the far right are well matched: they’ve always shared a particular lack of complex understanding of varying structures of oppression, as I remember very vividly from online discourse back before radical feminism devolved so much it fully segregated itself from the mainstream.

Radical feminists were obsessed with working out who had privilege over others, or who were less privileged, and this resulted in complicated and very flawed calculations of compounding oppressions. For example, does a gay black man have more or less privilege than a straight white woman?

Boiling this down to its essential premise of how much is a marginalisation “worth” is what aligns the mindset of radical feminists with that of the far right. Neither group truly includes a full variety of perspectives to contribute to demonstrating and explaining the complexities in the ways our society treats marginalised groups. Such transgressive thinking is antithetical to their worldview and contrary to the norms they are invested in enforcing.

You don’t have to be highly educated or culturally engaged to see the inherent issues of trying to so distinctly define people into categories. Common sense would also tell you different groups have different privileges, different concerns, and that these would reveal themselves in different ways and need addressing with different solutions. Both a black man and a woman may be disadvantaged in finding a job vs your average white man, but one would have more reason to be worried accepting a drink from a stranger in a bar while the other might be more worried being pulled over by the cops. These real-life concerns can’t be differentiated down into a finite value.

(Not that either of these situations aren’t a threat to the other individual — women have plenty of reasons to fear the power of cops, and gay men who are victims of hate crimes are regularly picked up in gay bars.)

Common sense also would make you wonder how much it matters. If you want to add up all the different ways people can be disenfranchised, you’ll soon end up with a checklist of -isms too long to be of any use and able to find ways to fit anyone inside at least one of them, which is sort of the whole point. And in checklisting everything you’ll still be managing to ignore any nuance and the entire concept of classism, probably.

This was roughly the outcome of discourse between the left and radical feminists: “Your math doesn’t work out.” And like a true ally of the right, the TERFs said, “Doesn’t matter, we believe it anyway.”

Comment

Like the right, radical feminists struggle to conceptualise and explain the effects of compounding marginalisation, usually because they themselves tend to be quite privileged. Radical feminism was born from those first generations of women able to attend universities, and their demographic reflects that. Most radical feminists (actual radical feminists and not just people jumping on the transphobia bandwagon) were white women, able-bodied, on the richer side of the poverty line — and in fact, the exclusion of black women in the UK from feminist studies in universities has become a recent subject of criticism from black feminists, as Western concepts of norms have been drastically affected by the narrowness of the perspective of the field, and so in this way, defining ‘male’ and ‘female’ as distinct categories with distinct traits particularly disenfranchises Black people and other people and cultures of colour who maintain different ideals and norms, who have different physical features, and who resultantly find themselves alienated from a conversation dominated by the white voice.

Although their views on how gender should be divided in society are transformative, TERF positions on gender themselves are regressive and conservative, leaning into anti-scientific understandings of sex, gender, and the wider world that have steadily put the movement more and more at odds with academia and also, sometimes, with reality. TERFs, both women and lesbians, are members of marginalised groups who feel their space is being encroached upon by people who, by their own rubric, are evaluated as more ‘privileged’ than they are, yet are seen as ‘more harshly oppressed’ by others within their community, threatening their status and position within established movements. Having quite literally been the subgroup of feminists attempting put a value on oppression in order to determine who is “most oppressed” or navigate oppression dynamics, anti-trans feminists were women who found their position threatened by new groups and by their transformative ideas around the structures upon which their shared oppression was based.

Thus, the response of TERFs became to deny trans people, and particularly trans women, a position within the rubric in an attempt to stymie the growth of a group and ideology who threatened their position, authority and, they felt, their identities.

Conservative branches of movements formed by attempting to uphold outdated, unscientific ideals were ever-branching offshoots in leftism at this time. In the 2010s, within the LGBT community, radical feminist lesbians found allyship with ‘Truscum’ — trans people who believed that only people who experience clinical levels of dysphoria can be transgender. This movement almost entirely died by the end of the decade, but those sparse people and ideals remaining from the movement too have become very valuable allies to the far right. Like detransitioners, these rare examples of trans people holding non-normative subversive beliefs around gender and transness are frequently referenced, presented and paraded by anti-science fringe groups like the Free Speech Union as examples that prove their points and that some minorities support their ideas.

Truscum groups too were a response to new ideas of gender and sex threatening established science, identities, and ‘power structures’. Truscum-identifying trans people were generally individuals with a personal belief in the gender binary, were deeply affected by self-directed transphobia, and invested in the medical model. Truscums upheld the medical model of transitioning (that would eventually leave them behind), the gender binary, and then positioned themselves as scientifically-verified “outsiders” relative to that binary, a position that became threatened by the growing self-identification of non-binary individuals who signified a shift in thinking within the trans community away from gender as immutable and based in science, and instead used science to further question the sociological underpinnings of our concepts of sex.

I explain this to give you a cause-and-effect, psychosocial explanation of how these reactionary movements and beliefs spring up within movements in an attempt to demonstrate where positions like Stephen Rainbow’s come from — people in a marginalised community who turn on what many of us would see as a fellow marginalised group and what some of us (and many more bigoted or distant perspectives) would see as the same marginalised group.

Lesbians and feminists were not the only groups to have conservative social elements that felt threatened by encroachments of new marginalised identities within their community of marginalisation; it was demonstrated by gay men as well, just more bluntly and without them really forming an identity or body of academia or psuedoscience around their discomfort. But it’s through this ostracisation from their own communities caused by their unfavourable perception of, and then bigotry towards, new-entrant groups threatening the status quo, that groups like TERFs and gay men like Stephen Rainbow are pushed towards the radical right.

I also explain this to so you can get a sense for the categorical thinking that underpins these shared philosophies, and the way both groups put ‘value’ on these distinct categories of marginalisation. Radical feminists do put value on oppression in pretty much the exact way the right believe the mainstream left put such value on oppressions, and this has morphed into TERF ideas of status that the right think dominate left-wing thought.

The right count the monetary value of affirmative action initiatives and reparations, note the attentiveness of the public to marginalised issues, confuse the raising of diverse voices with the raising of status, and hold that the effects of these actions are a sort of ‘privilege’. The actual reasons behind these groups getting different levels of money and attention at different times is complex and much more to do with equity or recompense than value, but in dismissing this complexity, the right are attempting to ‘solve’ an unsolvable equation asking which marginalisation is worth what value to the left, while using entirely the wrong variables.

Because the far right are very strong believers in the value these marginalised identities must hold, ACT see appointing a gay human rights commissioner as “justifying” itself through marginalisation “points”, expecting him to be more acceptable or palatable to the left and to the public. They believe his oppressions qualify him or make him suitable, or somehow shield him from scrutiny, and they believe they can select by marginalisation in the same way Clarence Thomas was a Black Republican placed on the Supreme Court. They fail to recognise the way the majority of the LGBT community has embraced and incorporated the social, scientific, and gender theory behind current demographics and understandings of trans people and that, for the vast majority of the LGBT community, this is a point of unity and understanding between groups and identities.

Right now, gay men are frequently targeted by homophobic hate crimes, but that is not necessarily going to make them any more grateful to see an anti-trans gay man as Human Rights Commissioner because while it doesn’t affect his ability to advocate for gay men per se, his advocacy for queer rights ad a whole is likely to be compromised due to not truly sharing the same perspective as the community he supposedly serves.

This will not stop some conservative, privileged gay men from viewing any attempts at Rainbow’s removal as further alienation from their own community by “the left”. Rainbow’s placement in this position is a victory for the right either way.

In appointing Rainbow, ACT entirely miss the irony of what they are doing; they are the ones appointing people to positions entirely because of identity. The left, the wider population even, genuinely see the value and perspective different relevant minority groups can bring to these positions, and that is the basis for which minority identities can “favour” applicants for such roles. It is the right who have themselves boiled someone down to what “label” they can bring the role in order to better disguise their corrupt, bigoted appointment implicitly placed to further their race war.

Who’s playing identity politics NOW, Seymour?

[knarme-art]

This here represents a typical sketch I'd have drawn at any point in my recent life, - until now.

I will no longer be able to work in a high detail art style like this at all, until the accuracy of my new technique improves. And I can't promise it will.

Why?

I've been drawing with wrist movement for my whole life.

This is infamously unsustainable to the hand. It used to gradually become more uncomfortable until it became so painful that I can't do it at all for more than a few seconds.

I have good steam to work on comms now, but I'm forced to have a break from them because I reached the limit of this "wrist-work". If I keep pushing against my body's warnings, I'll disable myself worse and it'll last me forever.

My ability to draw is the most precious thing I have in my life. Nothing matters to me as heavily besides basic necessities, that I make art. Art is how I find friends and community and express myself in a way that nothing else satisfies that same way. Even in my worst times, this has been the light of my life. Even my best times would feel so devoid of content without making art. Art is my whole life.

Because the stakes are so high, I'm working on a solution.

A common tip for sparing the wrist is drawing from the shoulder and the elbow. This is very difficult for me since I'm not used to controlling my hand movement especially for detail from any other joint than the wrist.

Another is casing your pencil into any material (I just taped toilet paper tightly on it) to make it thicker to hold. It means you need smaller movements for drawing detail and therefore spare wrist work.

My muscle memory mostly has it all for moving the wrist to do all the stuff. See what it costs me now?

I'm practicing drawing in a new technique entirely, and figuring out what I can do.

I have to accept that my art style will not look exactly the same either, because physically I can't produce the same old thing drawn in my incorrect technique.

This is my drawing hand wrapped in a scarf to keep my wrist from bending when drawing, so I encourage sourcing the hand movement to my shoulder and elbow instead! Wearing this prevents the painful motions and helps me learn new motions.

Here are practice sketches in the new technique. I find it hard to draw small detail without moving my wrist to do it, but that accuracy can be trained by continuously drawing small shapes or objects (beans, circles, spirals, hair, fur, little horses...) from the shoulder. (This is advice I hear from professionals btw.)

Some thoughts about these sketches...

- I notice I simplify shapes more to make them easier for my hand movements to get across. I literally can not physically draw any other way, but the result looks kind of good even?

- I'm kinda excited to see where my learning goes from here

- I want to keep practicing hand control

- I was concerned especially about how to replicate my character designs like this, but it's somewhat working I guess?

So yeah... This is lifesaving for my art abilities on the long run. Gonna keep up the practice!

[ghostscrown]

Society is so fucked up because like

I'm on disability allowances bc I'm autistic

In my country (france) these are about 1000 euros a month

I wanna find a place to rent but most landlords simply won't accept you if you don't work or are a student, even less if you're disabled – most could if you earned 1000€ from your job, but not if it's from allowances, out of pure ableism

But I'm not able to work normal hours, so I'll probably have to get a part-time job

However, in france, the law is basically that if you work, they'll take off the exact amount of money you earn from your disability allowances

Example : disabilities are 1000, if you earn let's say 600 with your job, they'll take off 600 from the disabilities (so give you 400 instead of 1000), so in the end you'll only have 1000 in total each month

This way you're stuck only having exactly 1000 a month unless you work full time and get more than 1k with your job only (and of course if that's the case you receive 0 disabilities), which is impossible for many disabled people

(To note that, still in france, the poverty line is about 1150€ a month, and the legal minimum wage for full time jobs is about 1300€ a month)

So what does that mean? I'll probably be forced to work part time even tho it's very difficult for me, and it'll get me not a single euro more than if I didn't work at all and just stayed to regular disability incomes. The only thing is that it'll look nicer on my file and more landlords will accept me to rent their places.

Not even talking about the way I need a place in this specific city BEFORE getting a job because otherwise how will I go to the job in question, but they won't rent me anything if I don't have the job, and setting a date for the start of job is too dangerous because what if I don't find a place in the meantime, so what do I even do?

I applied for social housing but the waiting lists are HUDGE, if I'm lucky I'll get something in about 8 months, if not it could take years, I've heard of disabled people who had to wait almost a decade to get a place in social housing, so just waiting for that isn't a solution either

Society sucks

Like idk, you want us to not get too much money, at least put the total amount money limit at the minimum wage or something so we get some actual benefits from working and we can live decently? Is this too much to ask? Then they wonder why so many disabled people simply give up on having a job lmao, we're basically forced to work for free-

[dittomander]

Hi Ditto! Me and my friend are currently drafting EOA stories to write together. I want to be creative and come up with my own fun (and angsty) magical challenges for the protagonists to face. But I am worried that many of the ideas that I have either don’t fit into EOA magic system, or are influenced by the magic systems of other fairytale worlds, which have their own unique magic systems/rules that are different than EOA. How can I make sure that my ideas fit within the EOA magic system?

Without knowing any of the specifics of what you're looking to include, it's hard to tailor my advice, but in general, you probably don't have to worry too much about fitting with the established system. EoA plays pretty fast and loose with its magic, especially in season 3, and will add extra rules and contradictions as needed to move the story the way it needs to be moved.

(As an example, akatok is permanent after sunrise until they need Fiero running around again and they give Mateo a way to reverse it, and Elena's scepter powers drain her energy until she falls into Takaína, and then they don't drain her anymore until she breaks her arm, and magic requires careful training and use of a wand to be effective, oh except for all those times they had Naomi cast spells without any of the above, and—well. You get the picture. Don't even get me started on all the contradictions in the malvago system. Or do, I guess.)

That said, new rules as the plot demands works well enough for a Disney Jr. show—young kids are pretty notoriously good at 'making things up as they go along', and probably aren't too concerned about those moments of inconsistency—but I suspect your target audience is quite a bit older than the show's and slightly more likely to notice when things just aren't jiving. With that in mind, I'd argue that fitting with the established EoA magic system is less about stressing over what is or isn't consistent with the existing lore and more about making sure your new stuff makes sense when compared with itself.

For that, my recommendation would be the following three principles:

1. Keep it Simple

The more complicated you make a magic system, the more room there is to poke holes in it. Think of a machine—the more parts there are to maintain, the more potential points of failure it has, and the more time and effort you have to put into doing that maintenance.

EoA doesn't actually explain a whole lot about how magic "works". Wands and scepters get their power from crystals because certain crystals are just magical; certain creatures have magic powers because they just do; magic is present because it just is. People are generally willing to suspend disbelief for magic—you expect it to exist in a fantasy story, and so you're willing to accept the answer "because it's magic" to any questions about its base mechanics.

But the more often someone finds themselves asking "why?", the less satisfying that answer gets. An easy solution to this is to just have fewer things that require asking about. Sure, EoA has a lot of magical creatures and entities, but they all have very simple, discrete lists of powers. Noblins can turn into dogs, blow gusts of wind, and turn things into gold because That's How Noblins Work, but that's the extent of their list. Marimonda can control plants because She's Marimonda, but plants are pretty much her one thing. Even characters like Elena and Mateo, who regularly learn new spells over the course of the show, have fairly simple systems for doing so: they need the spell to cast and something to cast with, they're limited to the spells they know, and each spell has a singular effect.

Little of EoA's magic is explained, but it's made easy to keep track of. It's hard to complain about llévaluq making things float when like. It's just a levitation spell. Zuzo can do spirit stuff because, well. He's a spirit. He's allowed to do some spirit-y stuff. And anyone questioning the presence of magic in a fantasy series is probably not looking at it in good faith.

(If you'd like more examples of the kind of magic EoA already has, I have a detailed list of all magical effects and entities in the show as my pinned post.)

Notably, it's when EoA actually tries to explain things that problems start arising. I was fully prepared to accept the simple explanation of "malvagos are just evil wizards" that the show gave us in "Spellbound", except then they tried adding rules governing how malvagos are made and what makes them different from regular wizards and well then I had some questions! (What do you mean only dark magic can reverse dark magic—Mateo's been doing that since season 1! What even is "dark magic" in this context—there's never been a functional difference in magic "types" or "elements" before!! What—ok no I'm not gonna repeat the whole essay where I broke all that down. I already linked it in the first part of this post.)

Basically, I'd advise that when in doubt, under-explain before you over-explain, and keep magical effects straightforward and easy to remember. Doing so reduces the chances of writing yourself into a plot hole, and will also help you to...

2. Keep it Consistent

People can suspend disbelief for the existence of magic because it's magic, but that doesn't mean that believability can stretch forever. In general, once you establish a rule for your magic system, you're going to want to stick to it, as failing to do so is going to cause confusion and get people asking "why?" again.

Consider the Noblins from above. Sure, they can turn things to gold because they just can—plausible enough. But that plausibility would decrease if they suddenly started turning things into chocolate one episode instead. Why the sudden difference? Did something cause that? Is this something they could always do and they just only brought it up now? Questions upon questions—ones that can expose the bones of the story. Oh, of course the Noblins suddenly revealed they have the chocolate touch when the Great Avaloran Chocolate Contest comes to town, isn't that convenient. Stuff like that can make it obvious when the rules are changing not because the author found creative ways to work with the magic system they've built, but simply because they couldn't figure out how to get the magic to work for their plot otherwise.

Magic can do whatever you want because it's magic, but that doesn't always mean it should. Put too much strain on a reader's suspension of disbelief, and "because it's magic" starts to sound an awful lot like "because I said so."

And no one likes being told "because I said so."

Now, this doesn't mean there can't be any deviation in how a certain type of magic works. As Mateo gets better at casting llévaluq, the size and amount of stuff he can be levitating at once increases. But llévaluq never suddenly stops being a levitation spell. Elena learns new scepter spells at convenient times, but they're all related to the scepter's core function of manipulating light. And it could be totally plausible that a particularly skilled Noblin could control how much of an object they turned to gold—the rule of "Noblins turn things to gold" is not violated, and it allows more variation in Noblin-related plots.

And then, of course, there are exceptions to rules. The exceptions are great ways to highlight the exceptional or adjust the stakes of a story beat, but throwing them in arbitrarily can strain believability, and overusing them can render the rule they except moot. And generally, an exception expects an explanation, and as discussed, more explanations can lead to more issues.

As an example, an established rule in EoA's system is that wizards need wands in order to cast. But there are multiple points in the show where we see a brief display of wandless magic from wizards like Zopilote or Alacazar, who are noted to be especially powerful wizards. Their violation of the rule helps inform us of their exceptional skill. The exception makes far less sense when we see Naomi doing magic without a wand, because we know she has no training as a wizard—it feels like something thrown in because the writers couldn't come up with a better way to use her knowledge of Maruvian rather than a sensible addition to the magic system.

As another example, consider how EoA handles permanence. Our first introduction to the idea of a permanent spell is akatok, but then Mateo learns how to reverse it. Okay, that's fine—he's grown more skilled since the start of the show and it's acceptable that he'd find a way around the earlier established rule. Same sort of thing when El Guapo is introduced—we're told no one's figured out how to reverse his curse, implying at least a degree of permanence, and then Mateo gets around that one, too. And then Cahu's magic is framed as permanent, only for Elena to undo it at the end of "Coronation Day."

The idea of a magical effect that's arbitrarily permanent because it's magic is fine, as is the idea of finding an exception to the permanence rule. But what's happened here is a pattern—a rule is introduced that some effects are permanent, and then that rule is repeatedly broken. So... what's the value of the rule, then? If the rule is going to be broken with such regularity, then why should an audience believe it still holds true in situations where an exception isn't introduced, for example, when we're told that the sirena transformation is permanent? After a time, "permanent effects can be reversed by the right magic" becomes the new rule, and to insist that "no really, this one actually is permanent, we really mean it this time!!!" just sounds like an artificial way to raise the tension. Which brings me to...

3. Keep an Eye on Your Stakes

There's a delicate balance to strike with a story's stakes, where they should be kept high enough to keep things interesting, but not be so high that overcoming them requires a deus ex machina. Magic can easily be a nasty wrench in a writer's plans in that regard. You generally don't want magic to trivialize a problem, which will generally require adding some rules to it, but you also don't want those rules to feel hamfisted or contrived. Even if they only exist to place a convenient limit on the magic, they shouldn't feel like that's the case.

Healing magic is kind of the classic example. If someone has a spell that's established to instantly and reliably heal any injury, no matter how severe, then a scene of said spellcaster lamenting that they just don't know how to help their injured and dying friend just feels kinda silly. If they cast the spell right away, then any tension brought by the injury deflates, and if they don't cast... why? They have a solution to the problem, so why aren't they using it? Creating more rules governing how the healing spell works can avoid this, but they should be straightforward and applied consistently, so that they don't feel like they were added solely for the sake of making that one scene more dramatic.

I.e., if the spell requires some ultra-rare reagent in order to cast, then ok—it's understandable why they may be unable to cast at the drop of a hat. But if we never see that rule enforced anywhere else, or at least not to any meaningful consequence, the sudden emphasis on it can feel forced. Or if this mega-healing spell isn't used anywhere else and seems to only exist to make sure that character doesn't die... then maybe that scene should be revised so the injury is less severe, and the healing spell should be removed entirely.

For an example from the show, llévaluq could have trivialized the climax of "Sister of Invention," so they had to make sure Mateo couldn't use it. Having him simply decide not to cast wasn't an option, because it's the obvious answer, and not trying it makes it look like he isn't actually that concerned about rescuing Elena (and if the characters don't care about the stakes, why should the audience?). And adding a random, arbitrary rule like "oh, but llévaluq doesn't work in volcanoes, specifically" would have felt cheap, and raised questions about why his other spells were working fine. So instead, they went with the simple solution—they had the established rule that Mateo needs a tamborita to cast, so they broke his tamborita. Easy.

...And that cycles us back around to "keep it simple."

So to wrap up...

I genuinely hope this helps, at least somewhat. I've seen concerns floating around the fandom about working within the bounds of the EoA magic system, and personally, I don't really think those boundaries are all that strict. It's more a matter of understanding the elements you want to introduce than the elements that are already there.

If there are any specific aspects of the established magic system you'd like me to deep-dive into, a la the malvago essay, I'd be more than happy to. I'm also willing to help if you have specific concerns about whether your own ideas mesh, but do remember that I am not the sole arbiter of what makes a good magic system, and you need neither my approval nor permission (nor anyone else's, for that matter) to write what you want.

I wish you and your friend the best with your stories!

[xiaq]

(this can be answered publicly) Hey X, pardon me if you’ve answered this before, but I was just curious on how you ended up transitioning from academia to tech and what role you started with in tech? Also, so you have any advice for someone looking to break into tech from a non-STEM background? Thank you!

Hey! I haven't answered it publicly but it's a popular question, so I will now (warning, long answer is long).

So I was so fed up with academia for sundry reasons I won't get into here but I wanted a career that would allow me to A. retire some day (something that paid generally well), B. would allow me some measure of work/life balance without high stress, and C. Would ideally let me use my communication/writing/speaking/presenting skills in some way.

My parents and my partner all work in tech and were like, "did you know that we desperately need people with your skillsets in the tech world?" and my partner, who works in technical sales was like, "You would kill at my job, I am not lying." And I was like, every job listing in technical sales that I see requires either a degree I don't have or past experience I don't have, or both, and my mother was like "Do you know how many mediocre resumes from unqualified men come across my desk? Apply for the damn positions anyway." So I reworked my resume to focus on applicable skills/experiences and wrote a cover letter for each position I applied to saying "hey, I know I'm an odd candidate but let me tell you why that's a good thing." And I got a lot of positive responses!

I was interviewing at 2 different tech places when I accepted the offer for my job now. I had an initial screening call interview with HR, then a zoom interview with the hiring manager, and then I was given access to a limited demo environment and had a week to teach myself the software and put together a demo for a fake customer which I did for the hiring manager (my future boss), one of my current peers, and the VP of the org. I was offered the job the same night I did my fake demo. So in total it was a 2 week interview process, and I started working 2 weeks later. **

I'm a pre-sales solutions consultant, which basically means I'm paired with a sales guy who does all the money and business value talk with customers, while I get to learn about a customer's data problems and then demo for them how our products can address those problems.

The learning curve was (and still is) steep. But it was basically like going back to school, and I've always loved learning new things. The job is super fun. It fulfills all of my wants I listed above with the added bonus of being completely remote (aside from occasional travel to meet with customers for in-person demos). The people I work with are supportive, management is communicative and constantly giving me feedback/talking about my trajectory. I've won internal awards, already received two raises and one promotion and I haven't even been there a year. I'm making more than double what I did as a professor and the concept of retirement doesn't feel like a laughable pipe dream anymore. I miss teaching a lot, but I'm healthier, happier, and better prepared for the future now. And my work is genuinely fulfiling because I'm showing people how they can fix problems. Also, playing with data management software and putting together custom demos is neat. It's like all the best parts of a college project--research, making a preso, knocking everyone's socks off while giving the preso, but I'm getting paid for it. I'm glad I followed my mom's advice.

So I guess my advice is the same as hers: even if you're not "qualified," apply for the position anyway. Make custom cover letters for each position and if there's not a way to include the letter with the app, do some googling and find the hiring manager on LinkedIn and message/email them. The person who hired me said that my cover letter was what got me the initial interview. So that shit works. If you have friends or family working somewhere with open positions, use those connections. Having an internal referral will go a long way to getting your resume looked at. I know we're all like, boo nepo babies, but networking is a huge part of any industry. Use it to your advantage if you have the advantage (no, I'm not working for my parent's companies, but if there'd been an open position I was interested in, I would have applied for it. No shame).

**I also, on the side, applied for the Austin Fire Department because why not. After a whole lot of mental and physical prep, I was accepted to the academy (in the first class, no less, holla) right before I was offered my current job. But I had to be realistic and say that probably wasn't a good long-term career option for someone who is 110lbs and was barely meeting the physical testing requirements who also has issues with getting overwhelmed in high-input sensory situations. So. Into the tech world I went. This side note just to say, I was keeping my options very open and there's nothing wrong with that either, lol.

I hope this helps!

[just-sp-in-inginthevoid]

Sorry I'm a little dumb but what's a Schrödinger's cat? Really wanna know! :D

Schrödinger's cat is a cat trapped in an opaque box that we can't confirm if it is either dead or alive (until we open the box, that is); by such it is both alive and dead (until the box get opened and we can check).

It is an idea Schrödinger (that's a real man that existed) used to illustrate something (about quantum physics): a cat trapped in a box where a poison could kill it at any moment or possibly never (the condition for the poison to be released is totally unpredictable; it could happen or it could not) - no real cat were harmed.

When I talked about wanting NNA to feature an astro named 'Schrödinger cat' - it doesn't have much to do with what Schrödinger demonstrated with his theory: simply the example with the cat in itself. An astro in which it is impossible to affirm if its holder is dead or alive - because they are both while being neither while being only one of those options. An astro which makes the alive-or-dead status of its holder completely blurred, in which there is no clear-cut answer: and if the holder were to believe too much they are one or the other, it'd become true - believing constantly they're alive would allow them to avoid death but how far can you believe you aren't going to die? There must be a limit to the damage you can take before whole-heartily thinking it is your end, even if you are aware you have an astro that can save you from that - and thinking you're alive would make you vulnerable to death since to die one has to live, whereas when you're dead you can't exactly die a second time. So - if the holder isn't able to change the answer depending on what would benefit them the most (and choosing death isn't really beneficial, but choosing life wouldn't make you survive a bullet through the head - because living beings don't survive that) - the best solution is to refuse to give an answer, to refuse to think of one (a bullet through your head won't kill you since you're already dead but you won't 'act' dead, your body and consciousness won't die, because you're still alive. unsure as to how far this astro would work on self-regeneration), to solely focus on having a consciousness and free-will and that being enough - to make them trivial matters because if they're not then you're condemning yourself to the answer you choose. You can't die because you are already dead and you can't die because you are still alive. You're stuck in the middle and nowhere at all while being simultaneously on both sides. And being neither dead nor alive makes you pretty hard to get rid off (which is why I want Goshiki to have it (while not believing it's going to happen at all), it fits him).

It's not exactly an invincibility astro since the holder feels the pain and can't fix their wounds - they're simply stuck in status quo in which damages can't kill them but it still hurts like a b (depending on the severity of it ofc). It's not a regenerative one either, because while they're unable to (actually) die, getting better all depends on if the body is itself alive or dead, and that too can't be chosen because then it'd doom the holder - being dead means no regeneration is needed, being alive means regeneration happening (slowly, but happening still), stuck in status quo just means... that... I don't know. Perhaps the bleeding is put in hold? It doesn't get better but it doesn't get worse either. Such astro holder needs to find someone else with an astro able to heal other people. Imma stop thinking about how it could work. It's a zombie-but-you-still-feel-the-pain astro and it has many drawbacks(also, you don't eat brains and don't move slowly and you body can't rot), let's just sum it up like that.

Visually-speaking, I don't see it manifesting as cat ears and/or tail or other cat characteristics - Kuran is the only catboy we need - but I don't exactly see it manifesting as a box either. I could accept the box, I'm just not sold on what my mind is coming up with yknow? It not manifesting on the body but through the link could work as well, and then the link could be a closed box, i guess.

With the meteors strike, I'm sure a lot of people must have wished for something related to increasing their life expectancy; either because they had planned to wish for immortality or being cured by incurable disease before the meteors even fell, or because they got trapped under rumbles following the strike and were left to wish to survive whatever situation they were trapped in. That being said, healing astros aren't the only solution to these entrapped situations: thinking about the possibility that hat-girl from chapter 19 got trapped in an elevator because of the meteors strike and ended-up with her elevator astro because of it (wishing to 'get out of here/get to destination/smth else') - I am not saying it's the only possible explanation as to why it's her astro, there could be a lot of possibilities, knowing Wakui.

[mageofseven]

Repressed Love: A DiaLuci Love Story

Chapter 46

Tag list: @astroseuss @zarakem @brielle043 @deppressedanxiousebitch @missloserqueen

Satan did as his stepmom recommended and waited a day before going to see MC.

It was late morning the next day when he walked to House of Lamentation. In truth, he hasn't left the castle at all since his race change. Unlike other angels or even he himself when he was a demon, the blonde didn't seem to be able to switch to his less supernatural form. Lucifer surmised that it was likely a mental block; the newly-turned angel has been through a lot after all and still had a lot of internal struggles stressing him out.

Whatever the reason, the former Avatar of Wrath was stuck with his angel wings out. Satan didn't want anyone outside of his family to see him like this, but for his Kitten he will accept the blatant stares and whispers by the other demons out and about.

Once he arrived at his original home, the man began searching the rooms. The living room. MC's bedroom. The kitchen.

Eventually, the man found the his girlfriend in Asmo's room, curled up in bed and asleep against the lust demon's chest.

Asmo made a sound of disgust.

"Really?"

"Rosie, I'm sure he's trying his best." Solomon said from the other side of the room.

The sorcerer was at the far end of the room, working on what seemed to be a makeshift alchemy table.

Satan raised an eyebrow.

"What are you making?"

"MC's potion." The other man said simply before corking the vial and turning to the others. "In all honesty, I wish you both would have come to me sooner about her growth issues."

"You know how to help her?" The blonde asked incredulously.

"Of course." Solomon spoke as if it was obvious. "Her condition may be somewhat rare, but she is not the first human to experience it; after all, witches have centuries of experience traveling between realms and problems do occur at times."

All of MC's suffering...it could have been avoided if he had only asked Solomon for help. This angel felt like the shittiest being to ever exist.

When he discovered Diavolo's own knowledge on MC's condition was limited, he simply assumed there wasn't much to be known on it that was readily available. I mean, this is Diavolo, the Princess of the Devildom and powerful descendant of the Devil we are talking about. It always seemed like if an answer was to be found on something that she either held it or held the answer to finding it.

So to find that out that humanity held the key to ending his poor Kitten's suffering instead? That he overlooked something so incredibly obvious?

Because he definitely did. He was so focused on what he, a former demon, did to his sweet Kitten that he searched for help from other demons. It never clicked to him that this was a human problem that other humans would have a solution for.

Honestly...Satan felt like he failed MC in this moment.

As the sorcerer approached the bed, Asmo shook the human's shoulder.

"MC, sweetie, it's done."

The woman groaned.

"Kitten?"

MC's body tensed up before she peeked open an eye.

"Satan..."

Solomon sat on the bed next to his boyfriend and the human.

"Not to break up this reunion, but I believe you need this." He said as he extended the small vial out to the woman.

The human sat up before slowly taking the dark blue glass from her friend.

"So...this will stop the pain when my belly grows?" She asked softly.

"It should keep your growth from exceeding what you can handle." The sorcerer explained. "You'll still grow somewhat quickly, but not enough to cause the previous pain you were in. You may still have some bad cramping on occasion though."

Solomon turned the blonde, who was still in the doorway.

"I'll give you the prescription so you can make the potion for her here on out; she will need it once per day."

Satan merely nodded as he watched MC bring the vial to her lips and hesitantly tip the bottle to drink the dark liquid.

Suddenly, the woman coughed, seemingly choking on the drink for minute.

Her boyfriend rushed to her side, panicking.

Before he could say anything however, the coughing fit had ceased and the human turned to the sorcerer.

"Sol, that was disgusting." MC complained. "You could have at least given me a heads up."

Solomon smiled slyly.

"But would you have drank it?" He asked. "You won't even eat my poor Rosie's meals when you know for sure he has added abyssal shrooms."

And when they don't tell the woman? She eats the meal without complaint. The way the sorcerer sees it, you simply have to work the most efficiently with the pregnant woman.

Satan sighed as he lowered himself to the bed. His Kitten was going to give him a heat attack one day, he swears it.

But for now...she's okay. That's what matters most to the man.

His gaze fell to her belly, which held the child that he may not necessarily want, but the soon-to-be father knew that he also wronged.

"Tawny?"

The blonde pursed his lips before grabbing her hand.

"I...I was terrified of what you were going through." He said softly. "Though I still should have never asked you to do something I could just...feel deep within me that you wouldn't do."

Satan brought both of their hands to her belly.

"I'm sorry. I will do what I can to control my fear for now on."

MC started to smile at her boyfriend--started.

Things changed quickly within a second.

Suddenly MC leaned forward and groaned in pain, which quickly turned into a scream.

"Kitten?!"

The blonde's hand was moved off his love's belly, something he almost swore he felt done by a kick.

His brain was not focused on that in the moment though. Satan was holding his sweet Kitten close and asking what was wrong while Asmo freaked out next to them.

"Satan, get back." Solomon commanded.

"Wha--"

"Do it."

And so the angel backed away from his poor Kitten till he was against the wall.

Solomon reached over and very gently lifted up MC's shirt, revealing her belly to be riddled with dark, ugly bruises.

Gradually, the woman's pain subsided. Asmo held her close and spoke comfortingly to the understandably scared woman.

Satan went to rush forward but Solomon put up a hand to stop him.

Just what the hell was going on? What did his sweet Kitten just go through? Not to mention, literally after finding a solution to their last problem?

And most importantly, how can he help her now?

[coeursetcolores]

H’aanit, the Hunter: Chapter 2

WARNING! Spoilers ahead for Chapter 2 of H’aanit’s story in Octopath Traveler!

Why are all of these Chapter 2 stories so dark?! Even Tressa’s showed the scary reality of monopolies!

We made it to Stonegard, searching for any sign of Z’aanta we could get. Hägen leading us, we found...we found out things.

Stonegard...lives up to it’s name. Lots of rocks. Everything is rocks. I get the point is that everything is carved out of rock, but the gray monochromatic color scheme is kind of dreary. The foggy lighting doesn’t help either. Sure there’s a lot, but a little paint in a few places could have helped. 

I really like the emphasis this chapter puts on H’aanit’s relationship with Z’aanta. It’s clear the two care about each other, even if he annoys her at times. And I can understand, man needs to get his vices under control. But the fact that he spends his time away from her talking about her shows how devoted he really is. It’s a sweet, relatable relationship. Which makes the end of this chapter all the worse.

Natalia was cool. It’s nice to learn about some of Z’aanta's life outside of the village. And I give credit to a widow in medieval times just trying to live her life and trying to deal with being harassed (But what is with all the entitled rich people? I’m starting to see a pattern). Also, it was nice she let a direwolf and a snow leopard hang out in her house.

I know we have British accents in this game for some people, but now we’re throwing in southern American ones? Just where is Orsterra based off of, medieval Europe or colonial America?

Spectrewood is a scary forest just like out set out to be. Dark, foggy, could easily be used in a production The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Pretty standard. Until you meet the inhabitants.

The Lord of the Forest...is objectively terrifying. Seriously, look at a picture of it, it is scary. The worst part is it’s scary in the way only nature can be: fearsome but accepted as the way it goes and somehow beautiful. The majesty of a wooden stag is offput by the way the branches trail off to look like it’s flowing, like it’s a ghost. Also it EATS the monsters it summons! Ugghhh....

That’s not the dark part, though.

We find Z’aanta.

And he’s been turned to stone.

All this time, I just thought he was going to be dead. But, that glimmer of hope of turning him back...kind of makes it worse.

With how dark these chapters are getting, there’s a chance whatever Susanna advises won’t work. If she does have a solution.

More than dark, this chapter is just...sad.

H’aanit finds her father figure, and she can’t even reunite with him.

And the monster that did this is still out there. And I do not feel strongly about the Knights Ardante’s chances.

As for the other travelers...

Cyrus: Knowledge! And it’s about wolf facts! I want to hear his lecture...

Primrose: Okay, Prim; not all men are jerks. And you can’t just divide them into groups, people are complex. The guys in the party are pretty alright. H’aanit, you’re fine, she’s just had bad experiences.

Tressa: Aww, cute childhood anecdote. Write your parents, Tressa! You’re lucky enough to have parents, most of your companions don’t! But yeah, parents can get...creative with punishments. Hope she didn’t have a dentist appointment after that.

Therion: Listen to Therion, cut Z’aanta some slack! Let him have a break, he works hard! ...Just limit his spendings.

Olberic: ...She needed that. And Olberic’s right, your true character often only comes out in dire situations. At least Z’aanta gave them a direction to start at. I hope they get to talk one day.

Ophilia: Aww, they bonded! You’re both beautiful girls, and I’m sure Eliza would agree! 

Alfyn: Alfyn is too good for this world. Best support.

Well, our only chance is in Stillsnow.

Let’s hope it works out.