#empire state of grind

[regrettablemeasure]

I'm seeing, like in 2020 and 2016, a lot of talk about immigrating out of the states etc. and not even going into how that isn't feasible for a lot of people for various reasons I also just. don't see anyone talking about what if I don't want to fucking run away from my own home.

As a white woman I'm far from the first person to experience living in a homeland that you want to love but hates you politically. None of this is new for every other minority group in our country. But I remember first feeling it as a lesbian teen in the south and it's something I've heard shared by other friends of mine of different backgrounds from the US - especially red states. Even though I theoretically could get a visa somewhere else which is a privilege in and of itself - it's not fair that I should be pushed to consider it. Maybe I don't want to go to Europe. Maybe I like how diverse my home country is. I like our music and food and people and the little pockets of community we do manage to scrape together. Maybe I was born here and I want to fucking stay here rather than let the dickheads just win out over me and I don't want to run and pull up the ladder behind me.

I don't have an overarching point to this post and I'm not trying to shame people looking for a "way out" but it sucks to see. It sucks to see non Americans shittalk us, too, like there's not good people across the country - a whole half of the country - that didn't want any of this.

[probablybadrpgideas]

So, the way I see it, there are 5 types of lore in your game.

There's what you might call basic lore, which is just normal information players need to know about the world - elves exist, we're on a terraformed Mars, people get powers thanks to aliens. This tends to not be that interesting, it's just basic stuff. No-one hugely cares about them.

Then there's pragmatic lore, which is lore that's mostly there to determine what people can or can't do. "The lich's phylactery is the kings crown" or "the state has spies everywhere". This is also usually fairly boring. Related is narrative lore, which is things like "we have high tensions with the klingon empire" or "the vampires are massing under one ruler" - lore that is intended to set up a plot. This is only interesting dependent on the plot its setting up happens, otherwise its just pointless.

Then there's awesome lore, which is thing like "this land was founded by eternal dragons!" or "magic is drawn from Lucifer's chains!". Lore for the sake of lore, big setpeices and cool reveals and such like. And they can be interesting, but they can also be really annoying if the players don't find them as cool as the GM does.

Which is why I advocate the fifth kind.

Shitty bullshit lore.

Shitty bullshit lore is things like "Elven woman love children's toys. They're Lego Lasses" or "Oh, gold pieces detonate if you have more then ten in your pocket at once, did no-one mention that?". It's lore whose function is designed to grind the story to a halt while your players beat you to death with hammers. It's lore as an active weapon to use against the rest of your game group.

You should put as much as it in your game as possible.

[thewickedjazzy]

Level 3: “Stay Still!” [Dry humping] for Kinktober.

⤷⊹₊fyodor d. x afab! reader.

⊹₊Synopsis: it's your own roman empire, where you and fyodor continually indulge in lust-fueled escapades during important meetings.

⊹₊Warning: ņsfw, mdni, smųt, dry humping, agoraphilia, risky sex/secret sex, orgasm control, praise kink..etc.

⊹₊Word count & a/n: 1k, animated lines by @/cafekitsune. this was a very fun level to write honestly, a sweet thank you to bb rem @remlionheart for beta reading, ilysm<3

“stay quiet, дорогая (dear). if they notice, i’ll stop, and you wouldn’t want that, right?”

that might be the last coherent thing you hear before fyodor starts his meeting with nikolai and sigma. you’re face-down on the cold, rough metallic table, wobbling body pressed between him and the edge, feeling a familiar, simmering need flooding through your senses. three agonising months of work have kept him busy, and you’ve missed him terribly. so, if this is the closest you can get to feeling him? then fucking be it.

you grind your bare folds against his clothed bulge, the friction sending your whole body numb with pleasure. it feels too good, almost overwhelming, and you can’t hold back the quiet whine that escapes your lips.

“...we'll need a distraction, something to divert their attention while nikolai can execute our plan.” the russian states calmly as if your pussy is not soaking the hell out of the fabric of his trousers at this very moment. honestly, you can't fathom how he maintains such composure while you squirm beneath him, desperately trying to stretch out the pleasure that’s building quickly in your lower belly. maybe you can hold out until the meeting is over.

you’re doing your utmost to hang in there.

“the weretiger is an easy target...”nikolai exclaims, on the other hand, sigma is already rolling his eyes in boredom, clearly frustrated that they still haven’t addressed his casino issues yet.

you squeeze your eyes shut trying to drown out their conversation, focusing solely on the one command fyodor has given you: “don’t cum until I say so.”

such a cruel man he is. why? because he's slowly grinding his hips back against you, he knows that you're desperately close, it's in his nature to push all the right buttons, only to leave you mourning the loss of his touch afterwards.

you do your best to stifle a moan, but a soft whimper slips past your lips instead.

his slender fingers tighten in your hair, tugging just enough to make you tilt your head back, forcing you to meet his devilish gaze as he shoots you a warning glance, seeing you nod obediently, trying to stifle the needy whimpers that escape as you force yourself to slow down, biting your lip to keep quiet.

“their unity is what gives them strength; without it, they're weak,” fyodor continues, his left hand tightens around your hips, guiding your rhythm with maddening control, while his other hand slides down to tease your aching clit, circling it with deliciously slow, torturous strokes.

your eyes roll back, vision blurring from the overwhelming pleasure, and you’re caught between trembling restraint and the impossible need to let go. fuckーhow can he expect you to hold back when he’s sinfully pleasuring you like this?

It's been half an hour, and you’re not sure how much longer you can hold out. an aching need swells within you as you clutch his hand, fingers intertwining with his, silently begging him to quicken his pace, desperately craving that sweet, sweet release that feels just out of reach.

once the russian has his mind set on something, no amount of begging, sweet words, or tears will sway him. his long, pale fingers slip between your folds, thumb tracing lazy circles over your clit hood to add to your mounting pleasure and you can’t help but roll your hips against him, grinding harder with each passing second. you're acutely aware of the risk that his body might jolt, drawing the unwanted attention of his oblivious subordinates.

you can't hold back anymore, the pleasure has woven itself tightly within you, each pulse layered like bricks in a tower that only fyodor’s permission keeps standing, until the same bricks of bliss snap at the base of your spine once his hand, which had been gripping your hair, taps against the cold metal table twice.

it’s the sign you’ve been begging the heavens for. you're now rolling your hips faster against his hard cock, finally riding out your long-awaited release—jaw slack, eyes rolled back, a trace of drool slipping from your parted lips as you soak his fabric, bliss coursing through you like the light of a thousand stars from the milky way.

as you shudder in ecstasy, the three of his fingers continue bullying your swelling clit—coaxing you through the rest of your release as he draws sharp shapes on the puffy nub.

“that’s it, my love keep that orgasm going for me.” he leans down out of the camera's field to pressing searing kisses to the nape of your neck.

ironically, the meeting continues, oblivious to your plight.

nikolai’s enthusiastic breaks through your sweet bliss. “...and that’s how i’ll handle the weretiger situation.”

while sigma rolls his eyes, clearly unimpressed. “can we move on? i still need to discuss my casino issues.”

clearing his throat, fyodor straightens up, his trademark icy professionalism settling back into place once more. “then let’s wrap this up. we’ll reconvene later to finalise the plan.”

you try to regain your composure, still feeling the aftershocks of erotic pleasure, as the meeting draws to a close. fyodor casts you a sidelong glance with a small loving smirk as he adds, “i trust everyone will stay focused now.”

frankly, you can’t shake the feeling that your relationship won’t stay a secret for much longer. especially given how risky you both are being by engaging in sexually-driven activities like this.

TAGS: @a-smol-bean @violetbutterflix @amanoava @falloutjuli @embersweapons @warriordemigosworld @cathias @v15aexe @vasarii @pe4rl-diver @sukidenks @dazaifavbandage @chuuminn @fyodorsprettynun @ace-0fspades69 @irasamu @trippyserval @alyszuha @bittysuguru @writingandmusing @corruptedwrathkitsune @thedamselzelda @fyodorssimp1 @vikkinakahara @laylabuurr @perlaslibrary

[xtra7s]

Best Birthday Ever

Pairing: Jenna Ortega x Reader

Synopsis: Jenna’s exhausted from her busy life, and it’s her birthday!! Her and a few of her friends decide to go to a club, when she spots you on the dance floor.

Content: Jenna Ortega x Reader, G!P Jenna, Dom!Reader, Sub!Jenna, white girl dancing, Alcohol, Bathroom sex, Oral(Jenna receiving), 5’6 reader, 5’1 Jenna, penis referred to as ‘cock ‘shaft’

Word Count: 813

a/n: this is my first time writing smut(writing in general???)

masterlist | next part

Jenna thought staying at home, watching movies with her girls was a good way to spend her 22nd birthday, but Maddie thought differently. That’s how Jenna ended up standing in a packed club, on the streets of LA. “Mads, is this all really necessary? We could have just watched beetleju-“ Jenna yells over the music, but Maddie cuts her off, shoving a shot into her hand and smiling at her widely.

“Of course it is, babe! You deserve this, let’s have some fun, okay? I may have invited Emma and Melissa” Maddie yells back into Jenna’s ear, clinking their glasses together and throwing back the shot. Some mingling later, Emma and Melissa emerge from the crowd and wrap their arms around Jenna, wishing her a happy birthday and quickly grabbing some drinks. Indulging in as deep as a conversation can get in a club, Jenna notices a flash of dark red in the crowd, trailing her eyes down your body. From your black hair, to the maroon dress and your black heels, Jenna’s cock is twitching just from looking at you. She frowns lightly as the crowd shuffles around, making her lose sight of you.

“Hey guys, I’m gonna go dance, don’t wait up!”

-

‘Empire State Of Mind’ by JAY-Z is pounding loudly in your ears, swaying your hips as you hold your hands loosely in the air, feeling the beat in your bones and the alcohol in your body heating you up. You bring your arms down trailing your body, feeling a body invade your space behind you.

Continuing to dance, Jenna follows your lead and matches the way you move your body, your bodies touching with a few grinding grazes.

Feeling warm hands touch your waist, Jenna leans in and places her lips next to your ear, “Is this okay?” She whispers raspily, taking the way you grind your body back into her as a yes.

After a while of ‘dancing’ (if you’d even call it that anymore), you could feel the print in her dress grinding against you. Leaning your head back against Jenna’s shoulder, you grab the other side of her face and kiss her jaw lightly. “Come on” you whisper, grabbing her hand softly and pulling her towards the bathroom of the club.

You push open the door to the bathroom and drag her into a stall, locking the door and pressing her gently against the door, placing your hands on her waist and kissing her intensely. You graze your hands on her stomach, hiking up her dress and placing the palm of your hand on her bulge. She moans out into your mouth at the contact, you swallowing it as you slip your tongue into her mouth, biting onto her lower lip as you slip a hand into her boxers and trail your kisses down her neck. “Is this okay?” you gasp into her mouth, Jenna nodding quite pathetically as you kneel down and grab the elastic of her boxers.

You pull them down, her cock jumping out and hitting her stomach covered by her dress. You smile up at her as you grip the base of her cock and spitting on the tip, licking the head of her cock teasingly.

Jenna presses her head against the stall wall of the toilets, moaning as you wrap your lips around her cock and begin sucking. You move your mouth up and down on her cock, Jenna’s hand wrapping tightly in your hair as she lets out moans and whimpers to you, “it feels so good baby, deeper please”. You oblige, letting her cock hit the back of your throat and licking around the shaft.

“Fuck m’so close mami, you feel so good” Jenna whines in a rush, gripping tighter on your hair as you work her cock, gripping her thighs as you suck.

You focus back on the tip of her cock, licking and sucking, leaving kisses on her shaft. she grabs your head tighter, her moans and words becoming incoherent letting you know she’s about to cum. Thick ropes of cum cover your throat as Jenna whines, swallowing all of it as you stand back up kissing her delicately, your hand on her waist as she finishes coming undone, holding her up.

She holds your jaw gently, looking up at you as you pull up her boxers and fix her dress, smiling hazily.

“Best birthday ever.”

[artbyblastweave]

So one thing that irks me about discussions of the NCR is the idea that "they're flawed because they're trying to be America again. And Being Too Much America is what caused the War" without differentiating between the vast buildup of Nuclear Weapons and Geopolitical tensions, versus, like, being a republic and having a large-scale central state.

What's your thoughts?

I think the NCR circa New Vegas is textually intended to be repeating the USA's downward spiral. They're in the process of recreating the core dynamics of pre-war America- overconsumption of resources driving imperialist expansion, capture of the government by moneyed interests, and a prolonged conflict with a peer power that's suffering under similar expand-or-die pressures- but they're constrained from a one-to-one recreation mainly by the fact that they're working with a post-apocalyptic resource base, with the scraps left over from the last people who went down this path. Peanuts compared to the Sino-American war, but likely as close to that situation as the post-war-world is logistically capable of producing.

You see bits of this from the NCR perspective all throughout the game. There Stands the Grass is propelled by projections of incipient famine in the NCR due to rapid population growth, and you see the beginnings of this in Flags of Our Foul-Ups- O'Hanaran was sent to the Army by his family to lessen their food burden. Chief Hanlon's very first line is about how the NCR is overtaxing most sources of freshwater within the core territory, and he recounts how tiny groups of settlers backed by NCR logistics were able to take and hold a well in Baja against scores of locals; IIRC there's a cut event at Camp Golf itself where you'd see NCR rangers doing the same thing to Mojave locals encroaching on their water supply. The White Wash demonstrates that the NCR's sharecropping setup in outer Vegas operates at the expense of the locals, who can only get the water they need to support their own crops via subterfuge. If you assume that Heck Gunderson's underhanded Brahmin-farming empire in Beyond the Beef is supposed to parallel the real-world problems with the sustainability of beef farming, you start to get a sense of where all of that water is going and what structural problems (Heck Gunderson) might be in the way of allocating those resources more sustainably. There are likely more examples of this storm on the horizon that I'm forgetting.

As a result of all this, there's a level on which I think introducing the Tunnelers in Lonesome Road as a dangling White-Walker style Looming Apocalyptic Reset Option hanging over the west coast was gratuitous, not because it's Avallone grinding his axe with the idea of society rebuilding, but because it's simply redundant with the political situation already depicted in the base game- If you want the NCR to have collapsed by a future installment, just establish that they weren't able to put the brakes on in time and devolved into a completely dysfunctional oligarchy that collapsed under its own weight!

(Now, as a final note, one thing preventing me from fully committing to this take is that we honestly don't have a fantastic sense of what day-to-day life looks like for the average citizen in the NCR heartland, which I feel is kind of important. Because if the textual situation is supposed to be that the resource crisis is due to misallocation due to interests capturing the government, I like that a lot better than if the situation is genuinely intended to be that there are Just Too Many Goddarn People, because that's like. Lazy and Malthusian and leads to the usual ugly conclusions pretty quickly. More and more it's looking like the upcoming Fallout TV show is leaning into the recent decline of the NCR as a plot point, so, uh, fingers crossed they stick the landing when it comes to fleshing that out?)

[twiixr4kidz]

HELLO ^_^ i was just wondering, considering in the new Scott Pilgrim show Gideon Graves is kinda a cute pathetic loser, if you can possibly write something about it like headcanons maybe(??)

YES ABSOLUTELY new gideon is like, my favorite gideon ever

PATHETIC LOSER GIDEON HEADCANONS!!!!!

oh my god.

he is so lame.

this motherfucker spends literally all of his free time grinding video games at home

he wakes up just to kick ass in final fantasy

gideon literally only orders takeout

he's probably gotten scurvy before IM SORRY

you'd think that'd be matthew but NOPE

he has like, a scarily fast metabolism though, so no matter how much he eats he still looks like a stick LMFAO

also he somehow doesn't smell bad??

he actually smells really good (he showers every single day)

he spends a majority of his time rotting in bed

but like gideon's chillin with it yknow

there are some days where he's asleep literally all day, and other days where he's bouncing off the walls and pulls an all-nighter

he doesn't leave the house much so he gets his groceries delivered to him (he's still embarrassed by the downfall of gideon graves)

his groceries usually consist of energy drinks, junk food, and laundry detergent (with the occasional head of cauliflower) (he fucking loves cauliflower)

bro straight up had a funeral for his empire btw

he can survive on his own but in his state, he'd need someone to get on him to do literally anything with his life

gideon's enjoying his downtime though!! it's kinda nice not having so many responsibilities......... he deserves it

[newwillinium]

The Great Khans and the Tribes of Zion/Honest Hearts

So I noticed this a few nights ago when I was trying to decide what route to go for my newest Fallout New Vegas character, and I noted something that I don't think many people have really ever clicked on.

-][-

The Great Khans, in Fallout New Vegas, are written as stand-ins for Native Americans.

Hear me out.

They are a people who have been pushed east out of their ancestral homelands time and time again, later finding a home for themselves in the Mojave. They warred with other native tribes, Mr House and what would become the Families, and then later were subject to a brutal attack on their civilians which led them to be stuck on land that was their own but was sparse in resources and are unable to meaningfully fight back against the rising Imperialistic powers of Mr House and the NCR (President Aaron Kimball later referencing and using the same "Sea to Shining Sea" rhetoric as the United States did during the Great Western Expansion, at Hoover Dam).

But what really clicked this for me was that, in the NCR ending where the Great Khans ally with the New California Republic, they are once more kicked off of their land and are sent off to a far off distant Reservation.

After the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, the Great Khans returned for a time to Red Rock Canyon. The NCR's pressing need to expand proved greater than its promise of amnesty, and before long the government decided the Khans had to go. The surviving Great Khans were relocated to an isolated, barren reservation, well north of NCR trade routes

Sounds really familiar right?

And looking at the Great Khans within this context, really reframes the context of their raiding and deep bitter anger that the Elder Khans like Papa Khan and Oscar have against the NCR.

Colonization is an ugly brutal thing, and it is also a complex one.

Like the Great Khans in New Vegas, many Native American tribes ending up raiding American citizens as a way to fight back, to strike against a rising imperialistic threat that was eager and willing to grind them against their heel, to kill their culture and bring all under the American Empire.

They fought, raided, begged, pleaded, sent letters to congress, lobbied Congress and the President and the Director of Indian Affairs, even as the infinitely more wealthy and powerful United States (even just off of the weary years of Civil War) did little to nothing to step the Westward push and actively allowed it's military to perform as it may on and off orders to get the natives off of land that had once been promised to them but was now deemed too valuable for a mere treaty to hold any sway.

And to bring this back to the actual conversation I want to have, is that I wanted to state this realization of mind in order to contrast it with another example from the exact same game.

The Dead Horses, Sorrows, and White-Legs of Honest Hearts.

Where as the Great Khans are treated with a kind of weary respect, of a people crushed beneath the wheels of a infinitely more powerful empire, struggling to find hope in a FUTURE for their people and culture, the Dead Horses and Sorrows and White-Legs are. . .honestly written with far less respect in my eyes.

The Sorrows are being actively converted by a White Savior in Daniel, who sees it as his burden to show these "innocent savages" the true faith and demands that they give up their home so that they are not "tainted" by the harshness of reality. Where they have no other visible leaders then this Foreign Priest calling their faith and interpretation of his teachings through their own cultural lens as wrong-headed.

Where Joshua Graham, the butcher who helped Caesar commit cultural genocide on dozens of tribes alone, is elected War Leader by the Dead Horses and in some endings becomes worshiped by them. Even he warns Follows-Chalk to stay in Zion lest he be corrupted by the dangers of the wider wasteland.

Now you sound like Joshua. He always tells me the tribal life is better, that I should stay here and forget the outside world.

And the White-Legs are treated as nothing but a people wholly existing of hate that deserve to be destroyed because they have been fooled by Ulysses and Caesar. Never humanized, never given a chance to learn the truth for themselves, they are written and treated almost like generic Orcs in many fantasy settings. No matter what this tribe and people are consigned to doom and slaughter.

-][-

And I say all this because I find it deeply weird how disparate these ideas and depictions are between the main game of New Vegas and it's Honest Hearts DLC.

Why are the Great Khans given so much dignity and pathos, when the Honest Hearts tribes feel almost like caricatures?

Why is Honest Hearts the way it is? And why is the writing so disparate between the two sections of the game?

[allwormdiet]

Interlude 7

Hi Miss Militia, sorry your superpower is just being a living weapon

No dancing around on this one, huh, just straight into the meat of it

Is Kovan our first dead kid/teen in this story? I feel like the child violence is steadily increasing over time. Vista, the ABB conscripts, Dinah, now this.

Also this shit is brutal

Fuck.

Sometimes you just have that sudden, instinctual understanding that something bad is nearby. Not usually something so devastating as a pit trap or landmine, but just that moment of the hindbrain screaming at you that something's not right.

Hey fucker, you sure showed up early, huh

So. Fucked up geometric crystalline entity that exists in multiple overlapping states or realities at once. Piece of it comes off and impacts her, bada bing bada boom she has powers and, conveniently, no recollection of the vision.

Ladies, gentlemen, and those of you who know better, cosmic horror has entered the chat, and it's giving out free goodies to unsuspecting participants

Crystal Superpower Cthulhu legitimately looked at this child and was like "oh I know how to turn the circumstances of your trauma into a superpower! I'm just going to give you Gun."

This feels a lot more on the nose than it's been for everyone else so far, but what do I know

Yeah here we go

"Good news, you never have to sleep again. Bad news, your brain will be on at all times and when you try to shut it off you will remember the worst day of your life in fucking IMAX quality"

Also feels very appropriately sinister that nobody can remember Crystal Superpower Cthulhu except in dreams of their trigger event, if you can even call it a dream.

Wow! Even more reason to doubt the Wards program, huh? They just dropped this kid into that life without her say-so and that cooked her for however long it took to graduate, at which point she obviously became a lifelong member.

Miss Militia is fully in it, huh? That's the kind of indoctrination you straight up can't pry yourself out of unless you have a damn good reason to suspect that's what's up, and it sounds like she never got that reason.

Yeah of course she's a dutiful little daughter and student and soldier. What else has she got? Not even the other kids from her hometown. Fuck me. Isolate and steep in the propaganda.

Oh no. Oh no she believes the American Dream exists. Oh Hana I'm so sorry, they just made that up to sell houses in the suburbs.

...Fuck, that's just it, isn't it. Hana was a victim of the grinding machinery of empire, and that was the pressure cooker situation that made her trigger. And now she's a component of a different, larger empire, grinding more of its targets into the same fuel that she almost became, but she doesn't even see it.

She didn't have a chance.

Speaking of chances. Hana, do you want to live in a world where God favors Kaiser as much as he favors you? Like that's just the problem of evil times a hundred.

Oh hey you two

Colin you have got to be careful what you wish for, man, you live in a world where superpowers are built off of fucking monkey's paw logic

Pity.

Haha uh oh

This is the first time we've heard Case 53 used, yeah? Same as Newter and Gregor? Hmm.

Now this is kind of an interesting conversation, having to figure out what the hell to do about what junior members you can or else have to give away

Okay so they know Shadow Stalker is trouble

...How much do they know beyond that, and how have they been dealing with her? Because I don't think it's working, and at least one person is just straight up not doing their job

I'd love to feel sorry for Armsmaster in this moment, but my dude is in desperate need of some fucking humility, and honestly I'm not sure he was ever meant to be in a leadership position. He just doesn't have the temperament for it.

So, first off, insane that the Endbringers are keyed in enough to human civilization to know what hurts most for them to target

Second off: Coil you stupid fucker your gun jumping on the Empire accelerated the entire city into apocalypse! Arrogant bastard wants to run Brockton Bay so bad that he just tripped and dropped his little city diorama all into a trash can full of rotting fish. Fucking jackass.

The Endbringers can bring media response into consideration for their attacks?? What the fuck kind of operation are these kaiju running?

Oh god fucking dammit.

Armsmaster is going to try and get his glory by killing an Endbringer.

Current Thoughts

Somebody needs to tell these people the genre of story that they're in for real. This isn't gritty sci-fi, this isn't something about the power of faith, this is about an alien intelligence using Earth and humanity for purposes that are, at best, utterly ambivalent to the ongoing existence of either of those things.

Also I feel a lot worse for Miss Militia but it seems like she hasn't reflected on like, any of her baggage beyond the most surface level stuff of "boy I'm sure fucking glad I'm not in that village anymore"

[sleepingdeath-light]

blue diamond smut hcs ; 18+

requested by ; anonymous (01/05/23)

fandom(s) ; steven universe

fandom masterlist(s) ; here

character(s) ; blue diamond

outline ; “blue diamond smut hcs? i'm 19 years old!”

warning(s) ; sexually explicit content, soft dominant!blue diamond, pet name kink, lingerie kink, consensual use of blue’s powers as foreplay, oral sex, size kink, implied shape shifting to accommodate sex acts

minors and ageless blogs will be blocked

blue diamond isn’t strict in the bedroom by any means, but that doesn’t mean that she isn’t dominant — she’s a member of the diamond authority, power and control come as naturally to her as swimming comes to a fish, and though she may generally fall into the category of ‘soft’ domme, make no mistake, she’s still very much so able to put her foot down and put you in your place if she really needs to do so

she uses a lot of pet names for you in the bedroom and will very rarely ever use your name or title unless you ask her to do so — things like ‘dear’, ‘love’ or ‘little one’ (or ‘little gem’ if you are one) are her defaults but she’s open to introducing new terms of endearment for you so long as they aren’t degrading in nature for either of you

she definitely enjoys a more romantic approach to sex as it’s much more about emotions than the act itself for her — so both of you dressing up (you more than her due to the nature of her form being more permanent) in sheer lingerie (in her colours, of course) and wooing each other before making love is much more common than spontaneous sex

if you asked, and are affected by it, she’d be up for using her powers on you to a point — it’s obviously much more diluted and weaker than what she’d use on a servant or any other gem, but it’s enough to just barely impact your emotional state one way or another (usually it’s just her way of letting you know that she’s currently aroused without having to come out and say it, which she hates doing as she gets much too flustered to get her words out properly)

she’s someone who equally enjoys giving and receiving oral sex but she gets terribly flustered either way (both before and after altering her form to properly accommodate the act)

when receiving, she can barely look you in the eye and doesn’t quite know what to do with her hands (usually settling upon resting them on your head/running her hands through your hair whilst you go down on her) — it also usually happens when she’s either in her palanquin or when she’s sat on her throne, with you knelt between her legs licking her to climax

when giving, she’s much more focused and generally keeps her eyes closed as she massages your thighs and waist and hips — but if she opens her eyes and sees you looking at her, then all of her confidence disappears and she freezes in place, completely forgetting what she’s supposed to do for a few moments before she tentatively goes back to what she was doing

that being said, later on in your relationship when sex is something she’s much more comfortable with, these moments of freezing and becoming intensely flustered become much less frequent — only popping up on rare occasions and leading to a brief light moment of laughter before you go back to whatever you were doing

though she’s not as overt about it as yellow or white, she does have a bit of a size kink and enjoys being able to use her larger size to manipulate your form in the bedroom (or, conversely, having you pleasure yourself using parts of her usual form that would otherwise be much too large to fit inside of your body) — she particularly enjoys having you ride and grind on her fingers to get off when she’s doing some menial work for the empire, and will offer up plenty of gentle encouragement and praise while you entertain yourself with her (bonus points if you beg for her attention and call her ‘my diamond’ when you’re doing this to emphasise her role as your dominant and superior, but she won’t be offended or put off if you don’t do either of those things — again, she’s not as authoritarian as the two other remaining diamonds)

[omorinintendoswitchedition]

YOUR BACKYARD-The sky is blood red, casting an eerie glow through the inky blackness of your backyard. The trees stand still, like ghosts, watching you. A clear path stretches out before you, guiding you towards where you know you must go

PERCEPTION (SIGHT)-Towards the biggest tree in your yard.

HALF LIGHT-The one with the unidentifiable shape gently swinging from a noose.

THE TREE-It looms over you, like a pillar of death, you feel small and insignificant before it

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT-What’s this? We’re afraid of a tree? Pussy.

PAIN THRESHOLD (Godly:Failure)-This tree bears our deepest agonies. We have every right to be afraid.

SOMETHING-An indistinguishable thing hangs from the branch, the only thing you can clearly make out is the bright white eye staring at you.

“Do you remember the scent of your childhood?”

1. What *is* this?

2. What are you? <

3. I don’t remember

4. I was born in a hospital, where people usually go to die

YOU- What are you?

SOMETHING- I’m exactly what it says on the tin. Now answer the question.

1. What *is* this?

2. I don’t remember <

3. I was born in a hospital, where people usually go to die

YOU- I don’t remember

SOMETHING- Do you remember your sister’s hand holding your own?

1. I’m not answering until you tell me what’s happening

2. You mean Mari? <

YOU- You mean Mari?

SOMETHING-Yes, her. Tell me, do you remember her?

ENCYCLOPEDIA- Of course we remember her! She has purple hair, a purple vest over a white shirt with and a purple skirt and red necktie. She always has a picnic basket and a warm smile.

SOMETHING- Wrong

YOU- What do you mean?

SOMETHING - I’m talking about the *real* Mari. Not the one you made up to fill the cracks in your empty heart.

INLAND EMPIRE [Godly: Success] - Black hair, neatly pressed school uniform. Piano music. It’s the same song again, always the same song. She’s trying to make it perfect for the big night, always practicing, shut away in that room…

VOLITION- No, enough of that. Don’t think about it.

SOMETHING- Tell me, where are your friends? Human beings have friends Sunny-boy, where the hell are yours?

YOU- I don’t know

SOMETHING- Don’t know, hey? And why is that, I wonder? Could it have anything to do with the whole *not going outside* thing?

1. I’ve seen you before…….

2. I’m tired <

3. Help……me…

YOU- I’m tired

ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN - You’re what now? I can’t hear you over the sound of this jumbled-up word dream. It’s all garbage. The pictures are gone, your bed rises to meet you. A thin, sleep-like state. It feels more like glass than velvet, *grinding* up here in your head.

LIMBIC SYSTEM- Something is *wrong*. Sleep isn’t usually this bad. This dry. This *unsafe*. There’s something wrong with your head……a lingering feeling that won’t go away.

YOU- What? No!

LIMBIC SYSTEM- Oh yes sleepy boy. It doesn’t go away, it will always be here, lurking around the corners, waiting for you to drop your guard. Here it comes, so soon already! An alarm goes off, like clockwork. Barely letting you sleep at all. Time to get up, Sunny!

LIMBIC SYSTEM- Time to go to work in the shit factory!

[mychlapci]

starbee but everyone assumes that bumblebee is the sweet bottom who lets the big bad seeker do whatever he wants but it's the fucking opposite

starscream gets his pussy fucking destroyed by bee. tiny fucking car with a libido higher than the empire state building. he's hung too so starscream can't even make fun of him for having a small dick. bee's a menace with his teeth too, starscream's wings have big ole bites taken outta em

-burnt ice anon

YEAAAH. Bumblebee absolutely dominating Starscream is my #1 fantasy right now. Starscream is a hundred percent the cocky type, who’ll yap on and on about how hard Bee’s gonna have to work to really satisfy him in bed, that he hopes Bee will be able to keep up- after all, such a small car, trying to take on a big, high-speed jet? It’s a big challenge.

Not for Bumblebee, of course. Whatever Starscream convinced himself of flies out the window when Bee opens up his panels and there’s a fat spike sliding into his valve, grinding into his internal nodes with pin-point precision. Bee just smirks at him, ‘cause he’s seen that kind of face Starscream’s making before, and knows that he’s got him exactly where he wants him. 

Starscream mewling and screaming as he’s pounded into, his legs held spread open so he can’t even wrap them around Bumblebee's waist and set his own pace… he immediately gets Starscream’s pussy addicted to his spike, by sheer accident. Now, if you have Screamer limping around, you can rest assured Bee fucked him so hard he’s still a little dizzy. 

and Bumblebee being a little biter… grghhh, it’s always the tiny ones, isn’t it. You’d think a decepticon would bite harder than a little autobot scout, but oh lord. Starscream’s let go of that assumption a long time ago.

[cadere-art]

how'd you start with your uanlikri setting? i've always wanted to make a detailed fantasy-scifi-speculative bio type thing, and i'm finally starting with it, but it feels so big that i just don't know where to begin.

So, let me preface this by saying that Uanlikri has turned 12 this year. It has been a long haul project and it has been through a lot of changes - I have been working on it all my adult life, literally: I started working on it when I was 17.

With this established, here are two things about how I started: I don't quite remember how I was approaching it when I begun working on it, and lot of the stuff I put in it, especially in the first years, has been reworked, replaced, or removed*.

When I first started working on it, I was mostly trying to worldbuild around this plotline I had in mind, which remains, mostly intact, as the plotline of The Flight of the Winged Serpent, a story I may or may not write someday about the death of the last Emperor of the Namitan Empire. These days, I'm mostly trying to worldbuild around the location of another story, Empire's Wake, which takes place in the City State of Ranai after the fall of the Namitan Empire (which is why I keep going back to Ranai in a lot of my worldbuilding posts).

Regardless of whether you intend to write a story in that universe or not, for me the best approach to worldbuilding is to have a story, or a character, which serves as an anchor to your work. I'm not very good at focusing on Ranai or even the Basin Region, where both Ranai and the Empire are situated, but this still helps me direct my attention: although I've built loads of stuff for the lands south of the mountains which have little to no relevance to Ranai, I keep the level of granularity of that worldbuilding low - none of it is in depth, and I don't try to develop details for it. If I ever want to work on a story set south of the mountains, I'll have loads of stuff to work with, but mostly I'll have loads of stuff to develop before I can write in that part of the setting, because the worldbuilding there is very surface-level.

The other big thing I always and systematically recommend that people should work on and think about more is material culture (this could not possibly be because this is my field of studies). Whenever I don't know where to start, thinking: what's their land like? What grows there? What can they harvest, what can they intentionally grow, and what can they make from it? What do they eat, and how do they prepare it? The materials and designs of our houses, furniture, and tools influence our lives on a completely fundamental level. What does it mean for the rythms of daily life to have tiny houses without windows, or big houses with inner courtyards, or houses without clearly deliminated indoor/outdoor spaces, or communal houses? Do they need to grind their flour by hand, and who does the grinding? Going back to the material conditions of a group and what they can do from there is both an endless source of inspiration and a way to get back to the fundamentals and get a good base going from which to build up afterwards.

Also, and probably most importantly, I'd say focus on what's fun for you at that moment. A couple years ago I spent a lot of time doing a lot of work on colour genetics for a few critters. Is it useful to me now? Not really, but it's kind of nice to have, and more importantly, I had loads of fun doing it back then.

*There's also loads of stuff that's stayed - some that grew with the setting, some that I've never needed to change, and some that I'm kind of saddled with for better or worse. More on old Uanlikri under the cut.

Uanlikri started with antioles, which were initially lizard people with a very agamid / iguana - like look. The fauna in their world was kind of all over the place, but more fantastical overall and much more mammalian. The idea that they might be dinosaurs came quite early, I think, because they had feathers as early on as day 2 of the project (the very first antiole drawing is featherless), but I only decided to take this idea seriously and redesign antioles consequently in 2017, 5 years after I begun working on Uanlikri. I'm mostly happy about how antioles look now, but the strange feather crests are a remnant of the very first designs that, quite frankly, annoy me deeply lately. If I were to design them today, they'd have more sensical feather placement, but the weird crests are staying because I don't feel like invalidating the last 7 years of work and the 40 something drawings in the "antiole fashion" series. Making the rest of the fauna dinosaurian is something I decided on in 2017 as well, but which I've only begun taking seriously in the last year and a half or so - I've done a huge amount of work in the last 2 years on account of many things including a better workspace and also graduating and not being a student anymore.

At the start of Uanlikri, there were 4 ethnic groups in Uanlikri: the greens, the sand-folk, the grey mountainfolk, and the Pale Peoples. This a thing that's really grown with the project as it went: I never scrapped or intentionally revamped it, but it's both remained true and changed a lot in 12 years. The green peoples are now called the Undenau and represent two different colonization events in Uanlikri's history, one very ancient (6000+ y ago) and one recent (250y ago), with some surviving cultural taboos among the two groups which posit a common ancestor. The sand-folk are still kind of mostly beige and brownish (though with a lot more khaki as well), and probably arrived first. The situation with the mountainfolk has complexified considerably with the addition of polar regions and peoples to the South of the continent which did not exist in the first maps. The Pale Peoples are now mostly immigrants of another landmass.

One thing I'm saddled with that annoys me is that, in the beginning of the project, the sand-folk were somewhat (badly) arabic-coded especially in the names of things, and though I've tried to dilute that influence through the years, it's largely remained because I just don't see myself renaming such a huge chunk of the map and the characters which I know by heart. I think it's uninspired and kind of stale, but it is what it is.

Conlanging is truly the aspect of the world in which i've felt the most saddled with old decisions if only because I think redoing and relearning huge chunks of the world's names would be more of a disservice to me and the progress of the project than having a slightly better or more inspired bank of names. I try to avoid indulging the urge to redo stuff as much as possible.

[wilcze-kudly]

After the whole brainwashing incident in TROTE (The Ruins Of The Empire) did Mako, Bolin, and Wu, along with Asami went to therapy?

Do they go to therapy? Probably not.

Do they need therapy? ABSOLUTELY.

Perhaps they get some treatment for like. Obvious physical symptoms, like maybe headaches and muscle spasms etc. I imagine new, developed by war criminals brainwashing technology might not be the safest. Guan and Sheng don't strike me as the types to care for their victims' quality of life.

I also really like the idea of the brainwashed gang occasionally falling back into their conditioning or other half-conditioned states (think confused, maybe a bit of a zombie like state). Like imagine Korrasami just chillin and suddenly Asami's back on the "the Avatar is your enemy." grind. Had a talk about this with @makosbiggestdickrider. Granted it was mainly about Wei and Bolin in the same situation. But just. Imagine the awfulness.

I think there's a lot to do with the aftermath of brainwashing. The thing is traumatic, even without the potential long term effects.

I mean, having your free will ripped away due to electromagnetic shock must be horrific on most levels but I particularly focused on the psychological scarring for Wu and Bolin.

Wu, because he had to get captured and dragged behind enemy lines alone with all his friends and the people meant to protect him as mindless drones. Rambled about it here \/

And Bolin. God, Bolin. Imagine how he must've felt. Back in the earth empire uniform, with the knowledge that he hurt his friends. Like. Fucked up deja vu...

Yep they need therapy. But will they get it?

[pespillo]

some more Acolyte! King stuff , ideas for the arc, scenes, whatever, stuff i came up while walking in the morning:

timeline wise in early S2 King would end up at The Owl House through shenanigans and is kept there for like a week, he hates it, he complains all the time, he doesnt run away because he doesnt trust anyone but Belos to get him (and he wholly believes Belos will be coming soon); very reluctantly theres a semblance to warming up to Luz and Eda, but before anything significant happens, Kikimora shows up to get him back to the castle, he is thrilled to finally being saved, but is really bitter about blowing up his cover as someone who Doesnt or cannot talk over the ocasional growl or bark.

On the way back King notices Kikimora is diverting to another direction on her dragon and asks what is she planning and where are they going, Kikimora reassures him that she doesnt plan anything but that they have to talk. While Kiki is obedient to the emperor´s coven, she was always loyal to the titan and had made an oath to serve King even over the Emperor´s word. She confesses that the Emperor never made a clear effort to search for him all this time until she offered herself to go.

King is obviously confused and trusts that Belos simply must have been making a grander plan that maybe she wasnt aware of, but Kikimora nonetheless tells him that theres something else, that Belos has been acting off for a while and that even with all that she knows (and she does hold information no one else knows, like the Day of Unity´s intent, that King is a titan, that Hunter is a grimwalker, knowing about the Collector) but she knows that its not Everything.

They both end up settling down in a far off forest and Kikimora shows that behind Belos back, she took something from his chambers that she has to give to King, but only if hes willing to take them, for she is risking her life for the titan ´s will.

King tells her that she must not hide anything from the son of the titan and that she is obliged to show him, and so she shows him she took King´s broken off halves of his horns, she doesnt know in what state King came when he first was taken in 10 yrs ago into the castle, so she wants to know from King, if he can remember anything from his youngest years, shes known the greater deal with the day of unity for a while, and she doesnt ask to be spared from it, but she hopes that King can recognize his greater place in the Isles and that maybe, theres even other nations willing to join in for a greater empire (it is in her interests after all, she wholly believes King could be a greater Emperor), but first and foremost, she wants King to know the truth.

King starts remembering upon touching the horns, freaking out at flashbacks of being taken as an egg, and then waking up in a strange place, full of people who smelled like titans, but they looked, off, but still took care of him as a baby, feeding him and leaving him to nest.

He remembers Belos mask, his eyes, staring at him intently, the glint of a golden mask beside him as well, voices, arguing, shaking hands by the end, the reflection of the moon, he remembers Belos wrapping his arms around his body and walking away into a boat;

Being sat down and given something that made him dizzy, the grinding of his horns being cut off, then warmth and arms squeezing him close to a body whenever he cried. From then on, thats just his life, to be taken care of, to be told of the divine mission his father left to Belos, the blood tests, the prodding and picking, and the promises of a better world once this one is left behind to die.

King is just left wondering; who were those people, why did Belos lie about being saved from being sacrificed as a baby? is there other people willing to honor the titans for real then? Is there hope for the Isles to not be a lost cause in his eyes if he tries searching for more answers?

Kiki tells him she can send an open letter to try finding who these people are, if she pulls some strings before the Day of Unity, she does this only for the dignity and honor of the Titan´s son.

[whatmathgodwrought]

Salad Bar Theory of Popular Culture

This is going to be a long post. It will discuss "The Salad Bar Theory of Popular Culture," and why Tumblr dot com is the ideal, overgrown petri dish on the web for this phenomenon.

It's a bit of lark, but I do hope you'll laugh at least once if you read to the end.

Imagine you're dining at an all-you-can-eat restaurant. The restaurant is massive. The self-serve food bar has every kind of dish imaginable, and what's more, there is a construction crew adding more space, and new chefs are constantly adding new entrees, remaking old favorites, and sometimes they even invent new cuisines altogether. All of your friends and acquaintances are there. Sometimes you eat together, sometimes you talk about what you ate, sometimes someone excitedly comes to your table raving and telling you to try something new or an old favorite. There is more than you could ever possibly eat in several lifetimes, and it only keeps growing.

This metaphor is the current state of entertainment in the 21st century for all forms of media: music, movies, books, TV shows, ebooks, audiobooks, podcasts, talk radio, art, comics, graphic novels, manga, webcomics, cartoons, anime, newspapers, infotainment, online journalism, live-streaming, plays/dramas, console gaming, PC gaming, smartphone gaming and more. Thanks to the internet, streaming, global-shipping, viral-meme-culture, commodification-of-the-invidivual-via-the-social-media-grind, (and let's be honest, piracy and archival culture), people have access to and are exposed to more entertainment than they could ever hope to consume in several lifetimes.

So, where does leave the typical diner at this restaurant? Well, as the next paragraphs will show, there is no such thing as a "typical diner." There are no gourmets, no gourmands. There is just the Cornucopia and groups of people wandering the endless salad bar. You can be first in line and pay a premium to experience the brand new dish. You can go back to the same section and reload your plate with the same thing as many times as you want, and people will ask if you don't ever get tired of the same thing. You can be a vegetarian. You can eat only meat. You can eat a bit of everything. You can brave the sneers and jeers of the gatekeepers as you sample something--with tastebuds aglow--for the first time and rave about it to all your friends.

So what kind of dining experiences are there in this cultural canteen, this pop-culture pizzeria, this taverna theatre? What do you see there?

Popularity is the Objective Word Here

When something is popular, it spreads like wildfire. This has always been true of popular culture even before the internet. Humans are social, they tell stories and they share. This may seem obvious, but it's also bedrock for the other observations.

Originality is Dead: Long Live Reboots and Remixes.

Show of hands to three questions:

How many people recognize the reference of a gorilla carrying a woman, climbing the Empire State Building while bi-planes shoot at it?

King Kong right? A cultural icon for many years.

How many people have actually seen the original King Kong (1933) starring Fay Wray and directed by Cooper and Schoedsack?

Not as many right? Maybe you only saw one of the many remakes in 2021, 2017, 2005, 1986, 1976, 1967 or 1962.

How many people are alive today that saw King Kong (1933) in the cinema?

Not many I'll bet.

I'd wager the number of hands goes down with each question. And yet the staying power of the original story remains burned into film history and memory. The point is this. Humans retell stories. This is not a bug. It's a feature. "Tell me the story again of…" There is joy (and profit) in the retelling.

Derivative Reference is Often the Primary Way of Experiencing Pop Culture

OK, so people are sharing things left and right. They're retelling, remixing, rebooting, writing fan-fics, etc. All of this creative effort means that your first-time encountering something new may be a reference, rather than experiencing the original. People rarely experience the true original firsthand anymore. They're going to experience things second-hand.

This is especially true with older media. A first experience with something will often be a derivative reference. An example: Back in the day, in school, we watched Planet of the Apes in class. (I don't know, probably the teacher was hung over.) Want to know how I figured out before the big reveal that the Planet of the Apes was really Earth?

Troy McClure spoiled it for me. In Season 7 Episode 9 of the Simpsons, "A Fish Called Selma," McClure takes an acting gig in a musical adaptation of Planet of the Apes, and he sings the following lines:

Oh my God, I was wrong It was earth all along Yes you finally made a monkey out of me.

So there I am, watching Planet of the Apes for the first time, and Troy McClure's big number starts playing in my head. I sit there in disbelief, remembering the Simpsons, and then practically crying into my desk with laughter.

Probably the teacher thought that "kids these days" don't appreciate cinema, but it was just so absurd to have the movie spoiled by a bit in the Simpsons.

Want to know something else? In doing research for this essay, I discovered that Planet of the Apes film isn't even the original. The original story was a French language novel "La Planète des Singes" by Pierre Boulle. So again, people love retelling, often in different forms of media.

Point is, the longer something has been out, the more it tends to be referenced in other forms. TV talk shows will make jokes referencing the new popular thing. Popular phrases quickly become part of the everyday lexicon. People talk at the water cooler. A tech mogul names their new software after one iconic word in Heinlein's 1961 sci-fi novel.

Any piece of popular culture could be "spoiled" for you at any moment, which brings us to....

Spoilers are Everywhere but Do They Just Act as Adverts?

King Kong dies in the end. Dumbledore Dies. Both of these are spoiler memes (and I'm not sorry), but consider the amount of time passed between the original release of both. How long is the statute of limitations on spoilers? How long before a popular piece of media saturates public awareness so much that it becomes unavoidable? Is this ultimately unavoidable because of the viral nature of advertising, marketing and sharing?

In the modern day, it's increasingly hard to avoid spoilers. I've heard of people going off social media for weeks before a major film release so it doesn't get spoiled for them.

People seem divided on the topic of spoilers, but it's a very good question: Would you still enjoy a story if it was spoiled for you? Shakespeare spoils Romeo & Juliet in the first 14 lines:

Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life; Whose misadventured piteous overthrows Do with their death bury their parents' strife. The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love, And the continuance of their parents' rage, Which, but their children's end, nought could remove, Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage; The which if you with patient ears attend, What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

Do you still want to see the rest of the play? What if it had Leonardo DiCaprio as Romeo, Claire Danes as Juliet and Harold Perrineau as Mercutio? There is something to be said for knowing where the story goes, yet still enjoying the teling of the tale.

I'll go on record and say I don't really care about spoilers. They've become adverts to me, hooks of interest into things I might not have discovered otherwise. I have to encounter new media somehow, and I try to take a positive outlook on it, saying, "I was meant to discover this." If I like something, I'm going to like it unabashedly and still find a way to enjoy it.

Delayed Gratification

If you are PC gamer, let me ask a question: How many unplayed games do you have in your Steam library? Games you haven't even downloaded and opened for the first time. What about unfinished games? Played-once-and-dropped-it games? Now ask yourself: Did you buy this game when it first came out? Did you pay for early access? Would you have still enjoyed it, even if you had to wait a while? Consider the Reddit community r/PatientGamers. They don't care to line up and pay a premium for a brand new release. They know it will still be the same game (often less buggy), and they will even be able to get it on sale. They know the salad bar is vast. There's lots of content, and there's no hurry. They let it come to them when the time is right.

I Don't Want to Hear It

Similar to r/PatientGamers, there is also the phenomona when it seems like everyone is raving about something, to the point where you begin to actively block it out. It doesn't seem to matter what it is; even if it's something good that you would ultimately enjoy. Something about the repetition or the messaging rubs you wrong, and you innoculate yourself against it. You avoid that part of the salad bar at all costs, even if you might like it.

Interpreting the Rules: Remixing as Fan Behavior.

How dooes your social circle play the game Uno? Fandom has a tendency to take what's been created and modify it, remix it according to their own rules, according to fanon's own internal logic. Sometimes it's seen as an act of repair, sometimes a love letter to canon. Sometimes it's shipping characters. Sometimes it is a what-if. What if all these different characters from different properties got together in a story?

Dismay at Media Conglomerate Strip Mining

Has one of the five mega media conglomerates "ruined your childhood" by making a live-adaptation of your favorite childhood cartoon? Well, buckle up, because they aren't going to stop. The big five are hungry for content, and they are actively strip-mining your childhood favorites. It doesn't matter if it's a live action remake of Avatar the Last Airbender or CATS the musical, eventually some studio exec is going to see dollar signs, and your favorite thing is going to get a bad remake. It's best to just accept this.

Further Dismay at AI Strip Mining

If you don't like what the big five are doing, you will hate what AI is doing, and if you're an artist you probably already know you are getting robbed by AI companies. Large language models (also known as Plausible Sentence Generators) and text-to-artwork tools like Stable Diffusion and Midjourney are getting more sophisticated.

They're still scraping the web, and more sites seem to be selling user-generated content to these places, prompting artists to use Glaze and Nightshade to protect their work and poison AI data-models.

People are selling their likeness for permanent use in perpetuity for use in crowds. Lord of the Rings used AI-enabled CGI units in some of the battles, and that was over 20 years ago. How long before they don't hire extras for movies anymore?

The year is 2100. You put on a vid. It is the usual cast, starring: Tu-Pac Shakur's avatar, Hatsune Miku, the latest Disney princess avatar, and the disembodied voice of James Earl Jones. All of the original flesh and blood actors are long dead, but their AI avatars and copyright ramain. Some were never were alive in the first place. It's all necrotainment. You turn off the TV.

Back to the present year, James Earl Jones's voice is now in an AI model, so Disney can give us the same Darth Vader forever. The year 2100 seems not so far away.

On the plus side, there seems to be a growing backlack against AI-generated content. People consider it cheap, shoddily-made and flimsy, and the quickest way to associate a brand as cheap garbage. At the Glasgow Willy Wonka's Chocolate experience event, the organizer used AI generated visuals for the marketing, and people arrived disappointed at the "dirty old warehouse." According to Paul Connell, the actor who played Wonka, the script was "15 pages of AI-generated gibberish."

"I never knew I would have liked this"

OK this is getting a bit grim, so here's something fun: People are getting exposed to other cultures' entertainment, and they like it! Netflix reports that 60% of their users have watched a Korean drama, and they plan to invest USD $2.5 billion in future Korean drama for the platform. Like anime booming outside of Japan in the 80s and 90s, or the British Invasion in the 1960s, people try out other parts of the salad bar, and discover they quite like it.

Archival Behavior

Abraham Lincoln once said, "You can't believe everything you read on the Internet." This is why screencapping and archiving things has become more important. Tweets get deleted, accounts get banned, and users deactivate. Capturing and archiving things here at least preserves some of the conversation.

In the Art of War, Sun Tzu wrote, "If you know yourself and you know your enemy -- and let's be clear the enemy are techbros, who are fundamentally lazy and want to cut corners for the sake of a quick buck and flashy, fake-innovation. Even their own mothers don't love them. They stole this content from Tumblr username whatmathgodwrought, original posting date 2024/03/03, and this should be used as evidence in the lawsuit against the responsible parties -- you need not fear the result of a hundred battles."

If the internet is just 4 websites containing screenshots of the other ones, many are doing the good work of archiving for posterity.

Wasn't this Post also about Tumblr?

Yeah, yeah, we're taking the scenic route. (If you actually read this far, thank you. Send whatmathgodwrought a message and I'll read your blog, maybe reblog some of your stuff, maybe even follow you.)

Let's recap: pop culture spreads like wildfire. It gets retold/remixed/rebooted. Reference and spoilers are everywhere. You can delay and still enjoy a thing anytime, or you can resolutely choose to avoid a thing completely. You can remix, recreate, and fan-theorize canon ideas to their natural conclusion. The big five entertainment corps and AIs are strip-mining the heck out of it. People loves to try out things they never would have had access to before. So, after having some of these kind of experiences, you can post your fandom thoughts on Tumblr, add tags and watch it blow up (or not) or don't add tags (and watch it somehow blow up anyway?). Posts with "10k note energy" have slept for years before someone fired a reblog chain heard round the world. So what makes this environment the Galapagos Island or Cambrian period of websites for this Salad Bar idea?

Repeat and Resurgence

So the thing about a recurring joke is that it keep recurring. People will often write: "I will always reblog this." There are also seasonal examples. King Taejong falls from his horse, Feb 8, 1404. Julius Casear's assassaination on the Ides of March. Voyager's "Threshold" season-2, episode 15, Jan 29th. The clay tablet to Ea-nāṣir complaining about inferior quality copper. People like retelling, and reblogging with scheduling or queue contributes to the seasonal nature of repeat themes.

Tag You're It

Tags kind of help with the spreads-like-wildfire aspect. I've always liked tags as a general concept, because they're a flat, non-hierarchical, multi-category way of organizing information. In the Dewey Decimal system, your number is the category, and that's it; no nuance, no second-guessing, no argument. With tags, you add as many as you want, and then off it goes--haphazardly careening about the Tumblr ecosystem. Tagging is also broken, but whatever.

Goncharov

my favourite thing about the goncharov nonsense is that it relies on the tumblr culture of watching ur mutual posting about something but not really paying attention to it. the reason it slips so easily under the radar is we’re all used to seeing people’s random sudden fixations on our dashes and then just letting them do their thing - you don’t unfollow, you often don’t even filter it out, you just think ‘hey, glad they’re having fun’ and scroll past. i went like two days before realising it was a mass joke because i assumed one of my mutuals was just Really Into some old mafia film from the 70s all of a sudden. because why wouldn’t they be

User @watchmakermori hits the nail on the head. Tumblr's ecosystem exposes the user to random fandoms, which they might like, might look at later, or might actively avoid. It is within that space of ambiguity that the Goncharov phenomena thrived.

Trending By Organic Pollination

On this hellsite, it's possible to completely overwhelm the tags and get something trending, but at least this is mostly driven by human interest. In this case, Tumblr's lack of an algorithm is actually a feature. When a mutual reblogs something, at least I know that a human did it, unlike algorithm-based, auto-served content. We've seen what algorithms have done to Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube and even Google search. Algorithms drive "engagement", endless scrolling, and are likely contributing to Dead Internet Theory. At least Tumblr users are continuously blocking bots, trying to inoculate against AI-generated content, and are reblogging human content.

Parallel Play

Tumblr users' tendency to engage in parallel play also contributes to the remix factor as users reblog, retag and recontextulize. A shitpost becomes educational. Two isolated fandoms collide accidentally because of a poll. Someone makes a spelling error and it goes viral. Users play with JPEGs like dolls. Everyone is just out there doing their own thing in the big sandbox, and emergent behaviors result.

In Conclusion?

This post ended up more Tumblr-positive than I intended, even though that wasn't the original idea. The idea was to be more dispassionate, more objective, a casual observer. But like any participant-observer, I've gotten a bit caught up in the phenomenon.

So let's call this a Love Letter (academically aggravated) to Tumblr. Suffice it to say, I hope y'all keep blocking bots, reblogging humans, spiting the great AI content harvest, and keep enjoying the Salad Bar.

[historia-vitae-magistras]

I don't know who else to ask about this, sorry, but I'd like to ask about Gilbert in Berlin, I know the history (ussr, west vs east), but personality-wise, does Gilbert "fit" in Berlin?

OH, don't apologize! I love this ask. Gilbert is my OG blorbaux lol. Anyone can ask me anything about him! My thought Is very much yes. It's not a natural inherent fit the way I write Matt in the woods, Arthur at sea, or Alfred in the sky or space, but he does fit.

Gilbert was born the Teutonic Knights, a military order with a very strong sense of what we might call unit-based identities in a modern military context. He exchanged that for the Duchy of Prussia, the Kingdom of Prussia, the German Empire, and maybe East Germany? The memory of a last generation of East Prussians who, until recently, would have remembered what his Königsberg looked like, who might remember that pre-war world he no longer recognizes when the Wall falls? The Teutonic Knights? Who is he supposed to be, still breathing in this world where everything he once was, is a relic of a bygone and disavowed age? Who makes us what we are as people? I think Gilbert did what he's always done. He looked at the world around him and found his place.

Gilbert has Ludwig, his life's work. The rest he can find in Berlin if he looks, if he wants to live. And in my version, he very much wants to live. He has been boxed up over a long post-war winter like the statues in the Volkspark Friedrichshain, but when spring comes and he’s in his city again, it's just another transition.

The Vietnamese restaurant in an odd little corner of a warehouse. The children laughing in the Mauerpark. The two young lovers fucking their brains out in the apartment next door, finding a new joy in each other's bodies. The annoying tourists. The dead places of Cold War voids bursting with greenery. The Brandenburg gate flooded with light. Marjellchen, after dark, three glasses of honey schnaps past drunk. The 24-hour clubs, bodies grinding on each other, lights flashing, sweat, and lousy house electro music. Orgies in glow paint, he's not quite sure he pulls off. Freedom past the point of reason. The visiting young historian was drinking coffee overlooking the cemetery on Greifswalder Strasse, trying to come to terms with what the place was supposed to mean. The idiot tourists at Checkpoint Charlie and the Fernseturm. Haggling with the Polish babcia at the markets over antiques. Art students smoking and bemoaning the state of the world. Stiff federal government workers. The whackos ball out at the train first thing in the morning. Every little facet reflects who he’s been and could be now. Berlin might not fit him like a glove, but he can be himself in its excess of freedom. Especially for him, being born in an actual religious institution so repressed even a thousand years of hetero pining for Erzsé was taboo, he finds some real peace in a post-war, post-war Berlin. If there was ever a city for a thousand-year-old military machine to remake itself into an actual person, it is Berlin.

He just has to convince NATO‌ to get the ankle monitor off him first lol.