#for the graphic i didn't even have to change much i think it matches so well with the signs ;u;

[thankskenpenders]

Thoughts on two specific areas of the writing in Sonic X Shadow Generations

The best new 3D Sonic game in over a decade (or even two, depending on who you ask) dropped late last year. And I didn't write anything about it! Sometimes life happens. Well, I've finally sat down to finish Shadow Generations, and by now everyone has already been singing its praises for three months. This is the rare instance where the entire Sonic fandom, and even mainstream reviewers, are in agreement on something. The level design is the best it's been in a long, long time and the cool factor is off the charts, embracing Sonic's peak cringe era in an incredibly confident way. It's great. If you're even reading this post, you probably don't need me to tell you that. So I won't!

No, what I'm really interested in here is the writing. Because this is me we're talking about. But I actually don't want to talk about the main narrative of Shadow Generations, which is really solid little story about Black Doom trying to mold Shadow into his perfect soldier. No, I'd like to zero in on two other aspects of the writing here: the revisions made to Sonic Generations, and Gerald Robotnik's unlockable journal.

The updated Sonic Generations script

The new package mostly presents Sonic Generations how you remember it. There are some tweaks, but it's not a major overhaul. Graphically, I don't think the game has been touched much, if at all. I certainly can't notice any difference without a side-by-side comparison, despite playing it on a PS5. The most notable update is that the game's script has been rewritten by Ian Flynn.

Naturally, this caught my attention. Generations always had a nothingburger story, so with Ian rewriting Pontac and Graff's lame dialogue there was nowhere to go but up. (I don't like to pin the blame for those games' stories entirely on them, as a ton of it was dictated to them by Sonic Team, but, well, I don't think they're very good dialogue writers.) But it's less a complete rewrite and more like Ian was brought on as a script doctor for some minor touch ups here and there. Many lines of dialogue are completely identical to how they were originally written in 2011, and many others only have slight wording changes. Ian was clearly not allowed to request additional scenes or extend the ones that already existed. He has to match the original beat for beat so that they can reuse 99% of the cutscene animations. Don't expect it to be a whole new experience compared to the original.

Still, I think the new script is an improvement, albeit a minor one. Various things have been tweaked to maintain characterization consistency. Cream calls Sonic "Mr. Sonic" instead of just "Sonic." Instead of calling Sonic "buddy," Rouge uses the pet name "Blue," like she tends to do in things like the IDW comics. Espio doesn't have to remind you in the dialogue that he's a ninja, and he no longer has a line making it sound like he has some kind of soul reading power. I also like that Modern Sonic now actually has responses to what his friends say when he rescues them, rather than being silent like Classic Sonic. They won't blow you away, but they make Sonic feel a little more engaged with everything.

In general, the altered dialogue just seems tighter to me, and some of the more childish or trite wording of Pontac and Graff's script has been altered. Here, let's actually make a direct comparison, just because this stuff is interesting to me as a writer. Here's a couple lines from after the Egg Dragoon fight late in the game, in the original script:

Modern Eggman: Ooooh... I can't believe this! I was supposed to beat you this time. Modern Sonic: Aw, I'm sorry! I didn't get that memo. I beat you every time! [Turns to Classic Sonic] No, seriously, we beat this guy every time. It's like it's our job or something!

This is a simple exchange. Eggman is mad that he lost. Sonic is unflappably confident because he always beats Eggman, and he explains this to his younger self. But the wording here isn't particularly good. Eggman's simple and direct wording makes him come off like a little kid who's mad because his older brother beat him at Mario Kart, rather than a mad scientist who just had his plans foiled. It's making light of the situation.

And I've never liked Sonic saying "It's like it's our job or something!" That doesn't feel like a thing Sonic would say, it feels like a thing an outside observer would say about Sonic. This is a frequent problem with so-called "MCU dialogue," where quips meant to echo the commentary of a casual, somewhat disinterested audience are inserted into the story itself so that the writers can be like "See? We get it. We're genre-savvy, too!" It also just reminds me of bad Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric lines like "Rings! It's like they're made for me!"

And then here's Ian's rewrite:

Modern Eggman: I recalibrated everything! This was supposed to be my time! Modern Sonic: Oh, please, keep dreamin', Egg-head. I beat you every time. [Turns to Classic Sonic] No, seriously, we beat him every time. Our score card's flawless.

Eggman's still mad about his defeat, but the line "I recalibrated everything!" makes it more specific. He put all this work into the engineering side of his latest scheme and got tunnel vision, thinking if he got his creations just right there'd be no way he could lose. "This was supposed to be my time!" also turns it into a time travel pun, which is a bonus. He's still pitching a fit over losing, but it feels more like Eggman pitching a fit, rather than sounding childish.

And then instead of saying that beating Eggman is "like his job or something," Sonic says he's got a flawless score card against Eggman. He doesn't take Eggman seriously as a threat—at least, not to his face. He acts like it's all a game. But he conveys this in a way that feels truer to the character, rather than feeling like the words of a real world observer poking fun at the tropes of the Sonic series.

Is this amazing, A+ dialogue that blows me away? No. Again, it's not a completely different scene from the one we already had. Ian had to fit the beats of what was already there. He couldn't go all out and write an all new story confirming his longstanding headcanon that the Time Eater is a remnant of Solaris or whatever. But the wording here makes the existing story land a little better and feel truer to the characters in subtle ways.

But to me, the main change is that the Sonics and Tailses seem to have a more solid understanding of what's going on with the timeline and the Time Eater, compared to how idiotic they sometimes seemed in the original game. Which is good! No more standing outside Green Hill and wondering why it seems so familiar. Thank god. As part of this, yes, there are a few more references to past games in the dialogue, like Sonic briefly being confused about the fact that they're time traveling without the Time Stones, or South Island and Westside Island being acknowledged as the normal locations of Green Hill and Chemical Plant. Yes, ha ha, insert joke about how Ian loves references here. Look, it's Sonic fucking Generations. It's a game built entirely out of nostalgic references. Just own it! And, again, in this instance Sonic and Tails come off as less stupid when they make it clear that they do, in fact, remember their adventures from presumably less than a year ago in-universe.

Eggman, too, seems to have a better understanding of the powers he's toying with. Where in the original vesion his focus was simply on going back in time to undo his previous defeats and he seemed kind of oblivious to how much the Time Eater was actually fucking up the universe, here Eggman says he wants to use the Time Eater to give himself complete control over the entire timeline. Eggman also makes way fewer references to his own failures and shortcomings. Of course he won't admit that Sonic has defeated him time and time again. To him, he's never truly lost—Sonic just keeps delaying the inevitable total victory for the Eggman Empire.

So, yes. The new Sonic Generations script is better. It won't blow anyone away, but it's better than it was. It's been elevated from "kinda lame" to "fine." No, if you really wanna see Ian flex his ability to breathe new life into old Sonic stories, look no further than...

Gerald Robotnik's Journal

Hoo boy.

The story of what happened aboard the ARK has always been... a bit confusing, to say the least. Fans with encyclopedic knowledge of the script for every route of Shadow '05 may disagree, but it's the truth. We've had all the pieces to understand the story for a long time now, but that info was given to us out of order by a pair of unreliable narrators—Gerald, who became a vengeful lunatic shortly before his death, and Shadow, who was subjected to multiple rounds of amnesia and altered memories. Some of the ambiguity left by Sonic Adventure 2 was cleared up in Shadow '05, but that game also retconned in a bunch of new elements to Shadow's backstory (aliens!) that lead to further confusion. Not to mention the fact that that game had multiple routes and only revealed the truth about Shadow if you sat on the ultimate final boss battle for WAY longer than the fight would normally last. Or the fact that Sonic X made its own tweaks in its telling of the story. Or the fact that none of these things ever had the best English translations. I can't blame anyone who hasn't played those games in two decades for not remembering the truth about these characters and getting some details mixed up.

What we needed was something to piece together all of the info we have into one coherent backstory, told in chronological order. And thanks to Shadow Generations, we have that, in the form of an official journal tying together what we knew from Sonic Adventure 2, Shadow '05, and Sonic Battle into the tragic tale of Gerald's rise and fall.

Ian Flynn was the perfect man for the job here as the guy who started his career by tidying up the mess that was the first 159 issues if Archie Sonic. This is what he excels at: taking disparate bits of weird Sonic lore from multiple different sources, boiling them down to their most interesting elements, and connecting it together in a way that will make the audience see the dramatic potential he's always known was there. Rather than feeling like a cynical exercise in franchise building, going back and explaining things that never needed explaining so that people can add more bullet points to the wiki, he puts a new spin on things that retroactively enriches those past stories. The story here means something to the characters involved and gives us a better understanding of them as people, rather than as plot devices to motivate Shadow.

(And, of course, Ian didn't do this journal alone. He wrote the story, but I also have to give a huge shout out to Evan Stanley, who made the final product. All of her handwritten journal entries, sketches, and "photos" included throughout. The physical damage done to the journal over the course of 50 tumultuous years, passing from Gerald to Eggman to a certain special someone at GUN. The way Gerald's handwriting gets less and less legible as his mental state declines. So much love was put into what could have been a mere text dump in a menu, and it really elevates it to the next level. Congrats on officially getting hired by Sega, Evan, you've sure as hell earned it!)

The main idea the journal conveys is that Gerald was under a lot of pressure from a lot of different parties—GUN, the President, his colleagues aboard the ARK, Black Doom, even his own family—and boy did it get to him. The known incidents aboard the ARK mentioned in previous games are put together here to form a story where everything slowly spirals out of control as Gerald keeps compromising his morals to further his research, thinking he'll eventually find some way out of all this because he's a genius. I won't recap that whole story here (if you haven't already played the game and read the journal entries, I would highly recommend at least reading it on the Sonic wiki), but I'd like to highlight my favorite elements of the story, as Ian tells it here.

1) The Eclipse Cannon

Here's something that never quite made sense in Sonic Adventure 2: why does the ARK have a laser that can blow up the Earth built into it? It was supposed to be a peaceful research colony. Sure, Gerald went crazy and swore revenge on the Earth, but, like... when did he have an opportunity to go back up to the ARK and modify it? Did he have someone else do it? How? The ARK was raided by GUN and shut down! And then they arrested him, held him in prison for an unclear period of time, and executed him by firing squad when he was no longer useful! It doesn't add up. Shadow 'the Hedgehog '05 would give its own answer by introducing the Black Arms and saying that the Eclipse Cannon was always supposed to be a secret trump card against the Black Comet. But, like... we know that's kind of a bullshit answer, right? You don't need enough power to blow up a whole planet just to destroy a comet.

Well, the new journal retains what we already knew, but it paints a much more complete picture.

See, long before Gerald ever made a Faustian bargain with Black Doom, he had already made one with an even greater evil: the military. GUN gave Gerald much of the funding for the ARK, Gerald's personal utopian research station in space, but it didn't take long for GUN to start pressuring him to design them weapons. Gerald tried to get GUN off his back by personally contacting the President of the United Federation, and the President gave him an alternative: how about, instead, you just use your genius brain to figure out the secret to immortality for us, so our soldiers can be immortal? Gerald was initially sickened by the notion and found it completely absurd, like chasing a shadow... but given no other option, the sarcastically named Project Shadow soon began in earnest. (Maria would later put a more positive spin on the name after Shadow's awakening, pointing out that a Shadow can show us the direction of the light, like she says in the game itself.)

Of course, this search for the ultimate life form didn't go very well, and without any results on that front GUN kept hounding him for weapons. Gerald would throw them a bone here and there to get them off his back. His research on Chaos resulted in the Artifical Chaos prototypes, which he worried would be used for warfare but could at least theoretically be used for search and rescue missions in floods, in his mind. But that wasn't enough. So he gave them Chaos Drives to power their mechs. And that still wasn't enough. He's got Emerl. He'll give them Emerl. They're not impressed by Emerl. They'll shut the whole ARK down if Gerald doesn't give them something big.

Fine! GUN wants something big? Gerald builds a huge fucking laser cannon into the ARK. However, as a middle finger to GUN, Gerald makes it so powerful that it would destroy the Earth if it was ever fired at any target on its surface. In other words, GUN now has their ultimate weapon of mass destruction, fulfilling his contract, but they can never actually use it. Oh, the delicious irony. (And also Shadow will blow up the Black Comet with it in 50 years yada yada yada.) Is this perhaps extremely shortsighted and naive of Gerald, to believe that such a weapon would never actually be used just because of the risk? Of course. But hey, that's Gerald for you. And I love this as an answer.

(Also, this, uh, kinda echoes something from real life! Remember the bit in Oppenheimer where he says all nuclear war will become unthinkable, and Edward Teller responds "until somebody builds a bigger bomb"? Yeah, Teller went on to conceptualize a superweapon codenamed Project Sundial that would have been able to kill all life on the planet, as the ultimate deterrent for war. This was never made for obvious reasons, but hey, there's a basis for this sort of thinking outside of heightened sci-fi! There's a whole Kurzgesagt video about this if you're interested.)

2) The Biolizard

The Biolizard is, of course, brought up as the initial failed prototype of the ultimate life form, from before Gerald met Black Doom. We don't really learn all that much about it that we didn't already know, but I just love the way it's framed in the story.

As you can see above, we actually get to see a picture of Maria holding up the cute little salamander that would end up mutating into the Biolizard through Gerald's experiments. (Researchers want to figure out how to replicate salamanders' regenerative abilities for humans in real life, too, so this was a natural starting point for the project.) And then, after it grows to a monstrous size and goes out of control, Gerald has to lock it away in an unused sector of the ARK. He needs to keep the poor thing alive for his research into harnessing Chaos Energy, building life support systems directly into it, but he doesn't have the heart to tell Maria what happened. So it just becomes this first dark secret weighing on his conscience. The Biolizard becomes Gerald's Tell-Tale Heart beating beneath the floorboards of the ARK. I love that.

3) Lost Impact was the breaking point for the ARK

Remember the level Lost Impact in Shadow '05? The flashback level on the hero path where Shadow is running around fighting Artificial Chaos enemies on the ARK 50 years ago? Yeah, that wasn't just a random incident. That was important, as we now know due to its placement on the timeline.

See, Emerl's rampage aboard the ARK that was chronicled in Sonic Battle and Dark Beginnings set off a domino effect. Emerl riled up the Artificial Chaos, causing Gerald to lose control of them. They became violent, and so Shadow had to stop them, as depicted in Lost Impact. The thing is, that incident sent an SOS signal to GUN telling them that shit was going down on the ARK. Gerald didsn't fully understand the trouble he was in and assumed that he'd simply be reprimanded by the higher ups, or maybe face legal action. But, well... the next time he heard from GUN, armed troopers were raiding the ARK.

So Lost Impact was the straw that broke the camel's back. I just really like that detail.

4) Maria

And, of course, there's Maria herself. Maria has often been more of a symbol than a character, this perfect embodiment of everything that's good and pure in this world who gets killed to motivate Shadow and Gerald's revenge plots. But I really like the wrinkles this journal adds to her and Gerald's story, and their relationship. This is the most fleshed out they've ever felt.

For one, the journal leans into the idea of Maria's intellectual potential. The rest of the Robotnik family is all geniuses, after all, and she was proving to be a really bright kid. She excelled in her studies on the ARK, and she even helped design Shadow's jet skates and inhibitor rings. When Maria died, the world didn't just lose a symbolic personification of purity. She genuinely could have been a hugely influential scientist who did so much good for the world. That's what Gerald wanted for her. But we'll never know, because GUN killed her.

Speaking of her family, their presence isn't just mentioned for the sake of fleshing out the Robotnik family tree. It's mentioned that as Gerald struggled to find a cure for Maria's illness through his genetic research, he faced mounting pressure from his family. They didn't want Maria to be up on the ARK forever. They wanted Gerald to hurry up and find a damn cure, or otherwise just send her back home to Earth so she could be with her family again. She'd been up on the ARK for so long that Gerald's coworkers started thinking that she had been born up there. Eventually she gains a baby sister on Earth who she's never met. A rift forms between Gerald's two sons, and he's unable to really deal with it because he's so consumed by his work. There's this sense that the family is falling apart, and that everyone is dreading the possibility that Gerald will never find a cure and that Maria will just spend her final years up in space and die far away from her family, because Gerald just couldn't let go. If that happens, it'll break the whole family. But he can't stop now. So he just keeps working. Curing Maria is the only way to win his family back, in his eyes. It can't all be for nothing.

But my favorite detail regarding Maria is this one paragraph:

Maria is growing into a lovely young woman. It breaks my heart that someone as bright and energetic as her is diminished by disease. There are no visible effects, and I've caught my fellow researchers muttering to each other, doubting her illness. It is infuriating. I find all my reason and restraint vanishes when she's slighted.

This is SUCH a great addition to the story! It's always been true that Maria doesn't really seem all that ill, just looking at her in cutscenes. With this one little comment, Ian flips that issue on its head and turns it into a story about invisible disability. She doesn't act like she's in chronic pain, so she must not be, everyone thinks. And this really, really gets to Gerald, as does the pressure from his family. He's dedicating his whole LIFE to saving her, and they think she's faking it?! It's such a small addition, never referenced elsewhere in the journal, but it adds so much flavor to the story, as does the implied family drama. It grounds Gerald and Maria and makes them feel more like real human beings, rather than being pure archetypes. It's just enough info to let my imagination run wild filling in the blanks.

You also get the feeling that Maria being such a walking ray of sunshine was the only real source of joy Gerald had left in his life before Shadow was awakened, and the only thing keeping him from snapping under pressure sooner. All this stuff just keeps piling on, everything's spiraling out of control, but at least Maria is keeping her chin up, right? It makes so much sense that losing her would make him go off the deep end when it's framed like this.

It's just... man, I never thought I'd care so much about Gerald and Maria. But that's the Ian Flynn touch. After years of less than stellar Sonic writing that seemed to be embarrassed of itself, I'm so happy to have new games coming out that fully embrace the history of the series like this, making its world feel so rich and real instead of just serving as an excuse for a string of platforming levels. I don't even like Shadow '05, but I'll be damned if Ian and the rest of Sonic Team didn't make something amazing by "yes, and"-ing Shadow's cringe past here. Sonic has truly reached levels of "we're so back" never thought possible.

[demonic0angel]

Your Damian Fenton post gave me severe Uncles+Aunt Everlasting Trio vibes.

After the Moment TM of Danny being jealous about Jazz fixating so much on Damian, and everything had been said and resolved, I can imagine Damian being a little insecure, because his own Uncle looked like he didn't like him.

The goggles being a gift from Danny would be the turning point for the two of them.

Imagine, Danny in the lab, looking over notes from Frostbite about some experiment that he wanted to try out, maybe to take neutral ectoplasm and make it into healing ectoplasm, and he's pulling out his hair a little bit, because it's a lot all at once, and Damian wanders into the room, a little nervous, because while Uncle Danny already said it wasn't his fault, Damian still desperately wants his family to like him.

It's the "lightbulb moment" of a successful experiment that turns it around into Danny and Dakian being thick as thieves.

Danny bouncing on the spot, watching the mixture settle and change colors, and as he feels Damian approach curiously, in true Jack Fenton fashion, Damian gets to be squished against Danny's chest like a teddy bear while listening to his Uncle rapid-fire explain what just happened. It's actually pretty nice, getting to go limp and be swung around while cradled against Danny's chest, while Danny purrs with joy.

By the time he's set down again, Damian has a cursory understanding of what the experiment was, and also undeniable proof of love from his Uncle.

From there, Danny breaks out his old lab coat, from when he was Damian's size with the matching safety goggles, and has Damian put them on so they can take a photo together and send it to Jazz.

I can imagine Danny ruffling Damian's hair, giving him the Gremlin Smile and telling him "your mother's gonna flip if she catches you here without safety gear. But don't worry, your uncle's gonna make sure you know how to stay safe."

Danny gets whapped with the newspaper for using Lab Time as a bonding moment, but Damian is still clinging to him and constantly swishing the ends of his lab coat like he can't believe he's wearing it.

From there, by the time Danny, Sam and Tucker finally start dating, Damian has at least one patch in all his jeans, courtesy of Tucker, and he keeps stealing one specific t-shirt from Sam, because she left it in Danny's room and Damian thought it was the coolest thing ever, so he's going to steal it, like the gremlin Fenton child that he's learning to be.

Sam shows up the next day with a whole suitcase of graphic t-shirts for Damian to try.

Do you think the reason why Damian meets the Bats is because the Trio have eventually moved to Gotham, and Jazz+Damian are taking a vacation to go see his Aunt and Uncles?

The Trio take their nephew to a dog park so he can pet the dogs? Maybe also because they adopted a puppy from a shelter and whenever Damian is with them he HAS to be involved in walking the dog every day?

Regardless, one of the Bats see this mini-Bruce racing a dog through the park, and immediately have to go stick their nose into it, to great distress to Damian, and some seriously ruffled feathers from his Uncles, Aunt and Mother. Luckily, not Grandma and Grandpa, this time, because they're busy attending a seminar with Frostbite and his students, or there would be even more threats of bodily harm than there already were.

Danny, Tucker, and Sam were definitely a large part of his life since they babysat him when Jazz was busy. He bonded with them a lot over shared hobbies and interests (Sam with gardening and plants, Tucker with cars and machinery, Danny with ghosts and science and stars).

Honestly, when I thought of Danny being jealous of Damian, it was meant to be a moment between Jazz and Danny since Damian would've been like,,, seven when it happened. However, your idea is super cute! Danny and Damian do often do experiments and hang out with each other, but that's a post for another day 😌 the coat is specifically from Jazz since she gave it to him for his first birthday with them.

The reason why Damian meets the Bats is that the entire Fenton family went there to visit for vacation, but the real reason was that Jazz was planning to move there for work and wanted to take Damian with her, so she wanted to check it out first. Of course, shenanigans ensue as Damian makes friends with the Batkids (who are endeared by the tiny, mad scientist) and then eventually meets Bruce.

[baldursgate3tempobsessed]

Hihi! I went on anon cause my main blog is strictly sfw, but I promise I'm an adult(29). Anyways, I had this idea of Ascended Astarion teasing Tav/Reader in front of a mirror. He can't see himself, but loves the way Tav/Reader shudders under his touch and them getting more and more embarrassed because all they can see is themselves getting riled up by seemingly nothing, but when they look down, ofc they see his hands working magic across their body.

Lol ty for the clarification and ask! I've been needing some nsfw practice!

Ascended Astarion nsfw under the cut, 18 + warnings. Like this is not implied smut. It is smut, graphic. Possessive, obsessive, manipulative, bad vampire man who loves you. As much as he's capable of. Morally gray human Tav from the start to here. It's only downhill from here baby, m/f angle. But if that doesnt fufill the dream let me know and I can make a gender neutral/ gender nonspecfic no prob! And probably less intense too because this is angsty~~~

Like I went ham, this is a whole ass fic now💀

You frowned at yourself in the bedroom mirror, adjusting your hair for the umpteenth time. It still didn't look right, despite what felt like hours of practice that you'd put into the intricate style.

You sighed as let one of your braids fall down, dissatisfied with what you saw. You didn't exactly look the part of an all-powerful vampire's consort, or at least not with the company you've recently been keeping. But it turned out a significant part of taking over Baldur's Gate was trenched in politics, meetings, balls, social events created for the sole purpose of mind games.

It was exhausting, or at least it was for you. But Astarion seemed to take to it like a duck to water. This life suited him, one of power games and subterfuge, and more often than not, murder. Not that you minded. You were just happy that he was having fun. That he was finally free after all of those years of torment. Even if he was using that freedom for… less than savory ends.

But despite his goals, you had sworn to him that you would never stray. And you intended on making good on that promise.

You just wished that he didn't insist on you being there for all of his "business". You hadn't realized how literal he had been about the whole sitting in his lap plan. It had taken a half-hour conversation to even convince him that no, you would not be doing so in the nude. He still hadn't given up on convincing you off that plan, but you highly doubted that it would help with your current level of heightened insecurity.

Maybe you were worrying for no reason. It wasn't Astarion who made you feel out of place. Well… it was, but not because of anything he did. Just… who he had become. He was so different now, so much colder to everything and everyone but you. More calculating, less forgiving, and just perfect for working with the most dangerous individuals in the mortal plane.

You seemed to be the only living thing he could relax around anymore, the only person who could soften him. It was strange really. You used to remember his softer side, before the ritual. The way his heart would hurt for children and animals alike, despite his failed attempts to hide it. His soft spot for Karlach, those who were brave and brazen, always willing to do the right thing despite the risks. The kind smile he used to have, reserved for beautiful things like the sunrise, the sunset.

Gone, all of it. It was a fact that you didn't like to think about. What you both gave up, things could have been; there was no point to it anyway. It was over. You gave Astarion the choice, this is what came of that. So here you were, obsessing over your appearance in preparation for a meeting with a high-ranking devil.

How things had changed.

You had no idea if you would ever find a way to match up with the company he kept around these days. Maybe it was your own fault for surrounding yourself with otherworldly creatures, but it was hard not to feel inadequate.

It didn't help that whenever you even slightly alluded to that insecurity, Astarion was more than ready to remind you of your… "options".

"You can join us whenever you'd like my treasure," Astarion would say with a creeping grin, "Just one bite, and we can be sure you'll be mine forever. Would that be so bad?"

It was a tempting offer, one that you kept insisting on refusing. You loved Astarion more than anything. But… you wanted that love to stay your choice. An obligation you maintained of your own free will. It's not that you didn't trust him… but to be a spawn had too many implications for you to handle.

"What has you pouting sweet thing?"

You startled when hands suddenly settled on your hip, gripping through the thin fabric of your nightdress. You looked back, relaxing the slightest bit to see Astarion smiling down at you, amused at the fact he'd managed to sneak up on you through the mirror.

"You said you weren't going to do that anymore," You whined as you leaned back into him, your eyes turning back to the mirror. You could see the fabric of your slip indented under his hands, ghost-like without his actual image reflecting back.

"I lied," Astarion said simply, leaning down to breathe you in from the crook of your neck, "Now what are you thinking about pet? I can tell something's on your mind."

You bit your lip, debating for a moment if you should tell him or not. But it's not like he would let it drop, and he was way too good at being able to tell when you were lying. Might as well come clean.

You sighed, "I don't…I don't know if I'm cut out for this."

You expected him to huff at you, maybe even laugh. But instead, the grip he had on you tightened, hard enough to make you gasp. You could feel his fangs scraping against your delicate skin, scratching hard enough to cause pinpricks of blood to bead out.

"And why would you ever think a thing like that?" Astarion asked, his voice harsh and low, "Where else would you be if not by my side hm? Please, enlighten me."

You gulped, your heart rate starting to pick up. You hadn't meant it like that, "That's not what I meant-"

"Then what else could it have meant?" Astarion shot back, his hands digging into you, surely ready to leave finger-shaped bruises. Suddenly he was using that same grip to drag you backward to the bed, effortlessly settling you between his spread legs.

All while managing to still be right in sight of the mirror. You could feel your cheeks redden as his hands started to wander, unceremoniously tugging down the straps of your nightdress to reveal your chest. That was another thing about life after the ritual that had been a surprise, just how different Astarion's sex drive was. It's not like he was a prude before, far from it, but now he was insatiable. Always ready and willing to touch you whenever the urge struck him. Often enough for you to eventually come to the thrilling, if not slightly disturbed realization, that… he was training you. Training your body to always want his touch.

And tonight was no different. You could already feel yourself getting wet, and he had barely done anything yet. But then suddenly he was pinching your nipple harshly, hissing in your ear, "I expect an answer when I ask you a question darling."

You bit back a moan, trying to remember what you were even arguing about as he started to play with your breasts, "I-I didn't mean it like that. I just… I don't want to embarrass you."

It was humiliating to admit but it was true. Not many people of Astarion's caliber insisted on a singular lover. There were so many people after him now, people with more power, more beauty, and grace. You didn't match up. You couldn't.

"Nonsense," Astarion dismissed, his hands wandering down to tear off more of your clothing, "Look at you. You were made for this life. Made for me. You're gorgeous."

The compliments mixed with the harsh feeling of his hands ripping your nightdress in two was quite the experience. You could feel his own hardness pressing into your backside, twitching as he threw your ruined clothing to the side.

Then he was gripping your chin, forcing your head back up to stare into the mirror in front of you, "I said look."

You obeyed, eyes widening at what you saw. It was so strange to see yourself like this, fully exposed with your legs spread apart, flushed and panting. It nearly gave the illusion that your very image was what was causing the wetness between your legs, instead of the invisible man toying with you.

You swallowed, your throat dry as Astarion's hands wandered lower, a feather-light touch tracing up and down your slit, "You are everything. The sole reason that I'm the man I am today. There is nowhere else you should be than right here."

"But-" You gasped, your words interrupted by a sharp slap to your inner thigh. You could see your skin start to redden in the mirror, a perfect imprint left in it's wake.

"Darling, are you questioning my judgment? What on earth made you think that was a good idea?"

You frantically shook your head, moaning when his fingers delved deeper, playing with your slick folds, "I-I'm not. I didn't- I'm sorry."

You whined as he roughly pinched your clit, his other hand moving upward to do the same to your heaving chest.

He was starting to grind his hardness against you, a tease of more to come as he murmured in your ear, "There's my good girl. Was that so hard?"

You shook your head, gasping as he finally dipped his long fingers into your cunt. You were already so sensitive, humiliatingly close in a matter of minutes.

"So gorgeous," Astarion sighed, staring straight ahead to the sole image of you, whimpering as he finger-fucked your pussy, "So needy. Can you see how wet you are pet?"

You could, you were leaking around his fingers, that needy, intense feeling getting more and more intense by the moment. It was so embarrassing seeing yourself like this, enough so that you snapped your eyes shut.

A bad idea. Astarion tutted at you, landing another sudden and hard slap to your thigh, "None of that. I told you to look. Or else."

You snapped your eyes back open, watching yourself whimper and gasp as you were played with, the harsh movement of his hand jostling your breasts. You weren't going to last much longer, not with the image of you being taken apart, the feeling of him inside you, the mean edge to your love's words.

"You're such a silly little thing, aren't you?" Astarion growled, fucking you harder and faster. You were so close, but you weren't stupid enough to come without permission. Not after what he did the last time, "Doubting me. Do you really think I don't know what's best for you? What's best for us?"

"No," You whimpered, your hips arching backward to rub harder into his erection, "You're right, I-I'm yours. C-Can I come now? Please?"

"Beg me and maybe I'll think about it," Astarion meanly laughed, relishing in the gush of slick his harshness coaxed from between your legs, "Beg and apologize. Apologize for doubting us. For doubting me."

You could barely get the words out through your own gasps, tears prickling in the corner of your eyes, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I-I didn't mean it!"

"Good girl," Astarion huskily laughed, using a clever thumb to rub over your swollen clit, "Now tell me you love me."

"I love you," You said easily, meaning every word, "I love you more than anything.

"Tell me you'll never leave me. Ever."

There was something else behind that promise. An obvious implication that your fucked-out brain was too distracted to see.

"Never," You promised, reaching back for you him. You curled your fingers into his hair. pulling his head down to press his mouth against your throat. An open invitation, "I'll always be with you."

Astarion groaned against your skin, his fangs so close to piercing, "Precious pet, how could I ever want anything else? Come darling, you've earned it."

Then he was biting you, the brief flash of pain the perfect trigger for you to fall over the edge. You came with an embarrassingly high-pitched whine, slumping back into Astarion as he drank from your throat.

You looked as much of a mess as you felt, the stickiness between your thighs glistening in the light. You watched yourself, whimpering as Astarion slipped his fingers out. Just to tap them against your lips, forcing them into your mouth to suck on.

You moaned around them, light-headed as Astarion popped off of your throat. You sighed as he licked at the wound, enjoying the brief moment of rest. You weren't naive enough to think that you were done yet. Not when Astarion was still hard, his cock pulsing against you.

"See?" Astarion huskily laughed, licking the blood off of his lips while he played with your tongue, "You're perfect. Perfect and mine."

[mazosstuff]

Could you answer a curiosity of mine?

Pairing: Jing Yuan x gn! reader

Cw: none

Word count: 1.0k

Synopsis: You notice something off about your partner's hair, so you point it out and get to spend some quality time with him.

A/n: I finally did it. I completed this fic, and now I can post it! As always, requests are open. Pls check the pinned post!

Divider by @firefly-graphics

It was a day like the others. You were tidying up a little while your partner, Jing Yuan, was taking a shower to clean off all the dirt and sweat he could have on his body since summer was coming up and the days began being hotter and hotter by the minute.

You still couldn't believe you could call the General of the Cloud Knights of the Luofu and one of the Seven Arbiter-Generals your partner.

The relationship was at the first stages, still pretty contained and not much action besides lingering kisses and long nights spent cuddled one against the other.

The Dozing General, after all, hasn't been romantically infatuated with anyone since his teen years.

But, besides that, you two had great chemistry and were a match made in heaven. The frequency of your visits started to piss off Yanqing for how much time and attention you were taking away from his master. He even started joking around with Yunli of how you two should get together.

The two young ones teased the hell out of both of you, but in the end, they've grown to like the idea of you two together.

As you folded and put away the dirty sheets, you went to grab new ones from one of the shelves in the closet that was in the corridor before the main bathroom.

Coincidentally, you both happened to open the doors of the rooms you were in, one to enter, the other to exit the bathroom.

There you saw him. The General, no, Jing Yuan was standing right in front of you. He looked like he had just come out of the shower. His hair was dripping wet. He only had a towel wrapped around his hips to cover his intimates and... he noticed you staring at him.

You quickly averted your gaze and buried your face in the clean bed sheets you had in your hands.

"I'm sooo sorry Jing Yuan! I didn't mean to invade your privacy" you said hurriedly as you got out of that little corridor.

All of the sudden, you felt his hand grabbing your wrist to pull you closer to him.

"H-huh?" You stared at him with a confused and flustered look on your face.

"I'm sorry if I'm making you uncomfortable, my dear. I'd just like to ask you if you could help me with drying my hair... it's a really... tiring process, and if I have to be honest, I don't think I have the strength to do it myself." Jing Yuan asked calmly. Did he really not care that there was one single layer of fabric that hanged on his hips for dear life that separated decency and indecency?

You sighed. "Okay... can you at least put something on?"

"Of course, dear" he said with his usual calm smile as he approached the bedroom and changed into his nightrobe.

Once dressed more decently, you invited him to sit with his back on the side of your shared bed. In the meanwhile, you prepared all the tools and products you thought he needed when in reality, he never really cared that much about styling his hair or using products to protect them from heat or being frizzy.

You sat down on the bed behind him and placed yourself with your legs at his sides.

As you combed and dried his hair, you noticed two major elements. You knew his hair was layered and not cut straight... but not like a wolf cut. The complete opposite.

"A-Yuan...?" You called out for his attention.

"Yes?" He answered with a soft and sleepy tone.

"Could you answer a curiosity of mine?"

"Of course. What is it that plagues your mind?"

"Have you ever got an undercut?"

He placed his hand over his face in order to hide the faint blush on his face even if you couldn't see it.

"Yes, I had one. When I was still a teenager, it just so happened that there was a really hot summer and... I gave in. I couldn't resist the heat, and, in the end, I gave myself an undercut. Like I said... dealing with these hair it's really time-consuming." He explained and then lowered his voice when he admitted he couldn't bear the heat of that summer.

"Don't be flustered, I get it. I knew some people that had to do the same thing..." You eased his worries. "And... by the way, have you ever considered having curly hair?"

"Yes. I actually did. But, as you may have figured out, I have little to no time to actually care about what hair type I have"

"That sounds like bullshit to me." You got up from your seat on the bed and indicated the bathroom.

"... is this a cue to go back to the bathroom, dear?" He asked with a smirk on his face.

"We have time now. Go and put your head under the running water. This may take a while"

"Yes, my love" he said as he went back to the bathroom. You were left there with a deep blush on your cheeks.

"Damn you..." you muttered under your breath as you waited a bit to calm down and then went in the bathroom where he was waiting for you with his hair damp.

After a good hour and a half, you made him look in the mirror with his damaged, loose, but still there, curl pattern.

"So... what do you think?"

He looked at himself in the mirror and not only he felt a little boost for his confidence, but he also appreciated the opportunity to spend some quality time with his partner. Doing something that made him leave the general role and indulge in the little things that made life worth living is surely something he doesn't do often.

"It's... really good. I appreciate what you've done for me tonight, dear"

"Don't mention it. I like spending time with you and taking care of you"

He leaned in and left a soft kiss on their lips.

"I look forward for the next time then." He said as soon as his eyes met with yours.

Your cheeks turning red was the last thing you wanted him to see tonight.

Likes, comments, and reblogs are always much appreciated. <333

[angel-of-the-moons]

Hi, this is my first ever request, so please forgive me if I sound all over the place.

I was thinking of going trick-or-treating with Miguel O’Hara and Gabriella as wife-reade. Or the moon boys going trick-or-treating with single mother-reader and Victoria from small surprises. Either one would be great, and thank you if you consider my request 🙏🏼

I LOVE YOU THANK YOU FOR ASKING I MIGHT SPLIT THIS UP INTO TWO PARTS BECAUSE MY GOD I MISSED VICTORIA BUT I ALSO MISS MIGUEL

Trick r Treat

Moon Boys (Marc, Steven, Jake) x Fem!Reader

TW/CW: The candy ain't the only thing you gotta worry about rotting your teeth with this!

Dividers by @/saradika-graphics

"I just don't get why she'd wanna be him." Marc seethed.

You cant help but chuckle, watching as Victoria skipped up to the first house she saw, after bravely declaring she was big enough to go and ask for candy by herself.

Her Halloween costume consisted of a painstakingly-detailed outfit that looked like Layla's Avatar outfit, complete with a gold cape in place of her wings. And, on her head... was a paper-mache bird skull, an uncanny resemblance to Khonshu.

Steven (even though he had some snarky comments about her choice in costume), had helped her craft it by looking at detailed patterns of raven skulls. Jake helped with the costume, stitching each little symbol and piece of fabric into probably the most detailed costume that any child her age ever could have.

"Hey, hey..." You giggled. "She's not just him... shes a weird... Khonshu-Layla hybrid thing."

His nose scrunched in the cutest way, "That is so much worse."

Marc was wearing his Moon Knight suit, sans the mask. As much as Khonshu bristled at him using it for such paltry purposes, his gruf demeanor changed when you pointed out that if, on the off chance, that something bad happens, at least Marc would be prepared and protected. He seemed to quiet down, after that.

But you knew he didn't leave you unsupervised. Every now and then, you'd spare a glance up and spot his lumbering form, hunched over the edge of a rooftop, watching over Victoria.

You don't know why he got so attached to Victoria, or why he revealed his hidden softness only to her; but you were grateful that so many eyes were on your precious baby girl.

You sighed, digging the heel of your palm into your lower back.

Marc looked at you, frowning, "Baby, you okay?"

You smiled at him, tired but still happy. Your own costume consisted of green tights, and an orange shirt. The pattern of a happy jack-o-lantern stretched taut over your rounded belly. It was difficult to find a costume that suited you, given how far you were into on your third trimester you were; and it was a little saddening that you couldn't match with Victoria or Marc.

So... You were a round little pumpkin!

"Yeah, just a certain little someone is tapdancing on my kidney."

"Shoes are comfy?" Marc asked, smiling sweetly as he rubbed one of his hands over your tummy.

"Yeah. I'm fine, Marc. I swear, you worry more than Steven." You grinned playfully.

Marc snorted, but didn't object, continuing to rub your belly. "Hey, I'm just worried about my ladies."

"Pfsh! You and Jake! You seriously think this one is a girl, too?" You laughed, shaking your head.

"Hey! We can hope! We kinda like the idea of an other little you running around!" Marc replied, kissing your cheek.

"You just wanna be a girl-dad."

"Heyyy... Nothing wrong with that." He replied, his thick eyebrows waggling, his salt-and-pepper beard quirking upwards around his lips.

Victoria cut your conversation short as she came bounding back up to yeah, paying no mind to the children her bird mask terrified as it bobbed with her peppy footsteps.

"Mommy!" She giggled, wrapping her arms around your legs, rubbing her face on your round belly, greeting her unborn sibling.

"Heya, munchkin!" You chuckled, patting her mask affectionately. "Get a nice haul?"

"Yeah!" She nods her head, handing her bag to Marc for him to inspect her goodies. When he looked in, his eyebrow raised and he whistled, "Whew! She's got two full-size bars in here."

You rocked your head back, "Wow. That is a nice haul. Let's go to another house, huh, baby?"

Victoria giggled, walking between you and Marc, swinging your arms with her hands interlocked with hers.

"Yeah! Let's go!"

House after house, you and Marc let Victoria be a "big girl" and walk up to front doors and people toting candy buckets by herself, staying a reasonable distance as you both watched her with protective eyes.

However... there was a house that was... shall we say, intense with their decorations. A seemingly headless man sat in the rocking chair, candy bucket in his lap; looped recordings of a woman scream played as fog rolled across the yard from a cheap machine.

Robotic spiders and critters moved along the walls with their janky joints, projections of ghosts fluttering across the surface of the house.

Victoria didn't seem to be keen on walking up to that one. Not alone.

One hand held the beak of her mask while the other gripped Marc's hand nice and tight, hiding behind one of his legs.

"Want me to go ahead?" Marc asked her gently, kneeling down next to her. He bumped his shoulder against her, smiling sweetly, "I can scout it out for you. Make sure no bad monsters will getcha. Sound good?"

Victoria mumbled, her feet fidgeting as she eyed the house. Her entire posture was unsure; frightened, even.

"Yeah." She finally peeped.

Marc smiled up at you before sauntering up the footpath. And as he neared, it was obvious the headless "mannequin" was a man in a rigged costume--likely waiting to jump out at the first kid to come grabbing for a piece of candy.

The bucket was cheap plastic, painted to look both rusted and bloody with a sticky note that read: "Two per person! :)"

"Hey, buddy," Marc leaned in and rested his hand on the padded "shoulder". "My little girl is gonna walk up here and get some candy. You will not, under any circumstances, jump out at her and scare her, or make her cry. Or I will put my fist through your teeth. Get it?"

"...Got it." A shaky voice replied, earning a pat from Marc.

"Good."

Marc turned around and grinned, giving a thumbs-up to assure Victoria the "headless man" wasn't a threat.

As he walked back to stand next to you, he laced his fingers with yours.

You couldn't help but sigh as Victoria, now fearless, braved the path up to get her loot.

"You threatened that poor guy, didn't you?"

"Hey, I don't like it when she's scared. And if that guy made her cry, you can't say you wouldn't hit him." He said, bringing your hand to his lips to kiss his knuckles, the rough hair of his beard lightly scratching your skin.

You sigh, "If I wasn't currently sporting a bowling ball for a belly, I'd put my foot up his ass."

You grinned and looked at him, tipping your chin to a nearby building. "And besides... you know the old man would make his life hell if he made her so much as sniffle."

He had to admit, as much as it pained him to do so, that you were right.

He'd hate to be that guy if he had scared your precious girl...

If he thought horror movie critters were scary... He wasn't prepared for a pissed-off, protective god.

You chuckled, extended your hand to envelop Victoria's as she came happily skipping back to you. "Come on... let's go."

Yeah, it wasn't a "normal" Halloween... But it was the first one Marc ever really participated in, let alone enjoyed. And with his baby on the way?

He, Steven and Jake were on cloud nine.

A happy family just enjoying some old-fashioned trick-or-treating.

[kawareo]

Have a ramble about my Durge and his issues with sex because why not

TW for mentions of sexual assault and abuse, attempted incest, grooming and mentions of underage stuff; nothing is graphic but it does get dark so please don't read if you don't feel like you're in the right space for it

Strike is a very sexual guy as I'm sure you've had the chance to notice, but honestly, his relationship with sex and sexuality is complicated to a degree that he completely refuses to even acknowledge.

His Urges and Bhaal-given 'Ectasy of Murder' make it practically impossible for him to seperate between his own desires and those of Bhaal. He was way too young when he first got them, practically when he hit puberty, and then he was immediately encouraged to 'explore' and 'experiment' with either corpses, other Bhaalists, or still living victims. Sceleritas was the one to encourage and 'guide' him and Strike stopped feeling sick about the new need that overcame him whenever he killed well. He had to practically gaslight himself into seeing it as a gift from Father, or he would dislike it, and you can't afford to dislike something your god wants when you're his Chosen.

He also doesn't really know how to say no to sex. The way I try to write him is in a similar way of how society expects a cishet guy to always be down to fuck, except it's cranked up to a thousand - he is Bhaal's seed, scion, his breeder - there is no reason for why he would ever want to say no, is there? If you asked him for any reason he could think of for him not wanting to have sex, he genuinely wouldn't known the answer.

He said no once though, only once - when the temple attempted to match him with Orin once they were in their late teens. Orin would've pushed through with it even though she was obviously less than enthusiastic, but Strike was the one to push her away that time. It wasn't the incest aspect of it that turned him off, tbh; that really isn't a value the temple of Bhaal would consider abnormal, but Strike just... Orin was always the only relationship he's had where he never felt like it could turn sexual at any moment - they've bathed together, they slept cuddled up on the same bed, they straddled eachother when beating the shit out of the other and none of it was ever sexual, for either of them. But that was the first time he refused Bhaal's will and also the first time he lied to Him - he made up that he didn't think Bhaal's blood should get even more diluted and defiled than it was in Orin's veins. After that, Orin never forgave him for thinking he was above her (as she interpreted it) and their relationshio only strained more when Strike met Gortash a few years later.

Gortash is a whole other can of worms that I don't think I have to get into right now, but Strike's religious upbringing makes every sign of weakness, such as signs of softness or affection (for an enemy, especially) a sin and having sex reduces the sinfulness of it. Holding hands, kissing? Unforgivable. Intertwining fingers during sex, or cuddling right after while they're both still chasing their breath? Not ideal, but it can happen. Not the worst thing. It's not like he was doing something intimate just for the sake of intimacy, you know?

He's very hypersexual now as an adult because of all the above mentioned things combined, and when I get to Godsbound (my bg3 timeline fic has a name now btw!) He likes to joke and flirt and fuck literally whoever, that doesn't change end after tadpoling, he still has no idea how to be close to anyone without it being sexual but also he is so horrifically touchstarved that he wakes up screaming if he doesn't have a body next to him to hold onto it. I would like to explore how much of an actual issue that is for him, especially when he has forgotten all of the excuses he told himself through the years and the decades of religious fanaticism. But then again, he does tend to push his problems away to 'deal with later', so who knows.

[tornadeoqueen]

you make my motor run - refs & research

Hello! My latest fic you make my motor run aka car show rivals au is about Bradley and his Bronco, Hangster flirting as enemies plot and every Dagger owning a vintage Ford. It's a lot about Jake being a little shit but it's also a lot about cars.

This fic, and cars, mean a lot to me! And as such a lot of research went into it. Like, so much research. And it made me very happy and I got very nerdy about it, although I realise and recognise not everyone who (hopefully) reads the fic would know as much about cars as I do, so I thought I would make this post explaining a lot of the details I included, as well as pictures of the cars I assigned each member of the squad.

So, if you're a slut for research like me or interested at all, see more below the cut!

Bradley's Bronco

"My my, a first gen Bronco"

I based the Bronco off a 1971 Ford Bronco, which makes it a First Generation Bronco, which were made between 1966 to 1977. The reason why I went with 1971 is because someone on the classic broncos forum tracked down the actual car used in TG:M on a website called Cinema Vehicles dot com and it's a 1971. A lot of what I describe is based off of this car, and other 1971's I could find.

"...he put in disc brakes, replaced the transmission and ordered in new parts for the engine."

A lot of what Bradley did to his car is based off of what Sydney Sweeney did to get her own Bronco running!

Disc brakes: Bronco's didn't get disc brakes until 1976/77, so Bradley would have had to add them in (replacing the drum brakes which were prone to overheating). They became standard for most cars in the late 70s, as they are more reliable.

Transmission: A car's transmission is also known as the gearbox! Most people will replace the transmission on vintage cars from manual to automatic (which Sydney did) but I wanted to write Bradley as a purist so he kept it a manual. He did replace the transmission though because it was old and rusty after not being used for so long.

"...replaced the suspension and the front and rear axles."

Suspension: This is the system that connects the wheels to the body of the car, and works to regulate shock absorption and the general handling and movement of the car. One of the main components is a big coil that stems from the tyres, if you've seen that before.

Front and Rear axles: shafts that connect the wheels and help with wheel movement.

TBH he probably should have done this before he went anywhere, but I didn't know what other changes to list as part of his "restoration journey" that even I could understand. Lol I'm a hack! Anyway!

What In The World Is Jake Talking About?

“Original paint, two-inch lift, coupla hood scoops, a nice shine on those stock hubcaps… original two-spoke steering wheel with a three on the tree manual transmission – you’re crazy for that, by the way.”

Original Paint: I found this really neat image of the original paint options for 1971 Ford Broncos, and did my best to colour match. There were six blue's and two aqua's available! I am pretty sure we could say Bradley's Bronco is Bahama Blue. I thought I would use this in the fic, but I didn't. Nonetheless, look at this cool graphic!!!

2-inch lift: refers to the lift of the suspension/tyres. Bronco's are built for off-roading so a lot of them have tyre lifts so you can have bigger tyres on them. The cinema vehicle has lifts!

Coupla Hood Scoops: "Coupla" is my way of saying "a couple of" btw. Hood Scoops are the raised portions on the hood of the car with holes in the front, as you can see here:

Hood scoops funnel fresher, cooler air to the engine which can increase power. Some people only have them for decoration. I'm pretty sure these are a modification added and not an original feature, which hurts my Bradley is a Purist head cannon, but I included them in the fic because they are in the movie! I like to think maybe they were added in because Jake kept making digs at the car's lack of power. Or Goose did it! Who knows!

Stock hubcaps: Refers to the original hubcaps that come with the car. I don't think the cinema vehicle has them, but I found another '71 Bronco that does and I just think they look nice! Who doesn't love a bit of chrome?

"...two-spoke steering wheel with a three on the tree manual transmission."

Original two-spoke steering wheel:

Three on the tree manual transmission: Ok I'm gonna be honest, I know I'm showing off when I say "three on the tree" because what the hell, but also, if car enthusiasts know what it is, Jake would say it! I found out about it while watching an episode of Jay Leno's Garage on YouTube (I watched a lot of these during my research) and they kept talking about the "three on the tree" in this '77 "original stock Bronco" and I was like wth is that? Googled it, and it refers to the 3-gear column shift! The column shift is the silver lever you see behind the wheel, which is the gear shift. Bradley keeps his car a manual so he, like the guy in the video who also keeps his original, would keep the three on the tree.

Jake say's he's crazy for it because automatic's are so much easier to drive, and also 3 gears is not a lot so I doubt it can go very fast.

For those interested, there are numerous YouTube videos about how to drive with the three on the tree (I watched at least two).

“Pristine white bucket seats..."

Bucket seats: are the style of seats used in the front seats that I guess have a bucket shape? Anyway he calls them "pristine" because you an imagine what a bitch it is to keep white vinyl looking nice.

Restoration vs Restomod:

I touch a little bit on this, but if you want to read more, Velocity Restorations have a good overview of the debate (Velocity build restomods for clients. If I ever win the lottery, there'd be signs... ect)

Bradley screams "car purist" to me, and I originally had a line about him having a Coyote V8 engine, which is a popular new-build engine used to update old Bronco's, but I cut it last minute because I don't think I could do that to him, haha. The man drives a Bronco, first of all, and the moustache and his Dad's glasses and the Great Balls of Fire of it all... a purist!

Jake, however, likes power, he likes technology and making the car the best it can be. I like to think he actually worked on the restomod himself (with the begrudging help of Bradley, I'm gonna be honest when I say I'm still working out what their origin story is) rather than buy it. But having the '68 Shelby, arguably one of the coolest cars on the market, and also kind of pushing it in terms of power and ability (and comfort and modern amenities) is like a cool project for him. He is very proud of his car but don't say he doesn't have any respect for vintage cars! This isn't just a status symbol (although he knows it's hot as hell) but constantly evolving project.

Jake's 1968 Ford Mustang

Jake has a 1968 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 fastback in all black. The Shelby used to be a race car but then people were like hey, I want one. 1968 was the first year the Shelby Mustang was actually built by the Ford Motor Company (instead of by Shelby). Fastback refers to the coupe type, indicated by the angle of the back window (as opposed to a convertible or sedan)

photos might not be exact same model/make (I think they are supposed to have GT stripes?) so don't come for me. But you get the vibe!

Javy's 1976 Bronco Explorer

I don't have any specific reason for the rest of the gang's cars, other than, I saw them and it felt right!

Bob's 1980s Fairmont Wagon

You either get it or you don't, but Bob get's it!

Nat's 1964 Ford Mustang Convertible

Candy Apple Red is an official and original Ford Mustang paint colour so that's important. Based her car off one I saw for sale. And yes! The Palomino interior makes me drool, look how nice that is!

Mickey's 1970 Ford Escort

Ok so, Ford Escorts were actually a Ford Europe/UK car until the 80s, so this would have to be an import. I really wanted to give him one, though, for some reason, and then when I realised the car from Fast 6 is a Ford Escort (and the colours match his Fanboy helmet!) I was like, sold! Fanboy always and forever.

Reuben's Car ????

I actually couldn't decide! He really stumped me! I'm thinking maybe an F-Series pick up? Other thoughts included Fairmont sedan, a Fairlane, a Torino or Thunderbird, but I think at least one of them needs a truck and the more I think about it, the more I like it for him. But I'm feeling very "Reuben Fitch... who is your hit man?" about it. If you have any thoughts, please let me know!

If you made it this far, congrats! I hope this was as fun and interesting for you as it was for me! And if you haven't yet, check out my hangster car fic you make my motor run on ao3 <3

And if you ever want to talk about cars, or want to write your own car fic, please please please please please please please please

[rainofaugustsith]

On Those SWTOR Character Changes

Keilla, who has not done well with these changes. The new one is on the right.

My goodness, there's so much commentary on the SWTOR character overhauls. I think that "some of the remarks are ageist/sexist" and "the changes honestly are upsetting to many" are statements that can coexist.

Do the characters look older? Yes, I think so too. However - wrinkles, shadows under your eyes and looking older don't equate to ugly. Sorry, no, they don't. However, those are things that don't necessarily work with every character's story or every player's preferences. I would think it's actually a good thing to have wrinkles, eye shadows, etc. if they were optional. If your Sith Inquisitor gets off the shuttle on Korriban and they look very mature, it might not work. If they've been fighting through the galaxy for nearly 20 years, it might. If you had a slider so you could go in and age them a little after every expac or harrowing events in their life or your RP/HC, the same way you can change their hair color or whatever, I think a lot of people would embrace that.

I find the new lighting/glimmer in the characters' eyes to be disturbing. In addition to the changes to her body type (see below), my cinnamon roll Keilla has gone from looking mild mannered and pleasant to looking completely not like that, and it's all about the new look of her eyes and the fact that her makeup that was all shaded now looks very sharp.

The skin textures appear to be mottled and uneven, and I'm not sure what the point of that might be.

On the character body models, it's really ironic that people are claiming that this is some sort of "woke" plot to make their characters look uglier, when Viri, who has BT3, has been Barbified.

With the current graphics setting, Viri has significantly lost muscle. She's thinner, her shoulders are less broad, her neck is longer, her face is thinner, and her bust appears larger. They've more or less turned her into a tall version of female BT2. With the exception of the odd sunburn and texture of her neck and the very bizarre glint in her eyes, every change they made puts her closer to the conventional attributes that cis straight men traditionally find attractive. You can see on Keilla as well that her bust is ahem, more prominent than it was. Both of those things look fine if that's what you wanted for your character. But if you chose a body type that was specifically very muscular and now it isn't that way - that is not as intended.

So why the hell did the SWTOR devs do this? My guess: we have shifting characters for dudebro appreciation, not giving a fuck how they screw things up, perhaps combined with a severe lack of talent and resources. There have been comments that the devs ignored all the feedback about this on the PTS. Of course they did. That's status quo. Even when I was still playing, it's why I never bothered touching the PTS. Why expend all that time and effort to be an unpaid tester, taking time away from your paid subscription, when you knew full well the devs were going to ignore every bit of feedback that didn't match the narrative they'd already decided upon?

This is really just an expansion of the hack job they did on Lana and Koth when those companion models were made dressable. In Lana's case they made her more conventionally appealing, ie she lost weight, her hair was not as ragged, etc. In Koth's case I don't think they gave a shit about doing the character justice, which seems to have been a running theme with that particular character.

All in all it's a mess and I understand why people are heartbroken about how their characters look. And it confirmed, again, why I stopped playing SWTOR.

I'm glad I saved my characters' names. I'm really glad I got to experience the Lana date night mission. And now it's uninstalled again.

[doubleddenden]

A little more beta stuff was leaked recently- this time focusing on Legends Arceus and Scarlet and Violet.

So first off, I won't link anything outright to my blog just in case. Find it on Twitter, YouTube, or Reddit.

Second, there's nothing about beta Pokemon so far- and I kind of doubt there will be in the files given the games were rushed to a degree. But it is strange, both have elements in them that could have changed the final games a bit- probably Arceus moreso, as SV's is more on the graphics side.

Third, i am not a leaker nor do i personally have access to the builds- this is strictly commentary on *videos* you can easily find yourself. This is simply just thoughts I have- some may agree or disagree, I'm not arguing.

That out of the way: Legends Arceus

So first of all, we finally have confirmation that the modern bedroom found in LA's game files (as in the final distributed product) was indeed a remnant of what would have been before the official beginning we got. There were storyboards with it that depict the player watching a professor give their "Welcome to the World of Pokemon" speech, then it zooms out to reveal the player was playing a game on TV, they take a break to scroll on their phone, then digital shenanigans happen on the phone and the player gets sucked into a whole in reality.

This is old news to some- but there's also unfinished animation that depict this, basically only modeling the player and the tv- the rest is grey. It seems to be an idea they were serious about, but decided to cut it- I think it's for the best tbh. I never have liked GF's "kids and their smart phones" rhetoric and this made it seek like we'd rather be on our phones instead of playing the game.

Onto gameplay, there's footage of beta Hikari (has a headband instead of the bandana) and a Unovan Zoroark running and JUMPING around in the field. They battle with a Luxray in what appears to be auto battling with some limited commands from the trainer. This actually validates certain leaks for Legends Arceus and perhaps maybe even pre SwSh? Anyway, they claimed GF were debating intensely on a new battling system, and I believe one even compared it to Digimon World Next Order- this certainly matches the description, imo, but definitely dumbed down and in early phases. These rumors would persist a while during LA's marketing phase, so the decision to change to the system we have must have been last minute.

On a personal note, I know there are a lot of fans that are tired of the turn based battling system, but I'm personally glad we didn't go down the road of auto battling. It looked awkward to watch, and also it would make catching pokemon hell because there'd be a chance to knock it out when it's in the red. It does need work for sure- but I would argue it just needs work on an animation, camera, and overall aesthetic angle rather than try to fully shift things to a new system you know they wouldn't get right for a long time.

Back to the facts- there also appears to be a very early and very janky ability for the player to ride their Zoroark? I think? At the least, although both models are running on top of each other (developer beta, keep in mind), the player DOES seem on top of Zoroark, who does seem to gain a massive boost of speed in response.

Side note- this does harken to the supposedly canceled game: Pokemon Rodeo, where you ride Pokemon around. I believe footage showed the area where Scyther hang out in LA, and the project had been worked on since 2019. Perhaps they wanted to try to implement it in LA, but they scrapped the idea for accessibility via the ride system.

It's also clear they wanted to do something with Zoroark all the way back here- they weren't kidding when they said Arceus would be a very experimental game, it seems.

Onto the next game: Scarlet and Violet.

Scarlet and Violet beta footage doesn't really glean much other than a similar build of the final product (and let's not kid ourselves, the game is clearly unfinished). However, there is 1 unused music track, I think, towards the beginning of the game.

There's also a much different LIGHTING and SHADOW system compared to what we got in the end. It honestly looks way better than the final product, and it meshes with the environments WAY better imo. Most likely it was changed to the inferior one for performance purposes, as the game did somehow run slower than before (in an emulator, but still).

Personal take- I know some people's gut reaction is to immediately blame the Switch for being "under powered," but do keep in mind it could handle BoTW, ToTK, Xenoblades 1, 2, and 3, and more while still handling pretty decent shading. It is curious, however, that ported games such as Red Dead Redemption or Fate/Samurai Remnant might have some issues in a similar manner (there are some leaks of pc versions of some of these games being leaked, but they require very specific pc builds that would make them harder or impossible to run on much besides dev kit or Switch hardware). I don't know if this would be an issue with creating with the Switch 2 dev kit and having to downgrade- we know that from other leaks, GF had been experimenting with improved performance on Switch 2 dev kits as of one of the earliest Indigo Disk leaks- circa Dec 2022 or early 23. However, I don't think they had the kit during early SV's development, as it started in 2019 or so after SwSh ended development, and the Switch would only be 2 years old at the time- I think this is simply poor management and direction from people TRYING to get that BoTW look, but not wanting to update their tech or habits to properly accommodate it and not wanting to take their time with it. I think we all understand there was just a maelstrom of things going wrong for SV's development from the Pandemic, to trying to follow their same flawed release cycle, bad management, etc. It's a tired topic at the least.

As far as other things in the actual build, there does appear to be a... well, honestly? BETTER pop up menu for the bag and menu. It's stylized in a pretty unique way that feels nice and organic to the game vs the final product. The bag menu sort of overlays to the regular game like the finalized start menu does, but cleaner.

I can only guess this was changed because it affected performance somehow- perhaps related to the game's strange habit of being lit up when the battle menu appears in the final product, or maybe just another slow down like usual. It's too bad, it looks really good.

Between the bag and the lighting system, I hope both come back for gen 10. There's serious promise behind both.

As for anything else worth noting- like the LA beta, the SV beta has a lot of unfinished areas, nothing really worth noting on that angle.

But picnics- those loaded way quicker before, despite the game running slower on emulator. And sandwiches? Well, they were planned back then, too. It does appear to be an earlier build, as the guy was somehow tossing eggs from UNDER the sandwich to the bun, and underhand throwing the top bun on top instead of the finalized orbital drop method we have for both.

The only other things worth noting is that the player had a Lucario and Staraptor on their team (the Lucario is interesting considering Unovan Zoroark was in the Beta LA build). However the menu displays other things instead, such as Charizard (of fucking course), Poliwrath (not available in game until Teal Mask), MUDKIP (wouldn't be added in until ID dropped), and Nidoqueen- who isn't available in the final game AT ALL. Of course, these are just menu sprites and none of these actually appear in the videos- in fact, other than the creepy blacked out Koraidon, Staraptor, Lucario, and I think Staravia flying around, I don't think there was a SINGLE other Pokemon visible in the overworld.

Oh, and it does appear that the initial uniforms were planned very early, as the blacked out model matches the overall shape. Personal note- I hope they got that out of their systems. I hated it so much, and it was probably another time saving measure planned from the beginning.

Final thoughts: it's interesting hoe the beta build seems to be Scarlet- idk if there's one for Violet specifically, but looking on it, a lot makes more sense from a Paradox design and story angle if you just assume Scarlet is the canon game. It's easy to think of how a Great Tusk can kill a man in Area Zero 200 years ago, not quite how a robot could- and the final explanation certainly doesn't provide satisfactory explanation as to how it arrived there before the time machine was built.

As for appearance: Some of this makes me remember an official game freak reveal of early SV at Game Freak's CEDEC 2023

And this is officially revealed info. The Snorlax is definitely photoshopped in, but the shading and rock textures look a lot like this beta build. It does look better than the final build, there's no real arguing with that.

Again, I'm hoping whoever in charge thqt needed to learn a few lessons DID, because some devs were clearly TRYING to make some ambitious ideas work but just couldn't on the time alotted or the programs used. I think I heard they wanted to transition to Unity or Unreal for the next games anyway, so maybe programming it will be easier going forward and we can finally achieve these graphics they wanted. Probably not with ZA, but it'd be a nice surprise for Gen 10 or something.

That's all. Have a nice day

[scarefox]

Signed up to watch a 2h speech / presentation I need to attend... BUT it is online via zoom so I don't have to go outside and can sit on my couch in a blanket and drink coffe!

It's about new AI laws and legally save AI software... I need to know this as graphics designer 😔

---

lol started with a AI animated avatar / deepfake of himself that totally looked AI because the hand movements didn't match what he said.

Oh no, he is a Zuckerberg fanboy.

This is going to be fun. (probably will get pissed along the way tho)

But they have some lawyers there to answer questions. Yay Christian Solmecke is there too (popular german media lawyer on yt)

---

so far: unlike human made work, AI generated artwork or designs are not copyrighted (in germany) AND if the AI piece is based on an existing human made work and it's still visible in the AI piece you need to get the copyright from the original owner / creator (includes designs, logos, images, text and music)

Copyright owner can opt-out and sue if it's still gets used for AI training / generation (american laws aren't finished yet but also will go into that direction)

---

They test different AI software to give out a little comic scenario. And oh boy as a graphic designer with knowledge about typography the text is triggering me so hard. It's so bad. SEE alone typography is an area that can't be made by a machine because even tho it is based on design laws it's still an intuitive human-eye based way of design. There is a difference between mathematical-centered and optical-centered.

---

Man they are all so horny for AI and reduction of jobs and costs.... But no matter how good an AI could generate an image or video... it will never give you the raw files where you can do individual changes afterwards.

Besides that I still think humanity isn't ready yet for the power and options AI is giving us. (at least one of the very high quality AI builders isn't selling it atm because they are afraid that it will get misused for fake news and stuff, so they try to find a way to prevent that before they bring it on the market)

So many creative jobs and professions that will die out just for us to get 100% digital made "creative" content and advertisements :/ (so far even the most high quality AI still has some small uncanny vibe). Like even actors will be replaced in the future... all they need to do is allow companies to use their face / body.... there is literally a Black Mirror episode about that.

Reminds me of that one AI kpop idol project I have seen last year on tiktok.... absolutely creepy and wrong. I know some of us are simping over anime, game or vocaloid characters but... man idk, do yall want to simp over uncanny digital kpop idols who don't even exist nor actually work for their skills and talent? 💀 Being into an idol is not just about the visuals and songs, it's about their personality and individuality.... for me at least.... (but of course the kpop industry is one of the first trying this). I do like Taemin for example beacuse he's breaking out of the industry norms. AI dude could never be on his level.

---

"Amazing. In a company in the US a CEO told us that with the use of an AI they could remove 700 jobs and save so much money!"

.... yeah cool. Maybe we should remove ALL jobs on this earth and let AI do it, so we humans don't do anything at all anymore. Oh wait, no, of course we still have to do hard repetitive labor like some work drones because it's cheaper than to build and maintain actual robots for these jobs.

---

BRUH of course the event is mainly to sell an AI class from the hosting company. For the cheap price of 4900€ FOR THE LAST TIME because the next class will be over 6000€

I feel like AI bros always hype each other up to blow it all up artificially. Just like NFT and the mobile game market.

---

DID HE JUST SAY that there aren't enough graphic designer and programmer on the market and that they will profit from the support of AI?? (it's actually oversaturated and therefore jobs are hard to get) AI bros really live in a secluded bubble hu? Of course none of these dudes in this event are from the creative industry but lawyers and CEOs

[empressofmankind]

ON THE FIRST DAY OF CHRISTMAS

MY TRUE LOVE SENT TO ME

[Crocodile x F!OC]

Explicit - 5.5k words / 13 pages

(A/N) One large dick refusing to be contained, two bananawani for a picture perfectly framed. Three excellent sets of nightwear, and four shots that caught genuine care. 

Actually, a teenager's absolute worst nightmare.

Nico Robin is a teen in the cruel throes of puberty, peer pressure and that never-ending sense of social shame. For I realised a few days ago that she has a massive gap in her canon from about age 12-ish onward until Crocodile runs into her at 24. So, as her teens match up beautifully with the nuclear disaster that is Crocodile and Shiv's marriage, I decided that what this insane ship really needed was a teenager and zero tools to deal with it. Also, the notion of him having been stuck fake single-parenting Robin after everything went royaly south with Shivs just tickles me, personally.

This story is set around the same time period as ‘Hooked On You’ and ‘The House Always Win’, in Alabaste at Rainbase, mostly in and around Rain Dinners. Because apparently, I am not over these two.

It may be a tad less polished than my usual stuff, because I wrote it at the break of my Christmas morning to deliver it to you all on your Christmas day. Enjoy!

Tag(s): Teenage rage quit. Reprehensible parenting. Several amazing sexy lingerie modelling moments, courtesy of yours truly being horny on main on Christmas morning. We've also got dry humping, hand jobs, some good fingering and dicks breaking containment simply by being that darn large. Graphic sex. Excellent banther. Solid comedy, if I may say so myself. Absolutely filthy language. Shivs too. Girl made him lose his shit. Size difference is still relevant, stretching and edging too. I'd say orgasm denial, though neither was down for that one. At least they got to wreck eachother real good in the end. I'll be over there, helping Robin putting herself back into the system. I'd wanna disappear off the face of the earth, too.

🐊 🐊 🐊 

“You can't do this to me!” Robin all but stamped her feet.

Crocodile glanced away from Shivs to the fuming teenager, smoke escaping him as he caught her angry gaze. “I didn't realise we needed your permission.”

“This is humiliating!” she continued, beside herself with frustration. “I won't be able to show my face in public ever again!”

“You already can't, sweetie,” Shivs said in a tone not even on the same continent as comforting. “What with the World Government looking for you.”

“That’s not the point! You are murdering my social life!” Robin fumed as she glared at her adoptive parents. She'd sooner be an orphan again, she thought angrily. “Like, why are you even doing this? It's not like you need the money!”

Shivs tilted her head, taking the cigarillo from her mouth even. “It's fun?”

Robin switched her angry stare from her to Crocodile, but he was no help. Had the gall to chew that cigar as if he were actually thinking about it. 

“What she said,” he said through a cloud of smoke.

“Hrgh!” Robin balled her fists at them. “I hate you both!”

When neither particularly responded to her outburst aside from blowing out more smoke and perhaps raising an eyebrow, she turned and stormed out, slamming his office door. 

The Sphinxxx nightwear designer smoothed his tailored jacket with a nervous glance. “Will this be a problem, sir?”

“No.”

🐊 🐊 🐊 

When the photographer's assistant dimmed the ambient light of Crocodile's office to a softly flickering orange, Shivs felt the shift in mood. Of the office space, yes. But also her own, and Crocodile’s. The fact that there were nearly a dozen strangers fussing about them didn’t kill it as much as you'd think.

They'd just changed into the lingerie they were meant to model and were undergoing the fussy attention of the two resident make up artists. It was a nice set, though privately Shivs thought, not quite their style.

Shivs wore a just below hip length tube dress of sheer dark fabric that reminded her of stockings. It had a strip of opaque black silk that went around her pubes and breast only. The effect was interesting, she supposed. Crocodile wore matching boxer briefs made of the same sheer material, with thin opaque strips circling around his hips. However, the patch of cloth meant to obscure his business did not quite do its job as intended. And the fact that it had a subtle black zipper down the middle that appeared to go all the way around seemed like a hazard to her. But, Stefano - the Sphinxx designer who had envisioned these - was not one to argue fashion with, they’d already discovered. 

Fortunately, she’d managed to keep Crocodile from blowing the whole thing off at the first confrontation. He sat smoking at his desk now, blowing out smoke and creating personal thunderclouds around his head as one of the make up artists fussed with him. Could be have been far worse. She’d count this a win.

Cussing, Shivs fumbled with the small clap of her necklace behind her neck.

“Turn around, doll,” Crocodile said.

She glanced up to find him beside her, and wondered if he’d used his abilities because the poor make up artist was staring in their direction like a particularly dimwitted calf. Or perhaps he’d simply been rude.

“Thanks,” she said as she turned, bending her neck as she felt his touch against it. It should be illegal that he could unclip those with one hand while she barely managed half the time with two.

“No, no! Absolutely not!” Stefano exclaimed as he came towards them, all hand gestures.

Shivs could tell from the way Crocodile’s touch abruptly stilled that the fashion designer better follow up with a good reason fast.

“Keep the jewellery, it is classy, distinguished,” Stefano said. “This is art.”

Shivs relaxed when she felt the weight of his hand shift against her neck, idly palming the tension from the muslces there. Good save, she thought.

“Ready when you are, Stef,” the photographer said as she tossed her cigarette bud into the nearest ash tray.

Stefano clapped his hands. “Let’s do this.”

An assistant hurried towards them with the ashtray for Crocodile to discard his smoke, but Stefano waved them away. “It adds character, atmosphere.”

And just as well, for it was only half way gone, and it was never a good time to make him stop.

Stefano motioned them towards the desk, though with far more grace this time. “Poses, if you please.”

“C’mon big guy,” Shivs said as she took the curve of his hook and tugged him up from his seat. He rose with due reluctance through a cloud of smoke.

🐊 🐊 🐊 

“They are magnificent!”

Stefano’s breathless exclamation at seeing the dozing bananawani on the rear deck of the casino was especially satisfying. The rest of his crew hung back, exchanging uncertain glances.

“They won’t do anything,” Crocodile rumbled around his cigar. He caught the designer’s gaze. “Unless I tell them to.”

“Haha, noted,” Stefano said with a small laugh soaked in anxiety.

Shivs slid her hand into Crocodile’s as they watched him harry his terrified crew into setting up. “You’re so mean.”

He glanced down at her, then at the busybodies. “Think they'll miss us for six minutes?” he rumbled as he blew out smoke.

“Only six?” she muttered into the skin of his bicep, pressing a kiss against it.

“Hrm.” 

There was a note of amusment under the grumpy noise though, and she was glad his mood had shifted for the better again.

“Oh, that is small,” Shivs chortled when they were shown what they’d be wearing this time. Both were unnecessarily complicated looking contraptions of thin black cord holding in place the most minimal bits of cloth necessary to pretend at decency. She cast a cheeky look up at Crocodile. "Can that even contain you?"

Turned out, it couldn’t.

The elastic had been too weak to keep his junk from doing exactly as it pleased, and she was fairly certain she’d cherish the visual of all of it ignoring the thong’s confines for a good long while. In the end, the poor tailor had to thread iron wire through the main cords. Once that was done, they tried again.

“Over here,” Stefano said as he directed them towards the corner of the deck with an unobstructed view of the oasis around Rain Dinners. From this angle, the rest of Rainbase city wasn’t visible and you could fancy yourself in the middle of the Alabaste desert.

“Would it be possible for one of them to be, well, closer?” he asked, his tone carefully polite.

Crocodile audibly patted his naked thigh and made the clack-clack sound from around his cigar that was usually the only warning some unfortunate soul got. Instantly, one of the massive creatures uncoiled from its nap and lumbered towards them, the deck shaking under its heavy steps.

Shivs rubbed the bananawani’s giant snout. “Hello handsome, you’re gonna be a supermodel too?” she cooed at it as the enormous beast settled down around them.

“P-perfect!” Stefano said, seeming equal measures excited and terrified. “Jace, framing?”

The photographer took aim, motioning them this way and that way before she raised a thumbs up. “Good shot. Got both the desert and the animal framing them.”

Shivs leaned against Crocodile’s thigh, a hand on his broad chest as she looked up at him. He reached around her, resting the curve of his hook against the small of her back.

“Turn a little to the camera, darling, just a little,” Jace said. “Yes, perfect. Hold that position.”

Ever so subtly, Shivs pressed up against his hip, a wave of languid pleasure rolling up her spine as if a quiet beach. The small huff that escaped her drew his attention immediately, his hooded gaze snapping unto hers.

“Let’s have a different one. Glass!" Stefano said as he gestured at one of his assistants, who immediately came over to them with a crystal tumbler. "Something sweet, I think. Hold it up as if you're sharing it."

"What was that, doll?" Crocodile rumbled under his breath as he held the tumbler between them, leaning in as if about to drink from it. His gaze snared hers. Every stealthy push of her pussy against his muscular thigh lit a spark of pleasure that threatened to catch fire in her core. The curve of his hook pressed against her lower back as her quiet pants clouded the glass. "You going to cum on my thigh with all of them watching?"

“Oh, perfect!” Stefano exclaimed, oblivious. “Please hold those expressions!”

“Don’t think he’ll be happy if I climb on your cock instead,” she whispered above the glass. "Though I am dying to."

She heard it as much as she felt it - the twack of snapping fabric and the sudden shift of his balls spilling against her thigh as his cock broke containment, erect for all to see.

“Oh-hoh!” Shivs chortled, leaning back as Crocodile cussed, sloshing the drink. He removed his arm from around her but his hook snagged on one of the uncountable bands of the delicate contraption she wore. It snapped and the whole thing came undone around her with a sigh of fabric that would have been satisfying if it had been intentional.

“Oh, dear!” Stefano, his voice pitching up two octaves as the tailor and his assistants rushed in to fix things. The photographer put away her camera and went for a smoke break.

Shivs struggled not to laugh at the tailor’s awkwardly cautious manner while Crocodile glared down at him. “That is never going to fit back in there.”

Stefano gave her a look more panicked than when Crocodile had threatened shutting all of this down. “What are we going to do?!”

Shivs shifted as the tailor’s assistant helped her into a bathrobe. “Well, Stefano,” she said with a waggle of her eyebrows. “I know what to do about that.”

He stared at her for a long moment.

Then clapped his hands.

“You heard the lady, everyone out! Out!”

“Soooo,” Shivs said when everyone was gone, running her hand up his hard shaft. “What are we going to do about this?”

Crocodile reached for the back of her head and drew her to him for a kiss. She responded greedily and he drank her eagerness in as the gluttonous creature within him stirred from sleep.

“If you put your pretty pussy around it, you're not coming off any time soon,” he rumbled against her lips when they parted.

"Tempting as that sounds, I suppose we can't."

He was rock hard as she fitted her palms around him, just below the head, and pulled down with short, firm tugs that drew rapidly louder grunts from him. Holding on to his hip, she straddled his thigh again and rode against him with a languid roll of her hips that send sparks of pleasure up her spine as she jerked him off.

When he reached down to rub her clit, she almost immediately lost it, so wound up the whole affair had left her.

"Cum. For me. Doll," he grunted near her ear, his breath hot bursts against the side of her neck.

She whined pitifully as a short, intense orgasm cut through her so sharp and clear that it brought tears to her eyes. Trembling against him as she clenched around his thigh, savouring the sweet after pleasure. When she recovered, his large cock throbbed in her grip, precum leaking down his shaft and running between her fingers.

“I need those pretty thighs of yours, sweetheart.”

“I need you inside me,” she complained as he dislodged her from his thigh. She reached for his neck, tried to drag him on top of her as she spread her legs. The reverberating groan that drew from him did things to her.

“No -ngh- honey.” He struggled to turn her around as she squirmed underneath him. He was this close to shoving his cock into her soaking pussy and fuck them both into a stupor.

Instead, he pulled her up unto her knees and then feet. He leaned unto his hand, dragging her up against him. The angle was awkward, but no matter. He hooked her thighs together, his cock straining between their soft, hot skin. He groaned as he pressed along her slick pussy.

She complained, fingers curling into fists on the wooden boards as she bucked back into his thrusts, his breath hot along her back.

“You wanted the damn photoshoot,” he grunted, picking up his pace. 

“I want y-you,” she whined, and he had to force his hook around her waist to keep her from tilting her hips trying to get his cock inside her.

If that happened, he wouldn't be able to stop.

He threw his weight around and leaned on his hook instead, so he could reach his hadn between her thighs.

“I know, doll,” he grunted as he rubbed two fingers roughly against her clit, drinking in the way her whines pitched into moans.

“I will - hrng- fuck you. So good. Later.”

“Oh-ah!” She cried out as a second orgasm rushed through her like an oncoming wave and he pounded himself through it with quick, hard thrusts between her trembling thighs. They squeezed around his shaft as he came with a low, drawn out groan that made the bananawani look up. She felt its timbre against her back as he dumped his load on the boards beneath them with a noise that made her bite her lip as she caught his gaze across her shoulder.

By the time the Sphinxxx crew dared approach, they’d settled beside the snoozing bananawani enjoying that glass of brandy and a smoke. It had hardly been enough, but his dick had gone soft and it took the edge off. That’d have to be enough.

“Shit,” Shivs said when she noticed the incriminatingly bar-shaped bruises streaking her left hip.

“Not to worry,” Stefano said quickly. “We can retouch that away.”

“I like it,” Crocodile rumbled against her ear as his fingertips traced her hip.

Shivs stretched against him, nestling into his hold as she sipped the brandy.

“Bet you do,” she said against the glass.

🐊 🐊 🐊 

“Ohhh, it has a little tail! I love that!” Shivs exclaimed when Crocodile had turned around to go where Stefano pointed them.

The last set of nightwear the Sphinxxx designer had brought for them to model was distinctly seasonal. And though not usually one for these kinds of things, Shivs had to admit she didn’t hate it. Predictably, she was wearing a Mrs Santa ensemble that comprised a very short red velvet skirt edged in genuine white fur that felt sinful soft against her skin. It came paired with an impressively v-necked hooded crop top in the same style. She’d opted for stockings and red heels to go with it, because it felt half-finished without them. Stefano had been thrilled.

However, instead of matching Crocodile with a Santa-inspired outfit, they’d actually gone for a reindeer. A very big, very hunky reindeer. 

The outfit comprised a short sleeved top that barely reached to his midrif and struggled to contain his pects, and boxer briefs with cut outs at the thighs that only just managed to contain him. The whole affair was a seasonal chocolate brown, except for the smudge of white on the chest, thighs and butt. It had taken some convincing to get him to wear it. Nevermind, the antlered headband. But that, and the boxer brief’s little reindeer tail delivered the whole thing to grace.

No, she definitely didn’t hate it.

They had returned inside, to Rain Dinners' primary casino floor, which had already been decorated the previous weekend for the upcoming season. Stefano had been conflicted about where they’d do the shoot - by the oiled wood and polished brass of the Grand Café bar, or at the colonnade with the nightlights of Rainbase through the window wall? Shivs had casually suggested they could do the shoot at her table, and he’d loved that.

“No, no, lay down flat. Pretend it's grass and this is summer - yes,” Stefano said as Shivs laid down on her stomach on the poker table, leaning on her elbows with her hands under her chin and idly kicking up her feet.

“Good, perfect!” His tone was as cheerful as the decor as he handed her the poker cards. “Hold ‘em like you mean it, darling.”

“Devil’s in the details.” Shivs winked as she tossed the third card back to him, then put down the right amount of community cards as well. “That’s a little too much.”

“That’s not what you said last night,” Crocodile rumbled not even pretending to lower his voice as he leaned over her as instructed.

That drew awkward looks from everyone, and a chortle from her that settled pleasantly in the pit of his stomach as he leaned unto his hand and pretended to be interested in the cards instead of the feel of her damp cunt against his cock. The moist spot discolouring her panties under the short skirt hadn’t lied.

“No, not quite,” Stefano rubbed his chin, then snapped his fingers. “Indicate one of the cards.”

“Well, that’s a solid tell,” Shivs said with a snort.

“Art, art! This is art, not an actual game,” Stefano protested. “Go on, please.”

Crocodile shifted his weight unto his hand, indicating one of the two cards Shivs held with the tip of his hook.

“A little nearer - perfect!”

He leaned in closer as the camera clicked, pressing his cock against her firm butt. “You look like a seasonal treat good enough to eat, doll,” he grunted under his breath.

Shivs arched her back with a little noise, spreading her thighs more to accommodate him. She glanced away from the cards to catch his gaze from the corner of her eye. “Don’t tempt me to take you up on that, Blitzen.”

The rumble at the back of his throat as she felt his cock stiffen against her made her smile at the cards.

When they rounded up the last shot, Stefano came towards them positively aglow. “This was wonderful,” he said in a near reverent tone. “Stunning. Perfect.”

Crocodile lit a cigar, letting the praise shower him. Shivs suspected it smoothed his rankled humours from earlier today.

“Let me gift you any one of these,” the Sphinxxx designer added. “It would be my honour.”

“These ones,” Shivs said immediately. It was the little tail, truly.

Crocodile glanced down at her through a cloud of smoke. Amusement tugged his lips around his cigar.

“What she said.”

🐊 🐊 🐊 

“That what you want, doll?” Crocodile said as he ran his hand up her side and under the top’s red velvet to palm her breast.

“Yes. It will turn out to be the best picture,” Shivs said as she laid down on her stomach and leaned on her elbows, hands under her chin. They were in their bedroom, facing the floor length mirrors opposite the curving window wall, wearing the seasonal set that she’d claimed for them. A cheeky glance at him from across her shoulder. “And I want to see it already.”

“You do look good, doll.” He pushed the short skirt up, fingers running through the soft fur edge and against her warm skin. He palmed her firm butt, pulling the cheeks apart. Her crimson panties were soaked, just as they’d been during the photo shoot. 

“My own seasonal treat,” he said as he leaned down to kiss her shoulder, sliding fingers under her panties and between her wet folds. Her little huff when he pushed two into her slick cunt made his cock throb for its tight embrace. “I wanted to rail you every time your pretty pussy pressed against me.”

“Wish you had,” Shivs said as she arched into his touch, pressed her hips into his palm as his fingers drew sparks of pleasure from her core with their every move. She spread her legs further, wanting him against her the way he’d been during the photo shoot. “Wani, please. Need to feel you against me, on top of me. Like that. Again.”

She whined when he withdrew his fingers, and moaned when she felt his hips and weight settle against her instead. Their gazes crossed in the mirror.

“That what you’d do, doll?” he asked as he leaned over her, all but cheek to cheek as he dry humped against her butt, making her feel his erection. “Come to the stable at night and let all the good reindeer stuff your tight, needy hole like a little slut?”

“I only know a bad one,” she replied with half a moan. “But his cock is the best one.”

“Is that so?” he grunted as he pulled the boxer brief’s crotch out of the way and pushed his hard shaft along her clothed cunt and groaned at how wet the thin fabric of her panties felt.

“He always fucks me good and proper,” she said between huffs of need, pressing back against him to feel more. “I love how his thick dick spreads me open, fills me so fucking good.”

“Like this?” He pulled the soaked fabric aside and shoved his hard cock into her in one smooth thrust, the slick noise of her soaking cunt drawing him in incriminatingly loud in the quiet bedroom.

Her moan broke and set fire to the desire that had been smoldering in his loins.

“Oh, yess!” she whined when she felt him bottom out, stretching her so deliciously around him. The tip boldly pushed against her back walls, wanting to go further still. She cramped around him when he stayed put, pushed back against his hips. “F-fuck me.”

He watched her squirm and claw at their bedsheets. Felt her squeeze so tightly around his shaft it made him clench his teeth. He leaned close against her, his breath hot against the back of her neck. “What’s that, doll?”

“F-fuck - ngh- me, damnit,” she cursed as she pushed back against him, desperate for friction, any friction. “Make me f-feel your thick cock. You filthy beast.”

“Beast?” he rumbled with a firm thrust that wrested a groan from him as he blunted against the back wall of her tight hole.

“A-ah! Yes!” she whined half muffled into a fistfull of sheets. “More. Damnit.”

“More?” he grunted into her ear as he locked his hand around her shoulder and his hook behind the far edge of their bed. He wanted, no, needed, to hear her scream for him.

“Ye-ah! Yes!” She’d all but buried her face in their bedsheets, fingers clenching around the pale silk.

“Didn’t my little honey want to see?” he said as he struggled to control himself, hold back from recklessly thrusting into her wet, cramping pussy a moment longer. He pushed her chin up with his index finger as he started pounding his cock into her with thrusts that shook her whole frame. Thrusts whose wet slaps filled their bedroom as the slick noises of her soaking pussy eagerly taking him made him hungry for more. Much more.

“Look up, doll.”

The horny greed in her gaze when they met in the mirror made him groan as his cock throbbed. She was perfect, and his. She fed the ravenous beast within him the way no one else did. No one else could. Not any more. Not ever.

“Scream -ngh - for me, honey,” he grunted as he strained into his pushes, groaning as he forcefully pulled himself up by his hook with long, deep thrusts that damn near made him see stars. She screamed for him then as she watched him wreck her, shattering her cries with his thrusts. And when she started cramping around him, his low cries joined hers as he spilled his load deep in her tight cunt.

Feeling his arm give way under him, he turned to fall on his side into the rumped sheets beside her, drawing her with him as he rode out his orgasm with languid thrusts. She turned her head up and they kissed as he reached under her top again. She made a delightfully hazy noise against his lips when he stroke her hard nipple.

The timid knock at the doorpost drew an irritated grunt from him that made her want to fuck him again.

It was Anthony, his gaze fixed firmly on the ceiling. He was holding something, a magazine by the look of it.

“What.” Crocodile grunted.

“The draft print came in, sir,” Anthony said as he held out the magazine, gaze never straying. “They will hit the shelves tomorrow, I was told. Unless, of course, you object.”

“Oh!” Shivs was up and rising so fast that he groaned when his cock slid from her tight pussy. He rolled unto his back and watched his cum leak down her thighs as she grabbed his dress shirt and shrugged it on while trotting to his secretary. He reached for the night stand without bothering to get up, flipping a cigar from the box laying atop of it.

“Thank you, Tony,” Shivs said as she accepted the magazine from him.

“No problem, ma’am,” Anthony said without meeting her gaze, keeping it diligently up. “If there is nothing else?”

“Absolutely nill,” Crocodile said as he sat up and lit the cigar, and his secretary quickly made himself scarce.

“Look what they put on the cover,” Shivs said, clearly delighted, as she came towards him, proudly showing that seasonal shot she’d loved so well she’d made him wreck her like that not five minutes ago.

“Seems you got your wish,” he huffed through a puff of smoke as he reached out to her with hook and hand. 

She chortled as she took hold of his hook and let him draw her into his lap. “This sensationalist line they added about seasonal fun at the casino makes it sound like we got a whole something here for select guests, haha.”

“No, no other reindeer,” he grumbled, making her laugh.

“Don’t you worry,” she said as she sat up to press a kiss against his lips, hand stroking across his lower stomach. “None could hope to compare.”

The molified noise he made in response made her smile as she curled up against him with the magazine. “It looks so pretty,” she said as she ran her fingers across the full colour pages.

“That’s because you’re in it,” he said as he looked at them from above her shoulder. The article was a little ways into the middle of the fashion magazine. Eleven pages of quality photographs and there wasn’t a single one they didn’t like. It was only when she paged back to the front that they noticed the envelope taped into the inner cover.

There was a note in it emblazoned with the Sphinxx calligraphy, and a stack of photographs.

‘It was a delight and honour to work with the both of you. These did not make the cut, but I dare say I’d be in trouble if I did away with them, wouldn’t I?

Con affetto, Masotti Stefano.'

The delight with which she went through the additional pictures made the creature coil inside him with a purr.

“Oh, but these came out nice too?” Shivs said as she held one up. 

It looked like a candid shot as they walked to their intended spot during the shoot in his office. He’d just taken a draw from his cigar, a fond glance shrouded in smoke as she tugged him along by his hook, glancing over her shoulder with a smile as radiant as the desert sun.

Crocodile plucked it from her fingers. “This one will sit in my office.”

“I want a bigger print of this one,” she said as she shielded another one from view. He tugged at her shoulder with his hook to see. It was one from the second location, outside, with the bananawani. On it, he sat in one of the cast iron deck chairs, the large animal and the sprawling Rainbase oasis behind him. She stood against his inner thigh, leaning into him as she held up a lighter so he could light his cigar. It was a good shot, except for the part where all of his everything was breaching containment from the frightfully complicated thong. 

“I am going to hang it at my table,” she declared as she held it against her chest.

“Absolutely not!” he objected, smoke escaping him as he tried to snatch it from her.

She dodged and laughed, rolling off his lap amid a flock of scattering photographs. Then jumped up, the incriminating picture held high in hand. “Maybe that'll keep 'em piped down!”

He tangled himself out of the blasted sheets, biting down on his cigar as he gave chase. 

“Get back here!”

🐊 🐊 🐊 

Robin basked in the bright, sunny morning as she sauntered down Rainbase’s boulevard with her bestie, Miguella. They’d gotten the largest, fanciest lattes they could find and she had put them on Crocodile’s tab. She’d be lying if she said it didn’t taste better for it.

“We could go to All Stars or Seven Palms tonight?” Miguella said as she stirred her straw through the whipcream of her latte.

“All Stars.” Robin let the latte’s creamy texture take over her thoughts for a moment. “They’ll know to find us in Seven Palms, we go there too often.”

“They’re mad at you?”

“I am mad at them.”

Robin scowled. It was always excessively embarrassing when they did something like this, even when it was just lame old suit brands. She didn’t need to hear from everyone and their dog how good they looked, how amazing they were, and how lucky she was. She hated it here. She’d run away if she actually had anywhere else she could go without being turned in on sight. 

It was strange, though, for they hadn’t even tried to curfew her the past weekend. Perhaps they felt bad and hadn’t gone through with it? That’d be a first.

As they sauntered down the boulevard, not all its souvenir and food stands had opened yet. And the lady at the corner kiosk was just dragging the ‘newly arrived’ stand outside.

And that’s where she saw it.

Rendered in glossy full-colour, proud as could be on the front of Fashion First. Them. How dare? Her on her stomach on one of the casino’s poker tables, wearing the skimpiest sexy-Santa skirt and top you could still put on a front cover without being delegated to the randy back corner of a 24/7 shop. And him, dressed up as a goddamn reindeer, leaning over her back in what couldn’t possibly be an accidental posing. They pretended to be engrossed by the cards she was holding, but Robin knew better. She could fucking tell from their stupid horny glances.

Standing there, in the sunny, quiet boulevard. She thought she might actually scream.

“Hey! Aren’t that your parents?” Miguella said, and had the gall to chortle about it.

“They are NOT my parents, and they are dead to me!” Robin screamed, and stormed off.

🐊 🐊 🐊

Horny hell seat reservations - @tiredemomama @smut-goblin @ruledbyproblematique @momodwriter @littlemountainwolf @fanaticsnail @feral-artistry - have a very merry Christmas with a shot of crocaine on the house.

[girlsgoneplague]

Cramps

Spock x reader

Warnings: period talk (not graphic) cursing, depression

Promt: pain/comfort, you have the day off however your period has kept you in bed all day so your boyfriend Spock comes to check on you

Part 1 of 2 or 3, I plan on in the second part it gets worse

Waking up that morning you knew something was wrong whenever you rolled over, the cool wetness of your ass made it obvious your pad just couldn't take it last night. After groaning into your pillow for a solid minute you decide to get up and get cleaned up. When you get in the bathroom its obvious the pad never stood a chance, so you take off all your clothes and put them in the laundry hamper

So much for having a relaxing off day...

Before taking a shower you also removed all of your bedding, as well the pillow case since it won't match your other bedsheets. The pale blue of your former bedsheets start to irritate you and instead of putting them in the hamper you decide to throw the fitted sheet away. A ringing on your PADD goes off so you make your way to your bedside table and pick it up to see Spock is calling.

"Hey babe, I was just about to hop into the shower" you keep the screen aimed at your face in case he's with someone else.

"Hello, I trust you slept well?"

You sigh, "not really, I ruined my light blue bedsheets and I didn't even fall asleep until pretty late last night"

He tilts his head slightly, "I see, well the duration of my shift will end in a few hours, I will come to check on you."

You smile as you nod, "I'd love that, bring me something to eat too will you?"

"I shall, please continue your morning, I will see you soon"

"See you soon Spock" you end the call and make your way to the shower. Your cramps are starting to act up and a nice hot shower will ~hopefully~ help it.

After 30 minutes you've given up on the prospect of easing your pain. They haven't gotten worse but since its been so long its started to irritate you.

I swear they've just been getting worse these past few months....maybe I need to see McCoy.

After thinking it over you decide its not serious enough for that, if it gets worse then you'll have a good enough excuse to waste an entire day in sick bay. The worst part about it so far was the damper it put on your mood. Its only been about an hour since you've woken up but crawling back into bed is the only appealing thing to you right now. You look at the clock and see it's only 11:03.

You haven't changed your bedsheets yet but decide to lay on it bare anyway, the only thing touching your skin is the robe you were gifted last Christmas. It's dark blue and goes all the way down to your shins so it acts like your blanket for now.

After a few minutes you decide to try and watch something before you get too caught up in your own head. After picking an old cartoon movie you've never seen called Treasure Planet, you decide during the opening scenes you'll actually eat something.

I'm sure spock won't be back for another couple hours I think he mentioned around 4pm the last time we talked-

Suddenly your PADD starts to light up again, wondering if it was the man himself you leaned over to find it was actually Uhura.

"Hey whats up?" You ask somewhat confused

"You forgot about lunch didnt you?" She said with a small smirk

"Ohhhhhh shit im so sorry! I forgot this was the only day this week we both had free, my period came yesterday and its been kicking my ass"

She raises her eyebrows, "Oh my, that sounds like you've been busy dealing with the worst time of the month I understand. Its kind of weird that you're having issues though, you don't usually have cramps that bad right?"

"Right!! I have no idea why they're so bad this time around, I haven't even gotten around to changing my bedsheets-of which I RUINED last night" you shake your head and move the screen to show you laying down on your bare bed

"Yikes, well to be honest I actually called because I'm already in the mess hall but Sulu wants to join me for lunch, would you be offended if I visited you tomorrow after my shift?"

"Not at all, im not really in the mood to socialize....or get dressed haha. I only really want to see Spock so we can cuddle"

She rolls her eyes, "yeah yeah I'm sure your hot boyfriend will help melt the pain away. But if you need anything at all before he shows up then call me"

"Sure thing, you have fun with Sulu and tell him I said hi" I waved bye as she said she would and then hung up.

I put the device back down and roll over on my back, the cramps are getting bad enough I decide to take some Tylenol and grab my medicine bag to fill up with hot water.

I'm so glad I bought this damn thing, take that you stupid uterus

After gettin settled on the bed you realize you didnt actually grab something to eat, but maybe that's a good thing because your stomach also starts to act up.

It be your own body, your own treacherous body

At least the movie still has an hour left before you paused it, so you hit resume and make a wall of pillows on your bed to protect your back from the hard headboard.

After about 30 minutes you decide to send Spock a message asking how long he will be on duty. After a few minutes he responds

Unfortunately I have to stay slightly longer than planned, so far we belive the problem will be taken care of by 5 at the latest. My apologies

You frown but don't want to make a big deal about it, especially since its not his fault so you respond quickly

Thats fine! Just don't forget to bring me some dinner, I want pizza, you know how I like it. I hope the ship isn't giving you too many issues i know we had a rough day yesterday

Rough is an understatement, however it comes with the job and you both understand most things are out of your control when it comes to repairs and maintenance.

Indeed. I shall update you at 4 about my arrival.

You smile at the screen and think about how happy you'll be when he gets here

In the meantime I can ask Uhura for some chicken noodle soup. Thank you:)

You look up and realize you didn't pause the movie but luckily there's not been anything super crazy that happened. Its actually grabbed your attention quite well. However you do pause it to message Uhura because you're not sure if you can call her.

You free? I've got a craving for some chicken noodles or maybe even some chicken and dumplings, either way something warm with chicken

As you wait for a reply you get up to change the water in your medicine bag again, after you get up however you realize you have to use the bathroom.....immediately.

When you get in there you cuss loudly

How the fuck did my pad manage to slip off, I swear today is not my day

After you finish up, you change your underwear again and rub your sore breasts.

This is possibly the worst off day I've ever had, including when we were all turned into those rocks or cubes or whatever they were*

Looking at the clock you quickly realize its only a little after 12. And since Uhura hasn't responded its starting to look a lot like you'll be alone for quite some time.

The movie ended after some time, it was really good but you frequently clenched your whole body due to the waves of cramps. And thankfully Uhura had let you know she would bring you food around 1. So you searched around for another movie to keep your mind off of things and settled on Asteroid City. After a few minutes you hear a knock so you get pause it to open the door.

After it slides open you smile at the sight of your friend with some much needed soup, "so whatd you bring me?"

She hands you the tray and follows you into the room, "just some chicken and dumplings, I remember last time you had noodles so I thought I'd take the liberty of switching things up for you"

"I love it when you make our relationship spicy" you chuckle and sit down on your bed gesturing her to join you.

She looks at your screen, "oh you'll like this one, but after this you should watch that horror movie that came out in the same year"

In between spoonfuls you ask her to send you the title in case you forget.

You and her chat for some time until she gets up to stretch, "well I think I'll leave you to it, I have the holo deck reserved for 3 and I'd hate to be late. See you later"

"Sure thing, see you!" You wave to her as she leaves and start your movie again.

2 hours later you decided this Wes Anderson was definitely worth checking out. Then you look at your PADD to see the title Uhura sent you and also notice Spock has sent you a message as well

Excellent news, I shall be done in less than an hour. Is there anything else you need me to bring?

Yes please! I need new bedsheets I can't find any clean ones. I like yours so maybe you could bring those?

Clicking on Talk To Me, you lean back again and wait for him to respond.

Roughly 20 minutes later you hear a knock on your door, so you pause the movie and practically run to see if its Spock

Once the door slides open you grin at the sight of him with a pair of sheets underneath a tray with an entire pizza.

"I missed you so much, here let me take the tray"

He lets you grab the tray while he starts to unfold the sheets, "I have missed you as well T'hy'la, I trust you were not disappointed with my tardiness"

You set the food down at the small table you usually eat dinner at, that is when you're not suffering, and turn to face him. "Its not your fault T'hy'la, besides im sure you can make it up to me"

The ghost of a smile is on his face as he walks over to you to hold your hand and lean his forhead against yours, "I will try"

You give him a kiss and tell him to start eating so you can finish your movie.

As you eat your pizza, and he eats his soup you discuss his day as well as how awful you've been feeling, "I mean I seriously have no idea why its been so bad this time around" you notice a frown on his face and raise an eyebrow

"If you are truly having issues why did you not see McCoy?" Concern all over his face makes you feel like you've said the wrong thing.

"Its just that I didn't think it mattered that much" you look away from him and at the floor, "I just didn't want to spend the day in sick bay or worse taking some disgusting medicine that makes me lose my appetite"

He considers this for a moment and reaches across the table to hold his two fingers out to you for a Vulcan kiss. "While I do not understand the human response of hating the doctors i understand you would have gone if you felt that the pain was too much, but please mention it the next time you have a check up"

You smile softly and nod your head, "deal, so long as you spend the night with me?"

His eyes light up and the corners of his mouth slightly turn upwards, "I believe those terms are acceptable"

You both finish up your meal and he excuses himself to grab a change of clothes while you head to the bathroom to change your pad yet again.

One of these days maybe he'll just keep a change of clothes here

You ponder to yourself about the future for a moment until you start to have an awful pain shoot through your abdomen.

You leave the bathroom and immediately lay down to curl yourself into a ball, its not clear how long you stay in that position but when Spock returns he knocks and let's himself in after you tell him its fine. He immediately walks over to your bed at the sight of you, "is the pain becoming too much?"

You nod slightly and roll over to face him, "is it alright if we just lay here together for awhile"

"Of course, just allow me to change into my robes"

You feebly nod and go to turn the movie back on, you might as well finish it before bed considering its not even 6 yet. After he gets changed he looks at the screen, then at you, and raises an eyebrow.

"A recommendation from Uhura" you respond to his wordless question

"I see, well you'll forgive me if I do not watch it with you"

"All I need is you, I know you don't like this sort of thing but I'm glad you indulge my human tendancies"

"There are many qualities of yours i admire, and as you are well aware I do not require silence in order to think about how to improve my work efficiency"

You shake your head slightly as he climbs into bed, "well as long as you're holding me i couldn't care less what you're thinking about i just enjoy your company"

A light green blush comes across his features, "I too enjoy being with you" he grabs your face and kisses you for a few moments until you break the kiss to groan about your lower abdomen. He places his hand on your forehead and looks in your eyes to silently ask permission to ease your pain. You nod and his presence fills your brain, the pain starts to leave your mind as you finally relax for the first time that day.

"I don't know what I would do without you" you tell him as he lowers his hand and once again wraps his arms around you.

"I am sure you would-"

"That was rhetorical, and I don't think I could love anyone like how I love you" the light green blush returns to his face and he puts his forehead to yours again.

"I love you as well" he tells the computer to turn the lights off and you fall asleep despite the horror movie still on in the background. He watches you for a few moments to be sure you've fallen asleep and then turns off the movie and allows himself to drift off alongside you.

End of part one

Authors Notes, in the original series theres an episode where only 5 of the essential crew weren't turned into these blocks so if you're curious this is what I was referencing in the paragraph that talks about being turned into rocks lol

[maochira]

Working at Blue Lock/father figure!Ego introduction

Tags: gn!reader, overworker and overachiever!reader, reader is a graphic designer, artist and assistant at Blue Lock

A/N: I want to make this a series so feel free to request more for father figure!Ego!! A part two to this will come soon as well! Also, this originally goes for one of my Blue Lock OCs, but I want to write it as an x reader for you guys to enjoy and because I prefer writing reader inserts💟

Working at Blue Lock is your first job ever, so ever since the beginning you swore to yourself that you'll put all of your power and passion into this. Especially because of how passionate Ego is about Blue Lock, you want to do your best to help him

Ego tends to give you very tight deadlines almost all the time. It's to be expected that at least once a day he'll tell you something like "You need to do this until tomorrow", or "I have this speech planned later, you need to do this until then", but nothing about that ever bothered you. It's on the opposite side, you've always been happy about getting tasks from him and feel good about being helpful to the project.

Most of your work consists of designing and drawing player icons and all the graphics Ego shows on his screens during his speeches. Every time he holds his speeches, you're in the back of the room to watch. To you, it's like seeing your work come to life, and that's always been your dream.

Ego often criticizes your work when you show him your ideas or sketches. But that's part of working as a graphic designer and artist. Even though his criticism tends to come off as harsh and cold, you're always happy to follow his wishes. And hey, in the end, it's always worth it because you get at least a little bit of praise. It's never much, usually just a simple "Good work, (Y/N)-chan" but for you, it's enough.

But due to your hard work, you pull at least one all-nighter a week. You'd still be able to finish all your tasks on time even if you got a healthy amount of sleep, but you always get so lost in your work that it keeps you awake all night. A part of that is passion, but another part is your overworking nature.

You rarely tell Ego and Anri about your all-nighters, you either act as if you got up extra early or just briefly mention something like "I couldn't fall asleep" and laugh it off. Ego never showed any concern over it, but Anri certainly did.

And for the first months, sleep deprivation didn't have that many effects on you. Surprisingly. Your passion kept you going. Well, until you pulled an all-nighter after a night with only 3 hours of sleep. Even caffeine couldn't save you anymore. You really try to keep your eyes open, but they get so heavy that they just close on their own and you end up falling asleep at your desk.

In the meantime, Ego is rewatching recordings of Blue Lock matches, until he sees you asleep at your desk. His first instinct is to wake you up and yell at you to continue your work, but he's so hesitant about it, he changes his mind after second thought. He remembers how you've been working extra hard lately and knows your current task isn't that urgent, so he simply lets you sleep.

But when you wake up, a rush of panic runs through your body. You immediately look up at your computer which has gone into sleep mode by now. You turn around to see Ego, still sitting on his chair.

"You finally woke up, huh?" His voice doesn't give off any particular emotion, but you automatically think he's mad at you for falling asleep during your work hours.

You open your mouth to apologize, but your mind is still a bit fuzzy and not properly awake yet. Before any words actually get out, Ego continues: "It was about time you got some proper sleep."

"Sorry, I've been-"

"No need to apologize," Ego interrupts you, "Just don't let this happen again."

"I won't, I promise." You answer before turning your computer back on, ready to finish whatever you were working on before you fell asleep.

"You really need to take better care of yourself." Ego tells you in a stern voice. "Get more sleep and pay attention to your health. I don't want you to get sick."

"Oh?" You turn around to face his direction. What he said makes you laugh a little. "Aren't you the one with eyebags who only eats instant noodles?"

Ego is slightly taken aback by your response and for a moment he struggles to find an answer. "Are you talking back to me?" Is the only thing he manages to come up with.

"I wouldn't call it talking back," you answer as you turn your head back to your computer, "I'm just surprised why you'd care more about me than taking care of yourself."

And with this, you've got yourself your own personal Ego speech.

"Listen, (Y/N)-chan. I 'care' for you in a way an employer cares for one of his workers. Because that's what you and I are. I can't have you getting sick or breaking down because you exhaust yourself too much. That would mean I would have to look for a temporary replacement which would cost time and money. Plus, your work is great even under these conditions and I doubt I'd find anyone else who's as passionate about this as you are. But even with that, I don't want you to exhaust yourself this much again. It's true that I appreciate your hard work, but with your hard work comes the need of taking care of yourself. Understood?"

Halfway through his speech, you turned back to look at him again. His expression and tone are not much different from how he usually is, but what he says still surprises you in some way. You and Ego never had a deeper conversation on anything, but this is starting to pick up your curiosity, so you decide to continue.

"That still doesn't explain why you'd tell me to take better care of myself when you uhm, you know."

"Leading Blue Lock comes with its sacrifices." Ego responds, "If I'll lose sleep over it, I'm willing to sacrifice that. But I'm not willing to let you sacrifice your health."

"So you're worried about me?"

Ego lets out a short frustrated sigh. "As I already said, I care for you in a way an employer cares for their worker. You're not much more than a tool to help my dream come alive."

You only nod in response and return to your work. You want to continue this conversation, but Ego's frustrated sigh is a sign to stop.

Even though what Ego said could definitely hurt someone's feelings, especially because of his stern tone, just him mentioning he cares about you in some way makes you happy. Sure, to him you're not much more than a tool to achieve his dream, but that still means you have some sort of important role for him. Be it in an employer-worker way, you're just happy to be useful.

As you continue your given task, Ego finds himself unable to concentrate on his own work. He thinks of his own words he just said to you moments ago and they keep repeating in his head until he wonders if he even spoke the truth.

Sure, in theory, you're not much more than an employee to him. But something about seeing how you overworked yourself and even sacrificed a lot of sleep just for the tasks he's given you made him truly realize how hard you've been working ever since the beginning of Blue Lock. It awakened some sort of protectiveness over you inside of him.

And even when he's back to focusing on his work every now and then his gaze wanders over to you with slight concern. He can't help but ask himself: Is this the kind of protectiveness a father feels about their child?

[wind-up-thancred]

SO i've been digging around in the benchmark files with xiv data explorer...

...and with my middling knowledge of how XIV's current texture types work, i've noticed some differences in how texture channels have worked and what data is stored where. i haven't figured out what EVERYTHING'S for yet and if you think you have an idea or any corrections, pls feel free to lmk. could help with figuring out 7.0 modding quicker! this is also decent info for figuring out what old mods can be repurposed for 7.0 graphics.

also content warning for unwrapped face textures under the cut, i know those can look kind of spooky if you arent used to 'em lol

starting off, i didn't source this info but chirp (known plugin dev) on twitter talked about finding about fifty six new bones in the facial armature specifically. this means things like sculpts will probably be unusable unless they are manually re-rigged with each one of those fifty six new bones, or else they wont animate properly.

the default UV maps for the face specifically have changed, too, and many of the uses of the old normal and multi channels have been changed or moved to a different texture. NOTE that these examples were found from au ra textures, male specifically, and the channels may or may not have different uses on non-scaled races!

old vs new multi map. i'm fairly certain every channel here has been repurposed: for example, blue used to be for lipstick, now it seems to be for something else. so where'd the lipstick area data go? well:

it's been moved to the alpha channel on the normal map (these are both the new one). additionally, it seems like the blue channel on the normal map has been changed to signify the difference between skin and non-skin or something of the like.

(old vs new) similarly, even though the body seems to use the same UV layout with a redefined normal map, the blue channel here also seems to indicate skin vs non-skin. but the blue channel used to be for transparency (iirc?), so where is that data stored now?

the transparency data seems to have been moved to the alpha channel of the diffuse now. this image is part of the new face diffuse.

like the face multi map, the body multi map seems to actually use the blue channel now (and looks SO much cleaner, wow!). old vs new.

so what do these changes mean for our current mods?

-due to changed UVs, existing makeups will not be usable with the new faces UNLESS someone goes through the effort of taking the old sculpt (vanilla or otherwise) and weight paints ALL the new face bones to them, or somehow adjusts the UV mapping on the new sculpt to match the old one. i don't work with sculpts so i'm not sure how feasible either of these are

-existing body tattoo mods that only affect the diffuse should theoretically still work fine, as the UVs have not been changed on the body. body scale mods that are just recolors should work fine as well, but matching face scale mods will have to be redone for the new UVs.

-however, if it's a scale mod like dragonborn that changes the placement of the scales and therefore the normal and multi maps, those will have to be adjusted to match with the 7.0 channel uses.

assuming there are no major changes to how this data is stored between now and the releases of dawntrail, you could theoretically begin working now on your own texture mods ready for whenever we get access to 7.0 modding tools. i was able to access these files (and many others) by using XIV data explorer, a program that lets you view and export (but not import!) data directly from specific XIV data indexes.

if you also want to rip textures, the index storing them, alongside skeletons and animations, is 04000.win32.index2. hit ctrl+shift+e to export individual files to a .tex format and then run them through penumbra to convert them into .dds for normals + multis or .png for diffuses for editing. i'm fairly certain that 95% of the pathings will be exactly the same as what penumbra and textools gives us now, so there shouldn't be much need to find entirely new paths.

again, if anyone sees any differences in other races for texture uses or figures out the uses for new channels, PLEASE let me know bc the sooner we get all this figured out the better! i have only been modding for a few years and don't know everything about how every texture works so i'm open to corrections.

[snek-panini]

It's been a few weeks since I had new books to share, but I finally got photos taken of the newest ones so today's the day. Here, have a book:

This is Across Tides and Currents, a Good Omens siren AU by Sodium_Azide and @doorwaytoparadise (hi. I hope I tagged you right). My favorite thing about this AU is that, at its heart, it's about learning to communicate with someone who is so different from you that you can't even physically speak each other's language, and yet you've still got so much common ground that you find a way. It's way lighter and more fun than that description makes it sound, though, so go read it if that's your thing.

The cover on this is Lineco book cloth, scrapbook paper printed to look like leather, and blue foil htv. The foil was actually a nightmare to do. The first time I applied it, it wouldn't stick no matter what I did, and the bits that did stick peeled off as soon as I touched them. I had to peel them up very carefully, cut a new image, and try again. Thankfully it worked the second time but I don't know that I'll be using the foil type again unless there's no other way to get the color I want. The non-foil metallic was so much easier to work with.

More book photos under the cut!

I went with a coptic bind for this one for a few reasons. The first was that I wanted to try one on a quarto-size book to see if I could. I also wanted to try the mitered corners thing I did when I bound Strange Moons, and see if I could have the same effect on the interior. (That bit didn't work out so well; the front is fine but I mismeasured the inside and the lines didn't match up, so I trimmed some pieces of cardstock to cover that up. I really like the layered look though, so that's fine. It's quirky.) The third reason is that not long before I decided to bind this one, the authors published a new chapter after two years of no updates. That's the best possible reason to have to change plans, and the glueless bind means that if they ever do that again I can just redo the stitching to add more pages. Win-win.

Getting whimsical with title pages here. This took way longer than I thought it would, probably because I don't like graphic design and I did it in Word where I do the rest of my typesetting. Usually what I do is grab an image and put text around it or on top of it and then just play with fonts and sizes, but this time I drew the lines and then made the text follow them. This is the first time I've used the word art feature since...probably 2009? I'd forgotten how. I have no doubt there are better ways to do this but if I'd had to learn a new program at that point I'd have quit. And I do think it was worth it--it's cute and fun and looks about how I imagined it.

Couple of photos of the inside. Sorry the first one's blurry, I had someone trying to get my attention when I took these. The section break image came from rawpixel, I just made it gray instead of black so it's more subtle. The fic has very nice illustrations that I specifically got the artist's permission to print and then I failed to get any photos of them when I did my little photo shoot. They look very nice, though. I swear.

The last image is something I've started including in my latest books. I'm calling them "A Note from the Bookbinder" and it's basically just me talking about why I chose that story, the experience of reading it for the first time, stuff that's going on in the fandom, stuff about the process like the new chapter coming out as I was preparing to print. It's kind of...like marginalia? Part of fanbinding is preservation and that's linked to archival work, and something I know archivists love is marginalia and diaries. I don't like writing in my books and I've never found any fun in journaling, but sometimes that kind of context is important so I'm trying to add it. Someday, decades from now, I may not remember all the details, so I'm trying to preserve them. IDK, this got philosophical on me. Go read about mermaids now. Promise it's a good time.

[aeori-o]

Happy New Year!

Another year gone by! This one really felt like it flew. It has been an entire decade since I started doing these on tumblr! My first one was posted January 1, 2015! It’s wild to go back and see how little I tracked and talked about back then.

Let’s see if tumblr lets me make this into one post this year! I was so busy in the lead up to New Years that I am scrambling to try to get this posted on the first, let’s see if I make it! (I didn't, for the first year ever this is posting January 2nd, boo.)

So here’s what happened this year. I finally got to start playing D&D again with some friends and some new folks, and I very quickly became obsessed. I think the majority of my free time this year was spent on either making things for D&D (that nobody asked me to make, I’m just intensely into it) or wrapping my sister’s new car (the car I wrapped last year? Died.) So…

This year is the year I have read the least amount of books since I have been tracking reading books. The second lowest is the first year I was tracking, 2011, where I read 11 books total (that’s kind of funny, matched the last two digits of the year). I read 9 entire books this year, and technically have three on the go: House of Leaves, A Court of Mist and Fury, and Guilty Pleasures. Since 2019 the amount of books I’ve been reading each year has been steadily decreasing: 78 in 2019, then 65 the following year, then 43, 37, 26, and now… 9. With graphic novels (which I read 5) that number jumps to 14 but still, all time low.

I think across all the things I track I’m down this year, honestly, and that makes sense since, as mentioned, almost all my time was taken up by D&D and car-wrapping. If anything this year was an experiment in realizing I (we) really only ever have so much time, and it is finite, and we must choose where we spend it. (But that’s so hard.) I’m not upset by the lack of reading. I do wish I had read more, but I don’t wish I had done anything else less at the same time. I am extremely over being stressed out trying to reach certain goals so while I will very loosely hold the idea that I want to read more next year I’m not going to stress it.

The bright side is that I can really clearly remember every single book I read this year even though I read most of them toward the beginning of the year. This might also be because I have changed the way I journal about them. I used to just dump all my thoughts at once when I had finished the book. Now, because that really sucks to do with lengthier books, whenever I pause my reading I do a recap of what I read and my thoughts on the section. Gives me more to look back at later! And might be helping my memory of books but that will prove out better in a year where I read more books.

Before I talk about the good books I read this year let’s look at the stats! I am going to try to squash things into as few images as possible this year! Due to the entire Experience I had last year. (Thanks tumblr.)

Goodreads used to do this wonderful grid of books that made it easy to sort them into a nice little image but this year they just made a list with no option for alternate views. Awful. I had to arrange all those silly little icons myself.

Anyway it is wild to me how popular ACOTAR is. The fanbase seems to not even like the first book so I don’t think it’s controversial to say that having almost 6 million people, on one website, having read it is just… mind blowing. Last year I read another really popular book, The Summer I Turned Pretty, and despite being very popular, very ‘buzzy’, and even having a TV show made based on it, it had 5 million less readers. About 700,000 “shelved” instead of 5.7 million. It really is totally random what gets popular and what doesn’t. I wish there was a way to see the trajectory, see the point at which this book went from being just another YA book I could walk into the library and pull off the shelf (which I did, easily, years ago) to being a book you have to put on hold at the library to maybe get a chance at a copy in a few months. I’m not terribly interested in talking about ACOTAR as a book or series, I’ll be trying to read the rest of it faster but I have a lot of thoughts to write up on the first book still so who knows when I’ll get to it. But of the books I did read this year I’d like to highlight:

What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat by Aubrey Gordon

This book is surprisingly short for how much it talks about. Aubrey Gordon talks facts about fat while also weaving in anecdotes from her own life to bring in that human element that makes the narrative compelling and sympathetic as well as fact-based. I also listen to the podcast ‘Maintenance Phase’ on which the author is a host so most of this wasn’t new information but it’s still clear and concise here which is nice. Spoilers: Fatness is often out of a person’s control and Aubrey Gordon gets into why. Fantastic book, would recommend as long as it’s safe for you to engage with.

Let’s Talk About Love by Claire Kann

A really sweet book about a young woman trying to find herself and make space for herself as an asexual person and someone who wants to go against her family’s wishes. Lots of little dramas between friends and dynamics shifting as she becomes interested romantically but not sexually in someone and it makes her best friend jealous. The love interest is stupid sweet, I really enjoyed him, and the frictions in the friend group felt very real. It all turns out in the end and overall felt very cozy. I think maybe the most jarring thing was the opening chapter where the protagonist gets broken up with and gets like every weird asexual assumption thrown in her face by her soon-to-be ex-girlfriend. Might be a great hook for people who have been through that, for me I almost stopped reading but I’m glad I continued because the rest was a delight.

The Empyrean Series by Rebecca Yarros

I read the first book, Fourth Wing, and the second, Iron Flame, this year and the third comes out within a month I think. These books were massive but overall really fun, which I didn’t really expect from a stupid popular book series. I’m a huge sucker for dragons and I always respect a person who’s out there creating something they just think is cool. There’s a lot of things that are stupid-obvious for where the plot is going, and some things that feel cheap or undercooked (the jealous ex could have been handled in a more interesting way, I feel), some things are tropes that show up constantly in this genre (the protagonist, a woman, is just so thin and delicate but also cool and badass!) that your mileage may vary, but overall: Was a fun time. Nothing was ever egregious enough to make me not want to keep reading. And I think my biggest gripe with the book is that while the love interest goes down on and sates the female protagonist’s pleasure plenty of times she never once, despite being outrageously horny for the man, goes down on him. Is dick sucking a bridge too far? I have no clue but she doesn’t do it. Thumbs down. (But I also understand a lot of readers who are interested in men might really like the fantasy of having a man who will eat you out and never expect you to return the favor, so I can’t fault it too much for delivering the fantasy of Guy Who’s So Into You That Getting You Off Is Enough For Him.) The second major complaint I have is not with the book but with the fanbase, it’s so big, like ACOTAR’s, that only the most generically attractive art of the characters is what rises to the surface and becomes the only thing findable. Me squinting at fanart out here where I can’t tell any of the characters apart because they’re all Muscular Ambiguously Tan Men With Crew Cuts And Chiseled Jawlines. And again I get it, but it’s not really what I’m here for. Oh well, whatever.

Last year I mentioned it would be fun to re-read something from a decade ago every year. Totally dropped the ball on that this year, but if I can remember I’d like to do that this upcoming year. I might just set my goodreads goal to 10 and if I go over I go over and if I don’t I don’t. I am hoping to better balance my time in the coming year but my theme will give me a lot to work with.

I wrote this first section a few days in advance of New Years and couldn’t figure out where the storygraph wrap up data is. I can find the 2023 one but the 2024 one I guess wasn’t posted yet? Which is annoying but considering I read so little this year it probably won’t deliver much that’s interesting anyway, so I am not going back to look for it now that it is the New Year.

I watched 43 things this year! Which is also lower than last year, by a little, by 3. I’ve been slowly working on expanding my spreadsheet of things read and watched and so on so I should have even more stats for next year. Like I’ve started tracking release dates! Of films and shows released 2020 and 2024 I’ve watched 90, and 11 of the 42 things I watched this year were released this year! I love spreadsheets so much.

That side blog I made at the end of 2023 is paying off. Now I can easily make little graphics of everything I’ve watched (and played, and so on). There’s all the film-based-media I watched this year. For TV shows they only make it onto my category for a year if I finished them. So there’s some things I’m watching where I haven’t finished yet so they’ll make it onto next year’s (just in case anyone reading this is wondering where Game of Thrones is).

I think the biggest stand-outs have been older films that I just never got around to watching. Terminator, Alien, Singin’ In The Rain, and Scream were all fantastic films (or film series) that I had just never made time for. Scream I was particularly surprised by—I thought I had seen it but I think I had seen Scary Movie as a kid, not Scream, and somehow miraculously have never been spoiled for who the killer was so was still delightfully surprised at the end of the film.

Steph’s had us watch some weirder horror movies: Strange Darling, Lake Mungo, and Caveat and they were all really interesting, really weird little films. Great recommendations from Steph.

Looking at my image it’s occurring to me that only two things up there I watched on my own: Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and Fool Me Once everything else I watched with at least one other person but more often a group of people. Puss In Boots was a genuine surprise. I don’t think I’ve really enjoyed any of the Shrek Franchise movies since Shrek 2, including the other Puss In Boots movie I saw but I kept hearing good things about The Last Wish and it was genuinely incredible. I think I cried.

The classics I had previously seen all hold up: A Goofy Movie, A Knight’s Tale, The Princess Bride, Mad Max: Fury Road, and Kingdom of Heaven. Always fun to revisit something you’ve seen before and have it be at least as good as you remember it being. And the film Interview With The Vampire was just was wild and silly as I remembered, made all the more apparent because we had just finished watching the TV show which was incredible.

Almost all of the shows this year that I watched were incredible. Arcane we re-watched the first season (which is basically perfect as a show) and the second season was way messier than the first, there’s more to pick apart, but I think that’s only in contrast to the first season. And it is somehow more visually impressive than the first season. House of the Dragon season two got a lot of rough critical reviews for being ‘boring’ but I found it extremely engaging and interesting and I’m excited for the third season. Interview With The Vampire seasons one and two were both fantastic interpretations of the book. Loved watching those. Blue Eye Samurai fucking ruled. Beautiful show with a very cool protagonist. I am a little worried about how season 2 is going to go but only time will tell. I bounced off of the manga Delicious in Dungeon but watching the show with friends was an absolute delight and I want to give the manga another shot as a result.

Film is never a thing I really have any goals around watching more or less of, and I’m now wondering if part of why it winds up being such a weirdly consistent number year after year is because it’s largely a social activity for me. That does make me happy though! It’s nice to be able to look at all the stuff I watched and be able to recognize that it was (almost) all stuff I watched with friends or family. We just watched the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy yesterday (as a last day of the year activity) and those movies still rule and it was fun to have so many people hanging out to watch.

Okay so I played my PS4 so little this year Sony slash the Playstation Network will not give me a yearly recap. Which I think is very funny because apparently you need to just play ten hours to reach them giving you a recap. Yeah I… I didn’t finish Horizon Forbidden West this year. Or Pokemon Arceus. Or Pokemon Scarlet. Whoops. (Or Hades or Tears of the Kingdom but to be fair I didn’t start that one.) As mentioned above, though, this isn’t super surprising. Most of my time was taken up by car wrapping and making five billion documents for D&D.

So despite not finishing the games I highlighted (except for Folklore) at the end of last year I did start 21  games this year, finished 15, and reached 100% on 5. So I finished three quarters of what I started and I think that’s still a win. Finished fewer games overall (last year I finished 32) but a huge part of that is going to be because I didn’t play many of the Edutainment Point And Click Games. Here’s the games I completed:

But wait! That’s 12, not 15! I count slash track seasons of Fortnite if I participate in them even a little. So I have some seasons of Fortnite that I played but didn’t play much so it felt silly to make a graphic for it (all of the marvel-focused seasons are so boring) but because they’re time-based they just kinda end on their own so basically if I played it enough to put a “started” date on my tracking spreadsheet I still counted them when the season ended as ‘finishing’ but don’t put them onto that sideblog unless I felt I really participated in it. So far I’ve tracked 14 seasons of Fortnite that I have participated in enough that I counted a ‘start’ date. Wild!

Didn’t finish a lot of games overall I guess but did enjoy the ones I did. And it feels really strange to have finished more video games than books.

Zelda I and Zelda II are both really difficult. Playing on an emulator on a modern console at least allows a person to essentially have a rewind time ability which is not a part of the intended experience but I also do not care, those games are hard. Zelda II especially so. I cannot honestly say I enjoyed playing Zelda II and at this point I feel like it’s really rare that I play a game I just… don’t like. Most games have something good about them, it’s hard to make a game these days without some aspect of it being good, running into a game that was actively aggravating was surprising. I know a lot of people get really frustrated at games but I feel like I largely don’t so running into a game that was making me frustrated in a not-fun way was an interesting experience. (And this is different from a game being frustrating in a “supposed to be hard” way, there’s a huge difference in the frustration I felt playing Zelda II than the frustration I felt playing the secret boss in Splatoon 2 to get the hairstick cosmetic item.)

I did start The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and while I have yet to finish it it’s incredible how fun it is and how they really settled into that “Zelda” pattern so early. The first game obviously has a lot of the ground work for the entire franchise (and the second game… doesn’t) but the third installment feels like a modern Zelda game—it just has the same overall feel and beats as the majority of the other entries in the series. It feels like Zelda even though there’s so many games following it. It really feels like the first to realize the ‘language’ (I’m not sure how to describe it) that the Zelda franchise still has to this day. It was just really interesting to play two games that are Zelda games but don’t “feel” like it and then have no real transition period, it went from two games where yeah the aesthetics and title are Zelda but they don’t “feel” like Zelda games to suddenly have “oh this game feels exactly like a Zelda game”. Hopefully that makes sense!

100%ing Plate Up! was a fun challenge which I mostly had done by the end of last year and finished up at the beginning of this year. Great little game with some really fun modes with some challenging but fun to get achievements.

Firewatch, Folklore, Resident Evil 5, and Rule of Rose are all games I’ve played before, but not for a long time and they were all fun to revisit. Firewatch is still a wonderful game, though it did leave me reflecting a lot on game preservation as some aspects of the game were weirdly buggy. Not unplayable but some things just didn’t work quite right anymore (the main one was the protagonist having issues moving at all on some terrain, I guess the camera or character model was getting stuck on something). I love my PC, and I love PC gaming, but there’s something depressing about knowing some games can’t or won’t be preserved in a way that lets them be played indefinitely. And while console allows games to be preserved to an extent because they’re no longer in print without a means of replicating and preserving them a game becoming totally unplayable is kind of inevitable. (Especially given that things like emulation aren’t strictly legal.) Consoles will break down over time, as the technology advances some pieces to repair might become totally unavailable or prohibitively expensive and the games themselves can wear down or break or warp over time. It doesn’t help that even with modern consoles online stores will eventually go offline making a digital library that hasn’t been downloaded inaccessible, and if a game was deleted from a modern console to make space reinstalling it later may not guarantee it has all the files necessary to run correctly as the disc data will be missing the day one and beyond patches. We’re in an era of gaming where our current (and recent) generation of games feel more prone to failure or being lost in the future than the older games are simply because eventually those servers and storefronts that host all the updates and patches will be turned offline. At some point the only method to play a game you bought at some point may to be to risk piracy. (And I am all on board with piracy but I am lamenting the fact that preserving a complicated form of art is basically illegal, unless you are the holder of the copyright but those who do seem largely uninterested in preserving these things. If the game was popular enough they’ll just re-release a remaster later!) Didn’t mean to start babbling about that but I am leaving it here because it’s something I think about pretty regularly so may as well put it in the New Years Post Time Capsule.

But on that note Folklore is a game that gets me particularly stressed out on this concept and was another game that made me think about game preservation. I still have a massive soft spot for the game, visually it’s impressive for the time, the combat is interesting if a little strange at times. It can also be a massive slog, and the story makes no sense and for the life of me I have no idea if that’s because it was translated poorly or just made no sense to begin with. I do think it’s interesting enough to be preserved, but the game is only available on PS3. PS3’s are, currently, cheap, as are their games, but the lack of love for the console has made emulation for it scarce if not entirely nonexistent. I genuinely do not know if emulators for it exist—I know of emulators for basically every other console with the exception of our more modern ones (excluding the Switch) probably because 99% of the games on them are cross-platform so it makes more sense to just crack the PC version than emulate the console one. PS3’s are basically worthless right now, but games that were stuck on that console and not popular enough to get upgraded and remastered out to PC or PS4 are eventually going to get lost in limbo and almost already are.

Anyway! Folklore was weird as fuck and made no sense at all but I still kind of love it? And the OST still fucking slaps. Rule of Rose also has an OST that rules so hard some youtubers out there use it as background music in their videos and it throws me off every time. I re-played it just to get a grasp on all the things I needed to warn my friends for before I streamed it to them (the game is real weird and messed up) (and to get the optional cosmetics, of course, because I could not find my save on the 8 different memory cards I have) and it got me reflecting on how before stable, fast internet connections were guaranteed for most people games just wouldn’t get finished, but would be polished—unfinished content being cut in favour of releasing the game in a functional state. Extremely interesting in a totally different way to the current landscape of endless patches. I will not get as into that, but there’s so much to reflect on in the gaming industry! I can’t play a video game out here without ruminating upon the context in which it exists in the real world apparently. Speaking of the real world, a few months ago a sealed container or shipment of the PAL version of Rule of Rose were found significantly dropping the price in that market, which is neat because due to a lot of fear around the game being basically Evil (it’s a game about childhood trauma and bullying) it never got officially released in Europe.

Resident Evil 5 I played with Steph! It was fun and exactly as nonsensical as I remembered it being, but it was fun and has its moments. The PC version luckily lets you completely turn off cutscene QTEs and defaults to them being off which is wonderful because the QTEs were brutal especially playing co-op.

I played through and fully completed the Splatoon 3: Side Order DLC and I was really pleasantly surprised! It’s a rogue lite and at first I was feeling a little ‘ugh’ about it (not sure why, guess I just wasn’t in the mood for that style of game) but Nintendo is really good at taking a concept and making a really fun, really functional version of it.

And finally The Case of the Golden Idol I think is the only game I started and finished this year which was just, completely new. Like technically the Splatoon DLC is new, I hadn’t played it before, but I had played the base game’s campaign and plenty of multiplayer, Zelda I and II I hadn’t played before but I’ve played plenty of Zelda games before. Plate Up! I started last year. Fortnite is ongoing and never changes that much. And the rest were all replays. The Case of the Golden Idol was the first fully new game I played, not familiar to my brain at all.

And it was really freaking good. I was playing it with friends but it was really scratching an itch for me. It’s a really satisfying puzzle game with a wild but very fun story. After we played it it got an update with a version that had different menus which I think were supposed to be controller friendly but were way less friendly for connecting the pieces, it obfuscated things in a really weird way which made it a little more difficult to play when I was showing it to some other people after my friends and I played it. If you like figuring things out, solving things in a ‘narrative’ way I would absolutely recommend this game. Haven’t played the second one yet (it just came out recently) but I am very much looking forward to it.

I might not have played much of my PS4 but I did play on CurseBreaker (my PC) plenty so my steam recap is still fun to look at and includes the games I started but didn’t finish.

As you can see, Phasmophobia has basically taken over my life. I feel like I have pretty quickly gone from having zero fucking clue how to play the game and barely understanding how it works to being able to identify ghosts reasonably well with no evidence. I’m working on levelling up and the more challenging modes right now. I am maybe a little bit worried that getting so aggressively into the game has made me mildly to moderately annoying to play the game with but people are still willing to play it with me so hopefully that’s just in my head! Really hoping to 100% this one I’m having a blast with it. Included the graph for it because I think on steam it’s the only game I played on my PC in December (on steam, anyway) and I find that amusing.

Started Dead by Daylight this year which is a game I never really thought I’d get around to playing. I’ve had a few friends who played it over the years and for the most part those who played it seemed largely pretty ‘meh’ on it? Like, played it a lot, or at least frequently, but never actively recommended it. Finally got into it and was enjoying it! Unfortunately then Phasmophobia came along and I basically haven’t touched DBD since. Ah well I’ll get back to it eventually.

And I have finally been playing Control with Vin. Been one of those games I’ve been meaning to play for ages, and Vin really likes it so we’ve been playing! We kind of dropped off in December just due to December being the month of things always happening at all times but we’ll pick it back up soon. I am really excited to play more we kinda stopped at a really interesting point in the plot.

Oh, and there is the Nintendo recap but it feels a little weirder since I basically only played the NES emulator and the Splatoon 3 DLC with a little bit of Splatoon 3 multiplayer, and then Fortnite is there because I use my switch to idle-grind levels. But here it is anyway:

The 134 hours in Fortnite is wild that was all just, idling for levels. And I didn’t even bother with like two of the seasons this year at all.

Overall good year for gaming for me, I think. I didn’t really touch any of the goals I had at the end of last year for it but like I said I am over being stressed about not meeting arbitrary goals. Especially for things that are supposed to be fun.

I have listened to podcasts for years! And because so many of the ones I’ve listened to are serials—they just keep going—it never occurred to me to track them. Then one of my friends recommended an audio drama and I had no idea how to track it. It’s audio-book-esq… but without it being a published book. It’s a story, that I experienced, so I wanted to track it—and so I decided to start tracking podcasts. The end of the year as a time to start tracking this wasn’t the best call because I am currently trying to decide how to track the various serial shows I listen to that don’t make up their own seasons (I’m thinking of doing it as each year is a season since most of them will do different kinds of shows at the end of the year or new years wrap ups so that feels like a clean way to do it, but it also means that suddenly I have a lot of shows to add to my tracking spreadsheet all at once.)

So this tracking segment is kind of a WIP but here’s what I did listen to that I’ve tracked so far this year:

The entire top row there is one series, The White Vault, which so far is very intriguing! I’m excited to listen to more and learn what’s going on. It’s an isolation horror audio drama with weird ancient cult or religion things going on with maybe eldritch beasts or gods or something. Not sure yet, not sure if it’ll get explained, but it’s very cool so far and the voice actors are really good! Badlands Cola is in a similar vein of being a horror audio drama, but it strays more toward that surreal-space kind of horror where there’s eldritch slash unknowable beings affecting the world and people trying to use it to their own ends. Also very neat, and I was totally shocked when pretty early on it was clear it was actually taking place in Alberta’s badlands. I always get really excited when stuff takes place in Canada. Both of those were recommended by the same friend and when I have time I absolutely plan to take more of their recommendations.

The final one there is The Legend of SwordQuest which is a reporting podcast talking about the contest surrounding Atari’s Swordquest series of games released on the Atari 2600 in the ‘80s. It was this massive thing Atari was doing during that early video game boom but the contest fell apart as the industry did and as Atari changed ownership with the final Swordquest game never being released (and possibly never being made) and the prizes that were not given out have long been a mystery. Some things are still left up in the air by the end of the show but it is extremely interesting if you like video game history at all, and even has a bonus episode on the landfill where so many Atari games (not just E.T.) were buried.

Would absolutely recommend any of these, but I haven’t finished The White Vault yet so for something shorter and more digestible, if you’re looking for a podcast, I’d recommend Badlands Cola for fiction and The Legend of Swordquest for non-fiction.

I have never really tracked music in these things before, but with Spotify Wrapped being a thing and the wild amount of new music I got into this year I figured why not. I’ve already really enjoyed occasionally putting on older CDs in the car and being surprised by what songs have remained favourites for months and which songs I haven’t listened to in a hot minute, so why not do it in this recaps, too? My Spotify Wrapped feels weirdly inaccurate, it’s basically entirely from when I was building a playlist for my D&D character and her twin as well as another character playlist I was making for an RP server but WHATEVER HERE IT IS ANYWAY:

I have a suspicion that my “Top Artists” has more to do with how many songs I listened to from an artist (rather than how much I actually listened to that artist) and, as you can see from my songs to artists ratio being almost 2:1 I don’t really listen to a lot of songs from just a few artists. (Like that’s the average, I listen to roughly two songs per artist I listen to.) So because I was going through the entirety of Within Temptation’s and Florence + The Machine’s discography (of which there are many songs) that skewed my top artists. That’s my theory. Anyway I really enjoy spotify’s weird little summaries of the genres or styles of things you listened to. I was particularly delighted by “Cottagecore Ukulele Forest phase” because I am not sure anything I listened to this year even had ukuleles in it. I do wish they’d show what songs made them pick those titles, though.

For the fun of looking back later here’s my current “On Repeat” playlist on Spotify. I am way, way, way too lazy to type these out (and if I did that I would also feel compelled to link to them) so enjoy another giant image.

Most of these I associate with my characters but there’s also a lot of songs I associate with one of my friend’s characters which is also very fun. Will I remember who belongs to who in the future? No clue, guess we’ll see. Or I’ll see. It is also fun how many of these songs are new to me as of this year. Not all of them are, but I think the majority are. This is really weird for me that I have so many new songs to me that I listen to consistently.

For years I was starting to think that the time of finding new music that I like was largely over—just thinking about my parents (and older people in general) and how they’ve been listening to mostly the same tracks over and over again since I was a kid. Was starting to think it was kind of inevitable that your brain ‘sets’ or solidifies around certain songs and then that’s it. For years I’d be lucky if I found maybe a handful of new songs I liked over the course of a year, finding a new artist who I like the majority or even more than two songs in their discography is extremely rare for me so to have found (largely in thanks to one of my friends) so many new songs and artists is just… completely wild to me. And a big factor in why I even thought to include music this year.

Absolutely bonkers year for music for me!

As I mentioned, I started playing D&D again, my last group kind of fell apart a few years ago and I have been craving that table top role play ever since and finally the stars aligned! And I fell into a really wild rabbit hole of making five billion documents for it. (Have I mentioned I love excel?)

For the campaign I’m in I have made: A searchable character & location glossary; Session summaries; Transcripts of scenes; Saved written role-plays; Made a timeline of events on a broad and local scale (which includes a tracker for upcoming events); Made a document for my thoughts, my character’s thoughts, and my conspiracy theories; Made a ciphered letter to another character; Made two massive playlists and then wrote out explanations for every single song and I still am not done and have not shared that; Made my character sheet, of course, but started modifying it to make it easier to use and track things; Session note documents of course (rough and unshared); Made a functional cipher translator that steps through two different ciphers to get the result; Made three supplementary documents to go with said cipher (explaining the ciphers, how they work, how they should work, what it would take to break them, etc.); Our DM’s spouse would sometimes give us trophies so I also made a document to track that because that’s my idea of fun (spreadsheets); and started recording sessions (we were using a bot before but the folks in charge of it were getting swamped by work and my set up I used to us to record our former dnd sessions still works and is easy for me to do so I just kinda took over).

Which is a lot of documents on its face but the cipher required me learning a lot of new things in Sheets (which was delightful and aggravating at the same time) which took me a lot of time and my thoughts, character thoughts, and conspiracies make up over 100 pages of text, and I don’t even want to look at how many pages the session summaries are (I did not write all of them, but have written the majority). I have been thriving but it also takes up a lot of time. I’m currently behind on all of those because work was kicking my entire ass for a while, but that’s okay. I’ll get back into the swing of it. And when I do I will make my DM expire. My DM and two of the guest players cannot believe the shit I manage to guess because of the way in which I put things together, and I still have no clue what things I’ve guessed correctly. My partner, who is one of those guests, has mentioned wanting to throw up several times at this point from the things I have guessed right. Unfortunately my guesses are basically essays so I can’t even use these reactions as confirmation of anything because they’ll say I got something right except I just dropped like ten pages of unhinged rambling so I have no clue what. It has been really fucking fun, though.

I haven’t drawn my character yet for this campaign, and most of the art I’ve done this year has just been little things for my mom, but I have drawn my snakesona Lichen a few times (including the meme redraw above). So there’s that:

And I’ve still been wrapping things! It’s always fun to scroll through photos at the end of the year, I go from “I feel like I did barely anything at all” to “holy shit look at all the stuff I did!” It was so easy to feel like nothing ever happened ever before we had the ability to document every stray little thing we did.

Anyway for wrapping, as I mentioned previously: There’s my sister’s new-used car after the one I wrapped last year died, there’s a PS5 slim I did which I love the colour blue on, there’s the interior of my 3DS XL which I did do last year but wanted to do better since the creases weren’t laying quite right. I also wrapped my two decade old keyboard (as of the new year it is genuinely two decades old, this thing still has a PS/2 plug). Re-wrapped the trunk of an acquaintances vehicle with some spare wrap I had hanging around (the wrap we used before was… shrinking? I’ve never seen car vinyl do that before so we re-did it because the clear coat underneath is looking really rough). Wrapped my sister-in-law’s kobo as well, she chose a really great metallic green for it. Mostly happy with how it turned out but the buttons were tricky. Also made a bunch of vinyl stickers, a bunch of a character from our D&D group (most went to our DM’s house, I kept some though and I don’t remember who else I gave them to) and Vin graciously made me more sticker designs of our goober characters so I was able to make those for our stuff. And for posterity: There’s Button! She still says hoi! (She, and I, had our first ever flat-flat tire this year, wouldn’t pump up, so had to jack her up, put on the spare, and get the tire repaired.)

Did a little of re-shelling and tech repair this year as well! Re-shelled Steph’s Nintendo Switch Pro-Controller, and re-shelled some of my joycons because the ‘soft’ plastic of the shells was getting dirty but more than that they were getting these weird red speckles? Had zero clue what it could be and it wouldn’t come off and it was kind of skeeving me out so I just went for a reshell and while I am sad to not have that seafoam green, sky blue, and white colour combo I do really like the transparent shells for joycons so it worked out. Also reshelled an old DS Lite I had but accidentally mucked up the top screen in the process so had to get a new upper screen and then learn how to solder the speaker wires back into place. (And I did a little clefa decal on it for my friend, too.) 

Not pictured but I also cleaned a friend’s PS5 earlier this year and was utterly mystified when all of the “dust” that came out of it was laundry lint. Like. It smelled like fresh laundry, and was that blueish gray fluffy stuff you so often see in the lint trap of a drying machine. It wasn’t dust. It was clothing fabric. Which really explained why the PS5 kept shutting down on her it basically literally had a blanket on the heat sinks. Wasn’t regular dust, was clothing fibers. Absolutely bizarre. That’s the first and only time I’ve ever seen that before.

And I helped bring TWO computers into the world this year! The first is Moonstone (born Jan 29th, 2024) that I also did decals for, for fun. I built it for one of my best friends so they’d have a PC that could do some more demanding tasks and gaming. She’s not cutting edge but she’s a solid little machine with loads of storage and I’m happy with how she came out. Had a hilarious mishap building though where I just completely failed to plug in the CPU’s power connector on the motherboard and could not figure out why it wouldn’t boot to BIOS. Everything else had power so fans spun to life, LEDs turned on, but CPU had no power so it just hung like that. And you know that CPU power connector is crammed up in a dark corner so it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize I just failed to connect it. Oh well, shit happens and I figured it out.

The second is Vibes! (Born Oct 4th, 2024) So named after the fusion name of my and Vin’s strangest and most unhinged character pairing. I put together the parts list, kept an eye on sales and bundles, and walked Vin through putting it together because I could not be there in person. She turned out beautifully though and I am sooo envious of the little display screen Vin’s got on that case. (Even if CurseBreaker had a screen like that I wouldn’t see it, it’d be facing the wall—unless I reconfigured where my PC sits but who wants to do that.) Supposed to be making a decal for the tempered glass on Vibes at some point but we’ll get to it. The bottom pic is my midwife set up for Vibes—I was on call drawing on pictures of Vin’s motherboard and case for where things were supposed to go (using a rigged up webcam controlled model of Lichen that Steph made for me).

Really happy with both of these! But also when I was looking through photos I could not believe I made Moonstone at the beginning of this year, it feels like ancient history. Time moves in such strange ways.

Also had some nice just, organizing this year. Nothing major but it is something I sort of pick at as time goes on and it makes me happy. This year I realized I could put itty bitty drawers into the cubbies on my desk and while I do not have stuff to put in all the drawers this has greatly increased my happiness with how my desk looks and feels to sit at. I turned one of the drawers into a dice rolling tray by lining the bottom with some foam and felt because the foldable trays I have keep getting wrinkles and making rolls weird, and if I was going to get a bigger dice tray I wanted it to look nice for when it would be stored and the nice ones are expensive. So I very much like my converted mini-drawer solution. It is not the most aesthetic but it is the most neat and tidy which I like very much.

Also figured out some cable management for my TV area, I’ve been doing a lot of streaming things to my computer (since my PS4 is a hideously expensive blu-ray player at this point) so I figured out a way to make it easier to unplug and plug my systems into the TV set up and my computer set up without having to fish around the back of the console for the HDMIs.

This one is so minor but I saw this Tallneck lego set early this year and felt a mighty urge to have it. So I made my first “adult” Lego build. It has not sparked an overall Lego addiction but it was very fun to build, the Lego design works great for the Horizon creatures and I would absolutely buy more if they made more. Luckily they have not so my wallet is safe, but I did enjoy making this one and looking at it makes me happy. Not a full blown hobby, but still!

And this isn’t technically a hobby but dang the solar eclipse was this year it feels like it happened a nebulously long amount of time ago! I was able to drive down into the path of totality it was extremely cool. It went totally dark and then got light again, I have a video that I will cherish forever. (The last photo is not mine, the first two are, but I do not know if the final photo was published anywhere as it was a friend of a relative that took it.)

As always I must show off all the cool art I got from my cool friends.

Which I normally try to condense more than this but I got so much good art this year and there’s MORE that I didn’t include because I didn’t want to stretch the image into forever. I’ve settled into a kind of pattern with the order but first is the @refundtheticket section! They did a bunch of YCHs this year which I fully took advantage of and I adore them all. The 3D model of my sneksona was on my last year one, too, but after Steph got Moonstone they rigged it up for me and now I can control it via webcam and it’s one of my favourite things. I don’t use it often but when I do it brings me joy. They also made me a physical, 3D printed version of one of my favourite drawings of Lelia they’ve done and now it sits on my desk and I look at it every day like :) Steph also does commissions! Their info is here!

Then we get into the @auyamx section which I could have just completely flooded with my character Myosotis but they did so much good art this year. I was absolutely spoiled with pictures of Myosotis, but they also gave me plenty of Lelia, Vai and Bernie, a little Veene and Kohra sticker, some silly Osuna’s even though I haven’t drawn a reference yet (sorry to everyone), and while the other characters are either theirs or our friends (and DM) I love Dove, Aepeiros, Pidge/Harle, Naexidor, and Peirs so fucking much I couldn’t not include them. SO many good, fun drawings this year I go absolutely feral over all of them.

And then the bottom section with the very intense looking green lady is by @mossrotts! I gotta a widdle wewia and a werewolf wewia and a super fucking cute Myosotis and a very intense Osuna (sorry about the lack of ref I love you). He also does commissions which you can find information on here!

I adore all the art I got this year and continue to be lucky to have the coolest and most creative friends in the world.

All right so! Winding this down with looking toward the new year. Last year was my first time trying out, “yearly themes”. Here’s a video about it. The short version is: Instead of making a ‘resolution’ or a ‘goal’ with a fail state (i.e. Exercise Every Day) you make a broader idea that you’ll work toward which may not wind up as you envisioned it but can change with you and isn’t something you can ‘fail’ at. (Like instead of exercise every day, which if you miss once you then fail, your ‘theme’ can be ‘health’ so then any exercise more than you would have done normally counts, or if you break a leg or suddenly become ill your theme of ‘health’ can still be applicable just addressing the more urgent issue.)

In 2024 my theme was “Enjoying what I have” and I originally envisioned it as not buying new things, not indulging in new hobbies, so that I could focus on catching up on things (books, games, etc.). But then life happens and I’m not going to turn down the opportunity to play D&D when the stars align for it, and my sister’s car broke down and she needed the new one wrapped. So my theme warped from the intended purpose to a broader appreciation (or enjoyment) of my skills and even though I fell head over heels in love with our D&D campaign and made five billion documents for it that was me enjoying and flexing what I have—being my love and skill with spreadsheets and babbling endlessly about characters and connections. The car wrapping, too, got to be an enjoyment and appreciation of a skill I’ve been building for the last few years. It was also my first year trying out a theme and I’m still working out how best to make it work, the fact that I consistently remembered it and thought about it is honestly more than I expected given how resolutions and goals have gone for me in the past. They usually slip my mind entirely and then oops! It’s been six months and I forgot all about it five months ago!

I did start a ‘Theme Tracking’ spreadsheet and wasn’t sure if I would keep up with it but… shockingly I have! I’m becoming a big believer in just… figuring out what works for you. Apparently for me (right now) that’s spreadsheets. I can remember this ‘Theme Tracker’ spreadsheet in a way I have never been able to remember any agenda or planner or notebook or app in my life. (My partner found Notion this year and that seems to be working for them in a similar way.) I already have ideas for how I want to change up that Tracking spreadsheet but since I made it in February I’ve been slowly iterating on it month by month to make it work better for me, just as I think of it, which is maybe the beauty of a spreadsheet for me, personally. I can start with the barebones because I have enough literacy to slap together something simple, and then as I go “it would be nice if…” I can add it.

So! All that said I think 2025’s theme is going to be: Catching Up. I’m going to intend it in much the same spirit as I meant “Enjoying what I have” originally but hopefully the reframing of it will help me focus on it better. I have no illusions that I’ll ever be “caught up” on everything. There’s too much stuff in the world and that’s not really how my brain works, but some things I think I could be caught up on, and some things are okay to remain a “catching up” forever, but I’d like to reduce some of my lists, some of my piles of tasks, et cetera. Books are probably the biggest itch since I have a physical, in person to-be-read pile but it kinda goes for anything. I want to get all my spreadsheets back in order (so many of them, D&D and personal tracking, are in a bizarre half-overhauled limbo), I want to shave down my “on the go” games to just one (excluding social games), I just want to reduce the mental and physical clutter a little. That’s all. So that’s what I’m gonna try!

Overall once again I think it was a pretty good year! We’re ignoring global events in that assessment. In my little corner of the universe things are mostly okay. I went to three weddings this year, which was wild, I have never gone to so many weddings in a year before. I got to see old friends, my partner came up to visit, I got to know some people who have been kind of on the outskirts of my life, just outside my social bubble, for years now and they are a delight. I did do a lot of cool stuff this year! Got to do so much creative writing and role-playing with friends! It’s been pretty good!

I mentioned at the end of my post last year about how different things might have been if I had left the farm sooner, and about a person in a similar situation to me and luckily she has left now! She just did about a month ago and we’re all proud of her and happy for her!

Happy New Year everyone! If you do a similar write up please tag me or link me or drop me a message, seriously I don’t really go on my dashboard in the way any social media platform intends. I use tumblr in the strangest way possible which is likely why I like it so much, but it does mean I’ll miss out on everyone’s new years stuff unless it’s brought to my attention.

Thank you for reading! Here’s a cozy Frunk to see you into the New Year!