#halo eu

[short-wooloo]

Ok so, clearly I have a thing for 7 ft Cyborg Supersoldier Sniper Women, because every time there's a Spartan team with one they end up being my favorite character of the group

August-099

Linda-058

Kai-125

[nekoprankster218]

okay so was anyone gonna tell me that Halo released a short story about a Sangheili telling a little girl the story of Fal 'Chavamee while protecting her only to be like "actually this ending is depressing how about you make one up with your toys"

or was I supposed to just find a random comment, wonder wtf they were talking about and thought they meant Oasis from Halo: Fractures, google "halo story shard", and find out there's a whole part of canon that I've just completely never heard about???

[mx-matched-knickknacks]

Joostober Day 8 >:3

[daddy-ul]

this halo on fire

Paris, France - 20/05/23

[ficuscircus]

HPI rewatch: 205, "De mille feuk"

[legends-expo]

Panel Announcement: Storytelling in a Shared Universe

Authors Jason Fry, Barbara Hambly, Michael Kogge and Sean Stewart discuss the highs and lows of the creative process in writing stories as a team within a shared franchise. This panel will be on Sunday.

Buy tickets now: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/legends-consortium-2023-tickets-541786186067

[felassan]

Post on the Dragon Age website:

"Journal #2 The Voices of the Veilguard Get acquainted with some of the voice actors and join us for our upcoming character panel at SDCC! --- Hey everyone, We're packing our bags and heading down to SDCC this week and alongside that comes more Dragon Age: The Veilguard reveals! Today, we're excited to reveal some of the voice actors who bring our characters to life - a few of whom will be joining us for our character-focused panel at the convention. ICYMI, our SDCC panel "Dragon Age - Meet The Heroic Companions of Thedas” will feature Creative Director John Epler and Creative Performance Director Ashley Barlow as they discuss bringing the cast of Dragon Age: The Veilguard to life. Moderated by Lucy James, host and video producer at GameSpot, panel attendees will hear from Neve, Emmrich, Harding, and Lucanis’ voice actors as they discuss their motivations and inspirations that have lit up the personalities and uniqueness of each companion. The panel will be held on Friday, July 26 from 3:15PM - 4:15PM in Room 6BCF.  If the panel isn't enough to satisfy your Dragon Age cravings and you'll be at SDCC in person, join us at the Dark Horse Comics booth (#2615) where we will have swag to give away as well as talent & developer signings. Keep an eye on our social channels for more information on this. Discord members who drop by the booth and show us that they're a part of the server will receive a Romancer pin while supplies last. For those of you who will be keeping an eye on SDCC coverage from home, we'll have the full panel video available at a later date. Stay tuned. With that said, let’s get into our cast."

-

"Four Rooks are Better than One Featuring the most comprehensive character creator in Dragon Age yet, your character, nicknamed Rook, debuts with four different voice overs to make this story truly your own. Rook is Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s leader in the making who has to bring the Veilguard together to take down the threats on Thedas. Immerse yourself even further by picking your voice, with two options from US/North American personalities and two from the United Kingdom/EU.  Rook’s voices have been provided by iconic television, film and video game personalities Alex Jordan (Cyberpunk 2077, The Amazing World of Gumball), Bryony Corrigan (Baldur’s Gate 3, Good Omens), Erika Ishii (Apex Legends, Destiny 2), and Jeff Berg (Battlefield 1, NCIS). What even is Dragon Age: The Veilguard without the Veilguard? These 7 companions stand ready to join the fight to restore order to Thedas. We're happy to announce that our cast of companions includes: - Ali Hillis (Mass Effect 3, Naruto), returns to the fray as Harding, the dwarven scout, a Dragon Age: Inquisition hero with a big heart, a positive outlook, and a ready bow – as well as unexpected magical powers. - Ike Amadi (Mass Effect 3, Halo 5: Guardians, Insomniac's Spider-Man) as Davrin, a bold and charming Grey Warden who has made a name for himself as a monster hunter. - Jee Young Han (Perry Mason, Unprisoned) as Bellara, a creative and romantic Veil Jumper obsessed with uncovering ancient secrets. - Jessica Clark (True Blood, Pocket Listing) as Neve, a cynic fighting for a better future, both as a private detective and a member of Tevinter's rebellious Shadow Dragons.  - Jin Maley (Star Trek: Picard, Silicon Valley) as Taash, a dragon hunter allied with the Lords of Fortune who lives for adventure and doesn't mind taking risks.  - Nick Boraine (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Black Sails) as Emmrich, a necromancer of Nevarra's Mourn Watch who comes complete with a skeletal assistant, Manfred, voiced by Matthew Mercer (Critical Role, Fallout 4). - Zach Mendez (Horizon Forbidden West, Married Alive) as Lucanis, a poised & pragmatic assassin who descends from the bloodline of the House of Crows, a criminal organization renowned throughout Thedas.  Last but not least, we’re excited to let you know Gareth David-Lloyd is returning as Solas, and Brian Bloom as Varric. We have so many more people to introduce you to, including some returning characters, but we’re not quite ready to reveal all those yet, because of you know - story spoilers.  While that’s all we have for now, we’re eager to meet those of you attending SDCC and to continue our summer filled with reveals from Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Talk soon. — The Dragon Age Team"

[source] [Twitter post]

[thornowl]

Halo Pack (4 accessories, T-EU)

Unfortunately, they have nothing to do with the hit FPS game by Bungie.

Unisex, teen-elder (might convert for toddlers and children if there's demand for it).

All 4 accessories include proper handmade (not decimated) LODs (halo4 LOD3 is 272 tris, for example).

Original meshes. 32px textures. Technically CASTable, but they weren't meant to be, so patterns appear tiny.

The glowing effect is thanks to basic Sims 3 bloom. If you have disabled it, the accessory will appear as a silhouette.

Custom CAS thumbnails.

Download (SFS):

Install only one version!

Dental category — get this one if you're unsure.

Left garter category — alternative version for sims who are already using a dental accessory. Camera zooms in to a sim's thighs when CASTing the accessory.

[unadulteratedpiratepizza]

The "Wait no, the PS3 isn't retro" List

Have you ever said "The Wii isn't old, that came out when I was in High School"? Do you remember getting an N64 for Christmas? Did you play Halo 3 on Xbox Live with your friends while complaining about your math class? Then get ready to be destroyed by the ages of your childhood game systems (As of 2023)! Just remember that an age of 15 years makes it retro.

Famicom/NES: 1983(JP)/1985(US) Age: 40/38

Mega Drive/Genesis: 1988(JP)/1989(US) Age: 35/34

Super Famicom/SNES: 1990(JP)/1991(US) Age: 33/32

Sega Saturn: 1994(JP)/1995(US) Age: 29/28

PlayStation: 1994(JP)/1995(US) Age: 29/28

Nintendo 64: 1996 Age: 27

Sega Dreamcast: 1998(JP)/1999(US) Age: 25/24

PlayStation 2: 2000 Age: 23

GameCube: 2001 Age: 22

Xbox: 2001(US)/2002(JP,EU) Age: 22/21

Xbox 360: 2005 Age: 18

PlayStation 3: 2006 Age: 17

Nintendo Wii: 2006 Age: 17

Nintendo Wii U: 2012 Age: 11

PlayStation 4: 2013 Age: 10

Xbox One: 2013 Age: 10

[helix-enterprises117]

What is an "Ultimate Universe?"

In my psychotic and incoherent ramblings about an AU that I've kept FAR TOO LONG to myself, I'm sure you all have occasionally seen me use "Ultimate Universe" as a means of describing my AU; hell, it's literally on on the summary paragraph for my AU's series on Ao3.

That's begs the question, a question no-one asked: What's an Ultimate Universe?

To put it simply, for those who don't know: An Ultimate Universe is an alternate-continuity reboot of an older IP that's meant draw in the general audience (who know little of the source-material) to this new work so that they can become new fans of both the work itself AND the franchise at large.

The term was coined by Marvel Comics, who created the "Ultimate Comics" line-up (a series of graphic-novels that can be found on store-shelves anywhere) in the Turn Of The Millennium to draw in new fans with their "Hip, Trendy, Edgy, New Wave and Experimental" alternate-universe take on classic Marvel. It worked. So well, in fact, that just last year... they rebooted the Ultimate Comics, reusing the name but doing everything in a completely different way.

Other examples beyond Marvel include:

The Kelvin-Timeline Star Trek films by JJ Abrams.

The Dark Knight Trilogy and Smallville were this for both Batman and Superman respectively.

The recent Planet Of The Apes films by Matt Reeves.

The Legends EU became a retroactive inverted example after Disney rebooted the main-universe.

And most appropriately, Paramount+'s Halo The Series is basically this for the Halo franchise.

That last example is more or less why I made this post. Basically, I saw what the show was trying to do and decided that I wanted to follow the same concept, but do it my way.

Halo Reloaded, aka 'The Reloaded!AU,' is MY attempt at an 'Ultimate Universe' for Halo.

Hopefully, that clears things up. Thank you for coming to me TED Talk.

[lady-ree]

Se o sol, a lua e as estrelas continuarem iguais, eu nunca te deixarei.

- The Villain’s White Lotus Halo

[short-wooloo]

According to a new Halo Waypoint Canon Fodder update, the Silver Team Spartans now officially exist in the Prime Halo universe, and actually appear in Halo Wars no less

See in the Halo Wars mission Arcadia Outskirts you encounter Omega Team, a six-Spartan unit, half of Omega Team was established in Halo Wars 2 DLCs to be August-099, Leon-011, and Robert-025, but the other half was left unnamed, until now

[willowtron]

Is Mike Tyson a mascot for Western Apathy? The Age of Ad Revenue.

I have a really bad habit of trying to make my "first" posts really special and good, so this time I'm going to break that habit by talking about something I really don't care about.

Okay, so Paul vs Tyson; probably the least exciting boxing match that could be conceived, where a semi-competent novice takes an easy and gentle win against a heavyweight champion from thirty-five years ago - where said novice has gained fame purely from being a large enough dickhead on the internet that people started giving him money, and the fifty-eight year old former champ seems both depressed and in poor health. Regardless of who you thought might win, the whole point of this was quite obviously just for Jake Paul to be able to say "I beat Mike Tyson!" (who really seems like he actually, genuinely, couldn't care less about losing).

This is at the same time as president-elect Donald J Trump (part 2!) has announced some of the most brainrot cabinet choices possible. I'd like to say they're smart grift choices or whatever, but it's pretty clear a lot of them are just people that built their career on being loud and divisive - and, most importantly, are disliked by most everyone on the left. Elon Musk, a man who earned his wealth through a combination of inheritance from slavery, scams, fraud, and cryptocurrency is going to be in charge of a government department named after a meme that stopped being funny almost a decade ago - and he's not even getting it to himself, it's a shared position. Matt Gaetz, who alleges he is technically not a pedophile, will also hold a position in government; as well as RFK Jr, failed presidential aspirant, who is (supposedly) largely opposed to Trump's political stances and perhaps very existence, but likes the idea of being involved in government enough that he still endorsed Trump to be president in the 2024 election.

About a month ago, around October-November of 2024, YouTube (owned by Google and ran by CEO Neal Mohan) quietly updated the way it serves ads; "unskippable, longer, more" seem to be the three main elements of YouTube's new ad direction, and this most recent change appears to be one of the most aggressive yet. Even in minor territories like the Isle of Man, where licensing small print has previously lead to a small amount of ads served, the number of ads has dramatically increased - all while YouTube's copyright systems remain famously unequal toward actual content creators, and ads themselves retain a high probability of breaching YouTube's terms of service.

After a series of aggressive acquisitions lead by CEO & Chairman Satya Nadella that had EU, US, and Chinese governments regarding the merger as anti-competitive and monopolistic, Microsoft successfully bought ownership of Activision-Blizzard-King; while the ABK name is perhaps most famed for titles such as World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, and Overwatch, it is actually Swedish partner King who owns the title Candy Crush Saga and the infrastructure to make strides into the mobile gaming industry for Microsoft. While the ownership of titles like Call of Duty unofficially "ends" the console wars (with Xbox's Halo and (sort of) PlayStation's CoD now being under the same company), minor aspects like this haven't been major factors in the gaming sphere since the more wide-spread adoption of PC gaming and handhelds like the Nintendo Switch. even so, in my opinion ABK as an acquisition pales in comparison to the purchase of Mojang's Minecraft, now just over ten years ago, which to this day retains a chokehold on the market of "games for children".

Minecraft, initially released in 2011 by Swedish company Mojang, and created by now-disgraced game designer Markus "Notch" Persson, has made a lasting cultural impact that I genuinely believe to be impossible to quantify. To try and provide even a slight amount of perspective, the iconic Steve "oof" has not been present in the game since Beta - which was now around fourteen years ago. And hey, remember King? Markus Persson used to work there. Anyway, in 2014 Microsoft acquired Mojang, and Minecraft with it, and has now owned the title for a decade. Perhaps one of the most controversial changes to the game (perhaps second only to... voter interference in the Mob Vote? Okay. Sure.) is the introduction of Microsoft's global chat-report moderation; regardless of whether you are in a public or private server, players have the ability to report any chat message from any player, and if deemed appropriate, Microsoft will then temporarily or permanently "silence" this player across every server.

I have a lot of love for Minecraft. If you took my playtime from every other game I've ever played, combined it, and doubled it, you still wouldn't reach my playtime in Minecraft. I was a child during its Alpha, I helped my school friends bypass security on school computers so they could play it, some of my closest friends were met on servers in that game, and there'll probably come a time where I write all of my thoughts about it properly. For now, all you need to know is that I don't look down on the title by any means, when I say Microsoft, and the capitalist elite, have ruined Children's gaming.

Every now and then, I think about the "Decline of children's spaces online" Reddit post on r/tumblr - the comments I feel are worth including in this, so forgive the link to reddit. I don't disagree with any aspects of the OOP or Reddit OP's collation by any means, but I feel it frames the problem from the perspective of people very much... more terminally online than myself. Not once have I ever thought "grah, these kids are taking my space away!" when I see a badly censored swear word or my favourite content creators lamenting demonitisation, I just think "wow advertisers fucking suck". Because they do, and the need for increased "family-friendly-ness" in an endless quest to make ad revenue actually profitable is killing all forms of social interaction online, be it via social media, video games, everything.

Shortly after the full acquisition of ABK by Microsoft, there was a large wave of permanent chat and account bans for players of the game Overwatch, due to the sending of swear words in chat. This caused uproar on social media, but was also largely seen as so ridiculous as to be funny; in a game where one of the characters will say "wanker", out loud, in game, you can be permanently banned for saying "fuck" or "shit". To my knowledge this has been reduced, but is still technically punishable. In a game where you go around, killing people, blood flying off their model as you hit them with your fists or shoot them with bullets, or electrocute them to death as they yell in agony, saying the fuck word is a bannable offense now.

On January 7th 2023, YouTuber and Twitch streamer RTGame posted the video "Youtube is Restricting My Content" in response to a back-and-forth with the media giant regarding a subtle and ambiguous alteration to YouTube's Terms of Service, and monetisation guidelines. This was, at the time, the latest in a string of ad-restriction changes that included requiring content creators to not use any foul language at the start of the video, requiring content creators to not use excessive amounts or severities of foul language, not show real actual human death, gore, and mutilation (which is still apparently allowed generally, but will cost you ad revenue. ???), etc. Three years prior, on March 23rd of 2020, YouTuber Tom Scott uploaded the video "YouTube's copyright system isn't broken. The world's is." The video highlights how copyright law and systems of enforcement have been outdated for years, in no small part due to the ability for individuals to make a living for themselves creating content and uploading it, without any form of corporate support beyond host websites like YouTube and Twitch. Ad revenue is the driving force behind an entire industry of online content creation - even things that utilise regular payments as part of a streaming service do so, typically, for the purpose of allowing the consumer to avoid ads. YouTube, Twitch, Spotify; all allow for individuals to post their own individual content, as long as the services themselves get a cut.

And as more and more of our infrastructure has moved online, and ads have become a tolerated nuisance tightly integrated into using basically any online service, we've been hit by the emergence of the largest obstacle yet; AI.

"AI" is not just ChatGPT. I do not say the term "AI" and refer to DallE or Grok or whatever other nonsense environment-killer is the Monster of the Week for anti-AI proponents. In many ways, the insinuation that these even count as "AI" is offensive to me as someone who grew up with the belief that the only true AI is one that deserves to be recognised as sentient. ChatGPT is not sentient. None of them are.

AI is ChatGPT, but it is also the way mobs move in the game Minecraft; it is also YouTube's content ID system for copyright; it is also the myriad of bots that operate on the stock market. It has been part of your daily life for years, much longer than it's been used to generate soulless art from the stolen work of actual artists - AI has served to remove the human element from the things too tedious or too numerous for humans to actually manage. Ads and copyright are right up there on that list. Which ads to serve, who to serve them to, and automatic filing of copyright claims have all been part of YouTube for long enough that I'd wager most people don't even really know the term "Content ID" anymore

"oh but those aren't really AI" yeah neither is a thing that just collects sentences and tries to blurt out something similar. They all just do data collection and then try to find trends, and no that's not the same as being neurodivergent, we're getting off track just trust me that they're the same for the purposes of this post. All you need to know is that your ads are served by AI, and probably largely generated by AI, and the entire content creation industry (be it social media like Twitter, live streaming platforms like Twitch, or hosting services like YouTube) is built almost solely upon ad revenue.

Games like Overwatch haven't been sanitised because children are stealing the spaces from adults; people don't censor swear words on posts because they care about the children; RTGame isn't replacing all cursing on his videos with literally the word "YouTube" just because he finds it funny (it is, though). Sanitisation occurs because ad revenue demands no limitations; because corporations that pay for ads don't want to hear about how the videos they have their ads on aren't appropriate for certain audiences, they don't care about the actual content they help pay for. They just want their cut - for their ad to reach as many people as possible.

I really didn't want to have to, but... I have to at least mention it. In a world where user consumption, clicks, ads viewed, and time watched are the primary metrics for financial success online, TikTok is the primary driving force behind a lot of "foul language focused" sanitisation. Censoring of the words kill, die, fuck, shit, sex, etc, etc, etc. It's... depressing. And the permeation of these habits onto other sites does make it feel like the only internet spaces available are baby spaces for people who can't handle a swear word or innate parts of the human experience. TikTok drives a significant amount of online discourse, both niche and mainstream, and acts as both a means of escaping real-world issues like genocide, poverty, and the horror of having a meaningful vote in the world's leading democratic nation, as well as a source of news and information in a world full of unacknowledged bias, misinformation, and five-second attention spans. TikTok has made the dystopian vision of a humanity that is both apathetic and powerless seem closer than ever by proving that, given the choice, a significant proportion of the population will not resist attempts to misinform them and dull their ability to process long-form information. TikTok is evidence that if your algorithm is good enough, then morals, beliefs, and self-respect are all secondary.

And that's the really important part. People do not think critically about the information they consume because the internet bombards you with a constant stream of it; this isn't TikTok specific, or even particularly restricted to just online content. It's about how accessible good, reliable sources of information are; it's about how trustworthy megacorporations are in regard to humanity's best interests; it's about whether ads are trying to serve the consumer, or trying to manipulate them. And most importantly, it's about how much people care - how critically they think about the information they receive and the content they consume, and how parties who don't want that can disincentivise it as much as possible.

Being unable to traverse the sheer expanse of opinion, information, and style that exists across the internet is just one barrier for uneducated and uninformed westerners. Partisan and tribal politics, distraction techniques targeting minorities and scapegoats, a skew towards conservative and reactionary political leanings from most every major news outlet, as well as a general sentiment that the world is "speeding up" - no time to rest, no time to think, just have the right opinions and work work work! - all contribute to the hostility of nuance and accuracy. "These people hate you and want to destroy your way of life" is a lot easier to understand than "well they don't actually hate you specifically, they just have a built up resentment for the systems that support your way of life due to the disenfranchisement of minorities and the working class - and they don't so much want to destroy your way of life as they want to help you understand that your way of life is actually harmful to you as well, because it's designed to only benefit the ultra-rich capitalist elite" when the people you're talking to have intentionally been given a biased and low-quality education (if any at all). FOX news likes stupid people; but those people don't like being called stupid (understandably) - and unfortunately there's no easy way to say "your preferred news source appeals to the uneducated" without it being insulting, or failing to get the point across.

It is both a societal and an individual responsibility to be educated and provide education, but I digress.

Remember Paul vs Tyson? and Donald Trump's cabinet? It's been a little while since we started, but I promise I didn't mention those for no reason.

Twitter (or X if you're a loser) is currently seeing a mass migration over to competitor Bluesky - a mix of Elon's appointment to Trump's government, as well as some unpopular changes regarding the block function, have spurred people to move away from Twitter once and for all; but it remains the world's largest social media site.

Overwatch has had global chat, the "looking for group" system, and the "unfiltered" text chat option all removed from the game - things like the in-built LFG or "Guilds" were promised, but never delivered. They likely never will following Microsoft's acquisition.

YouTube's largest channel is currently MrBeast, with T-Series, Cocomelon, SET India, and Kids Diana taking up 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th. Three of these five are aimed at children (aged 15 and under, per my arbitrary definition); The remaining two are multimedia brands. While PewDiePie is a controversial figure, his dethronement from the top of YouTube in 2019 fully signalled the end of YouTube being a site for individuals and its transition to being a site for brands, with more focus on ads and marketability.

TikTok's parent company ByteDance reported a revenue of one hundred and twenty billion dollars in 2023. US$120,000,000,000. The "Usage" section of TikTok's wikipedia page makes for... enlightening reading. By all means, check the original sources, but there's a lot there.

As time has gone on, major corporations have killed human interaction online. Limits on video length on sites like TikTok, limits on characters for sites like Twitter, removal of "undesirable" (not advertiser friendly) kinds of interaction from online gaming, a continuous push for the most profitable content to be the most supported content. News outlets, media platforms, all of them exist as businesses with the sole driving motivation of making as much money as possible - quality, truth, and the betterment of humanity be damned. Scratch that, sacrificed.

In a pre-match interview with Jazlyn Guerra, posted to YouTube channel Jazzy's World TV, former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson is seen scoffing in bewilderment - the five minute long interview between the fifty-eight year old and the fourteen year old is... awkward, pretty much the whole way through, as the interviewer does her best to empathise with the weight of nearly six decades of a life she could not possibly comprehend. She agrees with statements on adversity in childhood and throughout life, dressed in designer clothes at 14; she asks what Tyson thinks of Jake Paul, who responds that he just thinks "he's very funny". In a question about legacy, Tyson responds bluntly "who the fuck cares about me when I'm gone. - I'm dust. I'm nothing." Tyson does not care about who his opponent is, or why he's fighting, or even seemingly what comes next. When Mike Tyson stepped into that ring he stood for nothing at all; when Jazlyn Guerra heard his fatalism she simply accepted it; and Jake Paul can say "I beat Mike Tyson!". Apathy, marketability, a legacy of vanity. That is what we teach young people in the modern day.

So when you see Donald Trump choosing the most "memeable" people possible for his cabinet - when you see the most powerful person in the democratic world slotting their country in as a cog in the machine that is mass-media consumption - "brainrot" is truly the most appropriate word for his decision making. The President of the United States has been determined by how much money he generates for media corporations, while the populations of the Western world become less and less savvy to nuance and complexity; all while the concept of "legacy" is eaten away by a pervading sense of apathy present in every online space, even in spite of generation-spanning crises regarding climate change, the capitalist system, and global inequality.

None of this is coincidental. It has simply been determined that nuance isn't profitable; that even skill isn't profitable.

This is the age of ad revenue.

[letsjuststoprightthere]

[POEM] PROFANE by Ashe Vernon

- translated in french; for my once-lover

The first time he calls you holy,

La première fois qu'il te dit saint(e),

you laugh it back so hard your sides hurt.

tu ris si fort que tes côtes te font mal.

The second time,

La seconde fois,

you moan gospel around his fingers

tu gémis du gospel autour de ses doigts

between your teeth.

entre tes dents.

He has always surprised

Il t'as toujours surpris(e)

you into surprising yourself.

en te faisant te surprendre toi-même.

Because he’s an angel hiding his halo

Car il est un ange cachant son auréole

behind his back and

derrière son dos et

nothing has ever felt so filthy

rien n'a jamais été aussi sale

as plucking the wings from his shoulders—

que cueillir les ailes de ses épaules—

undressing his softness

déshabiller sa douceur

one feather at a time.

une plume à la fois.

God, if you’re out there,

Dieu, si tu es là,

if you’re listening,

si tu écoutes,

he fucks like a seraphim,

il baise comme un séraphin,

and there’s no part of scripture

et il n'y a aucune écriture

that ever prepared you for his hands.

qui t'ai jamais préparé à ses mains.

Hands that map a communion

Des mains qui dessinent une communion

in the cradle of your hips.

dans le berceau de tes hanches.

Hands that kiss hymns up your sides.

Des mains qui embrassent des hymnes sur tes côtes.

He confesses how long he’s looked

Il confesse combien de temps il a cherché

for a place to worship and,

un endroit pour vénérer et,

oh,

oh,

you put him on his knees.

tu le mets à genoux.

When he sinks to the floor and moans

Quand il glisse au sol et gémis

like he can’t help himself,

comme si il ne pouvait s'en empêcher,

you wonder if the other angels

tu te demandes si les autres anges

fell so sweet.

sont tombé si doucement.

He says his prayers between your thighs

Il dit ses prières entre tes cuisses

and you dig your heels into the base of his spine

et tu enfonce tes chevilles à la base de son dos

until he blushes the color of your filthy tongue.

jusqu'à ce qu'il rougisse de la couleur de ta langue sale.

You will ruin him and he will thank you;

Tu le détruira et il te remerciera;

he will say please.

il dira s'il te plaît.

No damnation ever looked as cozy as this,

Aucune damnation n'a jamais eu l'air aussi comfortable que cela,

but you fit over his hips like they

mais tu tiens sur ses hanches comme si elles

were made for you.

étaient faites pour toi.

You fit, you fit, you fit.

Tu tiens, tu tiens, tu tiens.

On top of him, you are an ancient god

Au dessus de lui, tu es un ancien dieu

that only he remembers and he

dont il est le seul à se souvenir et il

offers up his skin.

t'offre sa peau.

And you take it.

Et tu la prends.

Who knew sacrifice was so profane?

Qui aurait su qu'un sacrifice était si profane?

And once you’ve taught him how to hold

Et quand tu lui auras appris comment tenir

your throat in one hand

ta gorge dans une main

and your heart in the other,

et ton cœur dans l'autre,

you will have forgotten every other word,

tu auras oublié tous les autres mots,

except his name.

excepté son nom.

[argentumcor]

Part of the problem with expanded universes in this the era of slow IP suicide is that, when you like a part of the EU, you find yourself waiting years to see those characters again. Whoever owns the IP is always, always like "we need new characters" and you're like "no! first, my favs need to have another hug at least! oh no please not more characters." And you get two books a year at best and chances are they're about some kids you don't care about.

Like the people reading your Halo novels want the end of the stories they already got before we get "new heroes". You can do dart board characters all you want but there will be no readers brought in by it. Please stop. Just give me more of the part I love, please. I am a fan, service me, I will pay you.

[magnetarbeam]

Obviously I'm known for my Star Wars hyperfocus, but I have had other obsessions in my life that I still sometimes want to talk about.

James S.A. Corey's The Expanse books were absolutely revolutionary for me. The theme of that series - all the bloodshed and hatred and suffering in history is doomed to repeat itself as long as our species lives, but between the lines of that summary, there is still plenty of room for kindness and compassion and selflessness - gave me a way to make the world make sense, and the message itself is pretty important too.

I gave up Halo a few months after Infinite's so-called launch, but I sometimes think of going back to that EU just so I can tell people that "This is what Troy Denning's writing looks like with actual management, otherwise you'd have to read Yanme'e orgies and Gravemind tentacles going into people's mouths and Parangosky as president of the UEG."