#how to invest in 2020

[openphrase123]

so i've got three fics that are in what i call "long outline" stage, where a couple chapters are written and the rest is all/mostly plotted out. when i'm done with curtain call i'll probably wait a month or so and then start posting one of them but i Cannot Decide which one to start with. i want to write all of these at some point but i need a Starting Point. please advise. i have decision fatigue

i elaborate on all the options below so if you need to be Sold on any of these keep scrolling. but also if you want maximum chaos and surprise just vote without expanding >:3

no nuance button no chef's choice button. if the chef had a choice he would have choosened it by now. i'm Indecisive please help

propaganda for all the options under the cut

the 20 years later fic is so messy i can't overstate it. i mean that in a good way. very popcorn drama. siffrin and loop haven't seen each other in 20 years but they need to figure out who in the family is harboring a secret regret that's trapping them in a new loop. everyone's over their problems from canon but i give them all NEW problems like osteoporosis and work-life imbalances. bonnie's the only one who ever went to real therapy in two decades and it Shows

the isabeau timeloop fic is probably the most angst out of the three of these??? but it's not a walking sadfest i know how to balance the vibes. it's not Primarily a romance fic but let's face it gamers. this is an isabeau pov. it's like 40% gay longing and you know this. the other 60% tries to solve the question of "would siffrin still be trapped in the loops if they told literally anyone about them at any time" and with the power of miscommunication and self sabotage. i'm pleased to say that answer is YES

the loop one is very prince-and-the-pauper to me. it's set in 1hat in a playthrough of isat that ended on a low loop number. this is both the healthiest and most toxic way for loop to heal postcanon in my heart. siffrin is not here this is NOT about him. he's fine though. it's just that i categorically don't think loop could heal and move on from the loops if siffrin's right over their shoulder being like "hiii do you want to Talk" no you have to TRAP loop into therapy

if you're reading this and going "all of these sound absolutely insane what are you doing" i'm doing My Best <3 all of them have the same general tone as my other fics so if you're like "i like that idea but that sounds too depressing" FEAR NOT. it's the exact same amount of depressing as curtain call and/or inutile

[swagging-back-to]

nah honestly it's hard for me to NOT have hope for the sims 4. im still holding out hope that there will be pack refreshes and that they'll actually listen and deliver on what we've demanded for years.

i was forced to stop playing in 2015 because i lost the cd and i didnt have a computer that could run it. I only started playing again in 2023. coming back to see how many improvements had been made was insane. actually mindblowing.

things i never even considered being added to the game were a reality.

when i stopped playing the game there werent dlcs AT ALL yet. to come back to have 80 something???? unreal.

and even since ive been playing again, so many new features have come out that have been revolutionary. the apply all button in cas, the tattoo features, curved pools, not to mention all of the recent packs have been bangers.

And this is just a small portion of revolutionary changes yall

until the sims team announces they are not longer going to update the game or release new content for it, i am always going to have hope it will be improved.

[whatudottu]

Hot take: the Ben 10 fandom and the NSR fandom are pretty much complete inverses of each other when it comes to what kinds of characters they simp for.

Ben 10 has tons of sexy aliens to the point of literally featuring an entire species of buff leotard-wearing cephalopod people that you think would attract alienfuckers by the dozen, but like 80% of the fandom simps for the basic white boy and white girl.

NSR has an entire boy band of conventionally attractive anime boy robots who outright flirt with the female playable character, but like 80% of the fandom simps for the DILF cyborg war veteran with a screen for a head and the space-themed forty-something DJ with a bowling ball for a head.

The NSR fandom said 'those old men can GET IT' and fucking ran with it so hard that it's the most written about romantic relationship (going by ao3 stats) by almost 50 give or take if you're reading with an account or not- honestly? 'Round of applause, y'all really meant it, those old men CAN get it!

But I suppose it might be helped due to the more 'boss rush' style presentation of NSR, being a game centered mostly around who you fight rather than who you fight as. More time is proportionally spent in the media (game in this case) actually focusing on characters like DJ Subatomic Supernova - representation of the self-centered DJ - and Neon J - representation of boybands and specifically as the manager - and getting a comparably significant amount of focus; space themed object head has an ego so dense it LITERALLY causes a singularity (and causes spaghettification) and war veteran cyborg ordering around troops with protocols.

With Ben 10 god I fucking wished more people simped for Tetrax, bestie is just such a cool fucking character let alone how he was introduced and thus executed, but as a show with MANY iterations we kinda need to have a central cast (that gets narrowed down eventually into a central character). Whoever wears the Omnitrix - the one main driving force of the series - is essentially forever a main character, and that character just so happens to be Ben Tennyson after one alien device did what it did.

Despite it's main focus BEING the aliens that Ben turns into - in addition to being a universe with an active alien presence - it never particularly set out to be more than anything other than a sci-fi alien flavoured action story, centered around a human boy (who probably gets his egg completely shattered only to crack an entire coop of eggs in the aftershock) walking only a few steps in other species' shoes. It was only rather late that the actual extraterrestrial exploration of the series really came around, at least in full force (SoTO my beloved 😫). Kinda hard for EVERYONE to simp for your favourite side character when you've got like... seasons worth of a mostly human main cast, lmao-

[aeide-thea]

wot show is so obsessed with architecture and tbh i'm not mad about it???

[darcyolsson]

in loving memory of tumblr's april fools' pranks 💐 2014 - 2024

icymi, tumblr used to do an elaborate april fool's prank every year, but this year they suddenly stopped. here's a somewhat detailed recap of everything they did over the decade:

2013 - mishapocalypse (honourable mention): tumblr staff didn’t start doing april fools until 2014, but the mishapocalypse happened on tumblr in 2013 and i feel like this list would be incomplete without it

2014 - tumblrpro: upon opening your dash you were greeted by an “inspirational” video, that ended with the option to get “tumblrpro (for free)”. all it did was put a top hat on your icon.

2015 - tumblr executivesuite/coppy: a copying machine appeared in the corner of your dash. it would offer tips on how to use tumblr, like clippy the paperclip used to do in microsoft word. as the day went on, it slowly broke down and died right in front of your eyes. many people hated him (but not me). you could also make a (small) spreadsheet. @executivesuite2016 is the official blog.

2016 - this is decision/lizard election/tumblrdecides: a parody of the 2016 US elections. there were 4 lizards (well, one of them turned out to be a salamander in a scandal) to vote for. the dash looked different and there was a live news report with election updates, as well as an election blog for each lizard. they all had their own slogans and you would get an "i voted" button after you voted that would get slapped next to your icon. there were built-in functions to make an election poster for your favourite lizard and to create a text post that supported your lizard of choice that autogenerated a statement for all your followers to read. imo tumblr’s april fools peak. @thisisdecision2016-blog is the official blog, @mop-2016-blog @wretchedtooth @timefordeborah-blog were candidates. rick also had a blog (rick-official) but that now seems to have vanished because he ended up dropping out of the election. mop won, if you're curious. by far the most elaborate prank tumblr ever did.

2017 - horse friend: a tamagotchi-inspired game where you had to take care of a little horse in the corner of your screen. it came with a randomly generated name, and you had to feed and clean up after it. if you didnt take good care of it, it died. you could then hatch (yes, hatch) a new one. there was also an option to look at the names of all your dead horses. this is now available to buy in the tumblr shop. @horse-friends is the official blog.

2018 - tumblcoin: a parody of cryptocurrency (this was the year bitcoin took off). you could ‘invest’ in tumblcoin, with which you could in turn buy things with to spice up your dash, including last year’s horse friend, coppy from 2015, and a frame for around your icon. you could share the amount of tumblcoin you owned in an automatically generated gif post which would be tagged #tbc2018 and #tumblcoin. @tumblcoin is the official blog.

2019 - @memories: this blog still functions the way it did on april fools itself! it's like mad libs, where it takes post templates and then adds in tags you use a lot and users you frequently interact with on your main blog. like a personalized shitpost bot.

2020 - group chat prank/@storybot: it was so hard to find info on this because it was contained entirely in the now-defunct group chat function, which no one used. i had to go through the notes of this post for information because no one cared enough to actually write anything explaining it. turns out, you could write a story with your mutuals by adding storybot to your group chat. it also kept working after april fools (well, up until the group chats were deleted) just like memories. many people missed out on it entirely because they did not use the group chat function.

2021 - tumblcryptids: tumblr allowed you to adopt “non-fungible tumblcryptids”, a parody of NFTs. clicking a button that said "Summon thy Tumblrcryptid" would spawn an image of a little blob-shaped creature with a short description, which would always read "Hi! My name is [randomly generated name]. I love [thing most people like]. I hate [thing most people dislike]. Like my parent, I can't get enough of #[tag from your main blog]." you could share them in a post, which would automatically add the tag #NFTumblcryptids to your post. and yes, people on the piss on the poor website freaked out about it because they thought they were real NFTs harming the environment. @tumblcryptidadoptioncenter is the official blog.

2022 - click-a-thon: when you clicked a light switch on your dashboard, a bunch of colourful things showed up, like a sponge you could move around, an "engagament meter", clickable buttons, and a “Summon Crab!” button, which would summon a crab when you clicked it. you could. the crabs, like horse friend, are still available in the tumblr store as of 2025. here's some screenshots. there were various ways to share your crab activities, which would all get tagged #april fools 2022. the prank was presented as a marketing technique created by Brick Whartley, a fictional businessman character created by tumblr, who (afaik) originated in a post on the official blog of the 2018 april fools prank, albeit originally in a different role. around this time he also started functioning as the mascot for tumblr's shop ( @emporium )

2023 - abstract reactions (emoji reacts): buttons were added to every post that allowed you to add emoji reactions, many of them based on tumblr inside jokes (horse as a reference to horse plinko/horse friend, vanilla for the vanilla extract meme, pikaman, bug for bug race, and brick whartley, who wasn't a meme but staff really wanted him to be). if one specific emoji was used a certain amount of times it would add an effect to the post, eg many cheese emoji reacts would cover the post in cheese. this was also attributed to Brick Whartley ("his" blog @brickwhartley also documented the day)

2024 - boop-o-meter: allowed you to “boop” other users who had opted in to the booping, like facebook’s poke feature back in the day. depending on how long you held the button, you would either boop, super boop, or evil boop. on the dashboard there was a counter for both how many times you had booped others and how many times others had booped you, as well as how many boops were given side-wide. when booping someone, an image of a cat paw appeared. you would get badges (which can still be used) for booping 1, 100 and 1000 times. if you gave/received more than 999 boops, the counter would switch to showing a three-letter word (see this post for specifics). this was brought back for halloween 2024 (as BOOp-o-meter. get it), with a ghost, skeleton and mummy paw. no official blog, but here's an official recap for april first from staff. i believe this was the only april fools prank that was mobile user friendly.

2025 - @fandom is running some polls, i guess

[tofupixel]

⭐ So you want to learn pixel art? ⭐

🔹 Part 1 of ??? - The Basics!

Edit: Now available in Google Doc format if you don't have a Tumblr account 🥰

Hello, my name is Tofu and I'm a professional pixel artist. I have been supporting myself with freelance pixel art since 2020, when I was let go from my job during the pandemic.

My progress, from 2017 to 2024. IMO the only thing that really matters is time and effort, not some kind of natural talent for art.

This guide will not be comprehensive, as nobody should be expected to read allat. Instead I will lean heavily on my own experience, and share what worked for me, so take everything with a grain of salt. This is a guide, not a tutorial. Cheers!

🔹 Do I need money?

NO!!! Pixel art is one of the most accessible mediums out there.

I still use a mouse because I prefer it to a tablet! You won't be at any disadvantage here if you can't afford the best hardware or software.

Because our canvases are typically very small, you don't need a good PC to run a good brush engine or anything like that.

✨Did you know? One of the most skilled and beloved pixel artists uses MS PAINT! Wow!!

🔹 What software should I use?

Here are some of the most popular programs I see my friends and peers using. Stars show how much I recommend the software for beginners! ⭐

💰 Paid options:

⭐⭐⭐ Aseprite (for PC) - $19.99

This is what I and many other pixel artists use. You may find when applying to jobs that they require some knowledge of Aseprite. Since it has become so popular, companies like that you can swap raw files between artists.

Aseprite is amazingly customizable, with custom skins, scripts and extensions on Itch.io, both free and paid.

If you have ever used any art software before, it has most of the same features and should feel fairly familiar to use. It features a robust animation suite and a tilemap feature, which have saved me thousands of hours of labour in my work. The software is also being updated all the time, and the developers listen to the users. I really recommend Aseprite!

⭐ Photoshop (for PC) - Monthly $$

A decent option for those who already are used to the PS interface. Requires some setup to get it ready for pixel-perfect art, but there are plenty of tutorials for doing so.

Animation is also much more tedious on PS which you may want to consider before investing time!

⭐⭐ ProMotion NG (for PC) - $19.00

An advanced and powerful software which has many features Aseprite does not, including Colour Cycling and animated tiles.

⭐⭐⭐ Pixquare (for iOS) - $7.99 - $19.99 (30% off with code 'tofu'!!)

Probably the best app available for iPad users, in active development, with new features added all the time.

Look! My buddy Jon recommends it highly, and uses it often.

One cool thing about Pixquare is that it takes Aseprite raw files! Many of my friends use it to work on the same project, both in their office and on the go.

⭐ Procreate (for iOS) - $12.99

If you have access to Procreate already, it's a decent option to get used to doing pixel art. It does however require some setup. Artist Pixebo is famously using Procreate, and they have tutorials of their own if you want to learn.

⭐⭐ ReSprite iOS and Android. (free trial, but:) $19.99 premium or $$ monthly

ReSprite is VERY similar in terms of UI to Aseprite, so I can recommend it. They just launched their Android release!

🆓 Free options:

⭐⭐⭐ Libresprite (for PC)

Libresprite is an alternative to Aseprite. It is very, very similar, to the point where documentation for Aseprite will be helpful to Libresprite users.

⭐⭐ Pixilart (for PC and mobile)

A free in-browser app, and also a mobile app! It is tied to the website Pixilart, where artists upload and share their work. A good option for those also looking to get involved in a community.

⭐⭐ Dotpict (for mobile)

Dotpict is similar to Pixilart, with a mobile app tied to a website, but it's a Japanese service. Did you know that in Japanese, pixel art is called 'Dot Art'? Dotpict can be a great way to connect with a different community of pixel artists! They also have prompts and challenges often.

🔹 So I got my software, now what?

◽Nice! Now it's time for the basics of pixel art.

❗ WAIT ❗ Before this section, I want to add a little disclaimer. All of these rules/guidelines can be broken at will, and some 'no-nos' can look amazing when done intentionally.

The pixel-art fundamentals can be exceedingly helpful to new artists, who may feel lost or overwhelmed by choice. But if you feel they restrict you too harshly, don't force yourself! At the end of the day it's your art, and you shouldn't try to contort yourself into what people think a pixel artist 'should be'. What matters is your own artistic expression. 💕👍

◽Phew! With that out of the way...

🔸"The Rules"

There are few hard 'rules' of pixel art, mostly about scaling and exporting. Some of these things will frequently trip up newbies if they aren't aware, and are easy to overlook.

🔹Scaling method

There are a couple ways of scaling your art. The default in most art programs, and the entire internet, is Bi-linear scaling, which usually works out fine for most purposes. But as pixel artists, we need a different method.

Both are scaled up x10. See the difference?

On the left is scaled using Bilinear, and on the right is using Nearest-Neighbor. We love seeing those pixels stay crisp and clean, so we use nearest-neighbor. 

(Most pixel-art programs have nearest-neighbor enabled by default! So this may not apply to you, but it's important to know.)

🔹Mixels

Mixels are when there are different (mixed) pixel sizes in the same image.

Here I have scaled up my art- the left is 200%, and the right is 150%. Yuck!

As we can see, the "pixel" sizes end up different. We generally try to scale our work by multiples of 100 - 200%, 300% etc. rather than 150%. At larger scales however, the minute differences in pixel sizes are hardly noticeable!

Mixels are also sometimes seen when an artist scales up their work, then continues drawing on it with a 1 pixel brush.

Many would say that this is not great looking! This type of pixels can be indicative of a beginner artist. But there are plenty of creative pixel artists out there who mixels intentionally, making something modern and cool.

🔹Saving Your Files

We usually save our still images as .PNGs as they don’t create any JPEG artifacts or loss of quality. It's a little hard to see here, but there are some artifacts, and it looks a little blurry. It also makes the art very hard to work with if we are importing a JPEG.

For animations .GIF is good, but be careful of the 256 colour limit. Try to avoid using too many blending mode layers or gradients when working with animations. If you aren’t careful, your animation could flash afterwards, as the .GIF tries to reduce colours wherever it can. It doesn’t look great!

Here's an old piece from 2021 where I experienced .GIF lossiness, because I used gradients and transparency, resulting in way too many colours.

🔹Pixel Art Fundamentals - Techniques and Jargon

❗❗Confused about Jaggies? Anti-Aliasing? Banding? Dithering? THIS THREAD is for you❗❗ << it's a link, click it!!

As far as I'm concerned, this is THE tutorial of all time for understanding pixel art. These are techniques created and named by the community of people who actually put the list together, some of the best pixel artists alive currently. Please read it!!

🔸How To Learn

Okay, so you have your software, and you're all ready to start. But maybe you need some more guidance? Try these tutorials and resources! It can be helpful to work along with a tutorial until you build your confidence up.

⭐⭐ Pixel Logic (A Digital Book) - $10 A very comprehensive visual guide book by a very skilled and established artist in the industry. I own a copy myself.

⭐⭐⭐ StudioMiniBoss - free A collection of visual tutorials, by the artist that worked on Celeste! When starting out, if I got stuck, I would go and scour his tutorials and see how he did it.

⭐ Lospec Tutorials - free A very large collection of various tutorials from all over the internet. There is a lot to sift through here if you have the time.

⭐⭐⭐ Cyangmou's Tutorials - free (tipping optional) Cyangmou is one of the most respected and accomplished modern pixel artists, and he has amassed a HUGE collection of free and incredibly well-educated visual tutorials. He also hosts an educational stream every week on Twitch called 'pixelart for beginners'.

⭐⭐⭐ Youtube Tutorials - free There are hundreds, if not thousands of tutorials on YouTube, but it can be tricky to find the good ones. My personal recommendations are MortMort, Brandon, and AdamCYounis- these guys really know what they're talking about!

🔸 How to choose a canvas size

When looking at pixel art turorials, we may see people suggest things like 16x16, 32x32 and 64x64. These are standard sizes for pixel art games with tiles. However, if you're just making a drawing, you don't necessarily need to use a standard canvas size like that.

What I like to think about when choosing a canvas size for my illustrations is 'what features do I think it is important to represent?' And make my canvas as small as possible, while still leaving room for my most important elements.

Imagine I have characters in a scene like this:

I made my canvas as small as possible (232 x 314), but just big enough to represent the features and have them be recognizable (it's Good Omens fanart 😤)!! If I had made it any bigger, I would be working on it for ever, due to how much more foliage I would have to render.

If you want to do an illustration and you're not sure, just start at somewhere around 100x100 - 200x200 and go from there.

It's perfectly okay to crop your canvas, or scale it up, or crunch your art down at any point if you think you need a different size. I do it all the time! It only takes a bit of cleanup to get you back to where you were.

🔸Where To Post

Outside of just regular socials, Twitter, Tumblr, Deviantart, Instagram etc, there are a few places that lean more towards pixel art that you might not have heard of.

⭐ Lospec Lospec is a low-res focused art website. Some pieces get given a 'monthly masterpiece' award. Not incredibly active, but I believe there are more features being added often.

⭐⭐ Pixilart Pixilart is a very popular pixel art community, with an app tied to it. The community tends to lean on the young side, so this is a low-pressure place to post with an relaxed vibe.

⭐⭐ Pixeljoint Pixeljoint is one of the big, old-school pixel art websites. You can only upload your art unscaled (1x) because there is a built-in zoom viewer. It has a bit of a reputation for being elitist (back in the 00s it was), but in my experience it's not like that any more. This is a fine place for a pixel artist to post if they are really interested in learning, and the history. The Hall of Fame has some of the most famous / impressive pixel art pieces that paved the way for the work we are doing today.

⭐⭐⭐ Cafe Dot Cafe Dot is my art server so I'm a little biased here. 🍵 It was created during the recent social media turbulence. We wanted a place to post art with no algorithms, and no NFT or AI chuds. We have a heavy no-self-promotion rule, and are more interested in community than skill or exclusivity. The other thing is that we have some kind of verification system- you must apply to be a Creator before you can post in the Art feed, or use voice. This helps combat the people who just want to self-promo and dip, or cause trouble, as well as weed out AI/NFT people. Until then, you are still welcome to post in any of the threads or channels. There is a lot to do in Cafe Dot. I host events weekly, so check the threads!

⭐⭐/r/pixelart The pixel art subreddit is pretty active! I've also heard some of my friends found work through posting here, so it's worth a try if you're looking. However, it is still Reddit- so if you're sensitive to rude people, or criticism you didn't ask for, you may want to avoid this one. Lol

🔸 Where To Find Work

You need money? I got you! As someone who mostly gets scouted on social media, I can share a few tips with you:

Put your email / portfolio in your bio Recruiters don't have all that much time to find artists, make it as easy as possible for someone to find your important information!

Clean up your profile If your profile feed is all full of memes, most people will just tab out rather than sift through. Doesn't apply as much to Tumblr if you have an art tag people can look at.

Post regularly, and repost Activity beats everything in the social media game. It's like rolling the dice, and the more you post the more chances you have. You have to have no shame, it's all business baby

Outside of just posting regularly and hoping people reach out to you, it can be hard to know where to look. Here are a few places you can sign up to and post around on.

/r/INAT INAT (I Need A Team) is a subreddit for finding a team to work with. You can post your portfolio here, or browse for people who need artists.

/r/GameDevClassifieds Same as above, but specifically for game-related projects.

Remote Game Jobs / Work With Indies Like Indeed but for game jobs. Browse them often, or get email notifications.

VGen VGen is a website specifically for commissions. You need a code from another verified artist before you can upgrade your account and sell, so ask around on social media or ask your friends. Once your account is upgraded, you can make a 'menu' of services people can purchase, and they send you an offer which you are able to accept, decline, or counter.

The evil websites of doom: Fiverr and Upwork I don't recommend them!! They take a big cut of your profit, and the sites are teeming with NFT and AI people hoping to make a quick buck. The site is also extremely oversaturated and competitive, resulting in a race to the bottom (the cheapest, the fastest, doing the most for the least). Imagine the kind of clients who go to these websites, looking for the cheapest option. But if you're really desperate...

🔸 Community

I do really recommend getting involved in a community. Finding like-minded friends can help you stay motivated to keep drawing. One day, those friends you met when you were just starting out may become your peers in the industry. Making friends is a game changer!

Discord servers Nowadays, the forums of old are mostly abandoned, and people split off into many different servers. Cafe Dot, Pixel Art Discord (PAD), and if you can stomach scrolling past all the AI slop, you can browse Discord servers here.

Twitch Streams Twitch has kind of a bad reputation for being home to some of the more edgy gamers online, but the pixel art community is extremely welcoming and inclusive. Some of the people I met on Twitch are my friends to this day, and we've even worked together on different projects! Browse pixel art streams here, or follow some I recommend: NickWoz, JDZombi, CupOhJoe, GrayLure, LumpyTouch, FrankiePixelShow, MortMort, Sodor, NateyCakes, NyuraKim, ShinySeabass, I could go on for ever really... There are a lot of good eggs on Pixel Art Twitch.

🔸 Other Helpful Websites

Palettes Lospec has a huge collection of user-made palettes, for any artist who has trouble choosing their colours, or just wants to try something fun. Rejected Palettes is full of palettes that didn't quite make it onto Lospec, ran by people who believe there are no bad colours.

The Spriters Resource TSR is an incredible website where users can upload spritesheets and tilesets from games. You can browse for your favourite childhood game, and see how they made it! This website has helped me so much in understanding how game assets come together in a scene.

VGMaps Similar to the above, except there are entire maps laid out how they would be played. This is incredible if you have to do level design, or for mocking up a scene for fun.

Game UI Database Not pixel-art specific, but UI is a very challenging part of graphics, so this site can be a game-changer for finding good references!

Retronator A digital newspaper for pixel-art lovers! New game releases, tutorials, and artworks!

Itch.io A website where people can upload, games, assets, tools... An amazing hub for game devs and game fans alike. A few of my favourite tools: Tiled, PICO-8, Pixel Composer, Juice FX, Magic Pencil for Aseprite

🔸 The End?

This is just part 1 for now, so please drop me a follow to see any more guides I release in the future. I plan on doing some writeups on how I choose colours, how to practise, and more!

I'm not an expert by any means, but everything I did to get to where I am is outlined in this guide. Pixel art is my passion, my job and my hobby! I want pixel art to be recognized everywhere as an art-form, a medium of its own outside of game-art or computer graphics!

This guide took me a long time, and took a lot of research and experience. Consider following me or supporting me if you are feeling generous.

And good luck to all the fledgling pixel artists, I hope you'll continue and have fun. I hope my guide helped you, and don't hesitate to send me an ask if you have any questions! 💕

My other tutorials (so far): How to draw Simple Grass for a game Hue Shifting

[phantomrose96]

If anyone wants to know why every tech company in the world right now is clamoring for AI like drowned rats scrabbling to board a ship, I decided to make a post to explain what's happening.

(Disclaimer to start: I'm a software engineer who's been employed full time since 2018. I am not a historian nor an overconfident Youtube essayist, so this post is my working knowledge of what I see around me and the logical bridges between pieces.)

Okay anyway. The explanation starts further back than what's going on now. I'm gonna start with the year 2000. The Dot Com Bubble just spectacularly burst. The model of "we get the users first, we learn how to profit off them later" went out in a no-money-having bang (remember this, it will be relevant later). A lot of money was lost. A lot of people ended up out of a job. A lot of startup companies went under. Investors left with a sour taste in their mouth and, in general, investment in the internet stayed pretty cooled for that decade. This was, in my opinion, very good for the internet as it was an era not suffocating under the grip of mega-corporation oligarchs and was, instead, filled with Club Penguin and I Can Haz Cheezburger websites.

Then around the 2010-2012 years, a few things happened. Interest rates got low, and then lower. Facebook got huge. The iPhone took off. And suddenly there was a huge new potential market of internet users and phone-havers, and the cheap money was available to start backing new tech startup companies trying to hop on this opportunity. Companies like Uber, Netflix, and Amazon either started in this time, or hit their ramp-up in these years by shifting focus to the internet and apps.

Now, every start-up tech company dreaming of being the next big thing has one thing in common: they need to start off by getting themselves massively in debt. Because before you can turn a profit you need to first spend money on employees and spend money on equipment and spend money on data centers and spend money on advertising and spend money on scale and and and

But also, everyone wants to be on the ship for The Next Big Thing that takes off to the moon.

So there is a mutual interest between new tech companies, and venture capitalists who are willing to invest $$$ into said new tech companies. Because if the venture capitalists can identify a prize pig and get in early, that money could come back to them 100-fold or 1,000-fold. In fact it hardly matters if they invest in 10 or 20 total bust projects along the way to find that unicorn.

But also, becoming profitable takes time. And that might mean being in debt for a long long time before that rocket ship takes off to make everyone onboard a gazzilionaire.

But luckily, for tech startup bros and venture capitalists, being in debt in the 2010's was cheap, and it only got cheaper between 2010 and 2020. If people could secure loans for ~3% or 4% annual interest, well then a $100,000 loan only really costs $3,000 of interest a year to keep afloat. And if inflation is higher than that or at least similar, you're still beating the system.

So from 2010 through early 2022, times were good for tech companies. Startups could take off with massive growth, showing massive potential for something, and venture capitalists would throw infinite money at them in the hopes of pegging just one winner who will take off. And supporting the struggling investments or the long-haulers remained pretty cheap to keep funding.

You hear constantly about "Such and such app has 10-bazillion users gained over the last 10 years and has never once been profitable", yet the thing keeps chugging along because the investors backing it aren't stressed about the immediate future, and are still banking on that "eventually" when it learns how to really monetize its users and turn that profit.

The pandemic in 2020 took a magnifying-glass-in-the-sun effect to this, as EVERYTHING was forcibly turned online which pumped a ton of money and workers into tech investment. Simultaneously, money got really REALLY cheap, bottoming out with historic lows for interest rates.

Then the tide changed with the massive inflation that struck late 2021. Because this all-gas no-brakes state of things was also contributing to off-the-rails inflation (along with your standard-fare greedflation and price gouging, given the extremely convenient excuses of pandemic hardships and supply chain issues). The federal reserve whipped out interest rate hikes to try to curb this huge inflation, which is like a fire extinguisher dousing and suffocating your really-cool, actively-on-fire party where everyone else is burning but you're in the pool. And then they did this more, and then more. And the financial climate followed suit. And suddenly money was not cheap anymore, and new loans became expensive, because loans that used to compound at 2% a year are now compounding at 7 or 8% which, in the language of compounding, is a HUGE difference. A $100,000 loan at a 2% interest rate, if not repaid a single cent in 10 years, accrues to $121,899. A $100,000 loan at an 8% interest rate, if not repaid a single cent in 10 years, more than doubles to $215,892.

Now it is scary and risky to throw money at "could eventually be profitable" tech companies. Now investors are watching companies burn through their current funding and, when the companies come back asking for more, investors are tightening their coin purses instead. The bill is coming due. The free money is drying up and companies are under compounding pressure to produce a profit for their waiting investors who are now done waiting.

You get enshittification. You get quality going down and price going up. You get "now that you're a captive audience here, we're forcing ads or we're forcing subscriptions on you." Don't get me wrong, the plan was ALWAYS to monetize the users. It's just that it's come earlier than expected, with way more feet-to-the-fire than these companies were expecting. ESPECIALLY with Wall Street as the other factor in funding (public) companies, where Wall Street exhibits roughly the same temperament as a baby screaming crying upset that it's soiled its own diaper (maybe that's too mean a comparison to babies), and now companies are being put through the wringer for anything LESS than infinite growth that Wall Street demands of them.

Internal to the tech industry, you get MASSIVE wide-spread layoffs. You get an industry that used to be easy to land multiple job offers shriveling up and leaving recent graduates in a desperately awful situation where no company is hiring and the market is flooded with laid-off workers trying to get back on their feet.

Because those coin-purse-clutching investors DO love virtue-signaling efforts from companies that say "See! We're not being frivolous with your money! We only spend on the essentials." And this is true even for MASSIVE, PROFITABLE companies, because those companies' value is based on the Rich Person Feeling Graph (their stock) rather than the literal profit money. A company making a genuine gazillion dollars a year still tears through layoffs and freezes hiring and removes the free batteries from the printer room (totally not speaking from experience, surely) because the investors LOVE when you cut costs and take away employee perks. The "beer on tap, ping pong table in the common area" era of tech is drying up. And we're still unionless.

Never mind that last part.

And then in early 2023, AI (more specifically, Chat-GPT which is OpenAI's Large Language Model creation) tears its way into the tech scene with a meteor's amount of momentum. Here's Microsoft's prize pig, which it invested heavily in and is galivanting around the pig-show with, to the desperate jealousy and rapture of every other tech company and investor wishing it had that pig. And for the first time since the interest rate hikes, investors have dollar signs in their eyes, both venture capital and Wall Street alike. They're willing to restart the hose of money (even with the new risk) because this feels big enough for them to take the risk.

Now all these companies, who were in varying stages of sweating as their bill came due, or wringing their hands as their stock prices tanked, see a single glorious gold-plated rocket up out of here, the likes of which haven't been seen since the free money days. It's their ticket to buy time, and buy investors, and say "see THIS is what will wring money forth, finally, we promise, just let us show you."

To be clear, AI is NOT profitable yet. It's a money-sink. Perhaps a money-black-hole. But everyone in the space is so wowed by it that there is a wide-spread and powerful conviction that it will become profitable and earn its keep. (Let's be real, half of that profit "potential" is the promise of automating away jobs of pesky employees who peskily cost money.) It's a tech-space industrial revolution that will automate away skilled jobs, and getting in on the ground floor is the absolute best thing you can do to get your pie slice's worth.

It's the thing that will win investors back. It's the thing that will get the investment money coming in again (or, get it second-hand if the company can be the PROVIDER of something needed for AI, which other companies with venture-back will pay handsomely for). It's the thing companies are terrified of missing out on, lest it leave them utterly irrelevant in a future where not having AI-integration is like not having a mobile phone app for your company or not having a website.

So I guess to reiterate on my earlier point:

Drowned rats. Swimming to the one ship in sight.

[bookcub]

Cozy Fantasy and Why It Doesn't Work

I think I am among many who feel like they should love cozy fantasy and have found it an incredibly lacking genre.

This newly branded "cozy fantasy" genre that has taken readers by storm since 2020 and while it is new that books are now marketed as cozy, the genre itself isn't new. Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones is a great example of the genre before it was labeled and also how to make it work.

Cozy fantasy is defined by many as fantasy with low stakes. Fantasy aesthetic but less sword fights. On paper, it sounds great. But the execution has been less than stellar for readers like me. The lack of physical stakes has also impacted the emotional stakes of these books, creating forgettable characters with boring problems. As a romance reader, I find this frustrating. Romance is known for being a predictable and formulaic genre, the now defunct Romance Writers of America defined romances as needing happy endings, a term romances have continued to follow. Yet these romance texts manage to have low physical stakes (how to date your neighbor, how to confront your toxic friends, etc) while still maintaining high personal stakes that keep readers invested and begging for more. So I was initially confused why cozy fantasy authors struggle to write texts that connect to readers like me.

I think I have found the answer which is the genre is just here for vibes. It is all about aesthetic, not even worldbuilding that fantasy is known for as most cozy fantasy I read have so many problems as soon as you ask one question. It is hard to acknowledge that a genre that is pitched to work for readers like me doesn't work for many of us. Especially because occasionally there is one that works beautifully to my taste.

I often say my favorite cozy fantasies that are more contemporary are short and visual, which I plays into the idea of the genre being an aesthetic. The Bakery Dragon by Devin Elle Kurtz is a good example because it is a simple story that is given the perfect amount of pages and gorgeous visuals without dragging on when the message is very clear and easy to understand. Books like The Phoenix Keeper and Legends and Lattes have absolutely nothing for me, their very clear message hitting the reader over and over so the readers don't miss it and focusing on the aesthetic of worldbuilding rather than the reality of the fantastic elements within the world.

I guess my point is. . . I realize this genre isn't for me since I have realized it is more of an aesthetic than anything. .. .but I want it to be. Should I let it go and put my efforts elsewhere? Or should I keep exploring this new trend and find the hidden gems?

[gavis-bettel]

see id be less reluctant to go back to obey me if the events and especially the event outfits didnt consistently suck absolute dog shit

[qazastra]

only about ten more episodes of word of honor left

if anyone wants to talk about it my dms and asks are open I feel a liiiiiitle bit crazy tbh

[inbabylontheywept]

the fine and subtle art of arguing with old men

it was a good week for testing which meant it was a slow week for me. most of my job is fixing the machine when it goes down. if it doesn't go down, i don't have much to do. 

fortunately neither did marc. in a site full of ornery old bastards, he's the oldest and the orneriest, so it goes without saying that i enjoy spending time with him. he reminds me of my grandpa. hell, he reminds me of a lot of people. i've befriended enough grumpy old men that i've got a sort of momentum to it now - you know how it is, when you meet someone that reminds you of someone else you really like. you get to start that friendship off half built, because you already have an idea of how to like that guy, and some of that old warmth can be brought to the new friendship. a little ember to start the stove up with.

(i think that's one of the really undersold beauties of getting older. you stop viewing people as strangers and more like remixes of friends.)

anyway, i was sitting next to marc and we were talking about the future. i've got my eye on having kids sometime soon (year or two? hopefully?), and he's very happy for me. i've tried asking him for advice, but all he says is that he didn't do a great job with his own kids and they still turned out okay, so i should stress less and trust myself more. i hope he's right. he believes it, at least, and it's a hell of a thing to have the faith of an old man. his faith is hard won.

as for his plans, he's retiring at some point in the next six months, and is hoping to sell his home and buy something in florida. he's republican, so he views the state as paradise, and i'm not inclined to even try talking him out of it. it's his dream, you know? i know for a fact my paradise would be a lot of people's hell. life's funny like that.

still, we kept going on, and it was a good time, and then he reminisced about the last time he got close to quitting - back around 2020. our job required getting vaxxed, and he refused, and there was a big kerfuffle about it before the job actually backed down. i know there's not a lot of sympathy for the unvaxxed out here, but the man's 62. you get the shot when you're under 30 to protect the people around you, but when you're over 60, you're just getting it to protect yourself and it's hard to be mad at someone for kicking their own ass. 

still gave me pause though. i knew he wasn't going to take it well, but half the job of collecting curmudgeons is keeping them around, so i said 

hey. i'm sorry they bent your arm over it, but.

but. 

you should really get that shot. 

and he looked over at me, and i looked at him, and he actually spat. not on me, just the concrete, but it was enough to show that he was mad. then he walked away, as abrupt as anything.

i felt bad about it. i wasn't sure what i'd expected, when he was willing to lose his job over it before, but i'd been so invested in his dream of retirement - the idea of him sipping margaritias on a beach next to his wife, the wife he calls every day during lunch, the wife he says is the one thing in life he ever got right on the first try. the wife that almost divorced him back when he was in the airforce because he just wasn't home enough. 

(but he can be home now.) 

and then he mentioned the vax thing, and it was like seeing a pin hit a balloon. he works out every day and takes all sorts of crazy vitamins and is generally committed to getting the most out of his pension and his life. i didn't want this dumb weak point to be his achilles heel. 

---

i wasn't actually sure how long marc would be mad at me. i've seen him stay mad at some people for weeks. i wasn't sure if being friends would make that time go up or down. 

it went down. i'm glad it went down. 

he stopped being mad about two days later. we were doing front end maintenance one morning, and it was just that simple mechanical rhythm - hex key, replace the anode sheets, punch some off-gassing holes, oil it up, put it back in - that put things at ease. it always does. people working there are too busy to remember grudges, and it has this sort of mandatory practical communication that helps smooth things over. it was going great, and then out of the blue he said babs, you gotta be careful giving advice. those shots come with complications. what would you do if i got that shot, had a stroke, and died? 

and i don't know what answer he was expecting, but i just told him the truth, which is that i would be devastated. i'd feel like i killed him. i thought that was a pretty normal response, but he looked taken aback. he asked why i said it then, and i said i'd have felt the same if he died of covid. that's just life. sometimes, there's no way forward that doesn't risk some kind of regret. 

we finished the tube after that, in a silence that felt heavier than peace but lighter than anger. it felt like the ball was back in marc's court. like it would be rude to take that turn from him. 

we parted ways with a nod and didn't speak until the next day. 

---

i was doing spreadsheet work when he found me again. standard paper engineering - thinking of things we might need and ordering them in batches, months ahead of time. it always feels a little like plugging holes in a dam with my fingers. 

but he popped up, and we didn't even exchange pleasantries. he just said i'm gonna die one day, and you can't blame yourself for that. 

which is a hell of a thing to just tell someone right off the bat. 

so i said what 

and he said babs, i am in my 60s. something is gonna get me eventually, and whether it's covid or heart disease, or a stroke, there will be something you could have said or done before. and that's okay. it's not your job to make me live forever. 

and you know, he actually made a lot of sense. so i said 

okay. 

i'll keep your business yours. i just

you were talking about your retirement before this. and i want that for you very much. you've worked hard for 45 years, and you deserve a break. we're getting to sick season, and it would be the saddest fucking thing in the world if you got this close to winning the race then tripped in the last ten feet. 

and we sat there a few moments longer. i wasn't sure what to say, and i wasn't sure what he'd say, but eventually he just shrugged and said

yeah 

then he left. i figured that would be the end of it. 

---

i did front end maintenance yesterday, after being gone a week. it's one of my favorite things to do. i like working with my hands. i really like working with my hands. i'm glad i went to college, but in a different life, i think i could've made a better electrician than an electrical engineer. 

and at one step, when we were both hoisting the plate back onto the machine, his sleeve rode up, and i saw two bandaids on his arm. 

we finished the install, and i was ready to go back when marc actually stopped me. 

i got the shot, he said, almost embarrassed. like he'd been caught. and i knew he was gonna say something dumb about it, so i just cut him off by giving him a hug. 

i was relieved. hugging old men is kind of like picking up cats. if they like you a lot, they'll tolerate it, but that's about it. we sat there maybe three beats before his hands went up, and then he gave me one overly-hard thump on the back. in my experience, this is how old men tell you that they're done, so i let him go.

carla talked me into it, he said, almost defensive. his wife. his one good decision.

tell her i said thanks, i said back.

trump got the shot too, he said, less defensive, but oddly pleading. like he was consoling himself.

like he was nervous.

then it's gotta be safe, i said, and he looked up at me, strangely searching, strangely vulnerable. i don't know exactly what he was looking for, but i guess he found it because after a few moments his shoulders relaxed.

yeah, he said, one hand on the back of his head.

it's gotta be.

[reasonsforhope]

"In an unprecedented transformation of China’s arid landscapes, large-scale solar installations are turning barren deserts into unexpected havens of biodiversity, according to groundbreaking research from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The study reveals that solar farms are not only generating clean energy but also catalyzing remarkable ecological restoration in some of the country’s most inhospitable regions.

The research, examining 40 photovoltaic (PV) plants across northern China’s deserts, found that vegetation cover increased by up to 74% in areas with solar installations, even in locations using only natural restoration measures. This unexpected environmental dividend comes as China cements its position as the global leader in solar energy, having added 106 gigawatts of new installations in 2022 alone.

“Artificial ecological measures in the PV plants can reduce environmental damage and promote the condition of fragile desert ecosystems,��� says Dr. Benli Liu, lead researcher from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. “This yields both ecological and economic benefits.”

The economic implications are substantial. “We’re witnessing a paradigm shift in how we view desert solar installations,” says Professor Zhang Wei, environmental economist at Beijing Normal University. “Our cost-benefit analysis shows that while initial ecological construction costs average $1.5 million per square kilometer, the long-term environmental benefits outweigh these investments by a factor of six within just a decade.” ...

“Soil organic carbon content increased by 37.2% in areas under solar panels, and nitrogen levels rose by 24.8%,” reports Dr. Sarah Chen, soil scientist involved in the project. “These improvements are crucial indicators of ecosystem health and sustainability.”

...Climate data from the study sites reveals significant microclimate modifications:

Average wind speeds reduced by 41.3% under panel arrays

Soil moisture retention increased by 32.7%

Ground surface temperature fluctuations decreased by 85%

Dust storm frequency reduced by 52% in solar farm areas...

The scale of China’s desert solar initiative is staggering. As of 2023, the country has installed over 350 gigawatts of solar capacity, with 30% located in desert regions. These installations cover approximately 6,000 square kilometers of desert terrain, an area larger than Delaware.

“The most surprising finding,” notes Dr. Wang Liu of the Desert Research Institute, “is the exponential increase in insect and bird species. We’ve documented a 312% increase in arthropod diversity and identified 27 new bird species nesting within the solar farms between 2020 and 2023.”

Dr. Yimeng Wang, the study’s lead author, emphasizes the broader implications: “This study provides evidence for evaluating the ecological benefit and planning of large-scale PV farms in deserts.”

The solar installations’ positive impact stems from several factors. The panels act as windbreaks, reducing erosion and creating microhabitats with lower evaporation rates. Perhaps most surprisingly, the routine maintenance of these facilities plays a crucial role in the ecosystem’s revival.

“The periodic cleaning of solar panels, occurring 7-8 times annually, creates consistent water drip lines beneath the panels,” explains Wang. “This inadvertent irrigation system promotes vegetation growth and the development of biological soil crusts, essential for soil stability.” ...

Recent economic analysis reveals broader benefits:

Job creation: 4.7 local jobs per megawatt of installed capacity

Tourism potential: 12 desert solar sites now offer educational tours

Agricultural integration: 23% of sites successfully pilot desert agriculture beneath panels

Carbon reduction: 1.2 million tons CO2 equivalent avoided per gigawatt annually

Dr. Maya Patel, visiting researcher from the International Renewable Energy Agency, emphasizes the global implications: “China’s desert solar model could be replicated in similar environments worldwide. The Sahara alone could theoretically host enough solar capacity to meet global electricity demand four times over while potentially greening up to 20% of the desert.”

The Chinese government has responded by implementing policies promoting “solar energy + sand control” and “solar energy + ecological restoration” initiatives. These efforts have shown promising results, with over 92% of PV plants constructed since 2017 incorporating at least one ecological construction mode.

Studies at facilities like the Qinghai Gonghe Photovoltaic Park demonstrate that areas under solar panels score significantly better in environmental assessments compared to surrounding regions, indicating positive effects on local microclimates.

As the world grapples with dual climate and biodiversity crises, China’s desert solar experiment offers a compelling model for sustainable development. The findings suggest that renewable energy infrastructure, when thoughtfully implemented, can serve as a catalyst for environmental regeneration, potentially transforming the world’s deserts from barren wastelands into productive, life-supporting ecosystems.

“This is no longer just about energy production,” concludes Dr. Liu. “We’re witnessing the birth of a new approach to ecosystem rehabilitation that could transform how we think about desert landscapes globally. The next decade will be crucial as we scale these solutions to meet both our climate and biodiversity goals.”"

-via Green Fingers, January 13, 2025

[millerillusions]

Invest In Me | Harry Castillo x f!reader

Summary: Your life has always been structured, dependable. You don’t stray, and it’s gifted you affluence. When you rashly decide to go on a blind date and they don’t show, you’re left with another fruitless, lone night of solitary. Until one equally lonely Harry Castillo invites himself to your dinner table and offers you a partnership just maybe worth investing in.

Pairing: Harry Castillo (Materialists) x f!reader

Word Count: 10k

Warnings: 18+ mdni, smut, unprotected piv (don’t be silly, wrap your willy.), oral (f!receiving), pull out and pray, cum eating, praise, wealthy hedge fund manager reader, lucy doesn’t exist/isn’t mentioned, fancy wine drinking, smoking, fluff, so much flirting, the authors limited knowledge of business and chess, no description of reader other than female anatomy and wears a dress/heels, a little easter egg referencing the kitchen scene bc i couldn't help myself

A/N: yes.. i did just post about my current wips.. but then i watched materialists, and came home and immediately wrote (no major spoilers in this). wanted to write something where Harry finds a partner who's also rich and work-oriented. i caved too quick for him and had to. sorry. thanks to anyone who reads <33 dividers by @/saradika-graphics

Masterlist

Blind dates are foolish.

You knew this. You’ve always thought this. Have never been convinced otherwise.

They’re wishes; a hopeful fantasy that two people will somehow be able to run an effective, effortless conversation despite knowing nothing about the other prior. They’re unorganised, variable.

Inconsistent. Nothing in your life is inconsistent.

You wake up at 5:30AM. Have a shower. Do your hair. Face. Slip on business casual clothes. Breakfast paired with a cappuccino with an extra shot of espresso. At work by 7AM. At your desk by 7:30AM. Home by 4:30PM.

Sure, sometimes the schedule can dip and maneuver in the later hours of the night in accordance with your current work load, but the point is- you have a schedule. It’s unwavering, sustained. Perfectly crafted to suit your needs and the straining pressure of your job.

You don’t do foolish acts like going on a blind date that the incompetent Rebecca you sometimes have a decent conversation with who sits at the desk opposite yours coerced you into believing would be enjoyable.

Witless, you think, as you stare blandly towards the empty plate opposite yours, framed by silver cutlery and a flawlessly folded napkin, pressed to delicacy. The third glass from the 2020 bottle of Argiano Toscana clenched between your impeccably manicured nails that tap an insistent, mindless rhythm against the stem. The liquor swirls like a bleeding wound in your glass, swishing up against the edges in crimson waterfalls each time you twirl it. It’s bitter on your tongue. Some blackcurrant and dark cherry bullshit of a far too expensive amalgamation of Merlot and Sauvignon Blanc.

Plus, there’s also the delicate lace-trimmed Stygian black dress curled around your body that flows down to your shin with a slit up along to the thigh, paired with simple but efficient silver heels. It’s not the most comfortable item you’ve ever worn- but it’s nice. Extravagant, if you look at it close enough.

Reckless, you think, glaring across at that empty plate on the opposite side of your two-person table that belongs to a person who hadn’t shown up. Toby, Troy, or something. Someone who apparently worked in luxury Real Estate, but who couldn’t even sell you one night of fulfillment or anything close to it. You had to call three different acquaintances to even acquire this table booking tonight, and this is apparently how gratitude is expressed back for your effort.

The candlelight flickers and illuminates the few tables scattered around the devastatingly wealth-painted Italian restaurant, the light laying across one side of your face like some sort of forlorn, two-faced golem sat isolated in the corner. Each of the other tables are occupied, mostly with couples on some feigned romantic date they paid too much to obtain, murmuring words of faux-affection across the flutter of a gentle flame and small portions of meals that took half of their last pay to afford.

“Were we still waiting on ordering, ma’am?” A voice abruptly chips into your carefully molded self-preservation, drawing your gaze slowly up to the waiter with the unpigmented mesh apron wrapped tight around his waist. You blink, eyes unfocused after glaring sharpened blades into the plate ahead of you like it might magically force a meal and a person to form.

“Yep. Still waiting,” You confirm, a grimace tugging at your features as you watch the waiter hesitate, glancing between you and the empty chair opposite. The situation you’re in is ridiculously obvious, like an open gash starkly revealed to everyone in the establishment.

He nods in understanding anyways, pivoting on polished shoes to leave, when you chip up to him, voiced edged with an indignation you fail to swallow back.

“Mind fetching the bottle?”

The man blinks back over his shoulder, peering down towards the glass in your hand, mapping out which wine bottle he needs to fetch. His brows twitch for just a beat- though you’re not sure if it’s in concern or awe- before he’s offering you a polite smile and dipping his head, whisking back to the kitchen to follow through.

You exhale sharply through your nose like the very breath is strenuous, eyelids fluttering closed before you’re leaning back in your chair. Dragging your gaze across the restaurant, the tungsten lighting- warm, reassuring, meaning to console the guests. Currently, it just makes you feel dreary.

You’re preparing to go on another wistful subconscious rant about the disadvantaged woes of blind dates whilst wondering if your vibrator’s batteries have been charged when a figure does appear. Looming like an assured shadow before lowering down into the seat opposite. Your head reels up to stare rather owlishly towards the newcomer’s sudden appearance. He leans back into the wooden seat like he belongs there, has already marked ground, a suave kind of allure hovering around him that you’re surprised you don’t immediately find smarmy, especially combined with the easy grin that upturns the corner of his lip.

Brown eyes are amongst the first things you notice.

The kind of brown that ensures it peers right into you without missing a beat, cooling the simmering apprehension in your chest like it’s effortless. Then the way he’s dressed. A black mesh top- formal enough for the establishment but not so lavish it’s considered profligate. He has a Roman kind of curve to his nose, full lips with a littering of a mustache that combs out into a stubble. He’s handsome, to say the least. Enough to make your heart stutter in a beat, but you blame it on alarm.

His brow curls upwards in a quirk at you as though expecting you to speak first, breaking you away from your pensive observation, mouth slightly parted like you’re spellbound. This can’t be Troy, Toby, Something. He looks too put together to fit the category of Rebecca’s acquaintances.

“You’re not my blind date sent by Rebecca, are you?” You ask blatantly.

He doesn’t look offended by the question. Rather, he seems amused.

“You’re the Hedge Fund Manager.”

His voice comes as a lower drawl than you expected. You can’t pinpoint the accent, but it’s like a rumble of a lullaby past your ears, twirling in mollifying notes with the gentle lull of the piano chords whisking in the air through the speakers. His residence here within just moments of seeing him is zephyr-like, as though he shifts and changes in accordance to the room he’s stationed in, all whilst commanding it with just the broad capability he clearly holds.

Your face falls slightly at his unforeseen mention of your occupation. You tilt back in your own chair, unsure if you’re trying to build an air of nonchalance or trying to create distance between you and this stranger that isn’t just the polished timber of the table.

“I dabble in that, sure,” You reply candidly, idly cautious. His eyes seem to lighten with satisfaction in the faint sandstone lighting. Like he’s trying to breach the space you created, he leans himself forward, tucking his elbows onto the table.

“You recently funded the last deal I brokered. Luxe Escapes,” He explains coolly. You perked slightly, gaze whisking along him, trying to regard him with a more inquisitive glance, wondering distantly if you had ever communicated with him before. It feels unlikely. You think you would’ve remembered a face like this.

“How were you involved in that?” You question, distantly wondering if you had clashed with him over the deal and that’s why you dismissed his existence following the conflict; act as though it never happened until the complication eventually dissolves itself into ash whilst you’re left with your triumph.

“I was the Sales Executive,” He assures, noting the slight pull of your shoulder blades in anticipation of a tense conversation. You blink, frets smoothed over swiftly.

“You were the Sales Executive?” You echo, giving him a once-over. Truthfully, it’s not difficult at all to imagine him pacing around a vast space of some grey-painted living room, footsteps leaden and quick as he prattles on about why some company or item would be efficient and worthwhile to invest in.

“That’s me,” He confirms, but he doesn’t look exactly supercilious or smug. Definitely not like that hotel branch company of luxury stays that conform the guests into the daydream of ‘escaping reality’ is rapidly becoming worth millions of dollars.

“And you are?”

“Harry.”

You tsk softly, tongue clicking against the roof of your mouth, seemingly unimpressed. Your head tilts, along with your wine glass as you circle it with mindless consideration, tone sardonic. “Harry. Fancy.”

He smirks lopsidedly, fingers flexing where they curl neatly over each other on the table. “Thought it’d sound less formal than saying Harry Castillo outright like this is a business meeting.”

“You’ve only talked about business so far,” You remind him facetiously.

“That’s fair. Let me try again,” He concurs. Then he rolls his thickset shoulders back to fixate his posture, a good-natured smile stretching along his inviting lips. He tilts himself forward, outstretching his hand towards you over the table. “Harry. I saw you sitting here over here alone and thought I’d come join you.”

You pause for just a beat, gaze fluttering to his outstretched hand, then back to him. Brazenly and uncharacteristically, you decide to amuse whatever this is. Leaning forward to meet him, you stick out your arm and take his hand, offering your own name back. His palm curls over yours, practically swallowing the proportions of your hand. It makes your throat tight realising how large he is, taking up the space like a polished, debonair boulder.

“You didn’t think about if I’d tell you to go away?” You hum, squinting towards him in silent challenge, attuned to keeping up this impression of satire he doesn’t seem to mind. His hand is still engulfed over yours- and instead of shaking, he squeezes once, before attentively turning your palm downwards, until he’s holding just your fingers in his grip. He bends down further, dipping his head down to lay an amiable but lingering kiss against your knuckles.

But what sends your heartbeat tripping calamitously in your ear drums is the way he keeps his eyes perched towards you, unwavering and unmoving. Drowning you in a melody of heat that seeps over you like dripping, melted sugar. That subtle flicker of interest swirling within the embrace of coffee-coloured warmth.

“I did. But I just had hope that you wouldn’t,” He rumbles in reply as he lifts back up, tentatively dropping your hand. It hovers sluggishly in the air for a beat too long before you finally regain control of your motor functions and let it fall back to your thigh. You huff a short, disbelieving laugh disguised as an exhale.

“Hope sourced from what?”

He crosses his hands over his lap, head cocking to the side as he considers the question for a moment, a sense of susceptibility murmured through the language of gaze. It’s not exactly pitying, just heartening.

“From the way you look like you could use some company,” He answers sincerely, his eyes flickering over you in an appreciative once-over that doesn’t feel like he’s leering, only valuing like you’re something cherishable. “And, admittedly, in good faith I couldn’t let that dress go to waste. It looks too good on you to do so.”

Jesus, he’s pulling out every move in the game.

Atypical in comparison to your usual indifferent composure, you can feel your cheeks heating, burning your skin. Actually flustered for the first time in what feels like months.

As if your own personal saviour dedicated to assuaging all your needs, the waiter swoops back in with the bottle of wine you requested held in two hands. He pauses for a second as he notices Harry, incredulity flicking through his eyes. But then he sends you a pleased smirk and unscrews the cork of the bottle, refilling your glass with repeated precision.

You murmur a quick gratitude, and the waiter takes the initiative to fill up the wine glass in front of Harry, who nods his own thanks. He plucks it up from the stem, gaze flickering from the rich scarlet liquid as he swirls it before returning back to you as he takes a sip, gaze remaining set on you. You mimic his actions, eyeing him from over the translucent rim, gaining back your conviction.

“Merlot,” He muses as he lowers the liquor from his lips. Your purse your own with amusement.

“You know wine?”

“No. The bottle's label says Merlot,” He says matter-of-factly, mirth ringing in his tone as he gestures off-handedly to the bottle. You blink quickly, that flushed tint coiling back over your skin, which only spurs him on.

“Fancy,” He comments steadily.

You breathe out sharply, lifting the glass back to your mouth to take a quick sip, lifting your shoulders in a careless shrug. “Didn’t think I was going to have any company.”

“I hope I’ll live up to any expectations you had for tonight,” He says, intentions genuine. But he clearly noticed how the table was set up for two when he approached, and yet only holding you.

It’s correctly jarring and disorienting considering your former thoughts on blind dating just a short while ago. Sure, this meeting wasn’t set up between you and Harry- but it was still accepting an offer of company from a stranger you knew nothing about prior, just as you would on a blind date. Harry continues to persuade you into telling him more about yourself, which you tentatively immerse yourself with.

Much to your bewilderment, you don’t entirely despise the conversation that you slip into with him. It’s smooth, undemanding, and light.

You tell him mundane things like what you had for breakfast, how early you usually wake, your pet lizard who lives back at your parent’s home in LA- before dipping into the story of why you were seated alone in this abundantly ornate and elaborate restaurant. Sheepishly laying out the story of how Rebecca had somehow coerced you into going on a blind date with a guy you can’t remember the name of, and how he stood you up. You shield any mortified winces with expressions of contempt, fingers starting up that irritable tapping against the stem of your glass again.

You go back and forth on sharing short, meaningless information about yourselves. Learning how Harry got into sales, explaining he grew up being surrounded by factors of money and influence constantly. He gestures back to a pair sheltered in a side booth, both hunched over the table and murmuring to each other like deadly secrets are being transferred. He elucidates with a grimace about how they’re newly-weds, boisterous and too sickeningly loving, which is what first led him to approach you when he couldn’t stand another second of third-wheeling his own kin and his newfound wife.

“So I guess we were both just feeling a bit lonely tonight,” You evaluate, chin tilting your face sideways slightly, wondering, are you lonely just like me?

“I suppose so.”

“Any thoughts on how to quench loneliness?” You ask, tone coy, one leg lifting to cross over the other. His gaze follows the movement, dropping to the table as though he can see it through the glossy wood.

“You want me to be honest?” He murmurs, eyes returning to your face, your features cast with casual curiosity.

“Of course.”

“I’d like to invite you back to mine tonight,” He admits, unhesitant.

Your moulded expression falters with the outright confession, heart tripping with it.

“You would?” You almost gawk.

“Only if you’re interested,” He assures, mouth thinning slightly as if he mistook your reaction for apathy.

“It’s not that I’m not entirely interested,” You correct, drawing out a soft sigh to collect yourself, propping one of your elbows onto the table. “I’m just.. weighing the pros and cons.”

He gives a slanted grin as you rest your chin on the palm of your hand. “Pros; you won’t be spending the night alone. Cons; you have to deal with repeats of Pink Floyd continuously playing during the car ride.”

You can’t help the gladdened snort that falls from you at the jest. You purse your bottom lip thoughtfully.

“And what do you expect to get in return?” You try to keep your voice methodical.

“Company,” He answers easily, his tone not housing any insistence for you to acquiesce.

You squint towards him, studying and observing. Maybe slightly teasingly, weighing the options over in your head like you’re being faced with a task from your employer.

“It sounds like an investment strategy,” You comment off-handedly.

“More like a mutual agreement.”

You lean back into your chair, hands falling back into your lap, giving a purposeful show of tipping your head to the side again.

“To fuck?” You question crudely. You catch the brief surprise that whisks along his features, but also the way the corner of his mouth twitches in the starts of a smile.

“To not be lonely,” He rectifies.

“Just for a night?” You test, your arms crossing over your middle loosely in a subconscious move of defence.

“Or we could see where it goes after,” He says with that enticing interest painted over his eyes again, with maybe some mingled hope tangled through it.

“After we fuck,” You lift your chin up, humour dour, like the thought of going back to Harry’s doesn’t send adrenaline pulsing through your veins.

He lets himself grin at your bluntness this time around. “Sure.”

“And if I’m thinking about saying no?” You croon, just to scrutinise his reaction, see if this gallant, poised persona of his can stumble.

His jaw clenches in consideration. “How do you usually approach your possible investments?”

You only pause for a beat.

“Like a game of chess.”

“Chess?” He parrots, intrigue evident. You nod.

“Investment is a game of chess. You think about all the strategies you need to win the board over, not just about your next move,” You cerebrate, eyes tipping down to your wine glass, fingertips etching a mindful pattern over it. “Each piece has its own pros and cons, like multiple investments do. If you move a piece in the right direction, it can become a more powerful player. It can grow in importance over time. But, a rash decision can leave you vulnerable and perceptible to attacks, or you can strategise and reach a checkmate. You need to invest foresight before anything else.”

His eyes round towards you as you tatter contemplatively, a deference evident in the solemn features of his gaze.

“So it’s a high-risk, high-reward situation,” He suggests, drawing your attention squarely back to him. A sly, knowing smile pulls at your mouth.

“That’s only considering it is a high reward.”

He doesn’t back down, fishing out a lighthearted jest, willingly taking the extra leap to solidify the blatant idea whisking between you. An idea you both already know was agreed to the moment he complimented your sleek dress earlier. “You could always find out. The customer is offering a first-hand demonstration.”

“Well, I do have to adapt to my opponent’s moves,” You hum wittingly, an easy, unarmed smile replacing your artful coquettishness.

“Is that an agreement we’re coming to?” He questions, optimism lighting his face the same way the candlelight casting along the strong curve of his jaw does.

“A mutual one, yes,” You assent, your stomach fluttering like a rocket preparing for launch, excitement twirling through you in searing ambers now that you’ve concretely settled on your decision.

“My driver can be here in the next ten minutes,” He suggests, brow raising. You agree zealously, smoothing your slightly clammy hands down the front of your dress as you rise to a stand. Harry fetches both his wallet and phone from his pants pocket, swinging a text his brother’s way to let him know he won’t be returning to advise him on how to keep his freshly-made wife appeased, and then calling his driver to your location. Placing a few hefty bills as a tip on the table even though neither of you ordered any food- which you belatedly realise- before he’s turning back to you, guiding you out of the establishment, his hand hovering just above the small of your back, barely grazing his touch along you.

You breathe out sharply as the pair of you move out of the restaurant onto the sidewalk, the New York nighttime traffic bustling, the usual tumultuous honk of a horn and the blinding streak of striking lights second-hand nature to you by now. You lean back against the rust-coloured brick of the building, hooking out a cigarette from the packet you kept stashed in your purse, just a pick-me-up in case Troy, Toby, Something ended up being a mundane bore.

Now you light the end, watching the embers burn as they smear tobacco into your lungs in hopes it’ll cool your anticipation long enough to arrive at Harry’s place first before you accidentally slip up and decide to crash your lips against his now and try to lick that blackcurrant wine right off his tongue against this brick wall.

“Drive shouldn’t be too long. I have a penthouse just up in up-town Manhattan,” Harry explains, peering down at his phone to confirm the driver’s journey to you both, settling next to you. You exhale, the smoke pluming up above you, catching away with the blur of a gentle breeze that’s swiftly turning frigid despite the mellow spring weather.

“You own a penthouse in up-town Manhattan?” You echo with only a tinge of bemusement intertwined.

“That surprising?” He raises a brow with a serene look.

“Not really,” You answer quickly. It wasn’t surprising at all, truthfully. He carried the staunch of his wealth with every step, his frame swallowing up the space he accompanied like he had banked out millions worth of cash just to own it, even somewhere as mundane as a sidewalk. It makes your breath hitch all the more as you watch his sombre eyes flutter down to your lips as they part to allow a plume of whitened smoke to trail up past your nose.

“Good,” He murmurs, gaze flickering back up to meet yours after a moment too long has passed.

You swallow gratingly at the simple way he eases into such a winsome persona, glamour and charisma tailing him constantly. He ushers you forth with a warm hand at the top of your spine as the car arrives, letting you stub out your half-smoked cigarette on the sidewalk before holding the door open for you as you slide into the backseat of the lush vehicle, smiling stiffly towards the driver, nerves growing fretfully in a churn in your lower stomach. Harry settles into the leather seat beside you, addressing the driver deferentially and directing him to upper Manhattan, back home.

As promised, the trip is entirely filled with the pleasant, tranquil lull of Pink Floyd drifting through the speakers, mingled with occasional talk between you and Harry. But for the most part, there’s just an effortless, unworried quiet between you; no demand to appear modish or shrewd- just a mutual understanding of comfortability.

The driver pulls up to the curb not long after, Harry swiftly hopping out of the car and trudging around to help you out. This time around, his hand settles more firmly against the base of your spine, fingers curling slightly as he leads you up to his penthouse with a phlegmatic gait, nodding his chin in polite greeting to the staff you pass. Your face is shrouded with a sanguine expression, heartbeat growing more erratic as you step inside the elevator.

Harry opens the dark-oaked door for you, allowing you to move inside the space first, his hand falling away from your lower back. Just with a first glance, you can tell how sumptuous it is. A wide, inviting hallway that opens out into a lavish living room and curves around to a dining table and kitchen, extensive floor-to-ceiling windows combing the expanse of the far wall. The hallway has two other doors perched at the opposite end, which you suppose lead to the bathroom and bedroom. It has similar lighting to the restaurant, only lit by the oscillating flutter of the city lights outside the windows, casting shadows inside and streams of gentle light, along with the low copper glow of a lamp sitting on the coffee table.

“You want a drink?” Harry asks, trotting through the living room in the direction of a side-bar set up opposite the dining table. You turn your gaze back to him, away from the darkened New York City skyline, a sight that somehow augmented your confidence.

“You don’t want to get straight to the business part of tonight? Close the deal?”

He pauses by the counter littered with liquors, blinking over his shoulder back towards you, a beguiled surprise whisking along his features. He diverts his actions, hand falling away from the wine he had been reaching for, instead turning around to face you. He leans back slightly against the bartop, a brow lifting with a teasing fashion.

“Well, I was hoping to try and charm you a bit first,” He replies steadily, his gaze looking even darker in the subdued lighting, casting over the entire length of you. Your body tenses slightly under the regarding look of cherishing esteem, your blood buzzing alight beneath your skin, anticipation coiling.

You take a step forward to meet him, which prompts him to kick off from the edge of the bar, taking purposeful steps towards here.

“Inviting me here was enough,” You murmur when he’s only a few short footsteps from you, deliberately fluttering your eyelashes and craning your neck up to meet his auburn-painted eyes swallowed by a blazing darkness. The side of his mouth twitches, as if with amusement, before it’s mellowing and darkening into something more decisive, nearly hungry-looking.

“Well, in that case..” He mumbles, more to himself, closing the distance between you. His hands lift to steady themselves on your hips, fingers curling around your frame with a durable finality. Your throat tightens with suspense, hopefulness whisking through you as his head tilts, eyes dropping down towards your lips. But neither of you shy away, your gaze mimicking his and wavering down to the fullness of his mouth that suddenly seems so close.

He leans in, and you mirror the movement, going to meet him- his breath brushes along the skin of your mouth which parts on instinct, eyes dropping to slip closed. His hands flex against your sides, and he pauses, pulling back with just a murmur of dubiety shadowing him.

“Though- you can pull out of this investment at any time, you know,” He reminds you, earnestly searching your gaze. You appreciate the effort to reassure and console you, but you fear your knees might give out beneath you if you have to go back and forth with this bashful, coquettish teasing any longer.

“Okay. Enough with the business metaphors. Just kiss me,” You husk back, one of your hands sliding up to curve around the nape of his neck and bring his face back down to yours. He meets you halfway, your lips meeting in a secure, firm kiss.

Your other hand lifts to balance yourself against his covered chest as his mouth slots over yours. It’s not rushed or heady like you might have expected in this case; but instead slow, deep. Assured. Bounding in a way that makes your lips part when his tongue drags along your bottom lip, coaxing. You acquiesce easily, sighing as his tongue meets yours, tangling in a precise dance that gradually grows more resolute, determined.

You sigh into his mouth as if you’re alleviated as his arms curl around your waist, tightening his hold on you, large hands tracing over the dress painted over your back. You tilt your head to the side to purposefully deepen the kiss, which he easily follows, movements quickly growing more desperate, a heat you thought had become a long-lost friend burning at the base of your spine, looping around in curling tendrils to your belly, warming. Your hand traces up from his neck to the edge of his jaw, then up into his hair- softer than you expected, threading through your fingers like silk.

You tug gently, urging. He sounds a low groan into the kiss, arms pulling you flush with the firmness of his body, the two of you swaying slightly to the side, unbalanced. He grips at your waist and guides you backwards. You stumble slightly in your heels, to which his hands curl tighter around your sides, nearly lifting you from the floor and carrying you backwards. He delicately but hurriedly pushes you back against a small side-table where he placed his keys by the door in the hallway, mouth working more urgently over yours. You respond with equal enthusiasm, a desperation clawing through each of your movements as your ass presses back into the edge of the wood, hips tilting.

He keeps one arm wrapped around your body whilst the other dips down, fingers toying with the edge of your dress where the split ends on your thigh. His fingers tilt beneath the fabric, carefully skimming along the softer skin of your inner thigh, making you keen towards him. He then swiftly grabs at your hips, and hoists you up onto the table.

The sudden action has you gasping with incredulity, lips disconnecting from his. He doesn’t waste a beat of not occupying his mouth, head dipping downwards to attach his lips to your neck. He kisses down the length of your throat, tongue tipping out to drag along your pulse, feeling it flutter frantically beneath the muscle.

He travels down further with open-mouthed kisses, to the exposed line of your collarbone. He curls his lips, sucking a small, blooming mark of purple into the small dip by the bone, his tongue smoothing over it. You should scold him, knowing you’ll have to cover it when you go into work next- but your thoughts are swiftly disoriented as he steps between your legs which part instinctually for him, his body moving flush to yours. You can feel the bulge of his arousal pressing into where your dress begins to hike up.

Need barrels into you harsher than you expected. With hasty fingers, you slide both of your hands down his body to his waist, hands working urgently at his belt. You barely get the buckle undone before his hands are covering yours, fingers dipping down to curl over your wrists and cease your actions.

He tuts, lifting his head from your neck.

“Not yet, honey. Wanna taste you first.”

You go to groan your objection, but it’s quickly swayed and swallowed by his mouth again, laying a prompt yet lingering kiss before he’s nipping at your chin, your jaw, working downwards. He lathes swift, small pecks of his lips over the curve of your chest, before following further down to your middle, his hand returning to your thigh, dragging beneath the hem of your dress beneath the slit, gliding upwards to your inner thigh, right by where you need him most.

He drops down more, his knees crouching down with a slight strain, and you notice the gentle wince that pulls at his face, the angle just not right. The table an inch too tall for him to comfortably try and settle between your thighs without an awkward position of having his body half-hunched and knees bent gracelessly, like some clumsy structure of a tower.

“You don’t have to crouch awkwardly, Castillo,” You inform through a rather breathless laugh, mirthful. Not mocking him, just finding his rushed enthusiasm endearing. You tug gently at his hair, coaxing him back enough for you to slide off the edge of the side-table so you’re pressed back against it again, ass squished against the wood. “I can just lean back on this.”

His eyes flutter up to yours with an inkling of vulnerability that’s quickly replaced with his own amusement as he comfortably settles onto his knees in front of you, now at the precise height to meet you.

“Great point. Underestimated my height,” He rumbles with gaiety, hiking one of your legs up so it’s resting half on the table, whilst looping your calf over his shoulder, opening you up further to him.

His fingers curl over through the fabric through the slit on your thigh, hiking up your dress enough to rumple it around your hips and give himself more access, both of his hands curling around your shins, before sliding up the expanse of your legs to your thighs with a reverent touch, like he’s sculpting a statue from just the rawness of his fingertips. He opens your dress like he’s unveiling a museum artifact, slowly opening the sheen curtains of the hem.

A nearly distraught sound falls from him.

“Jesus,” He breathes, eyes rounding, locked towards your covered core. Wrapped in a delicate black lace. His thumb swipes out to prod and stroke gently over the gusset he finds already damp, making his eyes flutter and his eyes drop with a ravenous look.

Your breath hitches, and his insatiable attention lifts up to you, locking his gaze on yours like an enchanting siren call.

“This was for him?” He mutters, calling back to your blind date who never showed up. He keeps his eyes on your face as he dips forward, pressing a lingering kiss to the inside of your thigh.

“Not anymore,” You reply throatily, fingers carding through his hair, urging. He smiles, nearly smug, boastful. Then lowers his head and presses another kiss to you, this time right against the soaked fabric of your panties, over your soaked folds held beneath. His hands slide higher beneath your dress to your hips to hook his thumbs through the waistband of the lace, dragging your panties down your legs with meticulous slowness. He curls the moist material in his fist after hooking it over your heels, before he’s tucking it into the back pocket of his pants like a secret fantasy hidden away.

His eyes drop down to where you’re now revealed to him, hands returning to your inner thighs, widening the stance, slotting his broad shoulders between them. You hear his breath stumble as he takes in the sight of you; puffy folds drenched with need, clit basically begging for his attention, hole clenching around nothing like it’s already calling him directly to you.

“So pretty, darlin’,” He murmurs, his thumb stroking out to swipe along the edges of your lips, spreading them wider for him. You feel your heart loop around in a scattered carousel as he lowers his face completely between your legs, his tongue flicking out to flatten against your cunt, then smooth upwards in one slow, long line.

You gasp at the wet heat of his tongue, and he responds with a drawling groan, his hand wrapping tight around your thigh. Then he’s lapping more insistently at your dripping slit, collecting your juices on his tongue like it’s the sweet nectar of a maple tree. His mouth lifts, suckling your clit past his lips, his tongue stroking over it in a smoothing motion that makes you twitch, chest arching upwards with a sharp inhale.

His tongue dips down, experimentally sliding inside you, curling to taste the slick right off your fluttering walls, slick pooling on the muscle. The motion has a devastating whimper slipping from your lips, your hand tightening and yanking lightly at his hair. He moans into you, the sound reverberating right up your spine in a quiver and making your hips flex into his mouth, which he only responds to with an eager, nearly debauched slurp, his mouth covering the entirety of your pulsing core like it’s his personal alter.

He licks into you, maneuvering between plunging his tongue in and out of your hole and sucking against that sensitive bundle of nerves that makes your knees threaten to give out. His eyes slip closed with a fervent expression as he suckles against your clit, his hand coiling up from your thigh to work his middle finger into you, your tightness wrapping around the digit as your mouth parts pendulously, body eagerly accepting the stretch of his thick finger.

He begins to dip his finger in and out of you with strenuous slowness, letting you feel each drag of it along your walls, making you drip more shiny slick onto him, drooling down onto his palm. He swipes his tongue out to collect it right from the source, drawing a ragged moan from both of you as he experimentally plunges his tongue into you alongside his finger. The act is followed by an obscene squelch as he licks up your fallen juices, the curve of his nose pressing against your clit.

“Oh, shit, like that-” You puff, chest heaving upwards. You urge him impossibly closer to you with the end of your heel pressing into his shoulder blade. He avidly complies, his finger moving faster inside you, submerging his tongue and twirling it inside you, curling and lapping. Your hips twist as he finger fucks you, but he stills you with one hand against your hip, whilst the other dips down to flatten his palm against your mound, his thumb slicking out and circling tightly over your clit.

You jerk, a whine curdling up past your throat as the tendrils simmer through your pelvis, the triple stimulation of his finger fucking into you repeatedly alongside his tongue catching any of your dribbling slick, and the rub of his thumb over your bundle of nerves making you lean further back against the side-table.

"Tha's it. You gonna come for me?” He asks into your cunt, voice muffled into your skin, sending another shiver up along your spine whilst you nod earnestly, quickly, lips pursing with another impure moan.

He redoubles and amplifies his efforts, sinking his middle finger deeper inside you, fucking it into you with rougher, sharper movements designed to make you uncoil like thread around his digit. His tongue continues to cuff and curl inside you, licking at you. His thumb strokes acute, tight circles around your clit until your thighs are clenching around his head.

Your hips roll down eagerly, impaling yourself further onto his tongue and finger, eyes slipping closed as your rapture tightens through your system, burning up along your spine and lashing over your chest like a smoothing of velvet honey. You’re pushed and diving thirstily down into the looping ravines of bliss, gushing down onto his tongue, your hand fisting in his hair.

He makes a starved sound against you, his tongue eagerly pushing and swiping, drinking down everything you have to offer like it’s something holy, an amalgamation of sweetness and headiness he’s rapidly becoming addicted to.

You wrench at his hair more insistently as he continues his ministrations against you, although slower, savouring each drip of your slick onto his skin and tongue. You whimper as the overstimulation of the flick of his tongue has your hips tilting away, his thumb a steady pressure against your puffy clit. He grins against you, smug, but relents, lifting his face up from between your thighs and peering up towards you with a lopsided smirk, pleased and satisfied.

“Okay?” He asks raspingly, like his lower face isn’t smeared with your release, lips glossy with you. You don’t reply, instead curling both of your hands over his cheeks and practically dragging him back up your body, lifting him up from his sore knees until his mouth is pressing back to yours, fervent, like you’re starved. You lick into his mouth to taste yourself on his tongue, moaning against him.

His nose bumps against yours as the kiss escalates, famished and keen, his hand grabbing at your jaw to direct your face and deepen your movements, his slick middle finger smearing your want against your skin. His other hand grabs at your hip to steer you away from the side-table, leading you backwards to those two doors by the end of the hall, mumbling into your mouth. “Want you in my bed.”

You both stumble slightly, but quickly anchor yourselves, polished leather and the plastic of heels clacking against the linoleum floors. His hand on your jaw drops down to snake behind you and fiddle with the zipper of your dress until it eventually comes loose, dragging it down to the base of your spine. The glossy material slides off your frame, pooling at your ankles. He helps you step out of it, guiding you backwards through the doorway to where you assume is his bedroom, his lips never breaking away from yours.

He kicks off his shoes whilst you wrestle off your heels, dropping down a few short inches as his hands covetously travel over you, melding over your curves like he can’t trace enough of you in the time he has- which is the entire night. He unclasps your bra, discarding it carelessly to the side with a soft clatter, leaving you completely bare for him.

His large hands come to immediately cup your breasts, squeezing carefully, his thumbs swiping over your nipples that quickly pebble under his attention. You whimper softly, pulling your lips from his and pushing your chest up into his hold, head slinging back with a breathy sigh. He takes the initiative, dipping his head down and attacking along the underside of your jaw, his tongue prodding at that sensitive skin behind your ear.

It’s heady, potent, a mix of heavy breaths and mingled want clashing into a nearly violent need. A different kind of greed than that of desire for wealth, desire for love or affection- but instead something rawer. Unbridled, weighty lust.

You barely get a glance around the costly expanse of his bedroom as you’re grabbing at his shoulders, directing him in a pivot until the back of his knees hit the edge of his king-sized mattress. You gently yet imperatively shove him back onto his bed, the silk sheets shifting with his weight as he lands back against them, his arms falling away from you.

He moves further up the pillows as you climb up onto the prodigious bed to join him, thighs framing his waist. His eyes draw up your bare frame towards you, inky black, his pupils swallowing out the brown of his irises almost completely in the soft lighting and in the consummation of his want.

His hands settle around your waist, squeezing as you dip down to press a swift kiss against his lips, your breasts squishing against his chest whilst your fingers slide down and tangle with his half-open belt, looping it finally through the fabric, before flicking it to the side. You nibble at his bottom lip before pulling away and unbuttoning his pants, zipping them down. You slide down briefly to urge and tug the fabric away from his legs, whilst he takes measure to tug his long-sleeved top over his head.

You crawl back over him, legs straddling his hips, your hands dropping to splay over the broad, warmth expanse of his exposed chest, his body left in just his boxers beneath you, an inviting happy trail of darkened brown hair littered above the waistband. Licentiously, you roll your hips down into him, dragging the soaked state of your core over the bulge of his boxers, making his cock twitch beneath the fabric, a groan rumbling from his chest.

“Fuck, honey,” He huffs, head falling back into the pillows, hands gripping your waist as you move against him in a teasing downwards grind, a carefully precise rhythm. “Can’t wait to have that sweet little cunt wrapped around me.”

You bite down against your swollen bottom lip, body straining with arousal, and hook your fingers through the waistband of his boxers, dragging them down his thighs, swiping them off his legs. Your throat tightens. His cock, thick and throbbing, slaps up against his stomach, the tip red and engorged, dripping a bead of translucent pre-come onto his belly, his balls full and heavy between his thighs. He keeps his gaze settled on you as you gawk like a renaissance painting; his eyes needy, dark, hungry. Unrestrained.

You exhale shakily, hand gliding down to curl around the base of him, manicured nails delicately smoothing over the sensitive, soft skin. You give him the smallest pump with your fist loosely clenched, and his cock twitches in your grip, hipbones flexing beneath you.

“Gotta be honest. M’ not gonna last if you tease me like that, baby,” He rasps sincerely, lips spreading with a rugged exhale like he’s struggling to contain himself and this bubbling need threatening to boil over between you. The confession only sends electrified wire sizzling along your veins in the form of arousal, and you nod in acknowledgement quickly, lifting your hips. You squeeze gently at the base of him, angling his cock until it’s nudging against your entrance.

“There you go,” He breathes, exhaling out through his nostrils, whilst you tilt your hips slightly, slowly sinking down onto his thickness. Your mouth dries at the sheer size of him stretching your clenching walls, jaw falling slack as your hips roll, determinedly swaying down until he’s entirely sheathed inside you to the hilt. You both sound a simultaneous groan of thrill, his brows pinched with concentration as he gives you time to adjust, your hips continuing to absently swirl in circles as the prior dull pain swiftly bleeds out into pleasure, hooking into the base of your spine like a hook.

His jaw works in a grating clench when you tighten around him as you slowly lift your hips, as though your body is trying to keep him inside you. You raise until just his tip is notched inside you, before you’re sinking back down. Slow, steady, his cock curving against the deepest part of you, nudging against that soft, sensitive place that makes your eyes roll back into your skull.

You gradually begin to increase the pace, elevating your hips just to drop back down on him, repeatedly stretching yourself over his girth. His gaze hops over you like he doesn’t know where to settle his attention on; your tits bouncing with your steady pace, the slick of his cock as he’s sheathed in and out of your gripping pussy, folds spreading around him, the inviting line of your neck pulsing as your hips roll. He finally settles on your face, captivated in watching the way your eyes twist with bliss, pleasure striking up along your body, your thighs squeezing around his waist.

“Fuck.. look at you,” He pants, his hands curling tighter around your waist, aiding you, guiding your hips into a slightly firmer tempo. “Look like a goddess on top of me. Like a bloody gift sent just for me.”

You whimper, nodding quickly, cunt squeezing around him, egging him on.

“So pretty taking this cock,” He mumbles mindlessly, eyes drawing to watch where you take him again, your inner thighs quivering. Your fingers curl against his chest, nails digging soft, crescent moons into his skin as you heave yourself up, before slamming down harsher, both of you moaning wantonly at the pressure. Your ass begins to slap wetly back onto his thighs as you rise and fall quickly, your back arching each time his cockhead brushes and prods into your G-spot.

“Other guy doesn’t know what he missed out on,” Harry husks, eyes drawing a searing line up your body as if he’s mapping you out, committing you to memory. His hips sway, grinding himself up to meet your repeated dropping motions, rolling himself flush into you each time. He chuckles, the noise strained with pleasure. “I can’t say I’m that sympathetic for him, though.”

His hands smooth further up along your curves, before he’s hiking himself up enough to wrap his arms around your body, your chest arching into his. You buck down into him, his face burying against the crook of your neck, breathing hot and rasped against your skin, your pulse fluttering frantically beneath it, tensing with each shameless moan that crawls out from your throat.

“Get it all to myself, huh?” He mumbles, sucking against that spot he left on your collarbone earlier, darkening it further, the bruise blooming with red and violet, like a stain against your skin you currently wear with unadulterated pride. Your cunt makes a vulgar, moist squelching sound around him as you jerk yourself onto his cock, riding his lap with a lacerating wildness.

“Yes, baby, fuck- like that,” He moans, tilting his head back to peer up at you, his blackened-out eyes shimmering with lust and something bordering on worship. “S’ all for me, yeah?”

“Mhmm- yes, all you,” You agree haplessly, your tits jerking with your body as you bounce on his dick, chasing that twist you already feel pulverising and chewing at the frayed edges of your burning bliss.

His hand dips down between you, the tips of his fingers consciously rubbing sternly over the engorged swell of your sensitive clit that’s peeking out beneath the hood. You jolt at the added stimulation, pace stumbling, and Harry takes the chance to curl his robust arms tighter around your frame, and before you can process his movement, your vision is whirling in a blinded blur as he flips you both, his cock still impaled in you. He lowers you down into the cushiony comfort of the mattress, silk spilling out around your head.

“You’ve had your turn,” He says with a crooked smirk, dipping his head down to bite gently at the edge of your chin. You go to grumble in petulant protest, but he cuts the sound off from the tip of your tongue with an unyielding, borderline harsh thrust into you, silencing you with his cock.

He repeats the action, slower this time, letting you feel the ridge and veins of his length, sliding through your slick, sensitive walls. Grinding down into you, that coarse thatch of curls at the base of him that’s slowly greying rubbing against your swollen clit peeking out from beneath the hood. You sound a rapturous, libidinous moan, head falling back into the pillows and chest arching upwards with a heave.

His hips jerk at the sight, before restraint snaps like a thread untying, the chain unsnapping that shielded the rabid dog to the pillar. He slams into you, hips slapping wetly against yours, cock plunging into you with brisk speed, firm.

“Yeah, you can take it, can’t you baby?” He moans in a gruff rumble, a sheen of sweat tilting over his temple. “So fuckin’ good. Feel so good wrapped around me- better than I imagined.”

You whimper, arms looping beneath his, hands curling over to his back. You dig your nails deeper into his skin than you meant to, leaving dim, red marks down the length of his back. But he doesn’t seem deterred- if anything, it spurs him on to pound into you swifter, relentless.

“So sweet and wet,” He mumbles more to himself than you, fucking you into his mattress. “Dripping all over my cock, aren’t you?”

His hasty, muttered questions are rhetoric, slipping from his lips like the drip of honey, curdling with sweetness. You couldn’t think to answer even if you wanted to anyways, shameless moans pouring from you in tumbling sways of bliss, body sliding up the bed with each jackhammering thrust of his hips.

You squeeze around him, legs loosely splayed wide for him to pummel into you, cunt slick and hot around his throbbing length, your face flushed and hair splaying widely around your head on his pillows. His hands settle on either side of your head, his eyes settling on yours intensely as his hips swing into yours, his eyebrows saddled with focus, dense breaths and groans drawing out of him. His chest shines with a thin line of sweat, his biceps flexing and the veins in his forearms bulging as he bucks himself forward, fucking you ruthlessly.

It’s shameless, a tangle of bodies and limbs that intertwine like second nature, like your frames automatically blend into each other. As if you hadn’t just met tonight, starting as strangers when you were both meant to grovel around in your own solitary. As if you were both molded to be here; with you beneath him, his cock hammering into your pulsating hole.

“Fuck, m’ not gonna last much longer,” He admits, glancing down between you to watch where your abdomen rolls to grind your hips up into his sharp, plunging thrusts. “You gonna come for me, baby?”

Your mouth feels numb, eyes glazed over with the pleasure that curdles along you. But you nod eagerly, nails digging further into his flesh. He pants, using the last of his renowned energy to buck harder into you, chasing you both to those releases burning through your blood, sizzling to an unstoppable height before it captures the pair of you.

His head drops down, forehead pressing to yours, your mingled noises tangling in the heated air between your mouths.

“Go on, honey. Come for me. Let me feel you squeezing me,” He mutters frantically, and his mumbled coaxing that rasps past your ears are the final length that stretches before that release curls around your veins, splashing like liquid ecstasy through you. Your mouth catches open in a noiseless whine, your eyes rolling back into your head.

Your thighs clamp around his waist, cunt tightening around him before spasming, juices slicking over him in streams, dripping down to his balls and smearing each time they slap against the curve of your ass. He sounds a groan that sounds pained, his hips stuttering in their pace as your walls squeeze and flutter like they’re trying to milk him of everything he’s worth.

“Fuck. That’s it, that’s it, so good for me-” He groans jarringly whilst you mewl hopelessly, hips bucking up. His thrusts turn erratic, uncoordinated as he unceremoniously chases his own orgasm, slamming down into you with propelling hips, sinful, the force staggering.

His mouth pinches in effort as your cunt slicks another gush around him, and with a hiss of restraint, he pulls himself out of your wet embrace at the last moment. His hand hastily dipping down to wrap around himself, length soaked and throbbing. He barely pumps himself once before his thighs are locking up, a trembling moan that whisks off into a whimper as the bliss hits him squarely in the gut, and his cock is jumping in his hold, ropes of thick white painting over your stomach in ropes of heat, nearly reaching your breasts.

You squirm, limbs aching, dipping your chin down towards your chest to see where he weakly strokes over his cock to milk out the last of his come, which dribbles down to your mound, warm and smooth and sticky.

For a moment, the only sound in the room is the hoarse panting of your shared breaths as you both reel through the after effects, foreheads still pressed together. Your eyes flutter closed, body sated, a content afterglow burning low through you. You feel him shift above you, dipping his hand down to your stomach.

Slowly, reverently in a way that feels nearly pious, he swipes a thick finger through the layer of his come on your belly, smearing it over your skin and collecting it on the pad of his digit. And then-

He’s carefully lifting it up between your warm bodies to your parted, swollen mouth. His finger taps softly against your bottom lip, coaxing your eyes open to meet his. They’re still dark, inky, but there’s a softer kind of benevolence swimming through them now, tender.

You swipe your tongue out to collect his come from the tip of his finger, letting your jaw fall slack as he guides it into your mouth. You moan softly at the salty taste of him, stifled as you curl your lips around his finger, sucking the essence of his release right from his skin. You hear his breath hitch as he laboriously slides his finger out again, swiping over your bottom lip. A beat passes before he’s dipping down and pressing his mouth to yours, tasting himself on you.

The kiss is delicate, still amorous but with a fondness burning through it. He pulls back, his tongue carefully swiping over his lower lip like he’s relishing the flavour of both of you combined, your need like a physical, potent taste.

He gives you an unhurried, warm smile, before his hefty body is moving from atop you, and he’s dragging himself off the bed with strained, exhausted movements. You exhale shakily into the slightly humid air, your skin gradually cooling as he pads into the connected ensuite. You hear the tap running as the room lulls around you, head drooping to the side, eyelids feeling heavy.

He returns a moment later, crawling to your side. You almost jolt as the warmth of a damp washcloth meets your sensitive skin. He prods it gently over your stomach, cleaning his own release from you, padding it gently against your sore, puffy core. His movements are nothing short of reverent.

He carelessly chucks the rag onto the floor, before he’s maneuvering your body onto your side, settling down behind you, his brawny arm curling around your waist, your arms tucking in front of you. His fingers brush against your wrist as his body presses into yours from behind, broad and assured.

For a while, neither of you speak, simply relishing in the afterglow that drapes over you like a blanket, especially after Harry moves the glossy silk of the sheet over the two of you, the coolness inviting on your warm skin. Consoling, he presses a slow kiss against the curve of your shoulder from behind.

“You know, I’d like to invest further in this, if you’d be so kind as to allow me,” He murmurs into your skin, careful but unhesitant in his decision. There’s a tinge of amusement intertwined with his tone at the inane ridiculousness of the continued jesting metaphors of a business transaction being shared between you.

“What are you offering?” You whisper back into the dull smoothness of his lavish bedroom, a knowing smile lilting up the corner of your lips. You feel his own mouth upturn in a grin against you.

“A second date. If you want it.”

You’re gladdened by the fact he can’t entirely see your face so you can shield the giddy, elated expression that tilts over your expression. Your heart thumping with a vertiginous stutter at the thought of going out on another date with Harry, to share precious time with him again.

Time where you’re both aren’t under the restraints and tensions of your jobs, where you can relish in the taste of each other, the feel of each other, the simpleness of comfort found within tenderness and lasting looks. A time in which you don’t have to be perfect- you can just be.

You tilt your head back, coaxing his face into the crook of your neck, hearing him inhale softly as he breathes you in, the scent of sex and something softer lingering in the air.

“That can definitely be arranged,” You answer, coyness blooming in your voice, but settled with an undeniable soft rawness. His arms tighten gently around you, the both of you ravelled in the other in his large bed, the milk-dipped moon waving somewhere high above the heights of colossal towers that loom like spires, the scintillating but gentle whisk of the city lights peeking into the room, something like nectar settled on the tips of your tongue, saccharine and honeyed, settling into the air like promise.

And now you think; when you return to work, maybe you actually will thank Rebecca for convincing you to go on that blind date.

“But I have infinite tenderness for you. I always will. All my life long.” - Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013)

Comments, reblogs and feedback are so gratefully appreciated! I’m slowly starting a tag list, so if you’d like to be added, let me know.

[malfunctioning-robot]

I hate having to do my best to reblog everything for a new piece of media while it's fresh, before the tag turns to typical fandom stuff (x reader, incorrect quotes, boring aus, etc).

I feel like before it'd be a long while before that happens and you could get into something late, but now you HAVE to get into when it's released because after 2 months the tag is practically unbearable.

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[mythalism]

i know everyone is really excited for the oblivion remake because i was too. oblivion was the first real video game i ever played when i was a kid, and is literally the reason i am a gamer today, but BDS has called for a microsoft boycott, and that includes anything made by bethesda.

this isn't just a "oh they have some obscure business partnerships in isr*el" or "oh they donate to this or that lobby" sort of boycott either, although those are important too. my tone is not meant to be flippant about them, but rather i want to emphasize the gravity of how microsoft directly and deliberately contributes to the palestinian death toll daily, in a way that is uniquely cruel and complicit.

microsoft has had a $35 million dollar contract with the isr*eli military since 2002. they provide cloud storage for surveillance data of gazan civillians, and an artificial intelligence program called a "mass assassination factory" to assist in planning and targeting their attacks, many of which are on civilians or involve mass civilian casualties.

microsoft's service agreements with the isr*eli military also includes the CPU responsible for the military's tech infrastructure, military intelligence units that develop spy technology used against palestinians and lebanese, the maintenance of the palestinian population registry that tracks and (illegally) limits the movement of palestinains in the west bank and gaza, their air force targeting database, and much more. they work closely with isr*eli military intelligence agencies on surveillance systems used to monitor palestians, provide specialized consulting, technical and engineering support, hosts training software for the IOF, provide financial support to organizations based in the illegally occupied west bank, and have repeatedly invested in isr*eli start ups specializing in war technology.

in 2020, internal and external pressure forced microsoft to pull out of its 74 million dollar investment in an isr*eli company that violated international law due to its use of facial recognition technology for military surveillance.

in 2021, microsoft signed a new, 3-year contract with the isr*eli ministry of defense worth $133 million dollars. the isr*eli military is microsoft's second largest military customer. the first? the united states.

you can read more (w/ sources) about microsoft's complicity here.

BDS asks us to boycott microsoft products whenever possible.

microsoft is directly complicit in countless isr*eli war crimes, and the money you provide them will further proliferate this violence. i know the oblivion remake was exciting, but please, consider the lives of palestinians above your own nostalgia. no one is free until everyone is free.