#i blocked it now + ALL variations i could think of

[castielsprostate]

please just say kill. please just say suicide. please just say porn. please just say epilepsy. please just say sex. please just say abuse. please just say the fucking words instead of k1// or tw sp1d€rs or ended time of being alive. stop letting algorithms rule your life.

i hate you "influencers", i hate you tiktok, i hate you "content creators", i hate you "unalive" and "s€x" and "dr/ügs", i hate you instagram, i hate you consumerism, i hate you family friendly, i hate you puritans, i hate you facebook, i hate you family vloggers, i hate you violating other people's privacy, i hate you modern day social media

[dandyshucks]

blinks tiredly. i decide "hm maybe i should try to expand my circle and step outside of it a little, lets go look at the main community tags" and im just greeted with a bunch of edgelords who think saying "fiction doesn't affect reality, don't like don't read" is peak activism and "fighting censorship". head in my hands. this is partially why i do not ever go into the community tags, my nervous system cannot handle blocking fifty weirdos every single day just so i can have a normal experience in the community tags hfdsjkl

[fushitoru]

rainy days and brownies

pairing ⸺ college/modern!au: bf!gojo x reader

summary ⸺ you wake up for some soft moments with your boyfriend that involves brownies (turned freaky)

warnings ⸺ smut, tooth rotting fluff, some mild angst?, gojo unfortunately mentions skibidi toilet, I think I made gojo gen z here, boob worship, brownies and baking, established relationship, oral (f!receiving), gojo eats pussy like a champ, NOT EDITED, might be incoherent to everyone except me, product of a forceful effort to escape writer’s block, rainy mornings <3, lots of intimacy, art by 3-aem, probably in the same universe as this

general masterlist

Rainy mornings with Satoru means baking.

It’s a ritual the both of you have fallen into. On a day like this, where the air smells like rain, you blearily wake up from your nap to smell the warm distinct aroma of overly sweet brownies.

The slutty brownies were Satoru’s masterpiece. Even if he did overdo the sugar, you can’t admit that your stomach was growling as you rubbed your bleary eyes and frowned while raking a hand through your head. This bed head was going to be a bitch to untangle with the hairbrush.

“AND IIIIIIIIIIIII, WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOUUU—“

You jumped, caught off guard by Satoru randomly deciding to pay homage to Whitney Houston. Standing up, you headed towards the living room of you and Satoru’s apartment—-not before you adjusted your tank top so your tits weren’t out and the boy shorts you chose to sleep in properly covered your ass.

“WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOUUUUU—-“ You cringed at Satoru’s attempt of a high note, grumpily looking at him use his chocolate covered spatula as a makeshift mic. He was in the kitchen—-shirtless, of course—-now bending over to peek at the state of his brownies in the oven. Deciding the brownies weren’t done yet, he closed the oven door and stood up once more, reaching for his phone to undoubtedly scroll through TikTok. Continuing to hum different variations of the chorus, he swiped at his phone, ignorant to your presence behind him.

You think he’s kind of sweet like this. If it weren’t for him, the both of you would never be in this position. You would always be the cold frigid bitch he saw in freshman orientation and occasionally at parties across campus, and he would be the sweet, friendly guy that all the girls would continue to fall head over heels for.

To be honest, you don’t really see what he sees in you. You’re like a Disney villain, the witch that entraps him in her webs of insecurity and jealousy, but he remains the valiant prince, fighting to get to you. When he finally has you in his arms, he kisses you into believing that you are his princess instead.

It’s obvious in the way he fought for you—memorizing your schedule, rushing across campus just to walk you to class, pleading with you to grab dinner. And each time, you’d brush him off with sharp rejections, finding excuses to keep him at arm’s length.

But when he finally had you, finally cracked all your defenses—he was never going to let you go. You could see as much; the way he proudly walked on campus with you at his side, across the main quad so he could boast that he got you. You were his, and he was fully, undoubtedly yours. At parties, his eyes would always be on you, raking his eyes up and down your figure in your nurse outfit, conjuring up the hundred and thirty four positions he would fuck you so good in, even if there were prettier girls clinging onto his arms asking for a morsel of his attention. Pettily enough, you would just need to sigh and mumble “This party isn’t fun,” to have Satoru whipped, ushering you out of the frat house while those girls glared at the back of your Halloween costume, angry beyond measure that a nobody like you has the campus sweetheart wrapped around your finger.

Loud booms of the Vine gunshot sound effect snaps you back into the present, where Satoru is snickering at some god awful brain rot. You choose to approach him, wrapping your arms around his waist and smothering your face into his muscular back.

“Hi baby,” you mumble.

“Guess which sleepyhead is awake!” He announces to the world and turns around, and your traitorous heart jumps in its chest while looking into his eyes. It’s stupid. You’re both in your PJs on a morning where the rain thuds against the window pane, blurring both the window and all outside life, suspending you both in this moment. His eyes look affectionately down to you, and he plants a wet kiss on your forehead. “How was your nap, baby?”

“It was good.” You watch him turn around again to peek at the oven, and he hums, upper arm flexing as he grabs the heavy bag of flour, dragging it closer to him. “When’d you get up?”

“Around 7.”

You shoot him a bewildered look as you hop onto the counter, a better space to observe your boyfriend. When he realized that you had woken up, he had left his phone open to give you a kiss, reel playing noises. You peek over and almost snort at what is playing.

“Satoru, why are you watching alligators get chased away by a shovel?”

He looks up from the bowl of brownie batter he was now cleaning—-with his tongue, mind you—-and grins boyishly. “Isn't it crazy how hundreds of years of evolution get destroyed by a shovel?”

”Your feed is not normal,” you shake your head, keeping a stony face as you continue to scroll through his TikTok. In fact, it’s hilarious—-the things he got were weirder than one could dream, with toilets producing heads of men taking over whole cities. You’re not sure what that means about your boyfriend, but you accept it as you watch the nonsensical video.

“Wait,” he makes his way over to you, standing in between your legs. “Is that skibidi toilet?”

“What the hell is that.”

“Baby,” he whines. “You don’t know the lore? I don’t know if I can be with you for any longer.”

Your bite back a grin. “And subjecting me to hours of FNAF backstory wasn’t testament to how much I love you?”

Before he could whine back, you noticed he had some leftover chocolate on the side of his mouth and leaned over to lick it. Humming at the taste, you grabbed his hands and took in his brownie coated index and middle finger into your mouth.

He frowns. “Are you trying to seduce me into forgiving you and giving you more brownies?”

You laugh softly and give him a soft smooch on his shoulder. “No, silly. If I ate any more than half, I would have diabetes.”

He grabs the back of your hips and pulls you closer into him, nuzzling his nose against yours. The physical contact rubs at your nerves the right way, firing off that emotional part of you that makes you think loving him is so easy. How lucky you are that he’s chosen to give you his love.

His god-awful alarm blares—same annoying sound he keeps hitting snooze on for his 7ams—and the moment breaks as he reaches for the oven mitts to pull out the brownies. The aroma hits you instantly, making your mouth water. Satoru blows dramatically on the brownies, pouting and mock-yelling, “Hurry up and cool down! My girlfriend wants to eat you.” You can’t help but giggle. Once Satoru finally decides they’re cool enough, he grabs one and offers it to you. “Make way for the choo-choo train!” he snickers, guiding the brownie through imaginary tracks, a shit-eating grin on his face, before plopping it into your mouth.

You can’t help but let out a soft sigh as the brownie melts on your tongue, its warmth enveloping your senses. Rich, velvety tones of chocolate overwhelm your mouth, with each bite releasing a symphony of deep, indulgent flavors that linger long after the brownie is fully swallowed. “Wow, this is actually good.”

He pauses, brownie and hand held in mid air. “Why do you sound surprised?”

“I don’t know.” You shrug innocently but stick your tongue out to him regardless.

Popping the brownie in his mouth--but not before sending you a pout---he brushes his hands together to remove the brownie crumbs as he makes his way back in between your legs. The way he settles between them makes you all too aware of the heat of his groin encompassing you. He lazily drags his eyes up your figure, but not before settling on your outfit. His eyes then flick down to watch his hands trace the hem of your tank top, and your eyes follow his hands, a little dizzy by the action.

You’re always a bit sensitive in the mornings, and before this day, you and Satoru’s interactions have been limited to a kiss before he runs for his 7am and then doing college work until 3am, where you’re both too tired for anything particularly frisky. So, yea, you are kind of pent up---and judging by the bulge that’s starting to form in Satoru’s sweats, you assume he is too.

You put your elbows on his shoulder blades to give him head scratches from behind and lean towards his jawlines giving small kisses. You can feel him close his eyes, purring silently like a cat, and underneath your hands, his back and shoulder blades tense and relax as you rake your hands over his scalp.

“This new?” He uses his index finger to snap the strap of your tank top against your shoulder, using his mouth to given open mouthed kisses to your collarbone.

“Mhm,” you hum, a little deliriously at that---he’s begun to trail down, mouth working at the swell of your breasts.

He slowly pulls the collar of your tank down, down down down until your breast pops out. His eyes trace the swing urgently and groans. “I missed these, sweet girl.”

You gasp sharply when he puts it in his mouth, tongue swirling around the nipple. Satoru’s always been a boob guy, joking about his hands being your bra to support “those mommy milkers.” Right now, he’s doing just that; groping the hell out of them and giving them kisses, as if they were God’s greatest creation.

As much as you were enjoying your boyfriend’s boob worshipping, you need more. You were throbbing in want of contact on your pussy, and you made sure to relay just that. “Toru, I need more,” you whined.

“God forbid a man appreciate nice boobs.” He rolls his like the sassy man he is and parts with your nipple like lips after a messy and wet make out session. Your breasts are gleaming with his spit, a string connecting your nipple to his lips. He trails his face down your torso, making his way down to his knees until he was facing your crotch.

You whine and clench your thighs together to draw his face closer to the space between your thighs. He looks up at you and coos, giving your inner thigh a kiss. “I can smell you from here, cutie.”

His statement reminds you that you’re not too wet in the mornings. As soon as you wake up, some of your morning sessions with Satoru require the aid of lube to ensure no pain. Irritation flares at you at the thought that you might need to leave your position to grab some l—-

Oh.

“What the hell. I thought you wet your pants,” Satoru giggles. The finger running through your folds glides messily, as you both marvel to how wet you are. You’re also on another plane; you haven’t felt his touch for weeks, and the feeling overwhelms you as the squelches your pussy makes echo throughout the kitchen.

Satoru gives you a kiss on your neck. “Baby, can I?” You deliriously remember that he’s lightly circling his finger around your entrance and when you finally give him the okay, he pushes in.

Both of you groan at how tight you are. “Satoru,” you moan and proceed to bring him in for a kiss as he pistons in and out of your pussy, curling them just the way you like and making you see colors.

“Pretty, pretty girl,” he groans. “Left my baby so pent up.”

At that, all you can do is nod and whimper in agreement. All that leaves your mouth are gasps of his names and oh my god’s because he’s making you feel so good.

And then, you almost scream as you feel him blowing hot air onto your folds, leaning down to give teasing kitten licks around your clit, but not directly on it. His tongue drags up and down until he finally stops it right next to your clit as if feeling the sensation of your pussy throbbing, echoing your fastened heartbeat skin-to-skin while drooling.

Frustrated, you try to move your hips, but Satoru grabs them to stay in place. He’s so close to the place you want him, but he’s stationed in one place, spit flowing down as his tongue is still and his dark eyes are staring at you as if enraptured by your struggling.

“Satoru, please lick my clit,” you moan wantonly, begging for him to change his position.

But Satoru Gojo wouldn’t be Satoru Gojo without some teasing. “What was that, baby? Avoid your clit? You got it.”

“No,” you sobbed, grabbing onto his hair and directing his tongue to your clit. This time, he relents, sucking the bud into his mouth and hollowing his cheeks, making you see stars.

But soon, his quick and fast lapping turn into lazy licks, and you get frustrated, grinding against air and pussy oozing out wetness as Satoru keeps his tongue outstretched in front of you but not close enough to make contact with your skin, teasing. You hate the feeling of your pussy throbbing and the inner thighs and pussy wet with your slick, lacking the sensation you needed to finally climax. “Oh my god, Satoru, please make me cum.”

“I don’t know baby, you sound pretty commanding to me.” The motherfucker shrugs as if he has nothing to do with your dilemma and starts trailing kisses up your inner thigh. His touches were close to where you needed him most, making you ache for the sensation of his wet laps against you.

“Please, baby,” you beg. “You feel so good, you’re making me feel soo good. I love you so much. Please let me cum.” You’re full on sobbing, hips writhing to get any sensation in.

Satoru, at your display, seems to give in, because he’s coming in once more, giving you a sweet little kiss on your clit. You nearly ascend.

He’s diving in, making a rhythm of dipping his tongue into your entrance and coming back to give sloppily wet laps on your clit. It’s when he groans while his tongue is inside, hot air and vibrations needily simulating your clit, that you come up with a gasp. You roll your hips, Satoru giving you little licks to help you ride out your orgasm.

For how hard you came, you’re bucking your hips frantically, body on a mind of its own as you almost fall off the counter. Satoru has to grip your thighs to prevent that potential injury and rubs soothing circles on the outside of your thigh as you pant, wetness and sweat likely painting the counter beneath you. It’s not until your breath returns back to it’s normal pace that you notice Satoru’s head against your thighs, looking up at you with lovesick eyes.

You’re probably giving him the same look back, you realize, given he made you ascend to heaven and back. He gives an affectionate kiss to your mound, moaning corny shit like “Your pussy tastes sweeter than the brownie.”

And then he stands up, knees popping on the way back up, and despite your fucked out state, you can’t help but giggle. “You old man with the popping knee caps.”

He glares at you playfully, but you know his expression too well to know there’s no real offense in it. “Hey. Rude to say that after I just made you cum your brains out.”

”And you’re about to get the same thing,” you purr, putting a hand on his hard-on. He hisses but looks at you with lust blown eyes as he grabs the back of your thighs to carry you to your shared bedroom.

Yes, rainy days do mean baking with Satoru, but not without intimacy with your even sweeter boyfriend in bed.

general masterlist

comment or reblog to let me know your thoughts! I appreciate all of them <3

a/n lol this was a bitch to write. this might be a word soup or salad or whatever for all readers and that’s ok! I’ve written this primarily at 1am so…

eugh ok im going back to writing ch5 of bridgerton!gojo and fixing the em dashes in this post when i wake up LOL

[fixyourwritinghabits]

How to Tell If That Post of Advice Is AI Bullshit

Right, I wasn't going to write more on this, but every time I block an obvious AI-driven blog, five more clutter up the tags. So this is my current (April 2024) advice on how to spot AI posts passing themselves off as useful writing advice.

No Personality - Look up a long-running writing blog, you'll notice most people try to make their posts engaging and coming from a personal perspective. We do this because we're writers and, well, we want to convey a sense of ourselves to our readers. A lot of AI posts are straight-forward - no sense of an actual person writing them, no variation in tone or text.

No Examples - No attempts to show how pieces of advice would work in a story, or cite a work where you could see it in action. An AI post might tell you to describe a person by highlighting two or three features, and that's great, but it's hard to figure out how that works without an example.

Short, Unhelpful Definitions - A lot of what I've seen amount to two or three-sentence listicles. 'When you want to write foreshadowing, include a hint of what you want foreshadowed in an earlier chapter.' Cool beans, could've figured that out myself.

SEO/AI Prompt Language Included - I've seen way too many posts start with "this post is about..." or "now we will discuss..." or "in this post we will..." in every single blog. This language is meant to catch a search engine or is ChatGPT reframing the prompt question. It's not a natural way of writing a post for the average tumblr user.

Oddly Clinical Language - Right, I'm calling out that post that tried to give advice on writing gay characters that called us "homosexuals" the entire time. That's a generative machine trying to stay within certain parameters, not an actual person who knows that's not a word you'd use unless you were trying to be insulting or dunking on your own gay ass in the funniest way possible.

Too Perfect - Most generative AI does not make mistakes (this is how many a student gets caught trying to use it to cheat). You can find ways to make it sound more natural and have it make mistakes, but that takes time and effort, and neither of those are really a factor in these posts. They also tend to have really polished graphics and use the same format every time.

Maximized Tags (That Are Pointless) - Anyone who uses more than 10 one-word tags is a cop. Okay, fine, I'm joking, but there's a minimal amount of tags that are actually useful when promoting a post. More tags are not going to get a post noticed by the algorithm, there is no algorithm. Not everyone has to use their tags to make snarky comments, but if your tags look like a spambot, I'm gonna assume you're a spambot.

No Reblogs From The Rest of Writblr - I'm always finding new Writblr folks who have been around for awhile, but every real person I've seen reblogs posts from other people. We've all got other stuff to do, I'm writing this blog to help others and so are they, the whole point of tumblr is to pass along something you think is great.

While you'll probably see some variation in the future - as people get wise to obviously generated text, they'll try to make it look less generated - but overall, there's still going to be tells to when something is fake.

I don't have any real advice for what to do about this (other than block those blogs, which is what I do). Like most AI bullshit, I suspect most of these blogs are just another grift, attempting to build large follower counts to leverage or sell something to in the future. They may progress past these tattletale features, but I'm still going to block them when I see them. I don't see any value in writing advice compiled from the work of better writers who put the effort in when I can just go find those writers myself.

[txttletale]

Can you elaborate on what you think would be the minimal needed changes to fix what you see as an issue in Civ? Civ has done fairly large shifts in some mechanics before, and "civ like" is still an interesting game space that can scratch certain itches

yeah i mean as i said, the baked-in racism arises from a certain set of core assumptions that i think lock it into that position, which are that civ is a

1) symmetrical

2) 4X

game about

3) 'real world civilizations' (deeply loaded terms ofc but that's how civ envisions them)

4) trying to 'win the game'

5) with a global

6) and transhistorical

scope

so, in its role as a symmetrical (1) game with victory conditions (4), civ as a text has to take positions on what constitutes a 'successful civilization'. as a (2) 4X game this definition also has to include some variation on the profoundly loaded eponymous Xs, 'explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate'. furthermore, as a (1) symmetrical game with a global, transhistorical (5, 6) scope, it has to necessarily create a model of what 'a civilization' looks like and apply it to every 'civilization' it wants to include, at all points in their history.

this all kind of naturally leads into civ being a game in which the colonial european imperialist powers are the default 'civilizations' and all other cultures are basically just like them -- a game where technology progresses linearly and innovations are made in the order they were in european imperial history -- a game where all cultures fundamentally work in the same way and hold similar values, a game where all religions are based on christianity (i mean, just look at civ vi's system, where every religion has a 'prophet', 'apostles', 'missionaries' and 'inquisitors'), a game where not only do cultures have teleological overarching 'goals' but where these goals are shared and these goals are fundamentally based on imperialist visions of 'victory'.

to drill into some specific examples: you can't play a game of civilization without founding cities. you will constantly be founding cities. when you're playing as 'the mongols' or 'the cree' or 'scythia', this makes no sense! these were peoples who historically had rich culture, science, arts, and certainly a notable military history, but were (to varying degrees, at varying times in their history, i don't mean to create a new and similarly heterogenous absolutist category here) nomadic!

similarly, to advance in civilization you must invent 'the wheel'. 'the wheel' is necessary to many later innovations, while of course the andean peoples represented by the playable 'inca' never made significant use of the wheel because the lack of suitable pack animals and environmental factors meant that it did not, in fact, prove a suitable tool for transporting large quantities of heavy goods. for an even more glaring example, a lot of early military technology is locked behind 'horses', which is pretty absurd considering that several of the game's playable civilizations, in the real world, developed plenty of military technology despite living on a continent without any horses!

so having established what i mean by 'the issue', which is that the game's core assumptions lock it into imposing a eurocentric, imperialist vision of 'civilization' onto cultures where it doesn't make sense, here's a few different jenga blocks you could pull out to resolve it:

SID MEIER'S EUROPE

the pillar you knock out here is #5. keep the game engine and core assumptions just as founded on eurocentric imperialist societies as they are now, and just make it about european empires doing imperialism. now, i think we can immediately spot some problems in there -- how are we going to represent the rest of the world? after all, this kind of just creates a situation where, either as NPC factions or as outright exclusions, all other cultures in the world are deprived of any meaningful agency in "history". this one just kind of gives you a new problem and also from a gameplay standpoint results in a game that just Has Less Stuff On It. i think this is a bad one

SID MEIER'S ELYSIUM

now here's one you can get if you knock out pillar #3. keep the same assumptions and gameplay and transhistorical global narrative scale, but remove the 'real-world' aspects. you can get real silly with it and add fantasy stuff to it, or you can be a relatively grounded 'our-world-but-to-the-left' situation. now to some extent this already matches a lot of the features already in civ games: after all, unless you specifically load in a 'true start location earth' map, you're usually playing on a strange parallel world with semiplausible but wholly original continents! now, you also need to get some fucking Nerds and Geeks working at your company to build out your fictional world, or you'll just end having pointlessly pallette swapped a bunch of factions that are now just Schmance, Schmina, and the Schoman Schempire, and not really have avoided the issue. but if you do that, and invent a deep and rich fictional history to riff on, then you could create something really cool and incorporate alt-tech or fantasy or retrofuturistic elements or all sorts of cool shit.

the downside of this is that it makes your game less accessible and appealing to a lot of people. a big part of (at least the initial) appeal of civilization is pointing at the screen and saying 'hey i recognize that thing!'. it is instantly more accessible to someone who isn't super invested in strategy or fantasy dork shit to say to them 'you can be BRAZIL and nuke FRANCE while at war with CHINA and allied to BABYLON'.

more importantly than that, i think some parts of the historical theming (because let's be honest, it is ultimately theming, i don't think civ is interested in 'history' in any serious way) serve a pretty load-bearing role in the game's information economy. it's a pretty tall order to ask a player to remember the unique abilities of dozens of factions and unique wonders, and the historical background makes it a lot easier. e.g., it is a lot easier for a player looking at wonders to remember 'the pyramids need to be built on desert' or 'broadway will help me make more culture' than it would be for them to remember the requirements/effects of 'under-eusapia' or the 'wompty dompty dom center'. i think this is one of the number one things that, if subtracted, would meaningfully create something that is no longer 'sid meier's civilization'.

SID MEIER'S ALPHA CENTAURI

now if you cut out #3 and #5 and #6 on the other hand... sid meier's alpha centauri is not technically an entry in the civilization franchise, but i think most people correctly consider it one. it has similar 4X gameplay to the series, and its (very bad) spiritual successor beyond earth was an official entry. instead of 'civilizations', the playable factions are splinters from a colony ship that fell into civil war as soon as it landed, each one representing a distinct ideology. now, y'know, this doesn't mean it's free from Some Problems (the portrayal of the Human Hive in particular is some of the worst apects of 90s orientalism all piled together) but i think they're problems it's not at all locked into by its design!

SID MEIER'S THERMOPILAE

by cutting out #5 and #6 -- making a civ game about a particular time and place in history you could achieve something much more richly detailed in mecahnics while also being able to handwave a lot more homogeny into it. giving the same basic mechanics to, say, every greek city-state in the peloponnesian war is far less ideologically loaded than giving them to every 'historical civilization' someone who watched a few history channel documentaries once can think of. it also lets you get really into the weeds and introduce era-and-place-specific mechanics.

the scale needs to be smaller conceptually but it doesn't really have to be smaller in terms of gameplay -- just make maps and tech trees and building more granular, less large-scale and more local and parochial and specific. this also gives you the advantage of being able to do the opposite of the last two options and really lean hard into the historical theming.

if this sounds like a good idea to you, then good news -- old world does something pretty similar, and it's pretty good! worth checking out.

SID MEIER'S LOVE AND PEACE ON PLANET EARTH

what if we take an axe to #2 and #4? instead of putting all these civilizations into a zero-sum game of violent expansion, make it possible for several civilization to win, for victory goals to not inherently involve 'defeating' or 'beating' other factions. now, that doesn't mean that the game should be a confictless city-builder -- after all, if you've decided to be super niceys and just try and make your society a pleasant place to live, that doesn't mean that the guy next to you isn't going to be going down the militarist-expansionist path. hell, even if all you want to do is provide for your citizens, a finite map with finite resources is going to drive you into conflict of some kind with your neighbours in the long run.

to make this work you'd have to add a bunch of new metrics -- 'quality of life', for example, as a more granular and contextual version of the 'happiness' mechanics a few games have had, or 'equality', game metrics that you could pursue to try to build an egalitarian, economically and socially just society where everyone is provided for. after all, why shouldn't that be a goal to strive for just as much as going to mars or being elected super world president or whatever?

SID MEIER'S DIVERSE HISTORICAL CONTEXTS

ultimately, all cards on the table, if i was made god-empress of The Next Civ Game, this is the option i'd go for: jettison #1 as much as practically possible, introduce as much asymmetry into the game as you can. some civilizations keep the established settler-city model -- others are nomadic, building their units in movable 'camps' -- maybe the 'colonial' civilizations, your USA and Brazil and so on, can be like the alien factions from the alpha centauri DLC, only showing as NPCs at the appropriate point in the timeline when other civs are colonizing other continents, or putting you into an accelerated-forward version of the game if you choose to play as one.

you could combine this with a more interesting version of humankind's civ-choosing system, where you lock certain civilization choices behind specific gameplay events. this would let you do crazy shit with the balancing -- imagine an ostrogothic kindgom civ with crazy strong abilities and units that you could only choose to play as if your capital is overrun by barbarians, or a hungarian civ that requires you to have started as a nomadic civ and invaded somewhere, or a soviet union civ that requires you to lose a revolution, or a usamerican civ that requires you to split off all cities on a foreign continent from your original civ -- you could add so much variety and so many new and bizarre strategies into the game with this!

as for the universal aspects of tech and the narratives of linear progression contained within, there are lots of approaches that already solve this! stuff like stellaris' semi-random branching tech paths, or endless space 2's circular tech web, could allow civilizations to take tech paths that make sense for them, rather than imposing one single model of 'technological progress' on the wole world.

obviously there's limits to this, right -- civilization isn't going to be a detailed historical materialism simulator any time soon. but i think abandoning the idea that every faction has to play fundamentally the same and introducing some severe asymmetry as well as choices that you can make after starting the game would work wonders to wash out some of the racist and colonialist assumptions built into the game's foundation, while also (imo) creating a more fun and interesting game.

[bagelzest]

ok I've been writing down every code I could find and what they do for thisisnotawebsitedotcom in my notes app so here's what I've found so far:

• tjeckleburg - NEVER MENTION THAT NAME AGAIN

• bill - eye of providence wiki page, then sesame street jazzy triangle meets a square square (same result with cipher)

• bill cipher - triangle wiki page

• weirdmageddon - gravity falls gossiper newspaper

• soos - letter from soos

• pinata - bill piñata gettin beat

• mabel - stickers on everything till 'LAB NOW FULLY MABELIZED'

• dipper - note from bill telling dipper to stare at the sun for 13 hours, enter multiple times for a retina burning sim

• mason - letter from dipper

• pines - A GOOD FAMILY TREE

• stan + stanley - brass knuckles ebay search, keep entering to get wheel of shame page

• ford + stanford + sixer- ford's polydactyly diagnosis + report

• pacifica - letter from pacifica

• wendy - note from wendy

• waddles - pigplacementnetwork.org

• gideon - sweat resistant bolo ties google search

• fiddleford - cotton eye joe mv

• dippy fresh - burger king kids club r/nostalgia

• axolotl - YOU ASK ALOTL QUESTIONS

• tad strange - bread slicing

• alex hirsch - flannel google search

• blendin - TIME AGENT LOST AND PRESUMED INCOMPETENT

• robbie - text chat between robbie and Thompson, pic of them being taken by bill

• gravity falls - NEVER HEARD OF IT

• mystery shack - confusion hill

• blind eye - eye test, colour code at bottom- euclmjiannrepttgccvisignnsupervisionn I think?? EDIT wtf was I on that is obviously not what it says

• reality - IS AN ILLUSION

• the universe - HOLLOGRAM

• deer teeth - FOR YOU, KID!

• fuck - I get told to wash my mouth out with soap :(((

• book of bill - HIDE IT UNDER SHIRT DURING PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

• giffany - enter multiple times, computer tries to block, SOOS, I STILL LOVE YOU, giffany appears on screen, downloading file IM NEVER LEAVING! file has all her sprites, a doc called ILL ALWAYS BE WITH YOU SOOS which is text in the shape of giffany

• euclydia - DIMENSION NOT FOUND

• portal - PORTAL.EXE HAS BEEN DELETED. I BET YOU COULD BUILD ONE

• toby determined - google search restraining order

• journal 1 - THE JOURNAL OF FUN

• journal 2 - THE JOURNAL FOR YOU

• journal 3 - THE JOURNAL FOR ME

• babba + disco girl - recording of dipper singing and listening to babba

• gun - OH YES OH YES OH YES THEY BOTH

• abuelita - best vacuum for walls and ceilings yt vid

• weird - weird al trapped in the computer

• xyler + craz - jem and the holograms theme song yt vid

• triangle - TRI HARDER

• theraprism - blue sign - IN CASE OF [the old one] DO NOT USE ELEVATORS

• yes - WHAT'S MCGUCKETS FAVOURITE SODA? (I tried putting in pitt cola and variations and nothing worked)

• no - YOUR LOSS...

• vallis cineris - creepy vid of baby bill held by static parents with voice saying why did you do it

• disney - RAT.GIF CENSORED FOR YOUR PROTECTION

• love + marry me (don't worry about how I discovered that) - pic of the love triangle book, click it and it plays an audio audiobook of it

• death - LIFE'S GOTH COUSIN

• life - LIFE: 72% COMPLETE. NOW LOADING: DEATH

• blanchin - how to blanch vegetables yt vid

• divorce - o' sadleys logo (aka the bar bill was at after "losing sixer" oh my GODDD)

• season 1 - SEASON -1: ANTIGRAVITY FALLS

• season 2 - SEASON 1

• season 3 - SEASON 2

• help me + save me + god - vid of axolotl swimming infront of a little bill statue

• ad astra per aspera - 2 journal pages starring ford and mabel, pls read them it's so good

• trigonometry - bill's attempt to have plato build the portal

• cray cray - mental health wiki page

• who are you - I COULD ASK YOU THE SAME QUESTION

• lies - bill talking about lying and nerds

• morality - fun game!

• R34LITY - henchmaniacs polaroids

• ducktective - DUCKTECTIVE STARS IN "LOVE, QUACKTUALLY" COMING TO: "OI, ITS THE COCKNEY CHANNEL INNIT?" THIS FALL

• question - ANSWER

• answer - QUESTION

I'm editing this post when I find new ones, feel free to add any you find!! please look at the replies to this post because people have found more codes!!

EDIT I'm probably done with updating this list, these are just the ones I found after goofing around on the website for 4 hours. other people have definitely made lists of all the codes found so far so make sure to check them out !!

[downtwngrl]

INTRICATE.

hi so it’s been a WHILE. uhhhh rewatched challengers for the thousandth time and it broke me out of my writers block! i don’t know how im going to continue w this, so feel free to drop any ideas and ill add it to the lore 😈 note: series prob isn’t gonna end with any smut scene bc im incapable of writing one without it sounding stupid asf! but who knows, you might be surprised

cw: 1.4k words,,, art and reader are dating but fighting, set in stanford era, tashi is NOT injured, patashi, hints of reader crushing on tashi but repressing it, fighting, tensiontensionTENSION! basically everyone is friends with one another but they all want each other BAD. lmk what else i should add :)

“it’s complicated.” that’s what you say every time someone asks you what your relationship with art donaldson is. and it’s true— you guys are fiery, but not explosive. complex, but not convoluted. it’s just… strange. intricate. hence, complicated.

you think he’d probably say the same thing, but there’s no real way to know, since you can’t exactly ask. the two of you aren’t on speaking terms right now, and for the same reason you two stopped talking last time, and the time before that.

art donaldson can’t split his time between his girlfriend and his fucking best friend’s girlfriend. and you can recite the argument quite well, maybe even word for word; it’s still fresh in your mind, engraved there.

“c’mon, you can’t just keep ditching me for her. it’s annoying, and it hasn’t just happened once or twice, you know.”

“i know.” art sighed, a hand tangled in his hair as if to ground himself. your name fell from his lips, voice cracking midway. “what do you want me to do? she needed help with her physics homework.”

“she can get one of her fucking groupies to help her! she’s a big girl, she doesn’t need to rely on you.” the way you said it, mocking and condescending, was mean, and you know it. you don’t hate tashi— you can’t even bring yourself to dislike her. but it hurts every single time you text art on your motorola and get hit back with some half-assed variation of ‘helping tashi. sry :( i’ll come later.’ he never actually shows up at ‘later’, which only rubs salt in the wound.

art’s jaw ticked. his eyebrows furrowed and eyes darkened in a way you’d only seen once before, when someone was talking shit about tashi in the cafeteria. you had watched as she calmly reassured art that is was fine, that he needed to relax, but he only shook his head and clenched his fists. in that moment, you wondered if he ever got that angry if he overheard someone talking about you. you now doubt it.

“don’t talk about her like that.” he said it calmly, but your skin still prickled. “she’s an accomplished lady. what about you? what have you done?”

if you sounded condescending before, it was nothing compared to how he sounded then. you scoffed away the sinking feeling in your stomach, blinked back the sting in your eyes. there was a lot you could have said to him then: ‘i might not be half as good at tennis as she is, but that’s less embarrassing than being second-best to her boyfriend.’ or ‘i didn’t compete for her number and lose.’ hell, even a good ‘fuck you’ would have sufficed.

instead, you just stood there, frozen, as he grabbed his stanford sweatshirt and left.

when you tell the story to patrick, he laughs, and doesn’t stop laughing until you jab him with your elbow, effectively knocking the oxygen out of him. his hands raise in mock surrender before speaking. “sorry, it’s just funny to see him get like this, i guess.”

you frown. “what’s that supposed to mean?”

“i mean that he likes you, but he likes tashi. i know it, tashi knows it, and from what i heard on the walk here—” he gestures vaguely towards the door to your dorm, “—the school knows it, too. i dunno, i guess it’s amusing ‘cause art has never been so disturbed about this kind of shit. usually he just picks the girl he likes best, but he can’t.”

“you mean he can’t because you’re dating her.”

patrick smirks his signature smirk. you have the urge to punch his teeth out; vagueness is beginning to be a pet peeve of yours. “no, i’ve told him that tashi is free reign.”

the way your stomach flutters at that is shameful. you push the feeling away. “like, you guys aren’t..?”

patrick shrugs. “i mean, currently she hates me because i said i’d go to her match yesterday and i missed it.” these guys really need to stop promising us stuff, you think. “but yeah, when she isn’t pissed off, we’re dating, and we talk about it. ‘bout you guys. she doesn’t really care if the two of you make moves on either one of us.”

you don’t say anything, but your ears feel warm, and your heart is about to explode out of your chest. it doesn’t help when patrick takes that as a sign to keep talking and says—

“i don’t care either.” it suddenly hits you, the closeness between you and him. close enough that you can smell his cologne, one typical of a rich frat boy you’d pass by in the halls. but it feels different, with him. patrick’s smirk has shifted into a grin, a big one. you realize he’s been gauging your reaction, and is thoroughly pleased.

“oh,” you breathe. he snickers, repeats it back playfully. you don’t understand how he’s so relaxed, able to make light-hearted jabs in this moment. art likes you and tashi. tashi doesn’t care if he likes her, or if you like her. patrick doesn’t either. but where do you stand in this?

your phone jingles, the sound muffled from the blood roaring in your ears. you don’t know if you should thank or curse out whoever decided to call you at this second, but you excuse yourself to answer. patrick nods begrudgingly, backs up enough for you to have room to finally start to inhale and exhale again. “hello?”

“hey.” it’s art on the phone. impulsively, you look around, as if he’s hiding somewhere in the dorm he marched out of a few days ago.

holy fuck. “hey!” you sound too cheery to your own ears, and hope that over the line it sounds more convincing. you hear a sigh on the other end, and can imagine art physically loosen. “what, uh— i thought you were mad. at me.”

patrick perks up. ‘art?’ he mouths, and you nod. he attempts to come closer, but you swat at him, moving a few steps away. he pulls a face, but doesn’t move closer. still, he’s definitely trying to hear what art is saying.

“i was.” art laughs nervously, the sound tinny over the phone. “but you’re right. i fucked up. tashi… she isn’t my girl. i need to pay more attention to you, and that’s gonna happen starting now.”

she isn’t my girl. “she could be,” you think aloud. you tense. art chokes. patrick stifles a laugh.

“what?” you pray that he didn’t hear it. you had mumbled it, whispered it, there’s a chance it didn’t pick up. art says your name one, two, three times before you respond.

“sorry, i just zoned out a little.”

“no, you said something. baby, what’d you say?”

“i said ‘you should be’. like, you should be paying more attention, dumb joke, i was trying to sound threatening,” you slap your free hand against your lips to stop your word vomit, then your forehead as you reprimand yourself for acting so stupid.

art hums. “oh, okay.” it should relieve some on the tension in your shoulders, but it doesn’t. he usually laughs when you fluster, but he didn’t. is he unconvinced, or are you overthinking? “hey, tomorrow can you come to my practice at noon? we can go to the cafeteria after, i’ve got wayyy too many meal credits.”

you look to patrick for help, but he shrugs, enjoying the moment. “sure.”

art says his goodbyes, goes ‘mwah!’ through the phone (which usually makes you laugh, but now you feel bad), and once you say bye, he hangs up.

“i’ll go to his practice, too.” it’s never a question with patrick (or with tashi); he just lets you know. “tashi’ll be there. she’s always on the court when she’s free.” you find it endearing that he knows her schedule.

“tashi.” you like the way her name rolls off your tongue, but you’d rather die than admit it.

before you can say anything else, patrick walks over, swings an arm around your shoulders and pulls you close. “don’t forget about what i said.” his breath smells like spearmint gum, the type art is always chewing. maybe he gave him a piece. “just think on it, yeah?”

you nod, and he pats your cheek before walking out the door, leaving you feeling dazed. after a few moments of just laying on your bed, soaking in the conversation you just had, your phone dings.

we’ll see u tmrw :-) -pat (&tash)

[kithj]

i've been playing veilguard lately and i have to say the dialogue in this game is some of the most frustrating i think i've ever seen in a choice RPG like this. Rook is locked as a friendlier character, which isn't a problem, but this lock out has resulted in a lot of the dialogue lacking in variation.

i chose the "Block it out" option here only for my Rook to say "Block it out. You're safe" but "You're safe" was already its own separate option-- this isn't how you write dialogue choices. again, i don't have an issue with Rook being friendly, but you shouldn't railroad players into certain dialogue.

if they wanted "You're safe" to be the common/reconvening dialogue, then it shouldn't have been made a choice at all. the wheel could have been something like this:

nice: "I'm right here with you."

aggressive: "Block it out."

panicked/confused: "Shit. Talk to me. Please."

-> all reconvene at "You're safe."

and this is a repeated problem. i've favored the aggressive options this entire time (which aren't really aggressive to begin with) but Rook will almost always still wind up saying the nice option instead. another example is early on:

again i chose the more aggressive "Maybe you should have" choice only for Rook to say something along the lines of "Maybe you should have [...] But we have to support each other now." (it's been a minute since i played this part so it may not be exactly word for word but i remember even then at the start of the game being annoyed that she still worked her way back around to saying option 1)

it's not that Rook is friendly, it's that she's literally saying dialogue options that i did not pick. it's fine for there to be a common dialogue repeated across choices/flavor texts, but not when it's the literal choice text itself. it feels like i'm being railroaded with every dialogue.

[abstractfrog]

HI I JUST SAW YOUR INCREDIBLE SHERLOCK AND CO COMIC YOU MADE AND I WOULD LOVE FOR YOU TO TALK ABOUT THE PROCESS AND THE SYMBOLISM AND INTRICACIES AND EVERYTHING PLEASE ‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️

GOD THANK U ok if i actually talked about EVERYTHING i would be here forever and ever, there were things about the process where it kept surprising me and i kept adding stuff.

I talk about my general comic process here , it started out mostly the same for this one. Analysis of the script, sketches, panel and colour blocking

The scene from Mr Sherlock Holmes presented me with a unique challenge (for me) because...usually I pick scenes from the podcast that are instantly visually stimulating. This scene is NOT that. It's sort of unclear and confusing and even the emotive narrative is sort of hard to pick out. Those things I had to sort of decide for myself. It's hard to draw a whole scene like this without first deciding what the scene is about, what its purpose is. If you go back and listen to the episode along with the comic you'll notice all sorts of changes and tonal shifts - that's because of me and my decision making.

I decided that the direction I wanted to go in was to show John having his realization about himself, his podcast, and Sherlock, showing him getting pulled into, yes, Sherlock's world, but also the world of the podcast as an adaptation. I knew i could do this just with colour, but if you've seen my other comics, you know i almost always use colour to show shifts. I guess I had some insecurity about doing the same thing over and over again so I pushed myself to think of other ways I could accomplish it visual. Enter: rendering technique

I will say I didn't expect this effect to make John seem so SAD and MISERABLE, i only wanted to show him getting pulled in, but its effective for his emotions in this scene as well. Scanning drawings into the computer sort of flattens the paper texture, so I started adding photos of the pages of A Study in Scarlet to make him feel more paper-y. And then, of course, realised i could use that to further elaborate on John's inner thoughts, backgrounds, and motivations. People are welcome to interpreted that how they like and i've seen a number of variations, but to me it operates on sort of a meta level, showing the inevitability of what John is going through. He's a Watson, he's always going to follow Holmes, he's going to try and figure him out, and that's why you sort of see a back and forth between acd and pod Watson, highlighting the ways in which they are similar, and then, John breaks off and becomes his own character, still with those foundations but also entirely different.

there's one piece of text that i haven't seen anyone pick up on or mention and I'm starting to think it's gone unnoticed because it's in an unexpected spot. I won't mention what or where because it is, for now, a very indulgent little secret.

I notice a lot of people are getting a kick out of Sherlock playing with the speech bubbles, which I am so pleased by because I almost didn't do it! I thought i was maybe breaking something in the comic but it was so fun that i didn't care and I'm so glad it came across well. It operates on a lot of levels, it shows his thought process, it plays into that fourth-wall medium play i've got going on, and it feeds into the web metaphor as well as visually showing him roping John in.

on the topic of Sherlock, I feel a lot of people are rather focused on John, which is understandable (he's the main event) but Sherlock has a lot of details I love too.

For instance, him pushing his hair back and putting on a coat when the officer arrives, almost like he's shifted modes, and then his hair falling back down when he gets excited and John starts to understand.

I really love this moment of Sherlock seeing John's potential for interest in mysteries when he's trying to solve the matter of what Sherlock Does, and being surprised and flattered for a moment (until John messes it up again)

John copying Sherlock's pose <3

There's deliberate things in the character design as well, things like the fact that once John comes into colour, it reveals that he's actually wearing more colour than anyone else in the scene, and the fact that the grey in John's hair only appears post-greyscale. Things you are welcome to read into. And there are, of course, the socks, which I've seen people pick up on.

Those are the main things for now so i might leave it there, but thank you so much for your ask and i'd be pleased to elaborate further on absolutely anything!

[thyme-in-a-bubble]

the glow

lilac, chapter thirteen

a/n: a little bit more sluttiness, anyone? sdfghjklæø like I'm offering refreshments or something

summary: "I don’t wanna promise anything, but I do wanna try."

warnings: lumberjack!frank castle x reader, smut, lumberjack AU, past domestic violence, crazy ex trope, crying, renovating an inn, clothed sex, outdoor sex, car sex, public sex, kissing, dirty talk, size kink, manhandling, oral, multiple orgasms, penetrative sex, unprotected sex (because this is just porn. no one is getting pregnant, I’m just craving the intimacy. let them be hoes and live out the fantasy)

word count: 4157

∼ gentle reminder that feedback, but especially reblogs are the way you support writers on here ∽

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Rolling the stubby pencil in your grasp, you let the tip ghost down the list as you murmured each item out loud, checking that you’d indeed gotten everything you lacked from the hardware store.

Your body jostled lightly as the stocked truck sped over a small bump in the road. Flicking one last checkmark on the small block of paper, you peeled your eyes away from the list and exhaled, “alright, I think we got everything,” sliding the small notepad and pencil back into one of the many roomy pockets adorned on the beige overalls you wore. 

Casting a quick glance in your direction, the driver nodded, “except for the door handles, which I’ll drive back for when they get them back in stock.”

“Frank,” you tried to diminish the smile that began to bloom, “I can go get them myself, you know. My car is fixed now and it’s not like door handles take up this much space,” you waved a hand back to the chaos that was the attempt at fitting all of the various materials into the vehicle in one go, the fact that Frank still managed to drive just fine, even with the review mirror completely obscured and long sticks of moulding poking past his seat and minimising his range of movement, was rather impressive. In fact, you had to tilt your head in order to get a clear view of him past all of the clutter in the space between you. 

“Yeah, but I don’t mind,” he shrugged, briefly flashing you a smile that made you stop hiding your own. 

As his vision returned to the road, you let your own wander and take in the lush forest that hugged either side of the lane. It stretched on for as long as your eye could take you, no breaks, the only variation was the change from birch to pine you spotted farther down the rural path. 

Hearing the rustling of Frank changing gears, your eyes naturally found his hand, shadowing the tight grip as it returned to the steering wheel. 

You couldn’t help but unconsciously drag your lower lip through your teeth as your gaze traced the back of his hands. From the shadow of fuss on his wrist that emerged out from under the hem of his dark flannel to the veins that danced under the skin every time he tightened his grasp. 

“Hey, Frank?” you breathed, letting the dull throbbing between your thighs sway your words. 

“Hm?” he simply hummed, not taking his eyes off the road, “what?”

“What if you stopped and parked the car for a little bit?”

“Why? Are you okay?” he asked, finally tearing his gaze away to glance at you, the intent behind your words finally breaking through his tough shell, “oh,” an airy chuckle flowed out pasted his lips and you let your head blissfully fall back against the headrest, your gaze never seizing, “oh! alright, yeah, I can definitely park the car.”

With no other vehicles on the road, Frank wasn’t gentle as he swung into a spot on the side of the road.

As he tugged up the brakes and retroactively pushed up the thicket of clutter between your seats that much further, your fingers found one of the straps to your overalls and fiddled to pop it open as you leaned in closer. 

Reaching with a hand through the mess of moulding to pull his lips to yours, a giggle only gushed from you as the eruption made it near impossible for you to do anything other than bang your forehead in your desperate attempt, “I don’t–, how do we do this?” a laugh bubbled out of you, “I don’t think I thought this part through enough.”

Only echoing your amusement for a second, a solution then fluttered across his features. Wordlessly, he opened his side of the truck and got out, leaving you with your hands thrown up in the air, still giggling and your gaze tracking him through the window as he crossed to your side and yanked open your door.

Grasping each side of your face, he bent down and drew you into a silky kiss. Rotating further in his direction, a light whimper slipped out past your lips and vibrated against his tongue as his fingers slid up through your hair. 

Slipping your right leg past his frame, each of your thighs now hugged around him as you hooked your index fingers into his belt loops and tugged him closer. 

As your palm began to pet him through his pants, an intoxicating groan reverberated within him and his fingers drifted down to the dungaree strap that was still secure over your shoulder, but then when the attempt at popping it open became more of a struggle than he’d anticipated, a chuckle bubbled out of you as Frank leaned back and cursed through his grin, “goddamnit! Why won’t it just–, there!” and it finally came undone. Throwing the long strap over your shoulder, the upper part of your overalls tumbled down your frame and gathered just below your waist, revealing to Frank just how hard your nipples were through the soft long-sleeved shirt you wore beneath. 

Leaning down to graze his lips across the side of your neck, you felt him yank your top up just high enough for your tits to pop out, letting it gather and cling to your skin just over the peaks as the mild breeze that hit them caused goosebumps to erupt.

After his palms offered your soft peaks and tender squeeze, they slid down towards the buttons still fastened on the side of your hips. As his nimble fingers popped them open one by one, you pulled his lips back up to yours, his body hungrily craning closer and causing your spine to follow along, leaning back further till you were lying down across the seats. 

Except, your back never did meet the expected contact. Instead, your head collided sharply with the cluttered supplies still demanding so much of the room. 

“Ouch!” your hand shot up to the part of your skull that now throbbed dully. As your eyes found Frank’s, a genuine laugh billowed out of you both and took the pain away, “this is such a disaster!”

Pressing a light peck to your brow, Frank muttered, “maybe we should just wait till we get back.”

“Maybe,” you blinked up at him and pouted your lips lightheartedly, “but I’m so fucking wet right now, it actually feels like I’m on fire!” your laugh never dying down a second.

“Oh,” a gravelly groan tumbled out of his chest and his fists closed around the fabric around your hips, “please don’t say that…” 

“Why?” you tilted your chin up, nearly closing the short distance and sharing his hot breath. 

But before you could press your lips to his once more, you let out a surprised yelp as Frank suddenly scooped his grasp under your bottom and hoisted you into his arms.

“What are you–,” you tried to ask, but you soon received your answer as he carried you a short distance around the gaping door and sat you down onto the hood of the car. With a smirk fast on his lips, Frank began to tug your dungarees, as well as the soaked underwear beneath, down over your hips, “here? Are you serious? What if someone drives by and sees us?”

“No one ever drives here,” his head shook lightly from side to side as he ceased his efforts, letting your garments bunch up just above your knees, “we’ll be fine for a little bit.”

And the next thing you knew, Frank had plucked up your legs and raised them up so far that your back fell down against the car as he practically folded you in half. With his forearm strong against the back of your knees, he pressed the tops of your thighs down against your stomach, exposing your molten core to him like a present. 

“You really weren’t lying, sweetheart,” he landed an electric smack to your bottom, “look at this,” your whole body trembled when he finally touched your pussy, pinching the puff teasingly and rolling your pearl between your petals, “you’re fucking soaked.”

You were gonna reply, think of some witty remark, but all of that became impossible when he bent down and lapped at your folds.

Kissing at the wetness that seeped out of you, his greedy tongue couldn’t help but sneak in a bit as he nuzzled closer, his prominent nose nudging against your clit as he did so. 

“F-Frank–,” your fingers captured your nipples in a needy pinch as you hazily blinked up at the treetops and clouds above.

Drawing back, he eagerly landed a dollop of spit onto your core and with his free hand, mixed his small bubbles in with your mess, “yeah? What is it?” parting your petals with his abruptly feathery caresses, you squirmed beneath his hold as he came to circle your entrance, “does it feel good, is that it?” he teased you till your eyelids fluttered.

“Please p-put your fingers inside of me–”

“Huh?” he smirked, only lightening his touch even though he obviously comprehended every single word of your pathetic blubbering, “what was that?”

“I wanna feel your fingers–,” but the rest of your begging never saw the light of day as he suddenly slid two of his thick digits inside, brashly cutting off your words, “ah!”

“Here?” he didn’t hold back as he pumped inside of you, “is this where you wanna feel me?” swiftly adding another long finger, giving your cunt what it was pleading for, and as he did so, strumming your inner walls and stretching you out till your toes curled in your shoes, one of your hands left your tit and shot down to flutter against the one of his that was still strong at the back of your trembling legs. Tapping against the back of it, he swiftly turned his palm upwards and welcomed your hold tenderly as you feverishly grasped his hand in yours, “right here where you’re so fucking warm and wet and soft?” dipping back down, tightening his hand around yours, he then captured your clit with his lips and sucked down hard, “so fucking perfect…” the sincere addition resonated in a deep groan that melted against your puffy pearl. 

It didn’t take too much longer before you cried out beneath him and your nails dug into his palm as you tumbled over the edge, “oh, fuck!” and if he hadn’t been holding you so securely, you’d properly have fallen off the car as well. 

Withdrawing his touch, his lips then fluttered up the back of your thighs till they danced across your hand still engulfed by his.

As he straightened back up, you hazily peeked up at him with a stary gaze, still completely melted against the hood. 

“What?” he smiled, noting the fuzzy grin that adorned your blissful features. 

“Nothing,” you bit down on your bottom lip as you blinked up at him in complete and utter awe, “you just make me very happy, that’s all.”

Beaming down at you, “well, good,” the faintest of sincere chuckles escaped his lungs, “you make me very happy as well.”

As he loosened his hold and shifted your legs to hang over the crook of his left arm, you playfully poked, “how happy?”

Only fiddling with his fly for but a second, the next thing you knew a light gasp slipped out your parted lips as you felt him tap his heavy cock against your cunt, letting you feel him throb against where you did.

“That answer it for you?” he smirked, rubbing brashly against you.

“I don’t know…” you giggled, feeling his tip catch your entrance “I think I might need to feel a few more inches to really grasp what you mean.”

Not one to deprive you, Frank then brashly buried himself completely, forcing all of the oxygen to flow out of your lungs as his heavy sack pressed up against your ass.

Breathless himself, he smugly croaked, “you get it now?”

“Y-yeah, I-I–, yeah–,” you shuttered deliciously beneath him, your legs, still sort of bound and restrained by your dungarees, trembled on the side in his grasp at the staggering sensation of his girth.

Feeling his hand rake its way up to press against your cheek, you leaned into the caress a moment before turning your head and placing a few hazy pecks along the calloused palm, before he started to move and your teeth gently sank into the muscle and muffled your moan. 

It wasn’t hard enough to break the skin, but when your head eventually fell back and your lips detached, you noted the small light marks that stayed on the strong root of his thumb, not that Frank seemed to mind, even if you had managed to somehow break the tough skin, he wouldn’t have minded, probably wouldn’t even have batted an eye.

Curling his hand back around the nape of your neck, he scooped your upper body back upright. Gliding the right arm around you and hooking it with his left, he held you in his arms and cradled you close as he rocked against you with steady and breath-taking thrusts. 

It wasn’t hard to notice how his gaze suddenly dropped to your lips, starvingly staring at them as he then uttered, “kiss me,” the whisper sounding like a wish on the wind as he drove in and kissed you as if he hadn’t gotten the privilege in aeons. 

Burying your grasp in the thickness of his flannel, you heard his hips meet yours in sloppy crashes. 

Shifting his hold a bit, you felt his right hand glide up your spine, still staying steady against it as his fingers slid into your locks, his short nails scraping hypnotically against your scalp. 

As he twisted your hair up in his hand, you whimpered against his tongue, raising a few fingers up to thread through his dark beard. 

“Oh, Y/n,” his head tilted back in a gravelly moan, a glinting string of saliva still keeping your lips connected, “holy fuck,” he panted in the hot air between you, “you feel so good.”

Readjusting you in his grasp, his left arm now supported you, the wide palm pressing against your back, while the right one dragged down to your hip and dug into the softness as his gaze followed. 

Shifting his weight, he tilted back and marvelled down at how lavishly he sank into you time and time again. 

But then suddenly, without warning, the pulled out of you completely and let out a low moan, “oh my god,” his brows dreamily knitted together as his right hand slid down to pull at your left ass cheek, “fucking look at that,” briefly sliding back inside in his entirety, he then slipped back out and shared what wasn’t within your view, “your pretty little pussy’s gaping so beautifully for me,” your creamy cunt winked at him after he retracted. The addicting visage of just how relaxed and turned on you were persuaded him to lower his fingers to the base of his girth and aid his repeated efforts as he methodically sank in and pull back out, “I think she likes me,” he grinned adoringly, “likes how I feel, likes how I split her open… remember back when she struggled to take even the tip? Just look at her now…” losing it completely, the next time he plugged you up, he didn’t slip back out, “I’m so proud of your pussy,” giving in to a fevered pace that caused your eyes to roll in your skull, “being so good, being the fucking best, taking every inch of me so perfectly.”

Your quivering legs dangled over his arm at the rough and desperate efforts, holding you tight and rocking you back down against his thrusts as you felt yourself unravel once more. Trying your best to keep your eyes locked on his, you heard your name like a mantra on his lips as he too swiftly followed suit, pressing his forehead to yours as your clenching cunt milked him of all of his worth.

“Ah…” his content sigh fanned across your flaming cheeks, “fuck…”

Carefully slipping back out, he let the weight of him simply rest against you as his load slowly trickled out of your tender hole. 

“That was–,” you fussily started as you felt him tug your shirt back down over your goosebump-ridden torso, “yeah… that was amazing…”

Mirroring your lazy grin, he concurred, “yeah…”

“Thanks for not waiting till we got back. It really isn’t that easy trying to convince people that the noises they heard were just construction stuff and not something more uncouth,” you chuckled lightly, “especially now that we’re done with all the heavy lifting… oh, wait, speaking of which, before I forget, what do I actually owe you?”

Tilting his head back, he stared down at you in amused confusion, “huh?”

“I mean for the renovation of the inn, not the–, uh, this,” you giggled, “you just said in the beginning that we’d talk about your payment when it’s done, and now it nearly is, so what do I owe you?”

“Oh sweetheart,” a warm chuckle rumbled faintly within him as he tugged a stray piece of your hair behind your ear, “I think you’ve given me plenty of compensation,” indicating the link that had flourished between you two, “I’m good,” and then he leaned in and grazed his lips against yours in a tender kiss. 

With your eyes still glued to the spot on the baseboard where you’d just smashed a nail in and secured the long strip of moulding to the bottom of the wall that much further, you didn’t shift your gaze as you extended the hand, not clutching the hammer, to snatch up another nail. But when your fingers grazed across the floorboards you sat upon and failed to find the small pile of pins, you finally lifted your gaze to realise that you’d used up all of them. 

“Oh, hey, I’m out of nails,” you glanced over your shoulder at the other side of the narrow room where Frank was stationed, taking care of the job you’d split up and shared, his progress migrating him slightly closer to you, “could I–”

“Yeah,” he uttered, his hand already dipping into the small cardboard container beside him and scooping up a handful before his long arm extended enough for him to reach your open palm, “here,” he let the cool metal cascade into your grasp.

“Thanks,” you flashed him a smile before he returned to the task. 

Just as you placed the handful down beside your crisscrossed legs, a figure appeared in the doorway.

“Waow,” Harvey peeked his head in, the floorboard gently creaking beneath his gentle tread, “this looks great! I tell ya, if your grandparents knew that the bloom room could look like this? Whew… they’d be ecstatic.”

“Well, it’ll look even better once the furniture is back in here,” you watched as your father’s gaze wandered around like he was a child in a toy store, “actually, dad… like, I get that grandma thought rhyming was fun, it is, but don’t you think it’s about time that we change the room names?”

As soon as your question left your lips, Harvey’s eyes swept to you in an appalled glare, a shuttering breath escaped his lungs before he stood his ground, “I am not changing the names just because it may confuse some of the guests! That godawful floral wallpaper might not have been up in this room in over 40 years, but I’m not changing it, not this one, not any of them. My mother named them those silly names and they’re damn well gonna stay!”

“…even the doom room?”

Promptly, his stubbornness then visually melted away, “…alright, maybe just that one… it’s fun to say, but does sound awfully ominous,” folding his arms across his chest, he tilted his head in thought, “maybe we could think of some other word that rhymes with room… let’s see, we’ve already got the doom room, the bloom room, moon room and the shroom room… hm… might have to sleep on that one… never the less, this all looks phenomenal. You kids really did a great job,” he shifted his gaze between you and Frank, “shinned this place up like a brand new penny!”

“Ah, it’s not hard to mess up when the bones are so good,” Frank hummed. 

Just as Harvey began to shift back out of the room, you sat the hammer down on the floor and began to lift yourself up to your feet, “wait, uhm, dad? Do you have a second?” his warm gaze found yours as he halted, “there’s just something I wanna discuss with you.”

“Oh, sure, pumpkin,” he then scooped a hand through the air, “come with me downstairs,” and when you’d migrated to the hallway beside him, he shifted his vision to catch Frank’s and asked, “and by the way, I just brewed a fresh pot of coffee, if you wanna just help yourself while we chat.”

“Yeah, why not,” he breathed before joining you both down the stairs. 

As Frank disappeared into the kitchen, you and the moustachioed elder pulled up a few chairs to one of the tables in the vacant dining room. 

“So…” you drew out a deep breath and lowered your gaze to your hands as you weaved your fingers together. 

“…so?” your father’s soothing rumble searched the air.

“I’ve been thinking,” you started, noticing how you suddenly got a bit nervous at the reality of the statement you wished to share, “both with everything–, uh…” your chest began to tighten as you almost uttered Preston’s name, “you know, everything…” catching his eye, he offered you a light nod of understanding, “and also with the renovation being essentially done…” one of your thumbs shifted, the nail pressing into your palm, “… I know that I said you shouldn’t count on me staying here, that I didn’t wanna go back to living out here, that this was just temporary… but right now, the thought of moving to a city I’ve never stepped foot in before really scares me and the thought of going back to New York and potentially bumping into–… well… uh… I think what I’m trying to say, and please don’t say I told you so, but I think I might wanna stay. At least for a while. With all of this time and labour I’ve put into repairing this place, I just couldn’t help but rethink everything I thought was so–, well, lame when I was young, and, I don’t know, I kinda just saw it in a new light. I don’t wanna promise anything, but I do wanna try.”

Drawing in a slow breath, the raw emotion shined clear in Harvey’s voice as he uttered, “really?”

“Yeah, I think so,” you nodded lightly, “at least for a while, till I feel like I’m enough back on my feet to figure things out,” as you caught sight of how glossy your father’s eyes had become, you reached out to lay your palm atop his, a soft smile tipping up the corners of your lips, “dad, please don’t cry.”

“What? I’m not crying,” he sniffled and squeezed your hand back tightly, “this is just my lifelong dream coming true, that’s all! My baby’s taking over the family business!”

“I’m not taking over, I’m just trying it out for a bit,” you corrected wearily. 

As you leaned in closer over the table to wipe a tear off the side of Harvey’s beaming face, the phone out in the lobby then suddenly began to ring, halting your fingers from taking care of the other cheek. 

Casting a glance over your shoulder to the reception beyond the archway, you turned back to see your dad fast in his seat, his grin only growing wider as he cocked his head, “well, you’re the boss now, pumpkin. You should go answer it, who knows, it could be a very important business call.” 

Biting down on your smile, you hurried out into the entryway, whiling around the front desk just before the ringing ceased. As you raised the receiver of the old, jade-green rotary phone up to your ear, your vision settled on the figures that appeared in the archway as both your father and Frank settled against the frame.

“Lilac Inn, this is Y/n speaking. Hello, how can I help you today? Oh, you’d like a room? Five weeks from now? One moment, I’ll check,” you flipped a few pages of the big open planner resting on the desk before you, “ah, yes, we do have a room available at that time…” 

© 2023 thyme-in-a-bubble 

[shinidamachu]

kagome higurashi, occupation: it girl

We're constantly talking about what a fashion icon Kagome is, but I haven't seen many actual analyses of her style or how it got translated from the manga to the anime, so I thought it was a fun, innocuous discussion to have this @inuvember. I'm not an expert on the subject by any means, but here's a compilation of my observations.

The first thing I noticed is probably the most obvious: she thoroughly enjoys showing off her legs, which she does by wearing an obscene amount of skirts, rarely jeans and never shorts, not even as a PJ.

The interesting detail is that she mostly pairs them off with a top that would completely cover her arms and shoulders, which is smart because puts her legs even more in evidence and brings an elegant balance to it. Sundresses seem to be the only exception to that rule:

Now, when it comes to prints, the anime left me the impression that she favors solid blocks of colors rather than especific patterns, but comparing to the manga it's easy to see that's just not true.

Not only does Kagome rock any print she wears, she also seems to have a preference for plaid variations.

Sadly we only got to see in the anime through the sundress above and the iconic Day of Days outfit (the high school uniform doesn't really count).

She likes her flowery patterns as well, although that's only really a thing in the manga. Of course, I understand Sunrise probably toned down this aspect of her clothing choices to make them easier to animate, but we can still mourn it.

The next one is particularly sad to me because it was one of my all time favorite manga outfit of hers and they replaced it with one she had used before in The Soul Piper and the Mischievous Little Soul.

The same outfit was recycled again in Sota’s Brave Confession of Love. It was literally copy and past, except for the colors.

And to add insult to injury, this was the original look:

Another thing that was pointed out by @kagomehigurashi in this amazing post is that her "stay at home" clothes are incredibly versatile: she can go from very fashionable sweaters to her fun SHAM shirt collection just like that. But when she goes out, she goes all out.

Overall, I think we can conclude that her wardrobe was pretty colorful. Especially in the anime, there's not a lot of black, if any, and Kagome tends to go for pastel. She also seems to be a big fan of overlaying: her outfits are often completed with cardigans, coats or jackets.

Plus, I'd say comfort is a priority for her. The vast majority of her clothes don't seem restricting at all and her shoes consist basically on loafers, sneakers and ballet flats. Even the heel we saw her wear once was of a wedge type.

She rarely uses accessories, but she limits herself to one or two when she does. It's usually a purse and some jewelry or belt (at least in the manga). Her hair is always down except for the occasional braid (also only in the manga), PE ponytail and bath bun.

It could have been interesting if Takahashi had also used Kagome's fashion sense to showcase how much she changed during her journey, but Kagome's style remained extremely consistent. I guess she found it very early on what she was about. I'd describe it as romantic boho, but I don't even know if that's a thing.

What I do know is that it was far from basic, that she appeared to be having a lot of fun expressing herself throught it and that it felt more mature in the manga, even if most of them are just covers or bonus art.

[s1mpactafterhours]

ok so i did a variation of this over on the sfw genshin main BUT i also wanted to make a filthy version too bc like my brain's been wandering- but anyway.. hear me out 🗣👏🏻

al-haitham coming home and barging into his housemate's room to tell him something or ask about something (etc etc) and accidentally walking in on kaveh absolutely plowing you, like you're both going at it hard until you suddenly hear the door open. (kaveh had assured you he wasn't supposed to be home until much, much later!) and so you're just desperately trying to cover up or hide or something, anything- but kaveh's noticed the way al-haitham looks at you, even if the man himself has no idea yet, so he just keeps going at it, witness be damned. al-haitham makes some offhand remark about how neither of you have any decency, but if he weren't wearing those damned headphone looking contraptions you'd be able to see just how red his ears were.

this is unfortunately how he begins to come to terms with his attraction to you, and unknowingly begins his learnings of the ways of heartache. kaveh pays this no mind, feeling that he's finally got the upper hand on his smart ass, seemingly unshakeable housemate. he's on a mission to make you scream his name, as many times as possible, as loud as possible. at some point, though neither of you hear it, al-haitham just ends up slamming the door on his way out, leaving to go to the library or literally anywhere else.... but not before guiltily rubbing one out. you two provided the perfect background noises he never knew he needed, but more importantly, it was your moans that were driving him insane. how would you sound screaming out his name all night long instead?

so off he goes to busy himself with work, so much work, so much that he ends up taking on extra work just to distract himself from the honeymoon phase you're both in, and the way kaveh just can't seem to stop showing you off in front of him. he can already tell the latter is doing so on purpose, but he refuses to let the blonde get the better of him. you're aware that something is going on, but attribute it to their weird relationship and how they're just always fighting.. though it has been awfully quiet lately, and you're starting to get suspicious. kaveh is quick to assure you that al-haitham is just very busy with work, and he's even quicker to get handsy with you. cuddles while he works on his projects, hands on across your shoulders or thighs at dinner, all the nights you two fuck your stress out before collapsing together in bed.. you're far too entranced by your seemingly sickly sweet lover to see through the haze, but it's always harder to think straight when you're getting your back blown out (or blowing him out-) ..and so, you don't.

and even as al-haitham has time to get himself back together, he can't help but wonder if maybe things would have turned out differently had he been more aware of his own feelings. if he had asked you out first, would that be how the both of you would be now? or had you always only had eyes for kaveh? the questions that used to keep him up at night become mindless chatter as he tries (and fails) to block you both out on the other side of unfortunately thin walls. but life goes on, and so does your relationship, and before you all know it, you're making plans to move in together, to share your lives together, and suddenly al-haitham finally knows what loneliness feels like.. all alone in a house that used to house shenanigans for three. he's not sure if he'll bother looking for a new roommate now that he's been promoted, but sometimes he can't help but wish he could share the news with you both, and how he misses your antics and smile and.... he belatedly begins to realize he misses kaveh too. in which a new set of questions unlocks thoughts he'd never even considered... had he harbored feelings for you all this time, or was he instead projecting because he was jealous... and falling in love with his own roommate all this time?

[plainclothesdisaster]

Red Knight Chapter 4 - Team Up

DP x DC | Dead on Main

Jason Todd encounters one Danny Fenton in the streets of Gotham and suddenly he's thrown into a world of ghosts and monsters. Will he embrace this life? Or will it just end up with him dead again?

Read on AO3 | Beginning | < Prev | Next >

--

Jason ended up at Danny’s place for a second time. After picking up his dropped bodega snacks (Takis and a six pack of Dr. Pepper) Danny pulled Jason out of the pavement and ushered him up the block and into the apartment Jason already knew was his.

Jason sat on the worn out sofa, hands folded. Danny appraised him from the kitchen, mouth full of Takis. “So what you’re gonna need most is some gear.”

Danny leaned over to a side wall and stuck his hand through it. He must have triggered a switch of some kind because a moment later an armory panel flipped around, revealing a rack of strange gadgetry haphazardly stacked on top of one another. Most of it looked similar in design to the belt Jason had found on Danny’s desk.

Danny rummaged for a second before he pulled out a canister and tossed it to Jason. Jason caught it and turned it over in his hands. “A thermos?”

“Your most important tool in ghost hunting. You use this to capture ghosts.”

Jason scoffed. “Why would I want to capture them?”

“You have any luck killing them?” Danny gave him a sideways glance.

Jason pursed his lips. Obviously he hadn’t. All his fights had ended in some variation of mutual retreat.

“Thought not. So— thermos. I trap them in there till I release them back in the Ghost Zone.”

“Ghost Zone?”

“The Infinite Realms. Aforementioned realm of the dead, if we’re being reductive. Where they live. Or after-live. Same thing.” Danny cracked a soda and held it out to Jason, offering. Jason shook his head, and Danny continued, “Since you don’t have a portal, you can drop your full thermoses off with me.”

“You do have a portal?”

Danny tilted his head for a moment, considering. “Not exactly. Next up— weapons.”

Not exactly. Another half answer. Jason swallowed any notions of follow up questions, and not just because he could still feel bruises forming on his skin from where Danny’s hits had landed (seriously when was the last time someone had actually left a mark on him?)

“All of this stuff was designed to work against ghosts, even for regular humans using it.” Danny gestured to the makeshift armory. “But the way you shoot ecto blasts out of your regular guns has me wondering— you might be able to enhance some of this stuff too.”

Danny pulled out a pair of clunky metal bracelets. “Take these for example. In theory these were designed to imitate a ghosts power of invisibility. They do a decent job of optic camouflage but it’s hardly the real thing.” He tossed them over and Jason snatched them out of the air. “I bet if you try them it will work all the way.”

Jason clicked the cuffs around his wrists, wary. Nothing happened. “Now what?”

“Do what you do when you use your guns.”

Jason concentrated a moment, clenching his muscles and feeling stupid. He must have been making a weird face because Danny chuckled.

Jason glowered at him. “This is dumb. I don’t have superpowers.”

“You do have ghost powers though. I think you’re trying too hard. Being invisible isn’t like firing something out, it’s like pulling something back, if that makes sense.”

“Not at all,” Jason grumbled.

Danny snorted. “I’m not a poet, cut me some slack. Just try again.”

Jason looked up to give Danny another glare, but he was surprised again at the casual intensity with which Danny looked back at him. Jason hadn’t noticed that he’d been avoiding looking Danny in the eyes and now he remembered why. He felt small under those eyes. Cornered like a feral cat. He wanted to-

“Oh!” Danny exclaimed as his eyes lost their direct focus. Jason looked down at himself and was met with a shifting shimmer of nothingness. Invisible. He felt a soft hum of energy from the cuffs that matched the hum of energy within him. He kept his concentration a moment longer before releasing it like a held breath.

“It works!” Danny smiled triumphantly.

Jason grunted in the affirmative, twisting the cuff on his wrist.

“Did you make all these?” Jason gestured to the cuffs and other gadgets.

“Oh, yeah. Some are based on my parents’ designs, but everything here I built.”

“Why? Why make all this?”

Danny shrugged. “Old habits. I’ll pack you a goodie bag of anything that might be useful. Most of it is pretty self explanatory.”

Old habits. Another dodge but Danny turned and started digging through the closet before Jason could ask more. Who has a habit of building weapons when you clearly don’t need them?

A minute later Danny dropped a duffel bag brimming with all sorts of odds and ends on the coffee table in front of Jason. It must have been hundreds of dollars worth of gear. It felt like some kind of con, or a trick. This kind of assistance didn’t come for free.

“Why are you helping me?” Jason asked it like an accusation.

“I told you. Because I can.”

Jason stared with narrowed eyes, unsatisfied.

Danny paused. Rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “It was coincidence that I sensed you that first night. When you got up closer I realized you were like me. We’re a pretty rare thing, and it’s not an easy life. Half life. Whatever.”

“But why help me. Half ghost or not, what if I was a serial killer? Or a pedo?”

“Or a crime lord?” Danny raised a pointed eyebrow. Jason kept his face at a trained neutral. “I’ve been in Gotham long enough to know the Red Hood’s reputation.”

Jason didn’t know whether or not he felt relieved by that.

Danny sat down on the couch next to Jason. Didn’t look at him. He fiddled with his fingers for a moment before he let them curl into a fist.

“For people like us… I know sometimes you don’t get the luxury of being the good guy. Sometimes you have to be exactly the monster they think you are.”

Jason stared at Danny’s hands. He’d seen a peek of the monster Danny could be. And playing with these so-called powers that Danny was teasing out of him felt like walking a tightrope across the Lazarus pit. But hearing Danny admit that he wasn’t some saint, he could accept that Danny really was trying to help him.

Jason picked up a pair of what looked like gaudy high-tech earrings from the duffel. “So with these I can make the ghosts stop attacking me?”

Danny was about to answer when the room went cold. Jason saw Danny’s breath. His smile fell.

“Shit.” Danny’s eyes snapped to Jason, serious now. “Ready for a crash course? Strap up. They’re here.”

Danny scanned the room like a predator. Jason saw nothing.

“Who’s here?” he said, grabbing miscellany from the bag (was that just a baseball bat painted green?) and clipping whatever would fit in his holsters. Goosebumps rose on Jason’s arms as the chill settled deeper. What’s here may have been a better question.

Danny didn’t look back at him, still scanning corners. “Okay short version: Gotham is super cursed right? A curse like this only happens to places when ghosts stick around too long. The ghost and the place become part of each other, kinda. They’re a different flavor than ghosts like those rats who come and go. As you can imagine the curse ghosts here have dug their heels in pretty deep. And I uh… asked them to leave.”

The lights flickered and went dark. Jason didn’t dare breathe. “And how did that go?” he whispered.

“Not great.”

Then an abomination unlike any of the ghosts Jason had faced yet phased through the living room wall. It had way too many legs and a mouth that opened too wide and a hulking animalistic form that seemed to ooze inky darkness.

“Super rude of you to crash my place when I have company over,” Danny quipped toward the beast.

Then a beam of green light pelted the thing in its side. An instant later Danny had vaulted the couch and jumped at it fists blazing.

Guess they were doing this.

Danny’s fighting style shifted completely from before. When he’d fought Jason it had been full of flourish, more dodging than attack, a cat playing with its prey. Now he was like a wolf, vicious and decisive, aiming directly for weak spots.

A blast of green energy from Danny’s palm to what Jason assumed was the creature’s head sent a glob of goop splatting to the wall behind it.

“Aw man that’s definitely going to leave a stain,” Danny huffed as the creature lashed back with a slippery-sharp leg-appendage.

The creature swung in a wide arc. Jason ducked and rolled, ending up behind it. He reached into the duffel if ghost gear for something that would work against it and pulled out… some kind of metallic medieval looking whip? What the shit was he supposed to do with this?

The curse ghost let out a gurgling roar as Danny punched what must have been its jaw. Heck. Jason might as well try. He flailed the flail at one of the thing’s rear legs. The ends of the whip immediately got stuck in the thick goop of it. The ghost didn’t even seem to notice as it tossed Danny to the ceiling.

Screw that. He abandoned the whip and pulled a pistol out, focusing his energy and letting a blast rip. It stung a hole in the curse ghost’s side. It spun around, attention shifted. Maybe that wasn’t a good thing.

Quicker than a pile of angry goo had any right to be it whipped its tail around and this time Jason didn’t duck fast enough. It caught him in the side and sent him crashing through the coffee table. Worse, his pistol went flying.

“Quit wrecking my house!” Danny shouted as he launched off the ceiling, elbow down on the ghost like a pro wrestler. They tumbled into the desk with a squelch. It gave Jason enough of a breath to notice the sword under the couch. Sure, why not.

He grabbed it by the hilt and reflexively focused his energy through it. The sword responded as he pulled it out from under the couch, glowing with energy that flickered like wicked green flames. He cracked a smile. Okay now they were getting somewhere.

He scrambled to his feet. Danny wrestled with the beast on the other side of the couch.

“Hey black licorice how do you like this?” He swung the sword two handed through the same leg that had eaten the whip. It cut clean through with a satisfying schlick. That chunk of goo slopped to the floor.

“Nice!” Danny beamed as he kicked the thing off of him with both feet. Jason swelled with golden pride.

He fell into muscle memory, relying on his old training. He didn’t let himself think too hard about the origins of the techniques and instead just relishing the feeling of the blade cutting through the ghost monster, slowly backing it into a corner with the aid of Danny’s blasts.

As if the beast sensed the jaws of the snare closing it lashed out one final time. It swatted Danny from the air and pinned him under a massive paw, nearly swallowing him whole. Jason froze, a shot of ice cold panic in his veins. The sword was cool and all but If Danny went down for real he was royally fucked.

“Thermos!” Danny croaked out from beneath the mound of goo.

Jason fumbled for the canister. He wasted precious moments fiddling with the cap and looking for an on switch.

“How the hell do I work this?” He barked back at Danny.

“Just hit the button!!”

His thumb found the switch then he barely managed to keep his grip as a beam of light shot out of the canister, hit the beast and sucked it up like a vacuum in the span of three seconds flat.

The lights flickered back on. Danny got up, brushed the lingering goo off his shirt, and flopped down on the torn up couch.

“Good job.”

What the hell.

Jason sat down on the couch next to Danny. “These things-“ he started, taking a moment to flick the black goo off his sword and calm the tremor in his hand, “They’re just running around Gotham attacking people?”

“Not directly. The curse ghosts aren’t like regular ghosts. They don’t attack humans. They don’t need to. These guys cause malice and chaos just with their rancid vibes alone, and then they feed off of the misery they cause. They’ve been in crime alley since before it was crime alley. In a way they are crime alley.”

“But they attack you,” Jason pressed him with a look.

“I shot first,” Danny sighed, “But I couldn’t just let them be.”

“Why not?” Jason pressed further. Danny wasn’t from here. He had no connection to Gotham, no reason to risk himself to protect it.

Danny hesitated. “It’s what I do. Ever since the accident. I protect people from ghosts.”

Jason supposed that reasoning made just about the same amount of sense as any of the justifications he’d heard from the other spandex-wearing dumbasses he knew. Himself included. Which now posed him with a dilemma.

It seemed so obvious that Gotham was cursed. Jason could swallow the supernatural explanation with ease. But that meant he had been fighting a losing battle this whole time. And not just him— Bruce and the rest too. Even if he ignored the curse ghosts and went back to fighting his own battles, he’d do it with the knowledge that he’d be treating a symptom, not the cause.

Dealing with ghosts night after night had been a nuisance but they hadn’t caused real damage. Not like what Danny described these curse ghosts doing, and not like what he’d just seen. He though of the dark shadows he’d seen in his peripherals ever since he’d started noticing the ghosts. They felt the same as the beast they’d just fought. He couldn’t ignore them now, the same way he couldn’t ignore the regular ghosts. Dammit.

“I want in.”

“What?” Danny asked, a note of surprise in his voice, and also a hint of delight. Jason ground his teeth together. He hoped he wouldn’t regret this.

“This is my home. These guys are fucking with it. I’m not about to just let them carry on.”

“So you’re not going to go after them alone?”

Jason shook his head no. Danny smiled.

“And you’ll let me give you the tools you’ll need?”

Jason nodded. Danny smiled wider.

“And you’ll actually call me if you run into trouble?”

Jason wasn’t stupid. The half-destroyed apartment was enough proof that he’d be toast if he tried to take down even one of those curse ghosts alone. Plus now he could begrudgingly and with absolute certainty admit that fighting with Danny was much better than fighting against him.

Jason sighed, loudly. “Yes, dammit.”

Danny beamed. “You’re hired.”

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[bomberqueen17]

the gay dolphins are too powerful

yesterday i was facing the facts that i do need to actually work out the technical mcguffins in this novel. like, i have some vague notion that there's a problem with the radio network because of solar flares and our heroes are going to... somehow... fix it. idk.

plot and worldbuilding wittering behind the cut

this was the main plot in the solarpunk mammoths novel too, and i had a vague notion that a problem on such a global scale as that would need to like. it would need to be solved by more than one person. and so my nebulous notion is that possibly several sets of characters could work on it in these loosely-connected novels where really i'm just exploring different ecosystems.

idk i just-- y'all know about the Turkey City Lexicon right? I got it as a hand-out in college creative writing class and of course it reshaped my brain, but. one of the Tropes To Beware they've got is the Cozy Catastrophe, which is startlingly prevalent and once you see it you can't unsee-- "the world is ending! all of humanity will die! unless... Jeff and Suzy, you're our only hope!" and our two everyman protagonists somehow are the only resources the entire world can muster and honestly the entire world seems to consist of one American city block with about three hundred people in it at most. Hm.

so i was like yah this catastrophe is way too cozy.

meanwhile i forget how it came up but @sonnetsandsinging, helpfully spitballing, said something about space whales and i was like

OMG in a world with genetically-engineered mammoths with radio collars that translate their brain waves to allow them to speak in human language it is ABSURD that they are the only species of animal that has been given this treatment

so like. what other animals do we try to talk to all the time besides elephants?

DOLPHINS

so now this world has genetically-engineered dolphins with brainwaves-to-speech dorsal fin attachments. like duh of course it does. i can't believe I hadn't thought of that.

there should be other animals too but i can't decide which ones, currently taking submissions. What Else Should Slightly-Disconcertingly Speak.

(My criteria: should be an animal intelligent enough to have successful communication with humans already, something relatively long-lived, something that couldn't use sign language or other methods already. My concept, which is not scientific really, is that it's been well-studied that while many animals have complex communication systems, humans are the only ones whose brains are structured specifically for language, so the Magic Fictional Science here is that they've had that ability genetically-engineered in, but of course the physical production of human-intelligible language is beyond the physical structure of most animals, hence the brainwave-interface collars. which btw could also be used on profoundly disabled humans, and that might be a plot point at some point; i do have some disabled characters in this story. I know I researched those like, communication board things that nonverbal humans can use and I settled on Magical Radio-Networked Interfaces that speak out loud instead for the simple expedient of streamlining things because like how is a mammoth going to carry a communication board around that it can like get out and point at. how is a dolphin going to carry anything. so, this is just where I ended up.)

(I was thinking parrots but then parrots wouldn't need the collar because they can actually make human-speech noises on their own. so that's a fun variation. maybe in this world african grey parrots actually just talk.)

Anyway back when I first started the solarpunk mammoths novel I researched Asian elephants a lot and studied their social structures and read up on their physical abilities etc., so in between trying to find out how radio waves and semiconductors work (i get the radio waves thing & think i have my mcguffin sorted out but semiconductors made my eyes glaze over and then begin weeping so i gave up) (also supercapacitors i don't understand u sorry bye) (do i know any electronics engineers who want to explain this in normal languages? shit i do know a chemical engineer maybe she knows. heck) ... ok i wandered away from this post to text her and then forgot i was making it. i did not get a lot of sleep last night the amphetamines are not being kind this go-round but i must continue the experiment. uhhhhh where was i

GAY DOLPHINS

too powerful

Yeah so I started researching dolphins, because if I'm going to have named-and-speaking dolphin characters, I need to know a little bit about how they work.

Now I have a slight head-start on this, just as I did on mammoths. Mammoths, I've been obsessed with since I was a toddler. But dolphins. For a while I used to go to SCA camping events and there was this guy who used to be a Navy diver and then worked for Sea World and he. well he was really good at telling stories, was his deal. And he had Seen Some Shit, and some of that shit was about interacting with dolphins. And the thing about dolphins is that. Well, they're violent little chaos gremlins, and just in the course of going about their normal lives, one of the things they do to interact with the world is, well. they have sex with things.

when they do this to people it is generally not a positive experience for the person. but. so i knew that going in. and most of the information on the internet about dolphins is really like. earnest and loving and whatever, which is great. but the thing is that dolphins are chaos gremlins who will fuck anything they can't eat, eat anything they can't fuck, or sometimes do both to the same unfortunate object if it proves to be possible.

what i'm saying is, these are going to be really entertaining characters to work with. because elephants, conversely, do not have recreational sex. they do a lot of things, but they just don't really do that. so dolphins are like. inverse-elephants, culturally.

Elephants also tend to have a strong matriarch, strong bonds between females, and then the males tend to be largely solitary, but will congregate more loosely, often around an older male who will teach them manners. (A well-mannered bull is MUCH more likely to be allowed to mate with desirable females, who have little patience with male foibles.)

Dolphins have looser gender roles; on the whole, the females tend to loosely congregate, and pregnant females usually go back to their mother's pod to birth and raise young, not dissimilar to elephants, but the males--

male dolphins very, very frequently will pair-bond. Two males of similar age-- adult males have very little to do with juveniles of either sex, generally-- will pair-bond and will be inseparable for the rest of their lives. If one of them dies, the other will mourn-- mourning behavior is well-documented in dolphins-- and then will seek to pair off with another adult male, because male dolphins prefer to work in pairs, for survival and companionship. (Dolphin "pods" are also more loosely-organized than elephant herds; dolphins will have a couple of core companions, but then will freely associate and disassociate with other individuals and groups over short periods of time without much fuss, depending on the situation.)

The pair-bonded males are the ones who in the wild do the behavior you see in shows, where they do like synchronized jumps and very-close fast-precise swimming and such, which in the wild are apparently courtship or threat displays-- i.e. "look how tight we are, you can't fight us" or, alternately, "isn't that hot" because

yes that's often how they court females. The pair will corral a desirable female and herd her away from other dolphins so they can both mate with her, and keep her from mating with anybody else.

(other females have been observed collaborating to free a corralled female who did not want this to happen, so it's not quite as rapey as it sounds. though, i mean. dolphins. what can you do.)

anyway dolphin threesomes are canon. but that derailed the rest of my night and i was unable to concentrate on anything else because the gay-- I should say really bisexual dolphins are too powerful.

so anyway i wrote a test scene with a dolphin character, and i had my main character take his wife and baby down to the jetty to introduce them to his dolphin pals, and a bonded male pair he'd known for years showed up and immediately tried to steal the wife, and then expressed shock that he didn't have his male best friend with him, because in their experience breeding was THEE most important time to have your buddy with you. He explains that his buddy is off on a long-term work assignment, and they're like hmph next time you breed you MUST include him, it is so much easier trust us. and the wife is like hmmmmm!

henceforth i will refer to m/m/f threesomes as "dolphin style" you're welcome

[hydr0phius-art]

Painting Chiss Skin

Before I start this, I’m just going to say that I attempted to do an in depth version of this part and then stopped and did dot points because it was too overwhelming. 

A lot of what’s in here can be applied to different body parts. Some of it may also be applied to traditional art, but most of this is for digital art. This post focuses on faces. Eyes and scars will be another post that'll hopefully follow this one relatively quickly.

Picking colours (and some other tips)

> Experimenting is good!

> There’s blood beneath skin and it’s going to show through at different intensities based on what your lighting is doing. I’m assuming Chiss blood is red, so I usually make any blush on my Chiss purple. (Red + blue = purple. Basic colour mixing thingz, you know?)

> The fairer the Chiss’ skin is, the more vibrant you can be with that purple blush in my opinion.

> Temperature, colour, and intensity of light determines what the skin looks like. 

> Having black shadows on a coloured artwork is a good way to flatten the whole piece; when I paint shadows on a Chiss face, I go for a dark blue or purple and blend it with what’s already on the canvas. Playing with layers and their opacity function is also good.

> Laying down a base blue before starting with the rest of the colours is good. You can see that I did that in the speedpaint I’ve attached to the end of this post.

> This website about colour zones will help.

> This website about colour blocking will also help.

References

> I find a face reference of an actor I want to Chiss-ify. Then I have my blue skin reference, which is usually one of the Na’vi from Avatar.  

> I use the Na’vi because there’s a lot of images available with variation with temperature of light and quality of light to observe. 

> Make note of the colours that appear in their flesh as light interacts with it. 

> Warm light will have pink that transitions to purple, then to blue as shadow starts to come back in. I’ve put Ar’alani next to the reference I took inspiration from (link here) for comparison.

> You want to go and paint your reference as it is, except blue. When you get to adding highlights and shadows, look at the Na’vi image and see what colours appear in that light. 

I think that’s pretty much all I do when I paint Chiss. Here’s a speedpaint of Thrawn with Lee Pace as a face claim if that helps somewhat :3

(Ignore how I erased his uniform; I could NOT be bothered with that sorry).

Also, Here are some artworks that helped me when I was figuring this out. I’ve done a bit of analysis that might or might not be helpful. Take what you like from it.

Magali Villeneuve

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Magali Villeneuve (@magali_villeneuve)

In my opinion, Villeneuve’s Thrawn portraits are the best official artworks of him that we have right now. They’re my main go-to for inspiration. The lighting plays across the skin in a way that gives it a fleshy, warm, alive feel. Even the colour zones are present, which gives it that extra bit of depth. If you can’t see them, that’s fine; it takes a bit of time to get used to looking for them.

Rod Reis

The first of Reis’ Alliances cover is also up there with good official Thrawn art we’ve had fairly recently, imo. His style is different to Villeneuve’s, but he follows the same processes with the colour zones and how the skin interacts with the environment around it. The shadows aren’t flat or black; they have colour to them that adds more dimension to the portrait. There’s also that hint of purple-blue blush around his cheeks with more yellowy-blue tones on his forehead and more blue tones around his jaw and chin (again, colour zones are present :3). The light is cooler than Villeneuve’s in the Chaos Rising Portrait, which you can see in the lighter teal hue on the right side of his face. Cool light usually brings out the lighter blue tones in the skin (that’s just what I’ve noticed, though).

And that's it! If anyone has questions, feel free to ask them :3 I'll try and get this eye post out soon <3

[hoodreader]

astrometeorology theories

astrometeorology is exactly what it sounds like: using planetary transits to predict weather & climate conditions. i’m new to it, but all of the coverage regarding the recent hurricanes (rest in peace everyone, i pray y’all get to safety in the affected locations) had me thinking… we should use astrology to protect ourselves during natural disasters or other dangerous weather conditions.

so this is part one. gradually, i hope to learn wayyy more! right now… we’re merely addressing different variations of weather.

sunniness strong sun. this doesn’t really need an explanation

wind the wind varies. mercury is wind, so i think u should read for aspects or conditions of mercury. moon to mercury will cause a chill. mars to mercury might cause a fast wind

rainless clouds saturn, being both dry and cold, obscures/blocks the sun without actually resulting in moisture… the gas giants overall might be able to be read for clouds anyways tho?

rain the moon is moisture. aspects between moon and other planets will determine the type of rain, for example, moon-saturn can be a drizzle. moon-jupiter/moon-neptune may be a downpour/heavy rain?

fog neptune is wet and obscuring so i think neptune itself is the planet of fog. i feel like saturn-jupiter or saturn-neptune is what indicates fog just bc saturn represents low things; things close to the earth & clouds are jupiter/neptune. neptune adds wetness & moisture… maybe moon-neptune or moon-jupiter can be an indication of fog

snow snow is both cold and wet. so moon (cold & wet) is indicated here. the weakness of the sun in the chart (sun as the sun aspecting malefics especially saturn, or being in detriment) can show snow (the heat of the sun is was prevents snowfall. lack of heat = snow). as snow is just frozen rain, the astrological conditions which correlate to rain can be read for snow however they must also have the conditions that cause frozenness. saturn freezes things, as it is traditionally the furthest from the sun. but u may also possibly read frozen things for pluto too, pluto is largely ice & it’s the only solid outer planet as well as it is modernly the furthest from the sun

rain storm we addressed that rainfall would be the moon. but a storm of rain would be read with uranus as a storm is an atmospheric disturbance and uranus does disturb. i can also see jupiter, bc it is known for its eternal storm. so moon-uranus or moon-jupiter can be read as a storm of wetness[?]. jupiter can be used to interpret the presence of thunder or lightning. i also see mars bc storms are defined as ‘violent.’ so moon-mars but with jovial influence nonetheless (like a moon-mars conjunction in pisces) but that could be read for any water related disaster

snow storm essentially, as i stated above, influence of uranus over what would indicate snowfall can result in a storm. mars as well, mars is also a cold planet in hellenistic however the condition of mars needs to cause coldness instead of warmth. uranus-saturn, uranus-moon in saturnian signs or with saturnian influence, etc

hail the indications are similar to that of snow. maybe stronger mars or uranus with saturn

floods flooding is going to be plutonic, neptunian, and lunar. as moon is what we read for moisture, read the moon’s conditions to understand the degree of moisture. uranus simply shows things we are unprepared for. pluto is where things are overbearing. neptune causes water disasters. jupiter causes abundance

tornado saturn and mercury maybe..? saturn is the planet of cycles and spinning things so maybe. i also see uranus and mercury. a tornado is a storm of clouds so that’s why i say that lol… tbh uranus will be read for any storm relating to wind. there’s a variation in temperature which causes the vortex so i think the sun is significant though i’m unsure how to connect that

tropical depressions, tropical storms, & hurricanes again, water disasters will be neptune. uranus is storms, especially storms of the sky.

tropical storms are no joke!!! so let’s stay together and stay educated: gofundme “how to help people affected by hurricanes” & gofundme for directly aiding helene victims! if you send a donation to the gofundme of a marginalized helene victim (at least $5USD) and send proof, i’ll provide a mini chart reading for u (word count: 1000-2000) 🤍 also, my general readings are open so if u want to just get a reading lmk, i’ll donate 25% to helene relief.

** marginalized people are the most disposed during the event of a natural disaster, war, or disease… so this is why i specify them. marginalization included but is not limited to blackness, queerness, and disability. **

please dm with inquiries! i hope this post was interesting.