#i have 5 days and this collection of countries is tiny

[ratherembarrassing]

okay tumblr please advise. you can go anywhere in the united kingdom and ireland. where do you go?

[fianllyclean]

Hey, bestie!

Maria, @taylorsmygirl13 and I both collectively feel like vomitting because we can’t believe that the tour is:

A. ACTUALLY HAPPENING.

B. IT IS ?! SO SOON?!

We have missed you so so so so so much. I think that everyone can collectively agree that when we left our final show on the rep tour that we didn’t think we would go the number of days it has been since we would next see each other. Almost 5 years, one pandemic, 2 degrees, 5 birthdays, 4 records, a bunch of happy times, a bunch of sad times, moving cross country, and new friends later, here we are about to embark on this new journey of tour!!!! I’m collectively just here to say how freaking much I am so thankful to be able to have tickets to the 2 shows that I was able to get. But most importantly that Maria and I are actually living a dream that we talked about for almost a decade. Being at opening Night! We are hecking excited to let all these emotions of the last 5 years out together and share this night with you, T. Maria and I became besties (I mean look at our prom pics in 2016 Lol, because of you.) She has taught me so much and led me toward some of my greatest accomplishments while always encouraging me to constantly keep pushing. I genuinely can’t wait for you to experience her radiant happiness that she emits into any room that she walks into, because every human deserves it. When you realize that she has been there on your side since 2006, at the age of 8 and is now 25. Wow what a journey and special relationship that is. She’s been there for every release day; midnight music video release, traveling hours for tour, spreading your message with her tiny students, and thanks to you, grown into the most successful and beautiful lady I know.

So excited to see you opening weekend at the Glendale shows!!!!

Glendale Night #1: Section C, Row 13, Seat 1.

Glendale Night #2: Section 129, Row 30, Seat 9.

Thank you for giving us a reason to see the desert 🏜️ 🌵, we wouldn’t go the middle of no where for no one else :)

We are so so so so so mega excited to see you and I want nothing more but for you and Maria to squeeze each other and share all these years of memories in conversation.

P.S. Tell Mer and Liv to not worry, I’m bringing Temptations for them and a special “nice to meet you” gift for Benji. 🐱🐈

WE CANT WAIT TO SEE YOU FRIDAY ☘️🇮🇪AND SATURDAY🪩🤠

@taylorswift @taylornation

[killxio]

Eren x caribbean gf headcanons 🙏

wanderlust | e. yaeger

word count: 1,440 [5 min 13 sec read] | ✪ content warnings: facesitting, six nine, handjob, eren using y/n like a face mask, he’s a munch in this (all hail the munches)

eren x reader / eren x black!reader / eren x carribean!reader

✭ drabbles of eren and his pretty beach bound girl. ( ps, sorry for taking so long anon. side note, everyone and their mama is jamaican, so the reader in this is not jamaican. trinidad and tobago i’m side eyeing you too. sorry not sorry, we need representation for other islands. )

eren absolutely gets himself into trouble just to hear you yell at him. he thinks it’s so fucking sexy, especially when you notice his hard-on and yell more.

the way your accent tends to come out when you’re angry just goes straight to his dick, mans can’t help it.

“woooii- ya make mi blood clot, eren! round with ya friends, can’t give nuh call or send mi text den tiptoe in the damn house like a ninja. ya can’t answer when me fa call ya name?”

he’s between your legs and you’re scolding him, finger pushing his big ass head around. he’s been out for a few hours later then he said he would, then came and snuck up behind you in the bathroom as you’re doing your hair.

yet all he can do after he’s put you on the counter is smirk down at you. he grabs you finger, guiding it down his chest and silences your complaints with a kiss.

it’s when he leads your hands low enough that you break it.

“jesus eren. you’re fucking nasty,” you shame, your american tongue coming back.

“no keep yelling,”

“ya fa be ‘shamed a-yaself.” you scold, trying to hide your smirk, brushing your fingers over his buldge.

eren takes u to the most luxurious parts of your home possible, he knows how much you love your families native country.

in college, he works his ass off to take you home atleast twice a year at fancy resorts or luxurious airbnbs.

as he gets older and more successful, the trips get better and more frequent.

your 10 year anniversary gift? him buying you a home at home.

eren finds the way you eat fruit with no fork adorable. he loves your brown doe eyes staring up at him accompanied by your sticky mouth.

“what?” you question, looking up at eren from your beach chair, mango in hand.

“nothing baby,” he smiles, bending down to grab a wet-wipe from your picnic blanket, “you just devour fruit like a bulldozer.”

“do not.” you protest, and despite him wiping your hands down his gaze is still set straight on you. there’s a slight breeze passing by, and his green eyes peer at you though his waving hair.

“stop looking at me like i’m that mango.”

“am not!” you protest again as he moved onto wiping your mouth and cheeks, knowing damn well you’re about to jump his bones in the hotel room later.

he loves your mango, grapefruit and pineapple fed pussy, he swears it makes you taste sweeter. before you, eren never came home craving his girl’s pussy like a meal. but yours? you have to claw him off you.

this time, eren’s taken you to jamaica, one of the carribean islands you actually haven’t been to yet. he pulls the rented jeep into the drive way of your two’s airbnb, coming home to feed you the breakfast you sent him to the market for.

“hi ren baby. did you get it?” your brown eyes and coily hair peek up at him from your book from your place on the couch when he turns the corner into the living room.

“mhm.” he nods simply, holding up the brown paper bag in his hand to show you.

but he’s craving a different meal.

“ohhh good! the utensils and plates here are so so cute, i think the host even left wine. is it too early to day drin- baby?” you question, distracted at the way he pulls at your hips and cuts you off with an absolutely nasty kiss.

“i need to be fed too,” eren says, briefly breaking the kiss, his hands sneaking into your tiny panties and toying with your clit. you know he isn’t talking about his own meal in the bag.

two of his fingers slide up and down your hole, collecting your slick, then slowly penetrates your tight ring.

“mmmm,” you let out a cat-like purr as his fingers slide deeper into you, moving up and down, riding, and he knows the perfect balance of thrusting to please you.

he’s swallowing all of your pretty moans, tasting the chapstick off your lips as he’s attacking at your lips, then your jaw. your neck. your collarbones. until he’s laid you down and pulling your cropped cami top up to get at the valley between your breasts.

he’s humming out appreciatively against your skin, tasting the soft reminants of your shea butter from a shower the night before. he travels, just a little, but cruelly ignores your hard nipples pointing up for him. he disconnects from your breasts with a squelch, sitting back up to pull off your panties and lay down beneath you.

“what’s gotten into you, rennie?” you ask, a little breathless between movements.

“nothing sweetheart. now sit,” he demands, pulling you up onto his chest.

“wait. let me touch you?” he doesn’t object and you go straight for it, sliding down his sweats and eagerly pulling out his coated dick. there’s two beads of pre still going down his shaft when you lean down to lick and start to suck on him, he slaps your ass.

“i’m eating. if you’re going to touch and distract me, hands only.”

and you do. scooting back more so your cunt hovers over his face, wrapping your fist around his cock. he pulls you down and begins licking at your cunt.

eren shakes his head lightly, pressing his tongue into you and passing over your clit a few times so deliciously, the downright nasty sounds of him slurping at your cunt making you clench around nothing. while his tongue travels back up to your leaking hole, he closes his lips around your cunt too, sucking.

“s-so good baby,” you praise, then get caught off guard by him prodding his tongue at your entrance and penetrating you.

and eren’s tounge is thick. not absolutely abnormal, but definitely matches his 6’4 height.

the repeated feeling of his muscle penetrating you sends you spiraling, tightening your grip around his shaft trying to ground yourself. with every in and out motion, more of your slick is pushed out and down his throat.

eren is addicted to feeling you come on his tongue instead of his dick, something about you creaming on his face? does it for him.

you’d think it’d be the way your hands swivel around his shaft that’d send him spurting sticky while liquid up around your hands but instead, it’s the way your hips jerk in their up and down motion while you cum, your ass jiggling on his face.

“ima.. ima cum eren.. i’m cummin’” hence the stuttering of your hips and your breathy, choked out moans. he wraps his arms around your thighs, burying his face further into your cunt.

“yeah princess?” he asks rhetorically, softly slapping at and jiggling your thighs, “do it baby. keep cumming on my face.”

“hah- fuckkk rennn..” you’re mewling, riding out your orgasm on your mans unfaltering tongue, drinking in the vibration of his words against your cunt.

“you’re such a sweet girl. my sweet girl.” he says, gazing up at you as you’ve now scooted down and are sitting on his chest. he doesn’t protest at way you leak down his abs.

“am i?” you return a dopey smile, flopping over ontop of him.

one of his arms wrap around you waist, rubbing soothingly at your bare ass while the other softly rubs at your scalp.

he doesn’t reply, instead you’re left to listen to the beat of his heart and rise and fall of his chest as you two share radiated body heat. you’re close enough to the ocean to hear the waves in the distance.

“.. okay, now can we eat?” you ask, breaking the silence, gazing at the forgotten food on the side table.

eren loves traveling with you, you grabbing him by the hand and leading the way. he’ll follow you anywhere.

“it’s a type of spanish lime but TECHNICALLY, but it’s more like a grape. it’s called kenip.” you inform him, tapping his shoulder indicating he could put you down now.

he puts you back down on the sand, having previously had you on his shoulder so you could pick the fruit from a tree growing on the beach.

he just stares up at you with the biggest eyes of admiration as you peel and hand feed him a handful.

“you like it?”

“yeah. i like you.”

“the stupid limes that are actually grapes, big head.”

“those too.”

he does like you. he loves you. his little caribbean girlfriend who’s smile glows the brightest when she’s taken to the beach. who cries in disdain when he gets fruit from the supermarket and not the farmers market. who’s vibrant dark skin, which he’s in awe by, enhances in the summer.

he loves you.

[babydollmarauders]

I know you said neither Jack nor Lovir are super possesive but I can picture little El being Possessive. Like Jack will take her to the golf course with him and a female gold cart driver starts flirting with Jack and El glares at her with all of her tiny might and makes sure lovie knows that “some girl at the golf place was trying to be her new mommy”

Jack is actually VERY possessive of Lovie! like, he loves showing her off and he loves that he has such a MILF and people want her, but he makes it KNOWN that that’s HIS wife.

and, Lovie gets only possessive during the off-season, but that’s it! during the hockey season, she’s understanding that other girls will show their love for Jack bc he’s one of their favorite players! but during the off-season? that’s HER husband/baby-daddy and she’s gonna make it known!

but i agree, El is definitely possessive! like i imagine 5 year old El and Jack are at like a country club for a father-daughter golfing day and they stop inside afterwards to get a drink before they leave and it plays out something like this:

“hi, i saw you playing out there, and i just wanted to say you’re really good!” the brunette woman smiles, leaning forward with her hands on the table, pushing her breasts together and forwards with her upper arms.

El immediately catches on, glaring daggers at the woman from her spot beside her father.

“oh, thank you.” Jack lets out a dry and humble chuckle, folding his arms in front of him on the table.

“do you think maybe you’d be able to give me a few pointers?” the woman continues, fluttering her lashes. “i’m not nearly as skilled as you are.”

her hand brushes against Jack’s bicep, giving a subtle squeeze as she fakes an innocent pout.

Jack’s mouth opens, a response on the tip of his tongue, but before he can answer, his daughter speaks up.

“daddy, can we go home now? i’m bored.” Jack looks down at the little girl, lifting a hand to play with the blonde ringlets pulled in perfect pigtails on the top of her head.

“give me one moment, lovely. then we can go home. you gotta get a bath soon anyways, before nap time.” he presses a gentle kiss to the top of her head, missing the eye roll and narrowed glare at the now scoffing brunette standing at the head of the table.

Jack looks back at the woman, sending her a good gestured smile as he collects his phone off the table.

“i’m sorry, i gotta get my daughter home-” he’s cut off once again by the little voice beside him.

“yeah. i wanna see my mommy.” El tells the woman pointedly, climbing to stand on the club restaurant seating. “let’s go, daddy! mommy is waiting for us! she’ll be so happy to see you! i bet she’ll give you one of those yucky long kisses.”

Jack lets out an awkward laugh, averting eye contact with the stranger and standing from his seat, his daughter immediately lifting her arms in wait for him to carry her.

“maybe i’ll see you around.” he nods to the woman before leaving the country club, making his way out to the car and buckling El into her car seat.

“what was that in the club, lovely?” he asks on the drive back to the lake house, his eyes flickering to her in the mirror.

“i don’t know what you’re talking about, daddy.” Jack chuckles at his daughter’s words, turning into the driveway of the summer house.

immediately once the car stops, El is unbuckling herself, not even waiting for her father as she sprints to the front door.

Jack trails behind her, opening the front door and letting her enter before he does, shutting the door behind him as he listens to his daughters footsteps echo throughout the house.

“mommy!” Eleanor squeals in delight, her arms wrapping around her mothers legs in the kitchen.

“hey, El-Bell! did you have a fun morning with daddy?” Lovie squats down to be eye-level with her daughter, grinning at how cute she looks in her little tennis skirt and polo shirt.

“yeah! daddy helped me putt!” El smiles, showcasing her missing front tooth and making Lovie’s nose scrunch in delight.

“he did?!” Lovie reiterates excitedly, her gaze lifting to her husband that stands in the doorway of the kitchen. “well, that’s so nice of him!”

“yeah! and some girl at the golf place was trying to be my new mommy!” El tells her, scrunching her nose in disgust. Lovie’s eyebrows raise, her eyes going back to her daughter.

“oh yeah?” she asks.

“mhm.” El hums, nodding her head. “but don’t worry mommy, i took care of it.”

“my hero!” Lovie chuckles, pulling her child in her arms and peppering her face with kisses, making the little girl giggle in delight.

[maaarine]

Hostile Intelligence: Reflections from a Visit to the West Bank (David Graeber, 2015)

"The only answer that makes sense is that the Israel forces want the Palestinians to seethe; they want there to be resistance; but the also want to ensure that political resistance is completely ineffective.

They want a population that is compliant on a day-to-day basis, but that periodically explodes, individually or collectively, in a unstrategic and uncoordinated fashion that can represented to the outside world as irrational demonic madness.

And why would they wish to do this?

Almost every Arab political analyst I talked to considered the answer self-evident.

Israel’s economy has become largely dependent on the high-tech arms trade, and the supply of complex electronic “security” systems.

Israel is today the world’s fourth largest arms exporter, after the US, Russia, and UK (it has recently pushed back France to #5). This is actually quite a feat for such a tiny country.

But as everyone also hastens to add: Israeli arms and security systems have an enormous advantage over their rivals, one Israeli firms never fail to emphasize in their promotional literature.

They are extensively field-tested. This new type of shell that was used to destroy tunnels in Gaza!

This new type of random-distribution tear gas dispenser was successfully used against protestors in the Balata refugee camp.

This new type of laser-detection device has repeatedly foiled attacks on settlers.

Arab resistance has become a key economic resource for Israeli capital, and were it to completely quiet down, the export economy would take an immediate hit.

If bullying is to be defined as, in its essence, a form of aggression designed to produce a reaction that can then be used as retroactive justification for the initial act of aggression itself, then the Israeli Occupation has taken bullying and turned it into a principle of governance.

Everything is designed to provoke. The provocations are daily. They are ugly and humiliating.

But they are also designed to fly just under the point of flagrant, undeniable aggression, where you can claim they were not even, precisely, an “attack,” but like the schoolyard bully who’s constantly subtly poking and jabbing and kicking his victim, hoping for some outraged burst of ineffective rage that can get the victim hauled before the principal."

[balloons-and-shadows]

* Swedish Culture *

As my exchange semester is coming to an end, I want to share with you what learned about Sweden the last 6 months

Trains drive on the left side of the tracks. On dagen H, everyone switched from driving on the left side to the right side, except for trains. Swedes will look at you funny for bringing that up.

On every product there is a detailed description of how each part of the product should be recycled. We need to do that everywhere.

Fika <33333333

There are no rules for biking here. It is chaos. As a Dutch person I'm very confused

Love to the academic quarter that allows me to be 15 minutes late to every lecture

I think Gävlebocken is a tradition we need to keep. Especially the burning part of it.

Why does everything close so early during the weekends??? What am I supposed to do??

Ikea has my heart. And a lot of my money.

Sun setting at 14.30 makes me want to eat dinner so early already

Also, the cold makes my hair literally so static? Does anyone know what to do about it?

I can never live without kanelbullar again

The amount of lactosefree options there are everywhere! Love it!

Swedes will be sitting outside of a café even when it is -2 degrees. I have the utmost respect for them.

Why do you close everything for the winter? What am I supposed to do now??

The Ikea stereotype is no joke. Everything I own is from Ikea. Everything my friends own is from Ikea.

I miss cheap alcohol :(

Where are there random loose chairs and tables in your trains? Where do they come from? Why are they there?

Affordable housing <333

Little kids in their little snowsuits with their little snowboots are the cutest thing ever

In small towns, you can find like 7 different Japanese restaurants. Nothing else tho.

Kötbullar are so cheap. I love them. I buy them all the time.

I need to know, why are you so obsessed with Thailand as a country?? I need answers.

I'm not made to withstand -15 degrees. No Swede bats an eye.

Also, choirs are a very big thing??? I wish I could sing well.

Did I already mention kanelbullar? <33333

People ask you if you've already been to the ABBA museum. You have not. You are also not planning on going. Still, people ask you.

The Vasa Museum is a very controversial topic.

The red barns you see everywhere are painted with animal blood. You like to point that out to everyone who comes to visit you.

You have not seen the sun in days. You live on vitamin D-supplements and nothing else

Icehockey looks 75% of the time like very aggressive flirting. You know, like the kdramas

You are sitting in the bus quietly. There are people checking the tickets. You have a ticket. Suddenly, there are 4 people standing over you checking your ticket. There's only 5 people in the bus.

16.00 is rush hour. That is very early.

People will not move out of the way for you. Not in the supermarket, not on the train or on the pavement. There have been many times I have had to walk on the road because people will not move for you.

What is lingonberry and why do you put it in everything?

Why do your parties start and end so early?? Why is 4.00 considered "late"?

Just like the Vasa museum, Gamla Uppsala is a very controversial topic.

Tiny rocks are strewn over the street to combat the ice and snow. They get stuck in your shoes. There is a tiny rock collection on the floor of the hallway now.

It is -20 degrees Celsius outside. You see a dude wearing kaki shorts.

Tomten has my heart. He is so tiny.

Student discounts <3333

[itsyagurlchip]

Stop the genocide!!!

i tried to make a political cartoon- it doesn't have as much symbolism as i wanted to, but im pretty proud of this!

i got the inspo from a convo me and my sister had. she would always try to counter my points with "well, i dont live there" "its not gonna affect me" or "i cant do much, im just a kid anyway".

and all of this isnt true.

You can slow the funding! Protests exist, especially the peaceful ones. You dont even have to protest, boycott brands and businesses who support this bullshit. Make homemade stuff to get your damned fix.

and if you refuse to do so, that just lets the whole world know you'd rather drink a damn lavender latte than spare 5 children of early death.

everything that is happening will concern everyone on the globe, especially america, because this determines whether or not we fight for our cause or let history repeat itself.

our ancestors, proud activists, and modern day people haven't and won't work this hard only for us to fail. Or even worse, ignore it and make it grow. it goes against human morals, it makes many groups of people get hate, and it shows how low people consider the bar for basic human decency, if that.

whats gonna happen to everyone, and i mean everyone, is chaos. (more than it already is- but you get my point)

if a tiny democracy, who cant even consider themselves a country better yet a state, can take down millions of people, kill off generations, fulfill an ethnic cleansing, ignore protests and collect proper fundings to do so, record and dehumanize said people, make billions of people watch this with an evil grin and a shitty bag of reasons,

who else do you think is gonna try?

(here's the time lapse:)

©KAL pls don't steal, repost, trace, or whatever an art theif does. you can inspire yourself! just tag me to let me know<3

[idontknowreallywhy]

Estera Ch 35 - Ten

What went before

It’s been a while! Ironic that in March of the OCs I have throughly neglected my dear OC but I shall try to make up for it! This one fought me (while I’ve written tens of thousands of words for further down the line 🙄) because I wanted one chapter to achieve too many different things and I rather lost confidence in myself to make it work or even to continue with it at all. (Every scrap of credit goes to @sofasurf for giving me a metaphorical shake and waving snippets of her excellent future chapters to bribe me).

The end result is… again… I have broken one event down into more than one chapter. Hoping there is the right balance of fluff and angst to suit those still reading (thank you xx)

Here we ponder whether one can be homesick for somewhere that is no longer your home, there is an addition to the gallery, Scott has a wobble and the giant floof introduces us to his favourite Thunderbird…

✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨

Bez stood guard at the front door, clearly determined to give the earliest possible warning of their visitor’s approach. It had been five minutes since Estera had heard the unmistakeable sound of VTOL engines through the open window which told her he’d decided to leave the jet somewhere nearby, maybe at the fancy golf club where such things didn’t stand out as so unusual. That was 15 mins walk away on normal-human-length legs, so she could probably expect him fairly imminently.

She gave up on the article she was staring at in a futile attempt to stop herself thinking too much and dumped the tablet on the coffee table with a little more force than intended before getting up to pace around the room. Maybe moving would help? Bez glanced over before returning his serious gaze to the door handle.

The intensity of his expression was offset rather by the little blue polka dot bow tie she had attached to his collar to mark the occasion. It had been 5 years to the day since she collected a tiny ball of puppy floof from the breeder and finally made her apartment feel like a home. Because on that particular day it had been exactly 5 years since she’d seen the last place that felt that way.

And thus today, dziesięć. Ten.

Ten years since she’d opened the back door in the morning to stand barefoot in the grass. Ten years since she’d taken a deep, rejuvenating breath of the air rolling off the Tatra mountains.

Ten years since she’d sat on the back porch with a cup of coffee, stealing a few moments to listen to the excitable call of the woodlark, one of the few privileges the militia hadn’t managed to take from them. The yellow-painted structure had been plagued by woodworm even then… it was probably long gone now. In fact, she didn’t even know if the house was still there. That felt wrong. Even if she knew she could never go back to it… surely she should know? But who could she call to ask? Nobody was there anymore…

Ten years since she’d held a meaningful conversation in her native tongue. Bez didn’t count.

Ten years since she‘d started to feel the constant need to justify her presence by being useful, by being an asset to her adopted country. Ten years since she felt like she truly belonged anywhere.

Ten years since she’d hugged her parents and promised to live.

She sighed and walked over to their photo on the wall for the third time that morning and pressed her palm against it. Then rested her forehead on the back of her hand. It felt as though she was fighting through the fuzzy layer that time was beginning to paint over her mental image of them, trying to fix the happy memories somewhere safe. Somewhere accessible. The memories before that day. Before the war and all the horrors that had brought.

Ten years too since she’d found and lost a hero within minutes and gained an imaginary soulmate.

Ten years since she should have died. Maybe in some ways the old her had. Ten years since her life had changed forever anyway.

Her gaze shifted to the new photo, framed in blue, that she had recently added to her gallery. Yes, and in the last few months… everything had suddenly changed again. But this time in an indisputably good way. Because the imaginary hero had somehow shed the imaginary bit and become her friend. The two of them grinned manically out of the hasty selfie - hair dishevelled, flushed with adrenaline and drenched in seawater but vividly, irrepressibly alive.

She couldn’t help smiling back. He was hero to lots of people, but friend was infinitely better.

Bez, who had quietly padded over to sit close beside her whined quietly and rested his big head on her hip.

“Quite right, Niebieski, enough introspection.”

He huffed a non-committal response before an ear twitched and he flung himself towards the door, his claws skittering on the tiles, and resumed his supervision of the door handle.

✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨

Elevator was out again, Scott noticed. He rolled his eyes and then took the stairs at a run… just because. He found himself counting them in groups of ten. Ten ten ten ten ten ten ten… and… hmph, two more. If she’d only lived on the 5th floor that would have been far more satisfying. He took a moment to calculate how much height each individual stair would need to have added to fix this… would that make the rise too steep? Maybe if they could reduce each by 20% and add four more to each flight?

Huh, he was clearly more on edge than he realised if he was compulsively doing math. He recalled frantically focusing on trying to disprove Goldbach’s Conjecture while refusing to visibly react to the agony of…

No. Stop it. He was here so that he didn’t need to lose himself in thinking about it. So that neither of them did.

He looked over at her door. He was technically a few minutes early, did that matter? He decided not and braced himself to withstand 60 kilos of furry, drooling enthusiasm. Bez, the big, fluffy, friendly dog who was most definitely not a half-starved killer. He was a different creature in every way and Scott was definitely getting better at forgetting the nightmare dogs. Much better actually.

It was all good. Even the bark he was about to hear was different - deep and booming and safe. Not snarling and howling. All good.

Scott raised a hand to knock but froze as an unexpected noise reached him… the scratching of claws on stone. They prowled relentlessly outside, waiting... Daring him to even try… He gasped out loud as his lower back slammed painfully into the bannister at the top of the stairs and he grabbed it tight, trying to ground himself. His vision blurred.

A voice drifted through the fog, the same sibilant quality of speech that haunted his nightmares and he was nearly overwhelmed by nausea before he heard a joyful laugh and knew… with a rush he knew… that it wasn’t there it was… here. It was her language, her’s and the dog’s, not… not theirs.

He gripped the bannister hard as the door opened and his friend looked up at him, the smile sliding off her face and her hand slipping from the dog’s collar as it surged towards him and… and skidded to a halt a metre away, ears raised, head tilted.

“Niebieski, Noga!

Scott? What’s wrong?”

The dog returned to heel immediately and sat down, looking up at him with that same questioning head tilt. Scott blinked the sweat from his stinging eyes, cursed himself for overreacting and was about to apologise when he realised Estera had gone… what? He shook his head in frustration and was about to call after her. Except she was already back and lugging a huge beanbag which she placed just to his left away from the top of the stairs. He rubbed his eyes with the back of a hand, it was passing he didn’t need to sit down. He was about to thank her for the thought but reassure her it was unnecessary when his knees decided for him and he sank into the thing, vaguely noticing the loud scrunching noise of the filling reshaping around him. He leant forward to rest his forearms on his bent knees… scrunch again. The noise drowned out the whistling and the barking and he wriggled a little to make it happen a third time. Then all was quiet.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be daft, Scott.”

“It’s so stupid.”

“No it’s not.”

“I’m sorry…”

“Just breathe for a minute, Blue.”

He did that. Precisely 60 seconds passed. 13 breaths, a couple more than would be usual. His comm pulsed quietly and he triple-tapped it to answer the enquiry in the affirmative. His head was much clearer now. He tried to relax his shoulders and looked around. Bez was nowhere to be seen. Estera was crouched next to him though, humming quietly. She smiled reassuringly as he looked at her and made to stand.

“I’ll just drop him round to George and Edith’s then we can go inside.”

“No! Don’t. Please.”

“It’s really not a problem at all.”

“No, it wasn’t his fault. I… something just took me by surprise. It’s not a problem.” Scott took a shaky breath and sat up straight. “I don’t want it to be a problem. I want to say hello.”

She frowned at him.

“I really do. Please bring him back.” Scott put as much confidence into the request as he could muster with the result it sounded more like a command than a request.

“Do Mnie!” She called quietly. He knew that one - Come! He focussed on practising the pronunciation in his head.

Bez poked his head out of the front door, his mouth full of some huge green cuddly toy. As Scott repeated the command the dog walked slowly forwards and placed the toy in front of him before lying quietly down next to his mistress.

Scott reached out cautiously and patted Bez on the head and murmured his thanks for the gift of… err… whatever the giant green drool-soaked plushie monster Bez had deposited at his feet was meant to be. Some kind of chunky lizard? A turtle with a zip on its belly? The dog looked at the toy and then back at Scott. Waiting for something?

Ah. He needed to physically accept the gift. Ugh… but he could literally see dog-spit-bubbles gleaming on the fuzzy surface. Shudder. Come on Tracy, you’ve dealt with grosser things in Gordon’s bedroom…

Acting with the kind of caution he’d exercise towards potentially explosive toxic waste, Scott picked the item up with a thumb and forefinger, and dangled it as far from his body as possible to inspect. It spun slowly in the air to reveal a very familiar yellow, red and white pattern on the top side and his jaw dropped in delighted surprise.

The shape, he could now see, was almost recognisable but it had been significantly squashed and white stuffing was poking out from several holes. Other sections had evidently been firmly re-stitched together which only emphasised how the rest of the original seams were on the point of bursting. The tail was hanging on by mere threads. Bez sat up tall on his hind legs and looked immensely proud of himself.

“Oh Bez… whatever would Virgil say?”

Now the adrenaline was dissipating Scott felt the overwhelming urge to giggle.

He cleared his throat to repress it and then bit his lip, not wanting to offend the giant animal by laughing in his face. His body shook a little as he shuffled forward and reverently placed the mutilated toy back down in front of its owner but he kept his cool. Said owner eyed him and then promptly picked up the toy and put it more decisively on top of Scott’s shoes.

“Goodness you are highly honoured Scott, he won’t let me near Thunderbird Chew! I’ve had to sneak her away while he sleeps to carry out routine maintenance in the dead of night and… err, Scott? Are you ok?”

Scott knew he was a lost cause even as he crammed a hand into his mouth to suppress the laughter. Bez looked at him with evident concern but it was Estera’s smug expression tipped him over the edge and he threw his head back and cackled.

Thunderbird Chew! He absolutely had to tell Virgil…

✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨

[sudsyv2]

I have so many silly prompts and only one small brain that can’t remember all of them so I’m writing them down ><! (if you like any feel free to use them !)

I’ll probably be adding to this list daily 😽

MISC:

1. Ghost and soap who have reincarnated so many times but somehow still meet each other in their new lives.

2. Soap and ghost on a swing, just swinging and chatting

3. Duke ghost and butler soap or reverse! Either way one’s trying not get them in trouble and the other doesn’t give a fuck if something happens, they’d literally go to war with the entire country if anyone opposes to their relationship

4. Siren soap!!!!

5. Ghost and his inability to say no to Soap

6. Gamer ghost (sorry this is just so funny) and rich boy soap who’s got an embarrassing crush on him

7. Tattoo artist soap and biker ghost

8. Big werewolf ghost and his somehow more feral human boyfriend soap!

9. Soulmates, red strings the whole deal

10. Ghost getting called big guy by soap (and liking it)

11. STREAMER GHOAP AU THINK ABOUT IT, IT WOULD BE SO FUNNY

12. Finding out each others love language

13. Ghost is a rock collector he collects shiny rocks and when he finds one he really likes he shows soap

14. Painter soap

15. Soap doodling on ghosts arm

16. Soap learning to cook, just cause he’s bored

17. WRITE MORE OF THE PROMISE RING SHIT I GOTTA WRITE MORE OF IT

18. Ok so hear me out, a tiny creature (can be a baby monster thing or idk) imprints on both soap and ghost

19. Soap is good with kids

20. Photographer ghost but he doesn’t talk about it. Though one Christmas, soap got him an expensive camera and he was extremely happy about it

21. soap carry’s small bandaids with stickers on it all the time. You got a small cut? He’s got a hello kitty, Batman, any kind of bandaid you want he’s probably got

22. Tyrant ghost looking for a wife and then in comes knight soap looking to defeat tyrant ghost

23. Ghost has incredibly dumb theories and soap is the only one who listens to them

24. DINOSAURS!! THEY BOTH REALLY LIKE DINOSUARS AND THEY HAVE ARGUEMENTS ON THEIR FAVORITE DINOSAURS

25. Detective Ghost and an Arsonist on the run from the police Soap

26. Literal ghost! soap, like that bitch is haunting the base grounds, and lieutenant who goes by the name ghost

(Will add more)

FLUFF:

1. Soap looking at ghost with such a loving shine in his eyes, those damn puppy eyes staring at ghost like he had just given soap the world

2. Soap buying ghost flowers

3. Soap kissing all of ghosts scars

4. Them just laying together, cuddling, soap is rambling about something and ghost is listening intently sometimes even adding a “I see” in between to let soap know he’s listening

5. Soap would be the one to propose but wouldn’t be able to hide the fact he was going to propose, his excitement written all over his face

6. I know it’s probably not possible but imagine ghost being ticklish

7. Ghost, whenever they’re cuddling, likes to put his entire body weight on soap. And soap doesn’t even mind, playing with ghosts hair and rubbing his back.

8. Soap having to get on his tippy toes to kiss ghost and ghost leaning farther and farther back to see just how determined soap is to kiss him (very. Soap is very determined.)

9. Taking a shower together, nothing sexual happens it’s just them washing each other after a long day

10. SLOW DANCING, AND BOTH TAKE TURNS TAKING THE LEAD

11. Ghost kissing soaps hand

12. Ghost learning how to knit and knits soap a blanket that says “soap and ghost”

13. Bass guitarist ghost in a band who really wants to woo this super cute guy (soap ofc) that always shows up to their concerts, and gets his bandmates to help him write a song for said super cute guy (soap)

14. Soap can sing and sometimes ghost will just ask if soap can sing for him. When they’re both sleepy! And soap does, it’s usually always some type of silly lullaby. Works wonders for ghost though

15. Price telling ghost that his lover boy(soap) is here

16. Ghost gets a small scratch on his cheek and soap kisses it better, ghost not expecting the kiss is left frozen in place for a couple seconds while soap is just walking off cackling

17. The way they wake each other up. Ghost gently nudges soap awake but if he could stare at soaps sleeping face forever he would. Soap on the other hand, says ghosts name and kisses his face. Like a lot. But ghost is always up after the first kiss, he just likes to act asleep to get more kisses

18. Their first kiss. Not like their usual quick ones that leave them both wanting more, this one is soft and tender. Eerily gentle.

19. Soap seeing Ghosts genuine smile, it left him breathless as ghosts deep laugh ran through his entire body and made him shiver

20. Soaps and ghosts adopted cat son Phantom!!! Phantoms patterns on his face look like ghost so of course soap had to adopt him. Anyways cat dads ghoap

21. Aftercare (I’m the biggest slut for aftercare that shit is amazing)

(Will add more)

NSFW (there will be NO things like noncon or r/pe here unless it entails them finding a way to heal after it)

I don’t usually write smut so I’m sorry if these are bad 😭

1. Werewolf ghost goes into rut, human soap offers to help him through it

2. Power bottom soap who is extremely good at getting guys like ghost to be on their knees for him

3. Soap wearing lipstick and leaving big O lipstick stains on ghosts dick

4. Ghost in bed is extremely touchy, he needs to have soaps skin under his hands gloved or not.

5. Ghost pressing his hand on soaps stomach to feel the bump of his own cock in the other

6. Soap is under ghosts desk sucking him off

7. Soap cockwarming ghost while the other writes a report

8. Roleplay idk what they’re roleplaying just roleplay

9. Soap likes to moan loud to see how long it takes for ghost to push his head against a bed/wall just to shut him up

10. Soap loves it rough

11. Ghost lifting soap up to fuck him and soap is absolutely in shock and turned on

12. ghost is a big biter, soaps had to cover up way to many bites from him

13. Lmao monster fucker soap

14. Ghoap exploring their kinks!

15. My friend said virgin ghost and I was like ok sure, then he hit me with “experienced soap telling inexperienced ghost how he wants to be fucked” and I was like damn ok

16. Ghost is extremely weak to the way soap says his name, especially in bed. Hearing that breathless “Simon” mixed with soaps strained yeses and moans gets ghost hard (really fuckin hard lol)

(Will add more)

[ajscico]

📸

🍙

🍙 - What's a food you've always wanted to try?

I've gotten pretty lucky and been able to try a wide variety of foods from a bunch of different places. I think I've gotten to try most of the weird/exotic ones that sound appealing.

That being said, I collect recipe books lately and sometimes wish these fantastic looking or sounding recipes were... possible for me to do. Like there's a fish pot pie in my BOTW cookbook that would be fantastic if it wasn't... quite the process plus having ingredients I have to order online because no store in my tiny town would carry random things like artichoke cream. Or I found a collection of recipe books from like 40 different countries. Some of them would be really cool to try but they're like all day prep and cook and not meant for someone working a 9-5

📸 - What's one of your favorite photos in your phone?

Ok, so I got a new phone and had to move most of my photos off my phone. Out of those... most of them have people's faces and I'm not editing them to not do face reveals. So you get the photo I stole from Nancy Dear because I'm also missing Gemglyph's version of Sky getting smothered in love. @nancyheart11 who drew this one so I can credit the amazing art to them?

My undying affection for someone who can find me the sketch of @gemglyph's Sky getting either a day in the blanket fort with sweet things or getting cuddled by Loft, either one.

[disneydelights]

Walt's Museum in his hometown of Marceline is a really fun place to visit. Just like with any Disney Theme Park, you enter and exit through a gift shop. Then as you go around the corner you see a giant Mickey Mouse in a train conductor's uniform. This Mickey is one of 75  that were made for the Mickey's 75th Birthday Celebration at Walt Disney World in Kissimmee, Florida. Then the entire collection toured the country. After the tour was completed they were sold at auction and one of the patron's of the museum bought the All Aboard Mickey and gave it to the Museum where it resides to this day.

The Museum resides in an old train Depot and the Ticket counter is left preserved the way it was when it still operated as a depot. You can stand on the spot where Walt "found the Magic" after getting off the train as a young boy in Marceline. He only spent 5 years there as a boy but it was the key to his success. "To tell the truth, more things of importance happened to me in Marceline than have happened since - or are likely to in the future." Walt  wrote in a letter to the local newspaper in 1938.

The museum is two stories of memorabilia, artifacts and history. There is a 2 hour star studded film about Walt Disney's impact on Marceline and the world as told through the voices of his friends and family. There are models and drawings of many of the elements of all the theme parks, early artwork and conceptual designs, photos, letters and so much more. There are multiple video loops playing throughout the museum with interviews and clips from some of the most  historical moments of Walt Disney's career. And so many of them tie back directly to this tiny little town in rural America. Here are a few pictures of the museum.

While you could spend hours in the museum alone there is more to do in Marceline than just the museum. A couple of blocks away is a US Post office that issued a a stamp honoring Walt Disney. Commemorative stamps are generally issued 10 years after a person has died and it has to be passed by an act of Congress. Believe it or not only two years after Walt Disney's death a unanimous vote in Congress made it possible to issue a commemorative stamp honoring this American legend. Mickey Mouse was on hand and they unveiled it at the post office in Marceline. There's another little gem at the post office too but I don't want to give away everything. You really need to go yourself and see this beautiful homage to turn of the century America and Walt Disney.

The radio station, call letters KDWD 99.1, the movie theater and many other buildings in town were Walt Disney's inspiration for the stores and shops along Main Street in both Disneyland in California and Walt Disney World in Florida. One of those places is a corner shop called Zurchers. It is on the corner of Main Street and Ritchie Avenue. Walt said it was the inspiration for Coke Corner at Disneyland and Casey's at Walt Disney World. A lot of people were unsure why as the architecture appeared to be quite a bit different and it just didn't seem to make sense. But after a fire took place in the back of Zurchers and part of the building was destroyed it became apparent where Mr. Disney got his inspiration. The back wall of the building behind Zurchers had a large Coca-Cola mural painted on the side of the building on the back corner of that block. When it was discovered after the fire they restored the original mural and it looks like this today. 

You can also tour the family farm and see the spot where Walt's Dreaming Tree stood. Then there is the barn which now is a place where you can you pay your respects to Walt Disney yourself. After the barn was restored the workers "autographed" their work and pretty soon visitors were doing the same. Now you really have a hard time finding a spot left to autograph!

This little town in the heartland, that still in so many ways is reminiscent of turn of the 20th Century life in rural America has not simply faded into obscurity as a tourist attraction. It is a vibrant town with wonderful people and thriving on local industry. They also keep up with the times in other ways. While exploring the town you can scan a QR code at many locations and get in Paul Harvey's famous words, "the rest of the story" as it pertains to each location. I did not get to see or do everything in the time I had, but I plan to go back again... and I recommend that you do the same! 

Postscript: Before I forget, Walt Disney loved trains. There are a lot of train related things to see in Marceline. They also have 75 trains a day go by just outside the museum. 

[paranormaljones]

1, 9, 20, 24, and 28💜💜💜. (sorry, I know those are some of the harder questions, but if you’d like to share I’d love to know ^-^)

sorry this took me so long XD

1. what are three things you'd say shaped you into who you are?

Novo Amor's music, Lockwood & Co. (the books and the show), and Endeavour. i picked a few more recent things that have shaped me for this one ^-^

9. tell a story about your childhood

so this probably started when i was like 9 and continued on for the next 4-5 years, but when i was a kid i had this little tiny pink Littlest Pet Shop mouse that became my constant companion. i was crazy over books that featured mice as the main characters (A Nest For Celeste, Tumtum and Nutmeg, Redwall) and i had an extremely active imagination. so i carried this little mouse (whom i named Cherry) with me everywhere i went, and i do mean everywhere. if she wasn't in my hand, she was in my pocket. she had a whole personality and many complex plotlines and i spent the majority of my time crafting little miniatures and building little spaces for her in my room and outside and pretty much everywhere i could. but one day, i misplaced her somewhere. i never did find her. 10 years later, i still wonder where she ended. i found a replacement for her in another LPS mouse whom i named Raspberry, and later on my mom let me buy a small lot of LPS mice off of eBay with my own money and my new favorite became a little brown mouse whom i named Cassie. Raspberry stayed a very prominent character as her aunt, and Cassie even had a love interest at one point named Ralph (yes, a reference to Ralph S. Mouse by Beverly Cleary).

i still have all of them somewhere, besides Cherry. i still enjoy making miniatures sometimes, but all the fun i had with those mice is probably the thing i miss most about childhood. i miss always having a mouse in my pocket.

(sorry this answer was so long XD)

20. favorite things about the night?

fireflies (you would not believe your eyes), hearing frogs and coyotes and crickets sing, seeing shooting stars, and that very specific earthy, loamy scent in the air on spring and summer nights. these are all also some of my favorite things about living out in the country.

24. what's one thing you're proud of yourself for?

going to the hardware store on two separate trips this week and picking up wood filler and sanding pads for working on my camper that i'm renovating. i feel daunted by all the stuff i need to do before i can move in but i'm proud of myself for chugging along despite feeling overwhelmed. i know it'll be so worth it in the end!

28. do you collect anything?

i do! i collect a few different things, but one thing in particular is marbles. i have a pretty big marble collection. i don't do anything with them besides look at them XD i like to look for jars of marbles at antique stores and buy them if they're not too expensive. i used to actually play marbles with my younger brother, but neither of us were very good at that so now i just collect them for fun.

thank you for the asks!! these were fun, sorry the answers are so lengthy XD

[milflewis]

top 5 mundane things you enjoy doing (my #1 is unloading the dishwasher lmao) top 5 journeys you've ever been on top 5 forms of self care!

1. peeling an orange. i love biting into it and tasting the peel on my mouth and then peeling it open with my fingers. bonus points if it comes off in one go!!!! 2. folding clothes. esp if they're still out of the dryer and all warm and soft. 3. reorganising bookshelves (it was my fav thing to do when i worked in a charity shop when i was younger). 4. collecting eggs from the chickens and the ducks (my grandad used to have a farm). 5. chopping up vegetables

1. every summer we used to go to my grandparent's place out west in this tiny nothing village. the last forty minutes of the drive were on really shit country roads and the car would be so bumpy and you could smell the sea. it would often be dark by the time we could there and bc there was barely any lights you could see the stars for ages. 2. the bus ride and then flight to see fran and kyle in germany this summer. i hadn't slept in nearly forty-eight hours with work and traveling and it was so worth it in the end. 3. every cliff walk i've ever been on. 4. i sailed around the coast of ireland once in a tall ship. i was starving and cold and wet and exhausted for the entire thing. my hands were permanently raw. it stormed for most of it and one point when i was climbing the rigging i was dangling over the sea bc the ship was practically on its side. it was one of the coolest things ever. 5. going to edinburgh with two friends i've known for over ten years now. we just spent three days drinking and laughing and walking everywhere

1. washing my make-up brushes. 2. snacking on comfort food and watching a movie from my comfort list. 3. falling asleep on my stomach with my cat purring away on my back. 4. swimming. specifically in the sea but any kind of swimming tbh. 5. getting high in the park with the sun shining

[nuri148]

My trip to Japan! ⛩️ Part 5 (last)

21.12

The winter solstice made an entrance with a very cold day. Getting out of Osaka station was fortunately much easier than it seemed on Google Maps, and we found our hotel easily. We left our luggage and went straight to the castle. The current one is the third iteration, rebuilt in 1970 after being destroyed twice in the 17th century, when it was first built. Therefore, at 53 years old, this version is actually the longest-standing one. Inside, it's a museum, not a castle, but it was interesting, unexpensive, and the views from the top are fantastic. What impressed me the most, however, was the double moat, huge and full of water. There were even boat rides around it (we didn't ride, but they were there).

We then went to the Namba district, where I had marked a restaurant that had an Attack on Titan collaboration, but it was over. We had lunch in a US-style burger restaurant. In fact, next to Namba there’s this area called Amerika-mura, with many shops of American items or aesthetics. Lots of hip-hop style clothing. It's worth mentioning that the commercial density of Osaka is similar to Tokyo; every building is a shopping center, and there are several covered pedestrian streets as well. Walking around,  we reached Dotonbori, Osaka's entertainment district around the canal of the same name, and went on to a street with several manga and anime shops. I had already browsed some in the previous cities and everywhere, here too, there was little to nothing on AoT. Only a handful of 2nd hand, 2nd rate keychains/badges featuring none of my blorbos (sorry Jean, I love you, but not as much as to buy merch with your horseface on it). Still, I managed to find a tiny string bag from the Sanrio collabo and a couple gachas.

For those who don’t know, gachapon are coin-operated machines that dispense a plastic capsule with a surprise inside. Like a Kinder egg, minus the egg. Each gachapon has a picture showing the trinkets you can get in that machine: small character figurines from a given franchise, or a collection of figurines following a certain theme, or a certain character in various positions; keychains, stickers, totebags... anything and everything. And when I say everything, I mean everything. Japanese Rule 34: If it exists, there's a gachapon of it. The variety of themes and objects you can get from a gachapon is as overwhelming as the commercial streets of the country. Every tourist attraction has some related gachapon. In castles, there are gachas of samurai figures, tiny swords, or pins with emblems of Japan's feudal houses; near zoos, there are ones with animals. In commercial areas, there are entire gacha shops, some with several floors. Some of these shops include a container for recycling the empty plastic capsules, and all of them have a change machine, since gachapon only accept ¥100 coins. The price for gachas usually range from ¥200 to ¥500, with a majority at ¥300-¥400, although there are some "premium" ones up to ¥1000. All good, but I'm not willing to pay so much for a surprise.

⬆️ English subs available!

In this regard, gachas are not alone: buying surprises seems to be something very deeply ingrained and popular in Japan. Many brands sell surprise products. You buy a little box, an acrylic figure, a little doll, but you don't know which model out of the available ones you'll get. In several shops there are products that aren’t for sale; they're tombola prizes. You buy a number at the counter, you get one of those items. While, as Husband observed, we’re not privvy to the exchange rings generated by this business model, not so conceptually different from the stickers we collected as kids or Kinder Eggs themselves, the profusion of surprises really took me by surprise (no pun intended), both for its ubiquity and for the prices, which can exceed ¥1000, and you don't even get a chocolate egg to console yourself if, as it happened to me twice, you get stupid Eren.

For dinner, we did manage to go to an okonomiyaki place that had an AoT collaboration. Usually, collabo places aren’t particularly good places, food-wise. They offer a menu of dishes "inspired" by whatever franchise they’re featuring, and if you spend more than a certain amount, they give you a souvenir like a card or sticker, a surprise, of course. You also have the chance to buy exclusive merchandise made specially for that collaboration. Again, many of these items are surprises. In short, the food was decent, I got my photo with Levi’s cut-out, and got a little card of him, too.

22.12

After breakfast, we took the Shinkansen to Himeji. The city's 17th-century castle, which has remained intact until today, is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Himeji Castle was defensive; it's not a palace, although it may look like one from the outside. Still, it's fabulous to see what a castle was like during that time in Japan (the defensive systems are very similar to European ones. As someone who hates the cold, I was pleasantly surprised by the arrow slits with replaceable covers). It's also mindblowing that this megastructure, mainly made of wood and adobe, is still standing after three centuries.

A few years ago, for maintenance, they dismantled it... and reassembled it entirely… with the same 300 y.o. pieces. The two main columns are two logs almost a meter in diameter and 25 metres long, going from the basement to the 5th floor. The views from the top are beautiful. The visit included a stroll through the neighbouring Japanese gardens. Here, there's a very cute restaurant with views over one of the many ponds in the gardens, which, oh joy, had very reasonable prices, so being already noon, we had lunch there. We returned to Osaka, and after coffee we decided to go our separate ways so each could shop to their heart’s content until dinner. I checked a few merch shops for AoT stuff, no luck.

⬆️ This comic book shop had a lot of dedicated doodles. I looked all over twice and Yams wasn't there, but I did find some other familiar faces.

We’d planned to meet in Shinsekai, but Husband got there first and said it was pretty dead, so we met in Namba and went to Dotonbori for dinner. We had takoyaki and kushikatsu, a local specialty consisting of breaded and fried skewers. I also ordered a beef cartilage stew, it was delicious and, funnily, it sort of tasted like fricandó, one of my favourite typical Catalan dishes back home.

23.12

We woke up early to catch the Shinkansen back to Tokyo. We left our luggage at the hotel (the same one as on arrival), and here I had a great disappointment because we planned to have a mid-morning snack at a nearby place, Hekkelun, which has been selling flan since the sixties. I don't know if I saw the schedule wrong on Google or if they changed it in the ten days we were touring the rest of Japan, but it was closed on the weekend. It made me very angry because I was really looking forward to it and, had I known, we would obviously have gone in the first Tokyo cour. I needed to cheer myself up, so after a tea in front of Shinbashi station, we passed by the NTV building, where there’s a beautiful clock designed by Hayao Miyazaki.

We arrived just in time to see the movement at 12, which was, of course, super cute. We then went to the Hama-Rikyu park. It used to be the shogun's gardens and includes things like ancient tea rooms; a seawater pond, as it’s next to the bay; and duck-hunting ponds, an activity which seems to have been very popular back in the day. Using real trained ducks as bait, they led the birds to narrow corners of the pond with camouflaged huts on both sides from where they hunted them. We returned to Shinbashi for lunch and stumbled upon an inconspicuous sushi place in the basement of the station, where we ate amazing susi for almost half of what takeaway costs here. We decided to go our separate ways like in Osaka, to cover more ground. I checkedd a couple of cute stationery shops I’d bookmarked and went all the way to Shibuya to check the Attack on Titan pop-up shop (it opened on the 22nd, so it wasn't there in the first part).

⬆️(Sorry for the awful audio, I was trying to be discrete)

Finally! I got decent merchandise (plus surprise cards for spending a lot my purchase).

There was supposed to be a collabo café nearby, but I had enough “surprises” and Shibuya was horribly crowded. I would’ve expected that a weekday at 6pm, not a Saturday at 4. I met Husband in Akihabara, where we looked at some merch stores (found nothing), had something at a cat cafe (pretty shitty, but the cats were cute), and had dinner at a nearby place.

⬆️ All my Levi stuff was in that blue bag, kitty knew what he was doing!

24.12

We both woke up ridiculously early, so we had breakfast at McDonald's (the only thing open at 6 am where you could sit) and went to Meiji Jingu. It's a Shinto shrine in Harajuku where Emperor Meiji and his wife, Empress Shoken, are enshrined as deities. Emperor Meiji opened Japan to the world in the mid-19th century, ending two and a half centuries of isolation during the Edo era. It’s beautiful, well-maintained and free. There is a small fee for the gardens, that we also visited. These were the emperor's gardens; there's a closed tea house from where the empress would gaze at the lake, with a small pier for fishing. There's also a lily field (barren since it was the middle of winter ofc) with a gazebo to contemplate the blossoming. This field was planted in what was once a rice paddy, where the children of noblefolk were made to work in ancient times to understand the labour than went into rice cultivation and appreciate the food they had.

From there, we went to the ukiyo-e museum a couple of blocks away. It was small but very interesting, with lots of insight into this technique, the one from Hokusai’s famous "The Great Wave off Kanagawa". We ate at a nearby place, Kyushu Jangara: the ramen was excellent, with its tonkotsu broth, soft-boiled egg, and the comforting feeling that a proper bowl of soup brings on a cold winter noon. We took a stroll through Harajuku; it was so full it was a challenge to walk through the pedestrian street. We then walked down the main avenue, full of fancy brands, to Omotesando Station, where we took the metro to Tokyo Station. Here is Character Street, a gallery of character shops. I’d heard it was expensive, it wasn’t so good, yada yada yada… well, here I did get more AoT stuff, including Sanrio items.

⬆️ There was probably more Aot stuff here than in all of the other shops I checked.

I stopped by the hotel to drop off the purchases, and we met at the KFC in Shinbashi to buy our "Japanese Christmas Eve dinner." The tradition, born from a 1970s advertisement, is to have KFC for dinner on this day. Despite what the decorations might suggest, Christmas is not celebrated here. They’re just into it for the aesthetics.

It was our last night in Japan, but not our last adventure! Around 11pm, right before getting into bed, we got an email saying our flight was canceled. Wham!

25.12

Needless to say, we slept like shit, and at six, we were already awake. Husband chatted with Lufthansa, and they rebooked us on a flight two hours earlier than the original one, so we got dressed and rushed to the airport. Every cloud has a silver lining, though, and I was thrilled when we got to ride on the LTS monorail! See you, Japan!

[glittter-skeleton]

Dirk and Tea: headcannons

So as person that doesn’t drink coffee and comes from the world’s second most tea-obsessed country (Russia. For proof of how much we like tea: I’ve done the entire routine of sauna-vodka-black tea multiple times. Tea right after you come out of a 100°c room. That’s a thing). So I’d like to add a more complicated view.

First of all, as any true herbal tea drinker would tell you, tea that comes in a bag is not tea. Dirk is not a true herbal tea drinker

With the way his life has been I think he is very much an anything above Lipton kinda guy, even then only because he is in his 30s. You’d catch 20yo Dirk Gently with 3 bags of Lipton in one cup at one am more times than not. His life would not have been kind to fancy French presses or nice non-bagged herbal blends so he has settled for second-grade tea bags that are nice enough. He also has different preferences for different times of day and modes of being:

Milk and sugar for breakfast, obviously. It’s caffeinated and it even has some nutritional value

Random tea packets with liquid honey for working in the office, chilling after work, any life situation really. Here you get your camomile meadows, spring melodies, tropical marvels and chocolate brownies. He gets then in those gift packs that include like 5 of each one and picks based on his mood. Most of it is just random choices tho. (He has a secret separate pack of Mint Thunder that he re-fills the main pack with because that’s Todd’s favorite even if he won’t admit it. The Melissa Greens also stays un-touched even if he really likes that one because it makes Todd just a tiny bit chiller)

With everyone else’s coffee order it’s either hot chocolate to treat yo self or matcha because that’s like tea but coffee. Love that thing.

For a caffeine boost it’s English Breakfast drank straight or with a tiny bit of sugar and lemon. More than one bag has been banned from the office but he still does it sometimes on his own. It’s not Lipton though, he has at least some self-respect

No idea of American places do this but if they do he’d get nice kettles of tea with lots of sugar and like actual berries in them for the table at cafes.

He’d love sea ​​​​buckthorn tea if he’d ever came to a country that had it. It’s served everywhere, especially around autumn, is bright orange tastes exactly like you’d expect orange to taste. But alas, he is unaware of its existence.

For staying in eventually as his place gets a bit more like home he’ll get a French press gifted to him and start collecting those bags of loose leafs with little pieces of fruit and berries and berry leaves in them. It may take some extra time to cut a slice of orange into it but it’s worth it, it’s always worth it.

For true late nights it’s black tea decaf and sugar. When you just cannot with any flavor and just need that familiarity.

So yeah, this might also all be wrong because I have no concept of how Brits drink tea. Not much more wrong than what we Americans have with the constant coffee runs. Comes from the heart from a person who takes a tea thermos with herself to work just so it’s extra nice))

[fillycolt]

15 mutuals 15 questions

thank you for tagging me @skelkankaos :3 :3 :3

1. Are you named after anyone? ... unfortunately yes. queen elizabeth. my mum's family has been naming their kids that way for like 3 generations and the name aside from that has a lot of importance to me so i kept it

2. When was the last time you cried? i don't know, probably last week?

3. Do you have kids? no but i consider my pets my children (not in the annoying "i know what parenthood is like! i have a dog" thing but bc i love them very very much and i feel strongly like a mum to them etc)

4. Do you use sarcasm a lot? not super i think?? i mostly tag along if someone uses sarcasm but i sometimes do myself. i prefer when sarcasm is either obvious in that it's suuuuper clearly exaggerated or when it's just completely nonsensical and probably only funny to me so i dont do it much organically

5. What sports do you play/have played? i never like, got on a team for anything, or did anything outside of gym glass, but i liked badminton. oh and in grade 4 i went to my school district's like cross country running thingy and i got in 101st place. one of the only non seizure/basically toxic shock syndrome related times i've fainted was next year's tryouts when it was too hot with a jacket but too cold without and i ran with a jacket on. oh and um i've played bloodbowl a couple times but also was never in a league but like i was gonna be

6. What’s the first thing you notice about people? their fashion probably

7. What’s your eye color? green and orange :3

8. Scary movies or happy endings? of the two i guess scary movies

9. Any special talents? i'm like, really good at controlling my experiences while high. i can write pretty good stories and shit. i can make any outfit work

10. Where were you born? ottawa

11. What are your hobbies? writing, making weird art, making and listening to music, playing video games, collecting my Collections

12. Do you have pets? I DO i love to talk about them. lentug is my beautiful snake daughter, she is a ball python, she is about a year old now but i celebrate my pets' birthdays as the day i got them and it hasnt been that long yet. shes so sweet and loves getting water poured on her and shes SUCH a good eater. then theres gawi, my precious guinea pig daughter who is a sweet little angel baby with me and licks instead of biting and has Big Feelings and Issues and Particularities but she is a bully to the others just a little bit. then dr pepper, who just turned a year old recently also and is a weird little freak of a guinea pig. she's a himalayan rex so she's albino, colorpoint, and has weird curly/frizzy fur and she bites to maim and she's SO fucking tiny even though she was the biggest of the litter and from two of the biggest guinea pig breeds. then there's my new little beasts: bobo, my old lady guinea pig who is all rumpled and so sweet and soft and loves her cuddly houses, and caramel, my even weirder freak naked beast of a guinea pig, whose ears slap when she shakes her head.

13. How tall are you? 5′5 since i was 11 or 12 lol

14. Favorite subject in school? english til high school then nothing bc i hated being there

15. Dream job? if i could publish my books and get like crazy famous without having to jeopardize my odsp til i'm solidly able to keep myself afloat for the indefinite future/at least longer than a few months so i can get back on odsp if needed... and i can use my money to travel across north america to write about weird little towns in different places... and to other places in the world to try all sorts of regional fruits and vegetables and snacks and do youtube videos about them. yeah that's it

tagging @thing2taste @1011100010 @shadowtouched @indicabutch @pranaferox444 @unseelie @rcris123 @xxm0nstrrrk1dxx @groblinboy @agatke @mothernatureslonelyson @wizardkins @07170 @forestsecretshack @solar-satan