#it feels like such a huge contrast from even just like half a year ago

[void-kill]

ok is it just me or has the kotlc fandom been a lot more... straight? recently? like i feel like im not seeing as much queer content regarding the characters lately

[autism-alley]

augh found my old post abt pjo and disability from before the show came out but it was on ye olde blog so i’m literally just gonna copy and paste, 3, 2, 1—

ok now that i’ve got it on the brain, i want to talk about disability in pjo and specifically how calling percy jackson dumb or treating him as such is not only a mischaracterization, but ableism. as a quick note, i’m keeping this to just percy to avoid having this already long post be even longer, but there are other disabled characters in pjo worthy of discussion, though i hit many of the same points in this post. i bring up percy specifically because he is mostly the character i have seen people treat as stupid.

percy is a dyslexic teen with ADHD who comes from a low-income family, raised by a single mother, and deals with an abusive step-father. i cannot stress enough how much of his character is shaped by that experience, but as hard as it is to single out any one part, i am going to focus on his ADHD and dyslexia. this kid has nightmares of being forced to take tests in a straightjacket as teachers ask him if he’s stupid and withhold him from recess with his peers. he is constantly labelled as “troubled” and blamed for things he didn’t do or aren’t his fault. he is told, over and over again, even from trusted adults, that he is “not normal” (othering him). he bounces between schools. he struggles to make friends. he deals with bullying. he has difficulty studying and reading, even when invested. teachers struggle to connect with him and tend to just give up on him. these are real disabled experiences, and rick does a good job at presenting them in the pjo books. sometimes, it feels like everything is a struggle. you are living inside a system that not only is restricting, but actively works against and punishes you.

in contrast, CHB is a great example of how when environments meet the needs of disabled people, it hugely changes how disabled we are in that environment. demigod brains are hard-wired for ancient greek, not english, and they’re born impulsive, with high energy levels that help them survive battle—but aren’t very good for a classroom setting. but by having them read books in ancient greek, regularly do lots of training/physical activities, and have genuine opportunities to express themselves...they function pretty damn well. percy discovers that while he struggles academically, he is brilliant in combat and capable of saving the world numerous times—he is a hero. do you know how important that message is for disabled children? disabled adults, too? that we can be heroes?

it is here, in camp half-blood, that percy finds a place he belongs, that shows him his worth—finally, somewhere is built to not only include him, but to nurture and genuinely prepare him for the world outside its boarders. however, i think people forget that just because percy functions in the world of CHB and the gods, that does not mean he doesn’t face ableism in the mortal world—and that there is an entire group of people who see ourselves reflected in his character.

i could talk on for hours about how much being disabled shapes percy’s identity and how he interacts with the world—like how percy’s humor revolves around coping with his environment and actually displays a very low self esteem after being looked down upon his entire life. this kid doesn’t even have to say anything and he screams i had a neurodivergent childhood. but about 5-6 years ago, when i was more regularly tuned into the fandom, every time i saw someone call percy jackson dumb or an idiot, even jokingly, i raised an eyebrow, and now that the series is getting fresh coverage from disney+, i have wanted to make this post. so much of this kid’s life and personality comes from being treated like he’s dumb or incapable, so it’s troubling to watch part of the fanbase reflect the harmful parts of this character’s upbringing. i truly hope it does not become common again. it’s also one thing coming from a neurodivergent/disabled person with similar experiences (and even then i personally find it a little uncomfortable), it’s another to be said by a neurotypical/able bodied person.

percy jackson’s experiences make for very important representation, and for people to characterize him as just a goofy, unintelligent guy is not only an insult to his character as a kid who is intelligent, but previously lacked the environment to show it, but also ableist. so in the dawn of the new tv series era, i ask that we cut that shit out. rick riordan did not create rep for neurodivergent and disabled kids for them to be called stupid by the fanbase. even jokingly.

[doodlegraveyard]

Hey I wanted know about your version of the ancestral and to know the timeline of when they destroyed domino

Hi, @seth-the-whalelord, i am sorry because oh gosh i have a LOT to say and you prompting this means im not gonna be able to think of anything else ahhhh. OK so like. lets ignore how in general the timeline is really fucked up (flashbacks with the company of light and Griffin and Faragonda's relative ages are very confusing) but lets just ASSUME, path of least confusion that Domino got iced exactly as many years ago as is appropriate based on Bloom's age (I actually haven't decided if i's scaling the girls ages up slightly yet.) So basically it got destroyed when Bloom (and all her other peers in her age range here) were babies. That’s a BIG event to happen in relatively RECENT HISTORY and I have issues about how I want to make it clear that this is an event that has affected basically every world in the magical universe. BUT LETS PUT THAT ASIDE LETS TALK ABOUT THE WITCHES.

So my issue is the Ancestral Witches are meant to be these, hugely ancient beings formed at the beginning of the universe. But, they never… felt…. That cool to me? They’ve existed for all of time but it took them literally until what 15-18 years ago to get at the Dragon Flame? Despite the fact that it seems like pretty common knowledge where it is?? And the fact that they later named them and then the backstory with Griffin working with them and Valtor… that was before they got banished so to me it seems like they shouldn’t need the proxy of someone working on their behalf, like they do when they’re guiding the Trix… That feels to me like big powerful witches and villainesses and definitely big bad material but not like the unspeakable ancient things that I imagine when you say OLD AS TIME ELEMENTAL EVIL, you know?

Another thing: Arcadia. We have a direct counterpoint to “the first witches” in “the first Fairy who flew”. I actually like how vague her existence is and how strange and uncanny she looks. She almost comes across as a minor goddess, or someone who has basically ascended to demigod hood. I think one of the reasons I like her vibe over the ancestral witches is… she seems so… separate from reality and above what’s going on in the mortal planes. She waits for the Winx to come to her, instead of meddling/ the AW are pretty much exclusively into getting the trix to meddle for them. Or building a boy (Valtor) to do stuff for them. Idk. That said im actually not how im handling Arcadia or the existence of the water stars at all im just thinking ab the contrast of how they’re presented. Basically even when they’re spooky shadowy crone figures the witches strike me as beings of the material rather than an old-as-time type set of entities.

Anyway making the first witches these ‘’’’first creatures of evil’’’’ really fucks with the limp ‘well, not ALL witches are evil’ assertion that the show tries to make (but also doesn’t remember half the time). Like, that can definitely be the NARRATIVE that gets pushed, and I do think that the Ancestral witches themselves should be properly evil big bads, but you can’t build the worlds universe on ‘witches were invented to be evil, and fairies are meant to good’ and then benignly go ‘oh not realllyyyyy. I mean MOSTLY but not really. You know. Not the 2 witches we like (one of whom becomes a fairy)’. That can be the story a lot of people believe, but you cannot build it into the literal history of your world setting and then turn around and ask the audience to think otherwise.

I think what makes most sense to me is that Belladonna, Liliss, and Tharma are the names of the last INCARNATIONS of the Ancestral Witches but not the original/actual identities.

I think they were just witches once. Not quite from the beginning of time but from a long, long, long time ago. They had names no one remembers anymore, and names before that. They were witches who garnered such power that they wrote their identities into the flow of magic itself, who unmoored their spirits from their selves so that when they died they did not truly die. Basically, they’re Liches. I like the idea of the Witches recurring in history, reappearing as different women across the eons as their spirits find new lives to subsume. It’s not a bloodline (even though the trix call themselves the AW’s ‘direct descendants’ - unless Belladonna, Liliss and Tharma all fucked and had children, and each of the girls could directly trace their ancestry back to them… first of all why, how, wouldn’t families keep that an awful secret because presumably being related to the people who tried to kill dragon god and nuked the fairy Vatican would make their lives DIFFICULT - despite that language I always assumed they were kind of styling themselves as spiritual successors (which.. might be the literal opposite of ’direct descendant’ but what can I say that’s the vibe I always got) I think, in my version of things, they’re… sort of like their successors. ( I have them style themselves as Inheritrix - Hence, Trix) but well, really the Trix are really more like… Vessels. Or, they will be, when they’re strong enough.

One of the big reasons Witches are looked down on is that there’s this pervasive cultural sentiment that they’re greedy and power-hungry. They Want what they don’t Have, they will Take what Is Not Theirs. This has a little bit to do with the way I conceive of the concept of positive or negative magic - not dark and light but more like electric charges or polarity. Fairies (+) generate magic, and Witches (-) absorb magic from outside sources. I think there’s actually a very important place for Witches in the magic ecosystem, and both fairies and witches have a part to play in keeping balance. The ancestral witches represent the worst extreme of witch dysfunction. They take so much that they cling onto life, stealing the lives of other witches through generations. They refuse to be swept away through the river of time, to return to the flow of Magic, to take their part in the cycle.

[apocalypticavolition]

Let's (re)Read The Dragon Reborn! Chapter 37: Fires in Cairhien

This picture doesn't depict anything in the chapter, but it does depict things in the chapter several days before the chapter happens, more or less. Don't like it? Take up fanarting! And also beware of spoilers because I am addicted to them and am liable to tell you exactly how this whole series ends right under the Keep Reading, for kicks.

This chapter begins with the rising sun icon because our girls are in Cairhien.

A village was sliding past, or what had been a village once. Half the houses were only smoldering piles of rubble with chimneys sticking starkly out of the ruins. On the other houses, doors swung with the wind, and pieces of furniture, bits of clothing and houseware littered the dirt street, tumbled about as if thrown. Nothing living moved in the village except for one half-starved dog that ignored the passing ship as it trotted out of sight behind the toppled walls of what appeared to have been an inn.

The fact that the civil war is escalating to such scorched earth tactics shows how the social order in Carhien broke down long ago. They've been rotting from within for a long time - at least twenty years - and now it's festering in the open. The grand contraction of humankind continues; without the coming political upheavals, I think Cairhien would have been the next nation that vanished off of the map.

She vowed to learn at least some of what it was they were doing; she did not like feeling ignorant.

Even in a setting where the people around her aren't practicing a skillset that will ever be relevant to her, Egwene wants to learn. Pirate!Egwene AU when?

Andoran soldiers do hold a few towns on the Cairhienin side.

An early echo of the ultimate merger between Andor and Cairhien, this one - and of course another way it's easy to see how Cairhien might have faded away entirely, with everything in their heartlands irrelevant and their towns on the trade network absorbed into an Andor that is itself a generation or two away from admitting to the world that it has no real authority west of Whitebridge.

Trees that made flowers in the spring had them, tiny white blossoms on snowberry and bright red sugarberry. One tree she did not know was covered in round white flowers bigger than her two hands together. Occasionally a climbing wild-rose put swaths of yellow or white through branches thick with the green of leaves and the red of new growth. It was all too sharp a contrast to the ashes and rubble to be entirely pleasant.

Egwene is already too drawn into the current White Tower-centric order of the world to be comforted by the truth of the fact that its inevitable breaking is just making way for new things to grow.

In one dream he had been on a huge stones board, the black and white stones as big as boulders, and him dodging the monstrous hands that moved them and seemed to try to crush him under them. It could have meant something. It very probably did, but beyond the fact that Rand was in danger from someone, or two someones—she thought that much was clear—beyond that, she simply did not know.

The symbolism of Rand as the Fisher King is entirely lost to Egwene because she doesn't know the game. Less justifiably, she also misses the message that at this point Rand is not his own player in the game but just another piece; his promotion will only occur when he finishes crossing from one side of the game board to the other.

She had dreamed of Perrin with a wolf, and with a falcon, and a hawk—and the falcon and the hawk fighting—of Perrin running from someone deadly, and Perrin stepping willingly over the edge of a towering cliff while saying, “It must be done. I must learn to fly before I reach the bottom.” There had been one dream of an Aiel, and she thought that had to do with Perrin, too, but she was not sure.

Most of these are relatively obvious but the dream of Perrin is fun because it's both a short-term dream (Perrin running into the Wolf Dream to save Faile at the end of the book) and a long-term one (he'll promptly ignore the Dream for most of the rest of the series until there's no other choice).

And a dream of Min, springing a steel trap but somehow walking through it without so much as seeing it.

Min sets off the Tower coup but escapes it.

Of Mat with dice spinning ’round him—she felt she knew where that one came from—of Mat being followed by a man who was not there—she still did not understand that; there was a man following, or maybe more than one, but in some way there was no one there—of Mat riding desperately toward something unseen in the distance that he had to reach, and Mat with a woman who seemed to be tossing fireworks about.

I don't blame Egwene for not understanding how Mat is about to reinterpret fireworks in a horrifying way (another dream that is both short- and long-term), but not understanding the Grey Men right away is silly.

Men and women breaking out of a cage, then putting on crowns.

The Forsaken being freed and making themselves the rulers of the world.

A woman playing with puppets, and another dream where the strings on puppets led to the hands of larger puppets, and their strings led to still greater puppets, on and on until the last strings vanished into unimaginable heights.

This is probably Graendal specifically.

Kings dying, queens weeping, battles raging. Whitecloaks ravaging the Two Rivers. She had even dreamed of the Seanchan again. More than once. Those she shut away in a dark corner; she would not let herself think of them. Her mother and father, every night.

The kings dying include those of Arad Doman and Amadicia, the queens weeping include Morgase and possibly Tylin, and the battles duh. The rest is pretty straightforward and like Egwene herself admits, her dreams about her family are only caused by homesickness.

The servants said Mat had been right about the civil war in Cairhien, and what it had done to prices. To Egwene’s surprise, Elayne had pointed out that Brown sisters wore wool more often than silk.

Nynaeve trusts Mat enough to at least test his claims, which is sweet, and despite Egwene being starstruck by the Aes Sedai, Elayne has enough sense to pay attention to what the women are actually wearing. Egwene is definitely being a bit myopic.

“I can ignore it because I do not want to think of what the people are going through, because I cannot do anything about it, and because we have to reach Tear. Because what we’re hunting is in Tear.”

Boy does she have leadership traits though, good and ill.

If the fighting is as bad as what we’ve seen on the banks. . . . Well. You cannot feed a people for twenty years and feel nothing for them when they must be starving.

Elayne also has leadership qualities, but more well-rounded ones.

“Do not be so hard on yourself,” she whispered back. “Perhaps it does mean that, but I did not see it, and neither did Nynaeve.”

Counterpoint, maybe all three of you girls are fools! What is the point of infodumps if you refuse to retain the info???

“You blind worm of a farmer!” he roared toward the man in the bow, who was clinging to the rail to keep from falling the rest of the way over. “You dirt-grubbing get of a goat! Haven’t you been on the river long enough yet to recognize how the water ruffles over a mudflat?”

I need to remember to add these to my repertoire.

Nynaeve appeared at the head of the ladder that led down to the passenger cabins, still straightening her skirts. With a sharp tug at her braid, she frowned at the knot of men in the bow, then strode to Egwene and Elayne. “He ran us onto something, did he? After all his talk of knowing the river as well as he knows his wife. The woman probably never receives as much as a smile from him.”

Nynaeve continues to be the best, even when she's ridiculously judgmental.

She drew a deep breath, but her voice grew tighter. “Have I explained my reasoning fully enough? Do you need more?”

Nynaeve is NOT used to Egwene being basically her equal, but she's at least trying. This is why Elayne's playing peacemaker of course, because she knows that as hot-tempered as Nynaeve is, Egwene's clearly trying to take over the party.

“We will reach Tear,” Egwene said. “And sooner once Nynaeve realizes she is not the Wisdom any longer. We are all”—she did not say Accepted; there were two many men hurrying about—“on the same level, now.” Elayne sighed.

Egwene's right to chafe under authority that doesn't actually bind her, but again Elayne is actually the barometer we can use to judge the others by. If she's tired of Egwene's shit, it's because she has reason to think that Egwene is starting fights for the sake of fighting.

Nynaeve’s mouth thinned. “If need be,” she told the air in front of her, “we can frighten off any brigands the way we did those Whitecloaks. If we can find no other way.”

Nynaeve is willing to do what it takes to survive, but note how she is clearly respecting Verin by not wanting it to be the first move they make.

A figure in brown and gray rose from behind a bush standing by itself almost in front of them.

Oh thank fuck, it's Aviendha. Elayne finally has someone to talk to who isn't insane! Well, mostly not insane. Or uh... compatibly insane with her?

Next time: Aviendha introduces herself! Also probably other stuff, it would be a short chapter otherwise.

[cucumbermoon]

Hello! I just wanted to say, I was browsing old Indeedsir posts as is my wont, and I came across your Meet the Family fic, and I really really love it and have read it multiple times. It's still open in a tab on my phone right now. I like Rebecca, she feels like a fleshed out real person and a believable Jeeves relative. I love outsider POV fics where you have to read between the lines, and I think you did that really well in that Rebecca doesn't have the information to understand straight away what she's seeing, but we understand perfectly what's going on between J and B. The contrast between her (understandable) assumptions about how a rich employer would be expected to treat her brother and what becomes clear is the actual reality is so !!!! The way she describes the way Reginald talks about Bertie makes me feral. She thinks Bertie is an idiot but we know he's just babbling because he's nervous about meeting Reg's family!! I adore the way Bertie and Reg are clearly communicating with each other nonverbally from the moment they get there. The moment where Jeeves looks at Bertie chidingly and Rebecca assumes there's no way Bertie could have picked up on it, but then she realizes he looks contrite made me want to scream!!! BEST moment (and there were a LOT of great moments). I love love love your characterization of Bertie, the way he's brilliant in his own way and shows hints of hidden vulnerabilities and is just INCANDESCENTLY in love with Jeeves. The way he tells the swan story oh my god!! (it's funny how we were just talking about that on that tumblr post recently!) Some of the dialogue made me laugh out loud.

There's so much more I want to say but I'm actually not sure how long asks are allowed to be, and I don't know if you even check LJ anymore and I honestly can't figure out how LJ works anyway, but if you ever saw your way to posting it on AO3 I would love to comment on it. I want to write a book report on it. I want to put it in a blender and drink it. I want to boil it down to a tincture and sprinkle drops of it on everything. It's SO GOOD.

Oh, wow. First of all, I am relatively new to tumblr and I don't know how to answer asks other than publicly, so hopefully this is all right! And no, I haven't logged into LJ in over a decade and I have no idea how to do it anymore!

Thank you so much. It's incredible to get any kind of feedback at all on a story I wrote fourteen years ago, but especially getting feedback like this is just incredible. I was (obviously) a much younger and less experienced person when I wrote my little smattering of Jeeves and Wooster fics, and though I have thought of them from time to time I didn't really have the courage to go back and read them again until you wrote to me.

Thank you for reaching out, for opening that door again. I spent last night rereading my Jooster stuff from when I was in my early twenties and it felt like reconnecting with a version of myself I'd almost forgotten. I never really thought about posting my old stuff on AO3, but I'm going to consider it. I will let you know if I do. I remember at the time I intended this particular story to be a part of a series, and I actually have half a chapter each of a story from the perspective of Bertie's sister (that mysterious person!), and Jeeves' uncle Charlie that I was going to add. Maybe I'll dust those off and try to finish them! I also happen to be a huge sucker for outsider POV, so it would be a lot of fun to play around with that series again.

Finally, I am so deeply pleased that you enjoyed it. I know anyone who produces art of any kind hopes that they can make some connection with someone or bring some joy into the world, and it absolutely delights me to know that something I wrote made you happy for a while. I appreciate your generosity in writing to me. Readers like you make writing so much better. People like you make life better.

And yes, it's so funny that we were talking about the swan thing like three days ago. I had forgotten I wrote that same sentiment in a fic a decade and a half ago. I guess none of us change as much as we think we do!

Thank you again. You've made my day, maybe week, maybe month.

[starkiller-009]

Hello!! I love love love your arts. I feel like a lot of them have a sense of 'movement' which contrasts a lot of very polished artworks.

I love works with meticulously planned composition, layers, highlights, etc. I love works with a certain kind of loose yet purposeful application of value and colors. (The Two Cakes thing in the fandom). And I noticed that your arts belong to the latter category which I can rarely find!

If you don't mind me asking, do you have any artists or artworks that you're heavily inspired from? Do you draw on a pen-tablet, IPad, or other media? What application are you using? I feel like three questions are already too much for one ask so you don't need to answer them if you don't want to. I enjoy scrolling through your blog either way!

Hiiiiiiiiii dear anon!!! thank you soo much for sending this message! it made my day 🧡🧡🧡 Loose but thoughtful art is what im striving for so its really make me happy to hear that i have some success in that Answering your question i draw using some cheap old model of genius pen-tablet. Bought it 10 years ago as my first device. Still running. Heard a lot of shitty comments about quality of genius tablets at that time, but even more only about Wacom in recent years i think (fuck them. Wtf with pen's tips that are constanty erasing. For who this product is made for. Ew). as for the apps, i use clip paint studio, for studies - heavypaint (great thing). There are AMAZING artists on tumblr who inspire me heavily with their works. like. i follow ~400 ppl here. because i like to stare at art. so. im gonna talk about my favorites! @crowthis - king. queen. i dont know the pronounces sorry. they draw magnificent things i love their style SO much, its such an inspiration. sometimes i just visit their blog to go through art tag and experience all that beauty. (half of their wrks i have downloaded on my desktop) It's loose, quite 'chaotic', but SO atmospheric. The mood, composition, texture, everything. Themes. I like black and white drawings as much as the ones with colours, it so bright and blatant\bold in a way, but it works perfectly, it gives your the right sense of the work. Even tho usually i prefer more calm colours, it makes me go 'wow!' And their works looks really simple and intuitive but as an artist you know that haha no its fcking hard to do things like that. it takes skill and knowledge. loose work is tricky

@frozensoba - idk how much time i could stare at their recent fish drawings like jesus christ. i wish i could do that. i want to be able to do that. my ass is ready to work every time i see it and drawings like these really inspire me to draw simple things and non-humans bc i feel like you can draw beautifully everything that exists. you just need to know how. Colours, texture, rhytm, lines... everything on its place. I love colours especially. Its very gentle kind of harmony going on there, and the palette is huge, intricate.

@nerdyhideoutphilosopher-2 - going crazy over their works. honesty dont know what to say. go look and see. unique voice Artists id like to mention as well: @dynasoar5 - i mean. just go and look at that. i love how loose and messy kind of rendering is but it looks amazing. and overall. simply amazing drawings fuck yes @jadenvargen - just go and look at his works. i see no point in talking. simply beautiful. looks easy but also hard as fuck. the colours are so bright and rich and very bold but somehow everything is right on its place. it leads you where it should. just wow. the skill i respect @snippit-crickit - once again. beautiful. i really love their studies and how they render things, the colours. @sen-art-acc - LINE WORK. LINE WORK. go check it out. LINE WORK!!!! and i simply like how tidy and clean the drawings look like with colours. i cant do stuff like this. i have zero patience to be this accurate and precise. Also if you love loose artwork i should recommend you those artists for sure @shican, @dude-standin i love as well @wuntrum and @cordspaghetti works a lot. I followed both of them because mcr fanart i guess? tho never was into mcr and stayed for the drawings alone Also, if we're speaking about more "pro" (dont like this term either, forgive me) kind of artists i have some huge inspirations as well (tho my art not in any way reminds of them im afraid lmao. but i hope maybe in ten or ok 30 years or more ill be somewhere). There are a ton of artists i like, but its for another post i guess. To much talk. So here we go Sergio Toppi - he's an amazing at working with lines and composition. I have his comic books on my bookshelf. I open it everytime i want to get energy to draw. You cant look at his drawings and NOT to get inspired. He's incredible. The rhytm, the shapes... damn. i can look at his drawings for hours. And he was the main inspiration to work with lines and composition more, to play with it more. I dont have a lot of line-work on this acc (last quiobi drawing, some year\two-old dghda drawings, eugene one) but i actually exercise it a lot. Lines are extremely powerful tool. And as for composition... The shapes, negative spaces, love it. And he's extremely good at working with colour too.

Francis Vallejo - he's illustrations are so good... he's incredible with composition and rhytm his drawings have. Negative spaces, one again.

Anders Zorn - i adore his black and white graphic drawings. Angles, framing, line work. Spent a lot of time looking at his works. Cant get enough of it. The way he draws people, the plot, themes. What he chooses to portray, the way people look, what they do. There is such a special mood to his drawings, there is something extremely psychological about it, isn't there? he's a master im mesmerized by

Bernie Fuchs - composition, rhytm, once again. I love it when you want to look at something for more then 2 seconds, because the rhytm of the drawings leads you into different places and opens its plot in parts. No matter where you look u'll find something interesting and even though there is lot of going on its still not a mess and looks and feels fucking awesome. And i love his colour palettes too. He's very good at setting the mood (check out his less commercial works)

As for the colour here's a few i love. (Though they're still extremely good with everything else)

Hovsep Pushman - the man is a mystery. His work with colours, light and texture is beyond me. Also it has disco elysium vibe to it. I dream of being capable of something like this when im sixty or so (im not gonna be)

Mead Schaeffer - simple but powerful. Looking at his works like eating a tasty ice cream.

same goes to Dean Cornwell - though its a bit more complex, his composing. You need to pay more attention

I'd like to mention one other artist - Jamie Wyeth. his works are something else entirely, i dream of drawing like this one day. Loosiness, themes, mood. Ill probably cry if i see those ones in real life one day, somehow special to my heart, relates

He has these series - "Seven deadly sins". Ive been in love for some time

As for the inspiration drawings on itself - thinking about it im coming back to dragon age tarot cards. Not all of them, but i still go 'jesus i want to draw like this' at some, through years. This one especially.

Soooo Thats it i guess! I mean. I love to talk and talk about art especially. I probably could write ten more posts like this no problem. I actually heavily into landscape painters since... Well. Nature. Ice, oceans, sky. I sadly havent really tried to get into the genre myself, i do not draw lots of backgrounds as you can see. Should work on this probably, life's short. But im always happy to share my fav artists! So hit me up whenever. dm or send an ask! And a beautiful work for the ending

[nototherwisespecified]

transcript (reblogs from sraithpics don't work):

If you listen, her tapping very much adds to the music.

lizzy52955: Love this [five pink heart emojis]

froggybangbang: That's Emma O'Sullivan! She's a famous tap dancer (all-Ireland champion) and you can see her often if you walk the streets of Galway, dancing in the street!

sraithpics: I'd just like to add (for non Irish people especially) that she isn't actually a tap dancer but a sean nós dancer. Sean nós is a traditional Irish dance (sean nós means "the old way") but it isn't the same as the mainstream Irish dance which people would be familiar with. In mainstream Irish dance the dancers have carefully choreographed routines that need to be learned and replicated and keep a rigid upright position at all times. They either wear soft shoes which make no sound or hard shoes which make a tap sound which are worn for different types of dances. People can also usually recognize Irish dance pretty easily at a glance due to the extravagant colorful costumes, white "poodle" socks, white undershorts and heavy wigs and make up that the dancers wear at competitions.

Sean nós is a totally different type of dance separate to this mainstream "Irish dance". It is a much more loose and free type of dance where the dancers always wear hard shoes since the sound of the feet is very important. There are a few basic moves (the "shuffle, shuffle stamp", the "heel and toe" and the "slide and shuffle" being the basic foundation steps) but once you have the basics you can combine steps, free style and even make up your own steps. You can move your hands and arms to the music unlike in mainstream Irish dance too. Sean nós is often seen as the sexier Irish dance as the dancers are allowed much greater hip and general body movement and can laugh and interact with the audience as they move. There are no particular costume rules for sean nós competitions. Unlike Irish dance, people can really wear whatever but the norm is comfortable and simple dresses or skirts or trouser/top combinations made up from whatever the dancer chooses from their own wardrobes, a huge contrast to the heavy Irish dance costumes and the expense and pageantry associated with them. Part of the appeal of sean nós is that it has not been commercialised and commodified to the degree that Irish dance has and has a much more casual and fun feel to it in contrast to the strict routines and costume norms of Irish dance.

The most skilled sean nós dancers are able to dance a "barrel dance" where they dance at high speed on top of a barrel without knocking it over. It usually takes years to get to this level of skill so people normally start on the ground and then work their way up from a quarter barrel to a half barrel until they can dance on the top of a full one. This is Emma again doing a barrel dance on a half barrel:

[Three photographs of Emma O'Sullivan dancing on top of a barrel.]

Another sean nós dance is Damhsa na Scuibanna "The Brush Dance" where dancers pass a brush between their legs at speed. The still images don't really do it justice so here's a clip of three members of the Cunningham family dancers performing it:

It's important that people call it by its correct name of sean nós or damhsa ar an sean nós rather than just "tap dance" as it's an important part of our cultural heritage and a type of dance that is barely known about outside of Ireland. Sean nós had almost fallen into total obscurity outside of small pockets of rural Ireland until dancers like Emma O Sullivan and the Cunningham family dancers repopularised it in the early 2010s through their acclaimed performances and TV appearances as well as their classes for children to keep the tradition going into the next generation. Sean nós is still threatened with falling back into obscurity, if you search online most of the popular videos and photos of it are from about nine years ago during this revival and it's still largely a rural, West of Ireland phenomenon which even people from within Ireland don't really know about. Calling it by it's correct name helps to keep it alive and allows new people to find out about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX3Z8qG7AKo

[queirdfiction]

Reflecting

This summer marks the year anniversary of my huge-to-me reading slump. For the past several years, I’ve read at a much higher rate than the second half of 2023 and first half of 2024—an average of 7 books per month in the first half of 2023, 8 1/2 books per month in 2022, 11 books per month in 2021, and 7 books per month in 2020. For the past year, I’ve been reading around 3 books a month, if that, including some stretches where I read like a fiend for a week or two (like my week of vacation at the beginning of January, when I read the first 10 Percy Jackson books with an intense hyperfixation, and then immediately failed to finish another book for weeks after I decided, okay, that’s enough Percy Jackson, let’s try reading a different book).

3 books a month isn’t shabby; I know it’s a lot more than a lot of people are able to read. I don’t mean to share the amount I was reading before in order to brag, but to illustrate how, even though 3 books a month is still a good, solid amount of reading, it suddenly felt to me as if I was barely reading at all. I used to read 3-5 books every month just for various book clubs, and now it feels like I barely make it to book club. I like to tag the books I think will be on my favorites of the year list, and the last time I read a book I felt that passionately about was January. How can I go from having to make tough choices just to make a Top 10 list to having one, maybe two books so far this year that I really loved?

I think part of the reason this reading “slump”—perhaps more accurately described as “period of reading a relatively normal amount for a working adult, though comparatively less than the frenetic amount of the past”—is that for a long time, being a big reader was a part of my identity. Horror and weird fiction was my special interest; I read widely, and I talked about it extensively on the internet in places other than this blog (I made this blog about a year ago or so, when I was trying to regain my footing in this interest). Since 2019, I had thrown myself into this interest, and perhaps most importantly, other people with the same interest formed most of my social circle.

And then, first in 2022 and then again with a different incident in 2023, that social circle started fracturing. A lot of friends pulled back, and left the place we had built together, and then in 2023 abuse allegations arose concerning a prominent member. And that’s life; not everyone you meet and befriend will turn out to be a good person, and it’s inevitable that friend groups will break apart and move on with their lives. But for me, I lost all motivation to read or engage, which contrasted sharply with the fact that I had been taking on more responsibilities and didn’t feel able to step back from them since everyone else had already stepped away from theirs.

The loss of a special interest is difficult to describe. @emhahee on TikTok spoke about it at some point with regard to Harry Potter, I think, though I can’t find the video now. I was in a highly depressive state for most of last summer, until around August when I decided to read One Piece. And now, yay, new special interest to add to the mix—! but at the same time, I miss horror and weird fiction. So now I feel like I’m just trying to get back to it, and to reading in general, in a sustainable way. Some way that doesn’t put so many demands on me that I burn out.

To that end, I made myself a reading Bingo board for the summer, to hearken back to the Summer Reading Challenges of yore. I really enjoyed it, and I’m going to do it again for fall—it was nice to have my short term goals listed out, and small rewards on the way. I would like to talk about books a bit on this blog, but not in any really serious capacity; no ARCs or regular posting or anything like that. Just pure yapping.

Will I ever get back to how much I read before? Perhaps, perhaps not. Am I really at peace with the reading “slump”? No, not particularly. But it is time, at least, to move forward.

[iviarellereads]

The Eye of the World, Earlier - Ravens

(THIS PROJECT IS SPOILER FREE! No spoilers past the chapter you click on. Curious what I'm doing here? Read this post! For the link index and a primer on The Wheel of Time, read this one! Like what you see? Send me a Ko-Fi.)

(Ravens icon) In which I rearrange the timeline to suit my whims.

(First written for From The Two Rivers, the first half of a YA reprint of The Eye of the World, and now seemingly available in front of the ebook edition (so you might be able to read it in the "preview now" on Amazon or your ebook retailer of choice, if you don't have it in your copy) as well as a few print editions, this was placed before the Dragonmount prologue. I feel that's too jarring for a first introduction, because it's 8-9 years ago, then 3000 years ago, then back to the present day. It doesn't work well in the other direction either, because it undercuts the tension (and the narrative connection) between the prologue and chapter 1. But, I really love this chapter, actually. It's a great insight into not just Egwene, but other characters we've been interacting with. So, I'm placing it after chapter 4, when we've met most of the relevant characters, or heard about them enough to recognize, and there's a bit of a lull in the story.)

We meet Egwene, who's with some of the other children in the Winespring Water river.

She was not here to play. At nine, she was carrying water for the first time, but she was going to be the best water-carrier ever.(1)

She wonders why she has to keep her hair long and wear it in a kerchief, when long hair is a sign of womanhood and she's years off from it yet.

Why did you have to keep doing something just because it had always been done that way?(2)

Downstream, the men are washing the sheep that will be sheared later. She's gathering water in her buckets when a raven lands nearby, watching some men washing sheep in the river nearby. Only, why would a raven watch the men when the sheep are the better targets? There are rumours that ravens and crows are the Dark One's eyes, but what would the Dark One need to see in the Two Rivers? That's silly talk.

An older boy, Kenley Ahan, tells her to get back to work. She gives him a level look she's seen older girls use, but it's not very effective. He gets back to his, pretending he's responsible about it, but she knows that won't last long. Still, she gets back to the water-carrying, because she really does want to be the best.

Farmers came from all around Emond’s Field for this, and village folk came out to help relatives. Everyone in the village had kith or kin of some sort on the farms. Shearing would be going on all across the Two Rivers, down at Deven Ride and up to Watch Hill. Not at Taren Ferry, of course. Many of the women wore shawls draped loosely over their arms and flowers in their hair, for the formality, and so did some of the older girls, though their hair was not in the long braid the women had. A few even wore dresses with embroidery around the neck, as if this really were a feastday. In contrast, most of the men and boys went coatless, and some even had their shirts unlaced. Egwene did not understand why they were allowed to do that. The women’s work was no cooler than the men’s.(3)

Egwene describes the jobs everyone does at shearing, from moving the sheep in and out of the pens, the shearing itself, sorting and baling, and preparing and serving food for everyone. Shearing is one of just five times a year when the whole community comes together, so the crowd is huge.

Taking care not to run into any of her sisters, who often treat her as a baby, she tells herself she's not looking for anyone else. Of course, it's a bit protest too much. She sees Kenley try to steal a honeycake, and get punished for it, and feels satisfied that he won't be giving orders again soon.

On her way back to the river to refill her bucket, Egwene sees Perrin with his family talking to the local smith, who says he's a fine lad, he'll do a great job. Egwene watches Perrin playing with his youngest sister, and his other sister sneaks up on Egwene and asks why she's watching Perrin when everyone knows she's going to marry Rand someday. Egwene notices more ravens, insults the girl,(4) and gets back to the business of water carrying.

Egwene then nearly runs into one of her sisters, telling off a Coplin for trying to interfere with the wool sorting she's doing. This makes Egwene think of how all her sisters treat her like a child. One of them even takes books Egwene wants to read, calling them "too complex" for her. Egwene particularly loves reading The Travels of Jain Farstrider, dreaming about seeing all the places he did.

She notes Nynaeve, the Wisdom's apprentice, bandaging a cut someone acquired from wool shears. Nynaeve was orphaned a few years ago, and taken apprentice much earlier than is usual for a Wisdom, instead of being sent to live with other relatives. She finishes the bandage, but the Wisdom undoes it, and looks disappointed for some reason Egg can't fathom.(5) Nyn tugs at her braid, a nervous habit of hers, although she could be trying to draw attention to the fact that she's been considered a woman grown for almost a year, even if she's still an apprentice.

Nearby Egg sees yet more ravens, watching the men and the boys. Just as she's about to ask the Wisdom what it might mean, Nyn sneaks up on her and asks if Egg has work to be doing. Somehow since last fall, she's known where Egg is without looking, and Egg wishes she'd stop.

Egg curtsies, and as she leaves, finds herself face to face with another of her sisters, Elisa. She's folding fleece, badly, and Egg thinks it's because she's older than Nynaeve by a year, but the Women's Circle still hasn't let her braid her hair. Egg points out another girl, Calle Coplin, who's even older with her hair unbraided, and Elisa gets deeply embarrassed and tells her to leave the adults to their work.

Well, with that, Egg stalks away, refills her bucket, and goes in search of Perrin and Mat, Rand's friends, for no reason at all, nope, she just has a question she needs to ask them, that's why she sneaks up on their hiding place. And she finds them, all three plus some other boys about their age. Egg hides around the corner from them and thinks about marriage customs and adulthood, and how she really wants to journey before she settles down, even if Rand is a kind boy.

The lads start talking about how to get into some mischief, and then someone comes and summons them all on behalf of the mayor. Egwene follows casually, and it turns out he promised to tell them a story. Only, they ask for a story about a false Dragon, and he doesn't know any, so he asks Tam, Rand's father, if he does. Tam offers to tell a story about the real Dragon, from the Age of Legends, three thousand years ago. Cenn Buie says some stories shouldn't be told, shouldn't even be known, but Bran insists it's only a story, what harm can it do?

To paraphrase, three thousand years ago in the Age of Legends(6) there were great cities full of huge buildings, and vehicles powered by magic that could carry people faster than horses can run. They didn't even remember war, and had no sickness they couldn't cure. And then the Dark One touched the world, and war came that covered the whole world in shadow. So came trollocs and myrddraal, and human darkfriends and even some Aes Sedai who went over to the dark and became the Forsaken.

Egwene puzzles at this, because some of the Forsaken were men, and they couldn't have been Aes Sedai, could they?(7)

The story goes on that Lews Therin Telamon, the Dragon himself, gathered an army of 100 men who marched on the Dark One's stronghold, and enough of them fought through to seal the hole in the Dark One's prison. And again Egwene puzzles, because didn't the stories say that the Dragon had broken the world? How could he have saved it and broken it?(8)

The story wraps up there, and Perrin asks what a dragon is.(9) Tam admits he doesn't know, and he's not sure even the Aes Sedai know what a dragon is. Still, it's nothing to do with today, so the boys are told to get back to work. Egwene is startled to realize there are more ravens in the trees than she's ever seen before. Worse, one of them is staring straight at her. She stares at it until it flies off with the others, and then she gets back to being the best water-carrier ever.

Egwene had to carry water again the next year, which was a great disappointment to her, but once again she tried to be the best. If you were going to do a thing, you might as well do the best you could. It must have worked, because the year after that she was allowed to help with the food, a year early! She set herself a new goal, then: to be allowed to braid her hair younger than anybody ever. She did not really think the Women’s Circle would allow it, but a goal that was easy was no goal at all. She stopped wanting to hear stories from the grownups, though she would have liked to hear a gleeman, but she still liked to read of distant lands with strange ways, and dreamed of seeing them. The boys stopped wanting stories, too. She did not think they even read very much. They all grew older, thinking their world would never change, and many of those stories faded to fond memories while others were forgotten, or half so. And if they learned that some of those stories really had been more than stories, well . . . The War of the Shadow? The Breaking of the World? Lews Therin Telamon? How could it matter now? And what had really happened back then, anyway?

=====

(1) Egwene is going to be The Best at anything she tries to do, or else the universe will have to pay. (2) And, our Egg is not a traditionalist. (3) Because your author wanted to make a particular point about your hometown being very conservative-traditional-having deep roots in the location. We've seen that with how many times things have been repeated and how many times people have said that's just the way it's always been. You, Egwene, may have been born here, but I think you can already see that you don't really belong. (4) In case you don't follow the logic here, my best guess, as someone who was once a 9 year old girl, is that Egg's embarrassed as all get out. She does have a crush on Rand, and they have practically been promised since infancy, even though there are many suitable kids of the right ages. But, she also thinks in this chapter about wanting to see the places Jain Farstrider did. She might not be fully aware of it consciously, but while part of her loves her home and her role in it, part of her also wants to journey beyond, and not be held back by decisions made before she was able to get involved. You can want something and still resent being pressured into choosing it, and resent any of that being noticed by someone else who's ready to embarrass you as soon as say hello. (5) Now, how odd. Do you think Nynaeve's that bad a medic? Egg doesn't think in that direction when she watches it. (6) Well, it's nice to finally have a timeline to work from, so I don't have to pretend I don't know when the Dragonmount prologue took place anymore. Oh, there's debate about the EXACT duration and whether the Third Age began before or after the Breaking, or even if it began with the great war, but we don't need to address that here. Plenty of places to talk about it once you've finished the series and can go find the full spoiler communities. (7) If the BOH in the prologue was to be believed, it was men who could channel who did most of the breaking, since they went mad and unleashed their power without control, while the "sisters" were still safe. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to suggest that Aes Sedai used to mean all channelers, and still means all not insane channelers. So perhaps Aes Sedai did break the world, but that got interpreted through three thousand years of semantic drift where the meaning of the term changed dramatically. A lot can change in how we interpret the words and prophecies of an era over the course of thousands of years. (8) How, indeed? This is probably the main reason why this fits before Dragonmount in publication order, technically speaking. Because this story leads into learning a little bit of the detail and the nuance. Not a lot, because book one of fifteen, but enough to tantalize the senses. We know that he led the Hundred Companions against the Dark One, because one of the Dark One's servants reminded him so. (Do you think that means the BOH was a Forsaken?) And we know that the men who could channel lost their minds and their control and broke the world, the way LTT broke his wife and his home and made that mountain. (9) Passing along information without context can be dangerous for just this reason. You never know what will be lost or made up in the game of telephone.

[bigskydreaming]

Okay, so you know “Justice League meets Batman’s kids, who they’d previously been unaware existed” AUs?

So picture that.....but this time, instead of them just having no knowledge of any of these other Gotham vigilantes at all....the Batkids all migrate to various cities as they get older and become known as their protectors - Dick in Bludhaven, Tim in San Francisco, Cass in Hong Kong, etc....

Meaning they’re all established figures, the Justice League are aware of them as solo local heroes who stick to their cities and so they just don’t interact with them much if at all, or else some are members of team lineups but are particularly vague about their histories or life outside of the team’s adventures....

So the big reveal isn’t that they become aware of all these other Gotham vigilantes all at once....its that some big conflict or whatever requires a huge team up of all available heroes, and in the aftermath, they figure out that like.....despite being known as solo heroes who work alone or loners outside of their team settings, 80% of these heroes all not only seem to already know each other, they seem to be related.

And so naturally they all turn to Batman, who has profiles on every known hero and they thus figure had researched these individuals too and just never mentioned this little detail, and they’re like, “Did you know about this?”

And then Nightwing turns to him too, arms crossed and is like, “Yeah Dad, did you know about this?”

And the infamous Red Hood is all: “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I have never met any of these people before in my life. Lives? Whatever.”

And then Red Robin moodily grates out “I have no siblings.” Since he’s nursing a grudge since Dick and Jason broke into his apartment the night before and replaced all his custom Red Robin gear with Darkwing Duck merchandise and his vengeance will be swift and also totally disproportionate because things escalate quickly in this family, that’s true in every universe.

Cass meanwhile has deftly skewered Jason’s lie by walking over to him and brazenly patting down the man with many many guns with no fear whatsoever. He squawks and futilely attempts to bat her hands away as she riffles through his many pockets, but he doesn’t seem shocked, just annoyed. Eventually, she pulls away and triumphantly reveals a box of Hello Kitty themed band-aids.

“So these are yours then? Just for you?” Black Bat asks smugly. Red Hood squints at the box.

“What the fuck? How long have those been in my jacket? Why are those in my jacket? Did you freaking plant them in my jacket just on the offchance you could at some point in the distant future use them at my expense?”

Black Bat frowns, puzzled. “Yes?”

“Oh come on, Dead Hood,” Spoiler says with an exaggerated toss of her head meant to convey she’s rolling her eyes beneath her own mask. She skips her way across the room to Black Bat and then drapes herself languidly all over the smaller woman. Who in turn doesn’t so much as twitch beneath the sudden added mass as Spoiler holds out her hand towards the box of band-aids. 

“One please. I have a boo-boo,” she says with easy familiarity straight into the intimidating cowl of Black Bat. Only then does she deign to finish her train of thought with Red Hood.

“I mean seriously, are you saying you don’t have potential blackmail set-ups, pre-rigged releases of incriminating material, and a random assortment of traps, pratfalls and mortifying scenarios in place for the express purpose of being able to humiliate any and all of your siblings at any given moment, without any need for additional prep time?”

“Is this true, Little Wing?” Nightwing whirls on the larger Red Hood with a faux-scandalized gasp. The founder and leader of the Titans, formerly the Teen Titans, renowned for his stratagems and calm competence when directing squads of supers in the heat of battle while he keeps pace with nothing more than naturally acquired acrobatics and a utility belt that apparently uses the same technology as Wonder Woman’s invisible jet....now appears to be....staggering with the back of his hand pressed to his forehead, moaning about how he felt....faint? 

What is happening right now, several dozen superheroes want to know. Is this a drill? Are they supposed to be checking for signs of a mental ambush from undetected psychic saboteurs? Did they all hit their heads at the exact same time and are now experiencing some kind of shared mass concussion?

Look, that wouldn’t be the weirdest thing to ever happen on the Watchtower. 

“Have I failed you so utterly?” The veteran child hero bemoans with a dramatic twirl - that when contrasted with his stern demeanor of a mere ten minutes ago - makes the fears of telepathic infiltration seem less paranoia and more....concerningly probable. “Did you learn nothing from me? Did you learn nothing from B?”

He stops and jabs a finger up at the sky. “Quick, everyone! What is the very first rule of Living While Batty?”

As if by rote, over a half a dozen voices chime in from all over the room, causing various heroes to jump. Spooked by yet more and more vigilantes joining in some kind of mass recitation like they and they alone have some kind of clue what the hell is going on and everyone else just hadn’t been invited to the party. Which is just rude, honestly. Nobody likes feeling like they weren’t invited to the party. Not even superheroes. 

“If you’re not going to bother preparing for every possible contingency and at least six impossible ones, you might as well just stay in bed.”

Even the Red Hood joins in the Illuminati chant or Cub Scout pledge or demonic ritual or whatever the fuck that just was, though his slumped and exasperated posture gives away every hint of sulkiness his headgear otherwise would have kept safely hidden. He’s surprisingly more...expressive, than most who’d only known of him by reputation had expected him to be. The day continues to yield surprises.

“Of fucking course I do,” he growls out, snatching the box from Black Bat. She doesn’t even fight to hold onto it, just lets it go with a knowing smirk. “I wasn’t surprised by the idea of it, I was just surprised she bothered with such a weak effort. Like yeah whatever, actually those could be mine. I use those all the time at home. So what?”

He aggressively yanks one of the band-aids out of the box, fumbles with the peel-off strips with one hand and he roughly rolls up the sleeve of his jacket with the other. Then just slaps it on his forearm and raises said appendage high, showing it off this way and that. “See?”

“Oh yeah, for sure,” Signal drawls from the other side of the room, nodding his head approvingly. “Totally convincing. Nice job walking that one back, you really showed them.”

Red Hood’s head snaps in his direction with ominous intent. “Watch it, Day-Glo.”

Signal just snorts.

“Yeah, like I’m gonna take constructive criticism on my name and costume from a dude who’s spent the last several years calling himself Red HOOD while running around in a freaking HELMET.”

“Its not meant to be literal, you fucking pedant.”

“So wait, its not literally a helmet? Huh, does it at least protect your head literally, or just like...symbolically? Like if Bane were to clock you across the head, would your concussion just be a metaphor? What’s the treatment protocol for a metaphorical concussion? Fluids, bedrest and a philosophical prescription of two chapters of Chicken Soup for the Soul as needed?”

“Laugh it up, KC and the Sunshine Band,” Red Hood bats back. “You just got yourself disinvited from Thursday night’s poker game.”

Signal just grins and folds his arms over his chest cockily. “Please. You’ve been looking for an excuse to ban me for weeks, cuz you know until you can prove I’m using my ghost vision to cheat, you can’t actually bring suit against me for it in Family Court.”

“That, and also Family Court isn’t a real thing, you toddler. Stop validating Wing-a-ding-ding’s obsession with Shitty TV Nostalgia and just call it that thing where Oracle traps us all in a room until we settle our latest fight without anyone getting stabbed.”

“Yeah, but like, say that five times fast,” Spoiler pipes up. “Its just not practical. Family Court’s way easier.”

“Says the one who’s not even in our fucking family.”

“And yet I grace you all with my sublime presence anyway,” she blows a kiss at him, beatifically unbothered. “You’re welcome.”

The Red Hood scoffs and rounds on his heel, zeroing in on Batwoman in the far corner.

“Hey Auntie B, my siblings are all dead to me and I just helped stop an alien invasion so I deserve nice things like a fun Saturday night. Can you get me into Dad’s fundraiser so I can crash it? He won’t put me back on the list until I promise not to bring any C-4 with me and I won’t promise not to bring any C-4 because he should just trust me that I won’t when I say I’m not gonna and he won’t trust me that I won’t until I admit I shouldn’t have brought any to that sting last month where three tiny little yachts blew up through barely any fault of my own, and I’m just not gonna do that ever because I have convictions and I feel I shouldn’t have to be punished for that. Y’know?”

Batwoman blinks at him. “Kid, I’m not gonna lie to you. You’re my nephew and I love you, but I stopped listening three seconds into all that.”

“Ugh, fine. Can you help me crash Dad’s event tonight so I can teach him a lesson about why he should just trust me not to make a scene so I don’t have to always make a scene to make a point.”

“Tempting as you make that sound,” she says wryly, “I have a strict policy for dealing with you lot and your......everything. I only worry about tolerating one of you at a time, and there’s seven of you, and seven days in the week. You each get your own. You know perfectly well its Robin’s day today. You get me on Tuesday, just like always.”

“Auntie B, we’re not like other families, are we?” Red Robin’s delivery is sarcastically childish and his question clearly rhetorical. Most of his attention is fixated on whatever it is he’s doing with his wrist-mounted computer. 

“No sweetie, we’re all severely fucked in the head and a little bit too comfortable with that.”

“Just checking. Oh hey, Hood, I just emailed you a patch for the hole in your firewall I exploited when replacing all my shit using your accounts just now.”

“You did what?”

“Used your accounts to pay to replace all my stuff that you fucked with last night?” Red Robin says slowly. “Did you not realize that I’ve been sticking within ten feet of you for the past five minutes just so I could clone your devices and do all that while BB and Spoiler kept you distracted? I gotta say, bro, I feel like that’s on you then.”

Red Hood swivels his helmeted head in the direction of the aforementioned two. Black Bat waves. Spoiler shoots him an utterly unrepentant thumbs up.

“You’d side with your ex over me? That’s what its come to?”

“My only allegiance is to chaos,” Spoiler says brightly. Black Bat shrugs.

“Plus he bribes better.”

“Hateful,” Red Hood points at Black Bat, moving on to level the same finger at Spoiler, who curtsies in acknowledgment: “Hateful-er.”

Then the finger rounds the bases to aim judgmentally at Red Robin. “Hateful-est. And that was all Nightwing’s idea anyway, not mine.”

“Oh, I assumed as much,” he says casually. “Your idea of a prank tends to have more of a Carrie vibe. Or be a literal literary reenactment.”

“Its called an homage, 4chan.”

“Whatever, plagiarist. And anyway, I couldn’t go after ‘Wing for payback on this one. He used an Immunity card. If you didn’t want me getting back at you, you should have used one too."

Red Hood looms aggressively. Red Robin ignores willfully. Round and round they go. Superheroes who can survive excessive G-Forces are getting dizzy just watching them have a largely motionless stand-off. That shouldn’t be how that works, but whatever. All the most infamously reclusive and isolated heroes in all hero-dom are apparently part of the same one big reclusive and isolated family of fucked up weirdos and they’re all officially bonkers. Nothing makes sense anymore. Reality broke. Try another stall.

“Okay, but see, in order to have an Immunity card, I would have to participate in one of you losers’ stupid Immunity challenges,” the Red Hood drags out with exaggerated patience. “And I’m just not going to do that, on account of those all being fucking stupid. You see the problem there?”

Red Robin just shrugs. “I don’t know what to tell you, bro. You can have principles or you can have an Immunity card. You can’t have both.”

Meanwhile, on another side of....the same room.....look, its like, an octagonal room, probably. It has a lot of sides. Robin fends off questions from an aggrieved looking Superboy.

“You never told me you had a bajillion brothers and sisters!”

“Yes but I never said I didn’t either.”

Superboy rolls his eyes. “Oh yeah, so I should just assume everyone I meet has a bajillion secret brothers and sisters?”

“Well clearly it would have worked out in your favor in this instance if you had, now wouldn’t it?”

“Assuming of course that you can trust what has been said or implied here today and I am actually related to any of those numbskulls. Which I am not actually admitting to,” Robin tacks on hastily.

Superboy eyes him dubiously. “You joined in the same creepy chant all the others did and then got super self-conscious and looked around to see if anyone had noticed. Which uh. I did.”

“First off, your interpretation of body language is abyssmal. I do not get self-conscious,” Robin says with a delivery that probably could have benefited from being a little less self-conscious. “And second....that proves nothing. I guessed what they were going to say.”

“Word for word,” Superboy says super-skeptically.

“I’m very good at guessing things. You know this.”

“Okay. Guess how much I believe you right now then.”

Robin glares and folds his arms grumpily across his chest. 

“And what was that anyway? Was that like....you guys’ family motto or something like that?”

“Oh no,” Spoiler pipes up. “That’s much shorter.”

Superboy balks at that. “Wait, you guys actually have one of those for real?”

“Yup,” Steph says, counting out the words with her fingers. “He who laughs last....probably works for the Joker. So tranq him just to be safe. See? Only sixteen words. The first rule of Living While Batty is way longer, and what we said was just the abridged version. You should hear the original, before Black Bat put her foot down and refused to memorize it unless sizable edits were made.”

Superboy hovers between her and Robin now, both in mid-air and on the verge of taking Spoiler’s words as an invitation to hear just that. A low growl arises from Robin’s direction.

“Must you?” He asks the older vigilante, with a most put upon expression.

She looks at him pityingly. “Do you actually need me to answer that? Like, we’ve met, right? Hi, I’m Spoiler.”

“Wait, so Robin said that I just never specifically asked him if he had a bajillion brothers and sisters, and that’s why he didn’t tell me, so that means he wouldn’t have just lied and there’s not some code of secrecy that flat out forbids telling other people stuff, right?” Superboy realizes excitedly.

“Yes, excellent direction. Go on,” Spoiler says, steepling her fingers. Robin buries his face in the palm of one hand.

“Soooo, what other stuff could you tell me about Robin’s super top secret family that I wouldn’t think to ask about but that he would tell me about if I knew what questions to ask?”

She claps once, lightly but with emphasis. “Well done. You’ve passed the first barrier. Untold secrets await you behind just a few more.”

“I’ll get you for this,” Robin vows calmly. She waves a hand at him.

“Yeah, yeah. Just make sure you do it before January 1st, remember? You’ve promised retribution like ten times already this year and those don’t roll over, y’know. Rules are rules.”

“Enough!” Thunders a voice then, from the front of the room. Well one of the fronts anyway. Like sides, it has a lot of them, but this is the one where Batman’s standing. All eyes snap to him. Which is kinda just what eyes do when Batman says stuff like that. Its like his superpower, except he doesn’t actually have superpowers, which is what makes it scary. But where the snapping of the eyes (directional) is usually followed by Batman saying something else besides just “hey look at me,” here he pauses in the wake of his own call to attention’s waning reverberations. Uncharacteristically silent.

Not that, y’know, he’s normally Mr. Talkity Talk, but usually his silences feel like he has the words to fill them, he’s just withholding them. This though, this feels more like he doesn’t have any words at all. And he’s as confused by it as any of them, and most everyone else is confused by Batman being confused, and its this whole trickle down economy of confusion and its wrecking havoc on the value of the golden silence standard.

Of course, not everyone present is rendered spellbound with confusion.

“C’mon B,” Nightwing cajoles, leaning forward and practically radiating delight. “I think you know what you have to do now. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Its not likely to come around again.”

Red Hood snickers beneath his helmet and chimes in. “Yeah Pops, go ahead. You do this and you’ll actually have my respect for a whole twenty four hours. No, wait. Sixteen. No! Eight. Yeah, eight. Still a good deal.”

“Carpe diem, B,” Red Robin grins, leaning back as if to enjoy the show.

“Hey! Infringe on my trademark one more time, dude,” Signal throws a faux-glare at the former. Red Robin just quirks an eyebrow.

“And what, you’ll start saying Yum every time you eat a burger? Oh no. I’m hoist by my own petard.”

Signal flips him off with a grin and then redirects his attention back to Batman. “Yeah seriously though B, you kinda gotta do it now. Because if you don’t do it, then you’ll forever be the guy who didn’t do it, and you don’t want to be that guy, do you?”

“Yeah you really don’t want to be that guy,” Spoiler shouts out. “Nobody likes that guy. He’s the worst.”

“Do it, do it,” Black Bat starts chanting beside her, steadily picking up speed and volume. Several others start joining in. Even Robin appears to be slightly anticipatory, albeit trying very hard to hide it.

Batman sighs, and somehow everyone manages to hear it. Stills. Waits for....something? Nobody but them seems to have any clue what, but the air is thick and heavy with portentiousness. Something is about to happen, and all most of the heroes present could say for sure is it was something they never would have in a million years seen coming.

Finally, Batman straightens with the resigned air of a man about to have oh so many regrets. He crosses his arms, shakes his head, and in an absolute deadpan monotone, says:

“You are awful children. You know you’re killing me. You’re killing your father.”

[grewlikefancyflowers]

in case you're feeling too alone in this view, I agree wwx went to that conference to vent his anger. Yeah sure he had the right to crash the "kill wwx party" and zero sympathies for the guy who got his arrow thown back at him nor for his brother whose neck was broken (nor for anyone who went there? lol), but he DID go there to escalate things further and ended up participating in their endless cycle of vengeance (contrast him hearing abt himself and jyl being badmouthed which is hugely upsetting vs him hearing some nobodies claiming they'd teach him a lesson right before the conference), which he did not on his right mind and ended up making things worse for himself and everyone involved

yeah ! thank you for sending this. i think people maybe can't reconcile that fact that while wwx did have plenty of righteous reasons to be there, he wasn't there for righteous reasons.

i mean, we can see that in the build up to nightless city, wwx's emotional state is completely wrecked, and it culminates in him taking this all out of everyone else...

'He asked himself, Just why have I been locking myself up on Burial Mound all these years? Why do I have to go through all this? Why did I choose to walk this path in the beginning? Why did I make myself like this? What do others see me as? Just what have I gained? Have I gone mad? Have I gone mad? Have I gone mad?!'

'He should’ve understood long ago. No matter what he did, not a single good word would come out of these people’s mouths. He was cultivating the crooked path either way, so what exactly did the years of persistence mean? What exactly were they for?'

'Wei WuXian had already lost his judgement. He was already half-mad, half-unconscious. All evil was being augmented by him. He felt that everyone loathed him and he loathed everyone as well.'

this is a pretty far cry from 'let the self judge right and wrong, let gains and losses go uncommented on' and 'if there's hope then let's move'. he's not at all in his right mind here, he's not at all acting like himself. he was pushed to this point, i can't imagine rejoicing to see him like that ??

even almost immediately after nightless city, in the three months between then and the siege on burial mounds, we see that wwx already makes decisions opposite to what he did at nightless city. rather than venting his grief about wn & wq's deaths on the jianghu, he instead builds them a cenotaph. rather than using the yin hufu to against those who have wronged him, he instead sets about destroying it so that no one can use it again. by the time wwx died, he was at peace with himself & what he had done, that's why he's so completely over it by the time the second siege rolls around, and why he never became a resentful ghost despite everything.

still, none of this changes the fact that everyone had gathered at nightless city with the intention of killing wwx, and every one of them had it coming.

[bmwiid]

I started making a new thing on Friday- an apron dress from an independent company called "The Assembly Line"

It was a printable pattern that I bought because WAITING is hard when I have the energy to do something RIGHT NOW. Waiting results in energy atrophy I've found.

It looks like this:

and it's made up of like 6 parts. I was able to cut the pattern and half finish the dress in about 4 hours, which is probably a long time for more experienced / faster sewers, but for me that was like....super quick. It only requires 2 snaps or buttons, fabric and iron on interfacing, so it's 100% a good starter pattern.

I'm making it out of this check fabric:

and it only takes 2 yards cutting on the LARGE size.

Now, I do have 2 yards of my Mood fabric, but I wanted to do a test first because I might not loooove this dress, but so far I'm super impressed. Also! I often find offcuts of fabric in my local fabric shop that are like, 1.5 yards and there WAS room to spare, so if you were to do the facings in another fabric, or contrasting pockets, you could easily put this together for super, super cheap. This fabric was in that bin, and it's 2 yards, and it was £6. It's not super super thick, but it has a stiffer, heavy feel with a crisp drape.

BUT!

I'm most impressed with the directions. I'm used to the big 4 patterns where the directions are assuming you know things. They'll have things like "insert the zipper" as step 7 and if you've never added a zipper, thats... not an easy thing.

These instructions are so clear, with line drawings explaining. Hell, it ever showed different options for top stitching and under-stitching which I've never seen explained, showed how to correctly iron on your interfacing, explained HOW to finish your inside seams with images and giving 2 options (overlocking or zigzagging). The pattern itself has the cutting AND sewing marks, shows how to transfer them over to your fabric... it even showed how to do tailor tacks (which I've been doing wrong!) and explained WHY each step was being carried out.

I swear, I may never buy another big 4 pattern again. If you want to start sewing, and you are nervous, I'd HIGHLY suggest this pattern. AND this isn't even the VERY EASY pattern. This is classed as 'EASY' and they also have two free patterns (for a pj set and a leather/ette bag)

It's pretty size inclusive - with most patterns hitting a sweet spot between XS and 2XL. It's not perfect, of course, but better than the big 4 most times.

BUT! I really do think this is a killer pattern and if you have a BASIC machine - you only need a straight and zigzag stitch, and if you use snaps you don't need buttonholes - and want to try something you can wear.... I think this might be for you!

But.... yeah, this is just a long post about how I think people should try sewing and how this might be the best way to start.

For me, the total cost of this apron dress, once finished, was:

2 buttons - stashed. I cut buttons off of all my clothes I throw away, and also pull off the zippers. Over the years it results in quite a collection, but charity shops also sell buttons. Just ask!

Iron On Interfacing - stashed. However, I know it's about £2 a yard. I didn't need 2 yards, but it's handy to have, so if you are buying it, get a yard! it's so useful, and most patterns require it at some point.

Fabric: 1.8 yards for Large. 1.5 for XS. I'd suggest going for a thicker fabric for this, which is more expensive. HOWEVER, I'm also a HUGE proponent of using what you can get, and I actually think the fabric I'm using is for curtains! If you see a nice pair of curtains in a thrift of charity shop, you can use them and end up with TWO dresses if you are careful with placement when cutting out! I spent £6 on this fabric, about 4 years ago. The only reason I remember the cost is that its written on the selvage in pen.

Pattern: I paid £17.00 for a PDF download, which included home printer A4 and US letter paper, store print, and instructions. I reuse my patterns a LOT, but of course, once you have it bought, you could just re-print it if you wanted to. I just like to feel thrifty.

Thread: I'm using cheap white thread on the spool and bobbin, I got in a multipack with other colours. I think it works out at like 50p a spool. Good quality Gutermann threads about about £2.50 for 250 yards, which is waaaay more than you'll need, so you can reuse it.

total: £23.50 for an apron dress.

I honestly think this pattern has a look of something you'd see with a much higher price tag BECAUSE it looks so simple. Like I can see GAP selling this for like £50 easy, just because it has a very... basic, staple, eco-friendly look about it. Like in a plain canvas, or denim? so basic but an easy staple you'd spend more on cause you know it'll get worn a lot.

As for time? I think it took me about 8 hours to make in total.

[forever-rogue]

Douse the Lights

A/N: I have no excuse for this, except I love one (1) Din Djarin and he deserves this and so do we. Enjoy! A little Happy New Year gift from me to you! As always, comments and feedback are welcomed! xx

Pairing: Din Djarin x Fem!Reader

Word Count: 7k

Warnings: SMUT (18+ only) - oral (m and f receiving), unprotected PiV, choking, degradation, creampie...filth. This is just filth. 

STUTTER SOMETHING PROFOUND (PART 2)

THE MANDALORIAN MASTERLIST

MAIN MASTERLIST

»»————-　♡　————-««

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Then stop kriffing staring at me.”

“I wasn’t even looking in your direction.”

“You,” with a sharp turn of your head you saw that he wasn’t even near you. Nope. Not at all. 

Kriff. Awkward.

“Lothcat got your tongue, Princess?” you’d never seen his face, but Maker, you just knew there was a wicked smirk on it.

“Just mind your own business,” stowing away your clean blasters with a huff, you prayed with all your might that he couldn’t see the flush of warmth on your face or hear the crack in your voice. You hated him. Everything about him.

At least you wanted to; you would have given anything in the galaxy to. It would make constantly being around the Mandalorian that you called your employer a lot easier. 

Maybe if you kept repeating it yourself, you would manifest it to become true. That you could hate that annoying, half-witted, tin can. 

“Thought that’s what I was doing,” there was the most minute inkling of amusement in his voice as he came over, lithe and silent - ever the hunter. He was at your side in an instant, the warmth of his body contrasting sharply with the cool metal of the beskar as he sent shivers up and down your spine. Along with the low pooling of heat and desire settling in your belly, but you were going to ignore that for now.

Almost as if he knew the effect he had on you, he made it a point to brush a gloved hand over yours as he nudged you to the side to inspect some of the weapons he’d tasked you with cleaning. You had to be quick in order to shut your mouth and keep a small whimper from escaping your lips. 

How long had it been since someone last touched you? Maker, it had been….dank farrik. It had been way too long. A simple hand brush - there wasn’t even skin to skin contact - and you felt like a lothcat in heat. You really needed to get...some company and have your frustrations taken out or surely you would explode. There was no way you were to give Mando the satisfaction of knowing the type of hold he seemed to possess over you. 

Perhaps once you were out of this more than awkward conversation you could slip out for a few hours and seek some pleasure. The little one had just gone down for a nap a short bit ago, and he was likely to be out for some time. Surely he wouldn’t have a problem for a few hours. Then you could -

“These are still dirty,” was his voice always that rough and low? He had to be doing it on purpose, surely. Before you could contemplate it too much, he took one of the blasters and shoved it back into your hands. Not rough or gentle, but with enough firmness to remind that he was in charge. You looked it over and raised your eyebrows as you inspected it yourself - it was polished to an almost pristine shine, “clean them again. All of them.”

“What the fuck, Mando,” you scoffed with indignation as you rolled your eyes at him, shoving the blaster right into of the black T of his visor. You waved it almost as if to prove your point, “this is clean. I dare you to find a cleaner blaster in this Maker forsaken galaxy.”

He was quick to your grab your wrist, his grip was firm as he kept your hand from moving. You didn’t normally argue with your stoic and mysterious employer, but this was apparently new and uncharted territory. You couldn’t put your finger on it, but there was a shift between the two of you, something had changed. The tension in the air was palpable, so thick you could cut it with the dullest of knives as you stared back at him. 

“Clean it again,” it was a growl that went straight to your cunt as you subconsciously clenched your thighs at the sound. Either this was a one time deal that you would commit to memory or you were going to make it a point to annoy him more often. As he stared you down, he slowly let go of your wrist and pointed at the discarded cleaning rag, “and make sure its actually clean this time.”

“You are the worst,” you tried to retain the little bit of composure that you had remaining as you swiped the blaster back.

“And you are a brat,” brat. Brat. Brat. Brat. Of all the words available in all of the galaxy, he had to choose that one. This was absolutely on purpose. The Mandalorian never did anything without careful planning and calculating the risks. The same could be said with his words; this was all carefully and deliberately chosen. He cocked his head to the side, almost as if trying to gauge your reaction, “but here we are. Get them clean.”

“Or what?” it was a mere pathetic squeak as found yourself almost unable to meet his face.

“Just get it done.”

Without another word he strode away, as silent and dangerous as he was when he first came in. If you were stronger, if you weren’t a weak little fool, you would have looked away and focused on your work. 

But no. Not today.

Instead you watched him go, staring shamelessly at his imposing figure as he moved to disappear back into the cockpit to do whatever it was that he did. 

Was his ass always that nice? Were those thighs always so strong and sturdy? Was he always so damn broad and wide? 

Shit. 

“Get your mind out of the gutter,” you hissed at yourself as you picked the rag back up and slammed yourself back down on the bench in order to re-clean all the weapons that you had just done. He wanted clean weapons? You’d give him the cleanest blasters he’d ever seen. 

»»————-　♡　————-««

Almost an hour had crept by when you’d finished your second round of cleaning. At this point you honestly didn’t care if the Mandalorian deemed the job satisfactory or not. The longer you had ruminated on his words, the more frustrated you became. 

Each word, each touch seemed burned into your mind as you let your imagination take over. You’d be lying if you said you’d never thought about him before. There had been a number of sleepless nights when you imagined it had been his hand between your thighs, his fingers running through your slick folds before they slipped inside of you. On nights when you really couldn't help yourself, you even imagined it was his cock, how he would feel buried to the hilt inside of you. You wondered what he would be like, but something - this day in particular - told that he was big. And he would get the job done.

But it wasn’t going to happen. 

Nope. No. Nah. You were just his sidekick little employee that most definitely was not going to act on any impulsive or rash decisions. You might have been a lot of things, including a huge fool in that moment, but you weren’t that stupid. You didn’t need to create some unnecessary strain in your relationship with the stoic warrior or even worse, lose your job and home and be left stranded in a forgotten corner of the galaxy. 

Even as you tried to rationalize all the ways in which acting on your impulses was a horrible idea, the frustration and the throbbing between your legs didn't wane. You were getting so desperate and pathetically needy that you sat on the edge of your small bench just at the angle so you could get a little bit of friction on your clit. Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic.

As you rocked back and forth, trying to keep the little mewls and whines from slipping past your lips, you realized you couldn't do this.

You couldn't risk getting caught by the Mandalorian. Oh yes, everything's fine, just getting myself off. Don't worry, I'm super horny because of you. Yeah of course I'd love your cock.

Yeah. Cool, cool, cool. This would never happen. 

Just when you before you reached your breaking point and had your hands halfway to your soaked core, you stopped. 

"Kriff," you sighed to yourself as you pulled your hand back out and stood up. What the actual fuck had gotten into you? A few commanding words you were completely losing your control. Either you were desperate for a release from something other than your own hand or you craved the mysterious Mandalorian. 

Hastily stashing the impeccably clean blasters back into the weapons cache, you discarded the rag as you quickly came up with a plan. 

Tiptoeing quietly back to where the little one was sleeping, you sneaked a peek and saw that he was still fast asleep. He wouldn't even notice you were gone - that's what you tried to convince yourself as you delicately touched his soft ears and button nose. 

You weren't sure if you were speaking of the Mandalorian or the baby. At this point you really didn't care. 

You glanced back at the ladder towards the cockpit, watching almost as if you expected him to come down and catch you sneaking out. Hells, technically he'd know as soon as you left the ship. You scrawled a quick note telling him that you needed a cleaner or something, in your haste you couldn't even remember what you put, and would need to go to the market.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was totally plausible, you insisted to calm your own nerves as you slipped on your boots and a cloak before making your final decision to leave. Attempting to be as quiet and subtle as possible, you slowly made your way off the Crest and started scurrying towards the nearby desolate town of Mos Eisley. In reality you looked more like a scrap rat scurrying away from the light than a woman heading into town to find something. 

Whatever.

Mos Eisley wasn’t exactly known for its sparkling reputation, and you were sure you could get exactly what you wanted quickly enough. In and out, you thought to yourself as a flush rose in your check, well precisely that. For at least you were hoping. 

But the Mandalorian, a seasoned hunter with a reputation for a reason, and didn’t miss a single trick. He was aware of what you were doing before you even left the cargo hold. If he was this frustrated and turned on you by you, his cock hard and straining against the confines of his pants, he was sure you must have been in the same position. 

Oh, but he had been close to breaking, just like you. How easy it would have been to seal the hatch to the cockpit and relieve himself of the desire and ache. But no - just like you he had limits and wasn’t about to give in and stroke his hard cock while you were within earshot. No matter times he had imagined it - fucking your mouth or burying himself deep between your luscious heat before pounding you into oblivion, he wasn’t going to give in this easily. 

He wasn’t a virgin by any means, but with your little backtalk and the way you had looked at him with those wide doe eyes and pretty pouted lips sure had him feeling like one. The thought of burying himself inside you, to watch as you bounced on his cock with your tits in his face was enough to make up his mind. 

One time couldn’t hurt, right? People had casual encounters all the time.Why should this one be any different? If you were willing of course, although judging by how your pupils had dilated with each word from his mouth, had little doubt you felt the same way; but consent of course was key. 

And tomorrow? You’d be back to being the same way you had always been.

Hopefully. Maybe. Probably.

Fuck.

This was a bad idea, and the small, sensible part remaining in his brain told him so. But he was too far in, too deep and lost in his own desires to stop himself. 

He was watched as you ran away, deciding to wait until you were halfway to Mos Eisley before going after you. He’d take the kid to Pelli, sure she’d more than happy to watch him for the night. The rest? That was to be all consumed by you. 

»»————-　♡　————-««

The old cantina was dirty, dingy, and smelly. There was no doubt in your mind it must have been at least a decade since it was cleaned, and yet it still remained a hot spot; granted not for those of politer society, but enough to get the job down.  You pushed that to the back of your mind as you clambered through the crowd and to the bar, sitting down next to a handsome Zabrak you had spied when you’d walked in. You’d never been with one his kind before, but you’d heard rumors of them, especially when it came to their prowess behind closed doors, and something within you was piqued. 

He must have sensed something was up - as soon as you sat down, he motioned for the bartender to come back and bring the two of you a new round. 

“You’re new here,” he said gruffly, a dangerous edge to his voice, sharp like a knife as he took one of the luminescent drinks and shoved the other towards you.

Before you could even move to grab your drink or utter so much as a word in response, a hand darted and quickly grabbed your wrist, the grip biting and firm. 

“She’s mine,” the words washed over you before you could even turn to look at the Mandalorian. His chest was rising and falling heavy as his visor was trained on your would be companion for the night. A shudder ran up your spine as he pulled you off the stool, the two men glaring at each wordlessly. 

He pulled you behind him, storming out of the cantina as the crowds parted at the sight of the gleaming silver beskar. They knew better than to stand in the way of the Mandalorian. You felt like a child being scolded as he refused to acknowledge you, keeping his gaze trained straight as you struggled to keep up with his long strides. 

“What the hell, Mando?” your question was an indignant shout as your voice climbed an octave. His grip didn’t waver for a moment as he grunted in his response. Oh, he was mad. Yup. Definitely. You had fucked up. 

Any thought of talking back or prodding him further were estopped as you could see him fuming as he dragged your ass back to the Crest. 

This was it, you realized. This was the end where he would fire you and send you packing. Of all the places in the galaxy to be stranded, Tatooine was not one of your top destinations. No one to blame but yourself, you reckoned. 

Instead you hung your head as he refused to look back, making quick work of opening the cargo hold and shoving you inside. There was something about his touch that was rough, almost sending you falling to your ass, but there was still an odd gentleness.

You stared back at the blank visor in challenge, attempting to figure out what was going on. His chest was rising and falling rapidly as he stared back at you. Neither of you were about to get a good read on each other. 

“Did you really think it was a good idea to just walk away without saying anything?” his voice was dangerously low as he crossed his arms over his chest and glared at you. You opened and closed your mouth a few times as you tried to come up with either a smart response or an excuse but instead of anything coherent, it was a mixture of the two. Great. Now he's going to think you were an idiot on top of everything else. 

“I didn’t...just um...doesn’t matter what you...I needed something from the market?” you swallowed the lump on your throat as you dropped your gaze to the floor. He sighed for a moment - heavily - as you’d come to know was his penchant to do. 

“You needed something from the market?” it wasn’t a question so much as an accusation.

“Mhmm.”

“What was it?”

“C-cleaner,” you lied. Somehow it sounded better than saying yeah, I really just wanted a quick fuck because you have me feeling some type of way. 

“There's a new cleaner right in the cabinet,” he said as you internally groaned. He was right - there was a brand new gleaming bottle on the top shelf. He’d gotten some last week, “or did you conveniently forget that?”

“Umm,” you couldn’t get anything else out as he took a step closer and left minimal distance between your bodies. He reached up and put a hand under your chin, turning your face up to meet his, “uh huh.”

“Uh huh, honey,” his voice warmed you up from inside out as you gave him an innocent look. If he hadn’t known what he was doing earlier, he certainly did now. And he was going to milk every second of it, to push this as far as it would go. Your tongue darted out to wet your lips, a subconscious gesture, but not unnoticed by the Mandalorian. His hand slipped from your chin and jaw and slid until he was gently holding your throat. His grip was light, and he was barely squeezing, but Maker, you wished he was, “is that really what you were going to do?”

“Y-yeah,” how much longer were you going to keep up this little facade? You had no clue. But the feel of his hand around your airway, pushing slightly, ever so slightly, had your mind positively reeling.

“Then why did you go to that filthy old cantina?” he leaned closer, his helmet mere inches from your face as you closed your eyes, the blood rushing to your ears as you the heat pooled in your belly, “why were you talking to Zabrak? Did you really think he was going to fuck you? To make you feel good?”

“Mhmm,” you managed to murmur after a few beats of silence as you realized what was happening. This was new, uncharted territory - for the both of you - and if you went any further, there would be no going back. And you - fuck it. Your eyes snapped open as you turned to look into the visor, right where his eyes would be, “needed someone to do it, since you never would.” 

And there it was - finally out in the open and hanging thickly between the two of you. All you could ever was a small huff from under the helmet and you were positive he was smirking like a victorious predator.

“Is that what you want, honey?” he asked and you nodded. Give and take and then...it all broke, “get on your knees. Now.”

And you wasted no time sinking onto the cool metal floor, now level with his cock, where you could see the hardness straining against his rough fabric. Shaky fingers worked to hastily pop the button and pull the zipper, but just before you could get to what you wanted, Din roughly grabbed jaw, turning your face up to his, “you take what I give. Yeah?”

“Yes,” you promised, feeling yourself grow wetter and wetter with each word. But then, with another gentle tap to your chin, he seemed almost...gentle, “Mando?”

“If you don’t want this, just say stop,” he waited for you to nod as you a sense of warmth fluttered over you at his desire for consent, “I will not be gentle, I will not-”

“Give it to me then,” you beamed at him before turning back to his cock and pulling out of his underwear. You almost moaned at the sight of his cock, hard and leaking already; and just as your little fantasies had led you to believe, he was more than adequate. 

Spitting into your palm, you took him in your hand, pumping him a few times before licking the head, just small light licks, just enough to tease. Licking a stripe up his shaft, you played with his balls for a moment, earning what you were sure was a small groan from under the helmet. Making it a point to draw it out, you shouldn’t have been surprised when his hand went to the back of your head as he pushed you onto his cock. 

A sound of surprise was muffled by his cock as you took all of him into your mouth, doing your best not to gag as he hit the back of your throat and your nose brushed against the soft curls of hair at his base. Your hands slid up his thighs and found purchase on his hips as he began to fuck your mouth. He started slowly at first, almost as if he was afraid to give too much. When you grew accustomed to him, making it a point to hollow your cheeks and suck him as best as you could, he picked up the pace. And it was brutal in all the best ways, spit was starting to run down your chin along with a few tears that had spilled over, but if nothing else, it worked to spur him on. 

“Look at you,” he grunted between thrusts as he took in the sight in front of him, “take me so well. Knew your big mouth had to be good for something. Always wanted to fuck that pretty face.”

You hummed in delight as you raked your nails over the exposed slivers of his skin on his hips, golden and delicious and you wanted it all. His thrusts slowly become more erratic and sloppy as he twitched in your mouth. His hand dropped from the back of your head as you took over and put a hand back on his shaft as you worked to finish him off. 

Soon enough he did, followed by an almost primal growl as he came, his hot, thick, cum coating your mouth and you eagerly swallowed all that he offered, which unsurprisingly, was a lot. As his breathing slowed down and he slowly came down from the rush of his high, you pulled back from him, looking up at him with innocent eyes and a wicked smile. You cleaned him off, but just as you went to wipe at your mouth, his gloved hand was faster and he collected the spit and cum that had spilled out and pushed it back into your mouth with two fingers. You grabbed his wrist and made a show of sucking his fingers clean, tasting him along with the worn leather of his gloves. 

“Good girl,” he praised before hoisting you to your feet, “strip.”

“What about you?” you turned your head to the side, but he shook his head in response. He paused for a moment, almost as if he was having second thoughts, but just quickly, he whipped off his gloves and tossed them onto the floor before putting a hand on your cheek and stroking it tenderly. You swallowed thickly before nodding and working to pull off your clothes. 

First was your shirt, tugging slowly over your chest and tossed down to join the gloves. Your arm went to your back as you tugged off your bra, letting the straps fall down your shoulders as an almost nervous breath escaped your lips. 

“Keep going,” he commanded, eyes trained slowly on you as he drank in the sight of you. You undid your own zipper and pulled your pants and panties down in one fluid motion before kicking them off along with your boots and socks. You’d never felt more vulnerable or exposed in that moment, wanting to cover up but also relishing in the fact that you seemed to have rendered the Mandalorian speechless. He looked you up down, not bothering to hide the fact as he looked at your form, glancing at your soft mound before your breasts and then landing back on your face.

Beckoning for you to come closer with a simple crook of his fingers, you did so, standing directly in front of him. His hand flitted from your cheek and down your body before resting at the apex of your thighs. You gasped lightly in surprise as he dragged his fingers through your soaked folds, coating them in your copious arousal, before chuckling darkly. A hand immediately went to his shoulder as you steadied yourself and tried not to completely lose it at the simple touch, “all of this for me, honey?”

“Mhmm,” you admitted as he gently rubbed over your clit, teasingly in the slowest, most tantalizing way possible. Before you could stop yourself you blurted out, “always think about you. Always get so wet.”

He made a small, noncommittal sound as he pulled his fingers away from your wetness and brought them to your lips. He tapped your bottom lip and you opened your mouth, sucked his fingers clean from your own arousal, “I’ve thought about fucking you too. That mouth, that pussy. You’re such a brat, but you drive me crazy.”

“I like when you get mad,” you said as he pulled his fingers out of your mouth, “‘s sexy.”

“Yeah?” he asked, his voice deeper and lower than ever before, and you felt your knees start to buckle at the sheer sex it exuded, He brought his large, warm hands to your tits, touching over your pebbled nipples as you bit back a moan. While you wished it his mouth on them instead, this touch was just as well, as he massaged them, trying to get a good feel of them and seeing what drew out those sweet mewls from you. But before you could enjoy it too much, one hand gripped your waist like a vice and the other went between your legs. He ran his thick fingers through your folds, before slowly inserting one into your wet heat. You moaned as he slowly inserted another and then a third, stuffing you full and already having you seeing stars in no time, “make yourself cum.”

“What?” your eyes snapped open as he stilled his actions, “you’re joking, right?”

“Nope,” he popped the p loudly as he lightly teased your clit, eyes boring into yours, “you act like a brat and you want to cum? You have to work for it.”

“You can’t be serious,” you groaned as he moved to pull his hand away, as if to show you just how serious he was. This time, you caught his wrist and held him in place. He chuckled lightly in triumph as one of your hands returned to his shoulder for balance and the other went to play with your sensitive bundle of nerves. He held completely still, a practiced and patient man, as he made you work for it. He wasn’t kidding by any means when he said he would not be gentle. 

He remained quiet, watching your pretty face shift through a range of expressions as you worked to reach your own high. He was glad for the helmet, for if you had been watching him, you’d have seen the tinge of pink rising in his cheeks as the sight of you fucking yourself on his fingers. He’d envisioned this many times, no doubt about that, but he’d never thought it would become a reality. Maker, you were gorgeous as you thrust onto his hand using him for your own pleasure a string of gentle filth spilled from your lips as you rubbed slow circles onto your clit.

“Mandooo,” it was soft as you felt that familiar blinding haze start to take over you, and your toes involuntarily curled and your cunt started to clench around his fingers. Your eyes fluttered closed in pleasure as your vision turned blurry and that familiar warmth started to spread all over your limbs. He felt his cock twitch from where he had tucked himself back in after you’d pleasured him. Before you could finish though, something different met your ears.

“Din,” he said as bit your lip in order to keep from crying out completely, “my name is Din.”

And there it was. Completely unexpected and out of the blue. It wasn’t just a name - no it was so much more than it. It was a sign of trust, of closeness, of the fact that whatever this little situation was, it was neither the first or only time something like this would happen. No, your story with Mando may have come to an abrupt end, but your relationship with Din was just beginning.

It was almost as his name, uttered softly and almost unsurely, was exactly what you needed to push you over the edge as you came around his fingers. A soft moan left your lips along with the sweetest sound he was sure he’d ever heard, “Din.”

A merciful man when he chose to be, he took over for you and worked you through your orgasm as you almost collapsed into his arms, “there you are pretty girl. You did so well, fucking yourself on my fingers.”

“Not enough,” you rested your against the soft cowl of his neck as he pulled his hand from you, but not before slapping your ass a few times, almost as if testing to see how far he could push you. You made a few sounds of delight at the sting, only spurring him on as he slapped and then gently needed the ample flesh of your backside, “please, need you to fuck me.”

“Is that what you need, pretty girl?” he purred in your ear as he pulled back and grabbed your face in his hands, taking in the already blissed out expression on your features, “you want me to fuck you? Think you’re ready for my cock?”

“Yes,” you were practically ready to beg at this point, “I’ve been wanting it for so long.”

At your words, he almost dragged you to the small bed that was reserved for you in the corner and motioned for you to sit. You watched with eager eyes as he scrambled for the waistband of his pants and hastily pulled them down and kicked them off, letting them join your discarded clothes. He practically ripped off the rest of the beskar until he was bared in front of you, save for the helmet. His cock was already painfully hard again, standing at attention and leaking fat drops of precum.

“Can I trust you?” he asked as you nodded, understanding exactly what he meant. You’d never questioned the fact that you’d never seen his face or that he apparently just never showed it to anyone. You respected him and his decisions, and you’d never dare to push the envelope or destroy his trust. 

“Always,” you promised as he walked over to the wall and hit the switch for lights, cloaking the room in darkness. You sucked in a breath before you heard him shuffling about and the beskar helmet clanged against the metal floor. He stood in front of you, you could feel his breathing as he touched your cheek before wrapping a hand around your throat.

“Hands and knees,” he instructed with a delicious rasp, made even better by the lack of filtering from the vocoder of his helmet, “now.”

The singular word was enough to send a fresh rush of arousal through your veins, as you laid on your belly on the small cot before positioning yourself so your ass was in the air. He shuffled behind you, his large hands grazing over the soft flesh of your ass. He spread your cheeks apart before dragging a thick finger through your soaked folds. A small sound of pleasure rippled through your throat as you clutched onto the thin, scratchy blanket of the bed, “please.”

“Quiet,” it was harsh and biting as  the palm of his hand slapped your ass, the sting delicious and leaving you wanting more, “you like that, don’t you? You like being spanked, pretty girl.”

“Only by y-y-you,” before you could say anything, he slapped your ass a few more times before kneading the soft flesh to make sure the sting wasn’t too painful. 

Mando - no, Din - shifted his weight and you could feel him line himself up at your entrance. He ran the tip of his cock through your folds. A moan escaped your lips - and his - as he slowly pushed into you, giving you a brief moment to adjust to his considerable size. The stretch was amazing, the slight burn quickly turned into pleasure and you felt full, so completely full. He groaned as he bottomed out, already feeling pussy dumb by the way your velvet walls hugged him, “this - kriff - this pussy is perfect. Just like it was made for me.”

“Din,” you buried your face in your pillow as he pulled out, slowly, before thrusting sharply back into you. He was not lying when he said that he would not be gentle. His large, warm hands went to your hips as he held them in a bruising grip. You were sure you’d bear his marks for days. 

He set a bruising pace, thrusting into you with no mercy as he slammed his hips into yours. There was nothing gentle or intimate about, no - this was months and months of pent up frustration and desire coming out all at once. Din was not a talkative man, but as he fucked you into oblivion, he was whispering strings of filth and praise into your ears. All you could do was lie there as he pounded into you, so lost in your own pleasure as you became a whining mess under him.

Before he came, his arms snaked around your waist as he pulled you flush against his chest. One large hand went to play with your breasts as the other went to your clit as he rubbed and circled at the sensitive bundle of nerves. Your mouth hung open in a blissful haze as he kept going, pressing kisses into the soft skin of your skin and shoulder, alternating between nipping and sucking and making sure to leave plenty of marks so everyone knew you were his. 

“Look at you, pretty girl,” he grunted in your ear, “taking my cock so well. You love this don’t you? Getting used like this.”

“Mhmm,” you bit your lip as he kept going, kept abusing your spent pussy as he started to stutter in his thrusts, “‘m so close, please, wanna come.”

“You’re going to come on my cock,” he commanded as you nodded, “and I’m going to fill you up and make sure you know who you belong to.”

“I’m yours,” you insisted as you felt your walls clench around him and his cock start to twitch, “only yours.”

“Good girl,” he praised as he turned your head to place a rough kiss on your lips. It was the sheer act of the moment and feel of his stubble that sent you over the edge and cumming all over him. You were like jello in his arms as he held you up, giving you a few more thrusts before spilling inside and coating your walls with his cum, “ahh - fuck - so fucking good. Maker, you feel like no other. Perfect pussy - just for me.”

He held you tightly against his body as he caught his breath, the two of you breathing in sync. You thought he might pull away immediately, but instead, he pressed more kisses, chaste compared to your previous actions, down your back as he slowly lowered you onto the bed. You couldn’t even form words as you laid there, cockdumb and already feeling his arousal along with your own dripping onto your thigh. 

“You did good,” he praised gently before reaching between your legs and scooping up some of his cum that had started dripping out. You whimpered at the touch, still sensitive, and listened as he brought his fingers to his lips and sucked them clean, “but I’m not done with you yet.”

Din gently flipped you onto your back so you were lying face up and exposed to him. He sat between your legs and slowly spread them apart, admiring his handy work. He leaned back before climbing off the small and getting on his knees, pulling you towards his face. Just as you had gotten on your knees for him, he kneeled only for you. 

“Din,” you sighed contentedly as he kissed along your inner thighs, working his way back to your dripping heat. He nuzzled his nose against you, taking a moment to take it all in, “already so much."

"Come on, honey," his voice was like liquid gold as he reached up and touched your breasts, cupping them easily in his large hands, "you've got another one in you. I know you do. Aren't you a good girl?"

"Mhmm," you arched into his touch as he rolled your nipples between his fingers. How this infuriating man got you to become a pile of mush in his hands you'd never know, but you definitely weren't going to question it. He leaned up and kissed your hips before burying his face between your legs, "I'm your good girl."

And with those words, he licked a long stripe up your soaked folds, still soaked from your combined juices. His nose, which you presumed was aquiline in nature, nudged your clit as he ate you like a starving man. You were the shining prize, glimmering in the distance, and he was the wrecked man crossing the desert to get to you.

This time you didn't even bother to hold back as you mewled and cried, tears of pleasure and overstimulation welling up at the corners of your eyes and sliding down your cheeks. Din hummed in content as he licked and suckled at you, making sure to focus on your clit as you came completely undone.

Reaching down, you carded a hand through his locks - curls - as you pressed his face against your aching core. You could practically feel him smirking against you as he slipped a few fingers inside to join his ministrations. Expertly curling his thick fingers, he quickly found the sweet spot that made your toes curls and you see stars.

"Almost there," he grinned as he gave you a moment of reprieve before diving right back in, "I can feel that perfect cunt squeezing around me. Taste so good, pretty girl."

"D-Din," his name falling from your tongue was like pure magic as he became transfixed by how it sounded. Your mouth dropped open in a small O as your legs shook around him. He pulled his fingers from you as he held down your hips in order to keep you from squirming away from him, "feelssogood - makerohstars - Dindindin."

"Come all over my face, pretty girl," his tongue darted into you for a few moments before he gave your clit a harsh suckle. That was all it took before you came again, screwing your eyes shut as he worked your through your orgasm, lapping up every bit of your juices, refusing to waste even a drop, "there you are - taste so fucking good. Perfect."

He was relentless until he was sure you were completely done and a practical ragdoll on the bed. Slowly, he pulled back from you, trailing light kisses up your body, stopping when he got your face. Almost as if he was able to see even in the almost complete darkness, he wiped away your remaining tears. He hesitated for a moment for leaning down and pressing a soft kiss to your forehead. You sighed softly as you rolled onto your side and scooted closer to the wall, making room for him. 

It was a big thing you were doing, boundaries had been crossed and blurred and any rules you'd previously had were thrown out the window. Neither of you were sure what came next.

But you did know that you didn't want him to leave - not yet anyway.

"Din?" you asked softly as he pulled the blanket over your spent body; he was surprisingly gentle for a man that had just sent you to heaven and hell and back. 

"Yes, pretty girl?" 

"Will you stay?" your voice was small as you prepared yourself for defeat and for him to leave.

"Yes," he whispered softly as he slid in under the blanket and next to you, "I'd like that."

"Me too," you admitted as he shifted and pulled you in his arms so you could lay your head on his chest, listening to the steady thump thump of his heart, "Din?"

“Hmm?”

"I'm in charge next time," you smirked lightly as you kissed his soft skin. He inhaled sharply but you could tell he was into it. The man might have just been in charge, but you had a feeling he might like being told what to do as well - and you were going to find out, "I want to ride you."

"Kriff," he groaned under his breath, "You're going to be the death of me, little brat."

"I'll make it worth your while," you promised with a small yawn, "I'll have you crying in no time - begging me for mercy."

“Mhmm.”

“You’re going to be a good boy for me, right?” it was your turn to put your hand on his throat and give it a gentle, but firm squeeze as he stiffened at the feeling, “I know you’re a good boy, Din.”

“Fuck.”

»»————-　♡　————-««

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[karlakattz]

Okay, so Anne sent me a Gif of this scene on twitter

… and while I wrote a little 'meanwhile' for it, I also had the idea for a slightly longer story.

It‘s not beta read, I‘m sorry for mistakes. I wrote it just this morning:

I try to stay awake. x

Aaron smiles, reading the message from Robert, when he walks up the stairs. The pub is still busy, he can hear the dull noises of people talking and music playing, but upstairs it’s quiet. After a long day at work, the prospect of 8 hours of sleep in his warm, comfy bed and Robert‘s arms is heavenly bliss.

It’s pitch black in the small corridor and Aaron used his phone to light up the way to his room. Right outside the door, he switches it off though, because Robert sent his whatsapp 45 minutes ago so he might have fallen asleep after all and Aaron doesn’t wanna wake him up. Basically being an old lad, Robert needs his sleep. Aaron grins at himself, knowing all too well how much his boyfriend hates being teased with his age.

He carefully opens the door, trying to be as quietly as possible, but all his attempts to not wake up Robert are obsolete anyway, because the man in question is still awake and leaning against the headboard with a book in his lap.

Robert hasn’t noticed him so far and Aaron takes a moment to just stand there and look.

At first, of course, he gets his fill of the man. The flat hair he always wears after showering in the evening and that feels so wonderfully soft when Aaron runs his fingers through it. The relaxed face, all focused on the story he’s reading and the bare chest. Aaron loves the contrast of the tanned, smooth skin to the dark bedding. The long legs under the covers that Robert often wraps around Aaron’s hips to pull him closer, deeper, faster.

Then he lets his eyes wander across the room. There is this huge bed and Aaron remembers how Robert wouldn’t stop going on about buying a box spring bed. Aaron didn’t even know what the hell that was - he didn’t want to box in it, just sleep! Admittedly, their new bed is super cushy and Aaron loves it despite the king size monstrosity taking up half of the room, where there was just a smaller wooden framed bed before.

Of course it came along with two new bedside tables and lamps.

The rock band posters of his late teenage years had to give away for the wallpaper that had been Robert’s idea as well, but Aaron was the one who picked it and put it on. And for the first time ever Aaron notices he has now candlesticks on his drawer and two new framed pictures on the wall. The subject is totally random, just a boardwalk in front of the blurry lit up skyline of a city. The other picture shows the same diffuse lights, so they must have come as a set. It wouldn’t have been Aaron’s first choice of art, but they do look nice with their colours perfectly fitting the rest of the bedroom.

Everywhere, he spots little pieces of decoration, like modern shaped glass vases, perfume bottles and piles of books.

It hits. It hits that this isn’t his room anymore.

“Hi.” Robert is now smiling at him, so warm and welcoming, and his eyes are incredibly soft.

Aaron’s breath hitches, because he didn’t know.

How had he not noticed it before?

“Hiya,” he breathes.

Robert puts the book aside and opens his arms. “C’mere.”

In record time, Aaron gets rid of his clothes and all but crashes on his boyfriend’s waiting body with a happy sigh. Strong arms are being wrapped around him and Robert’s soft chuckle washes over him soothingly. All the tension leaves his body in the rhythm of Robert’s heartbeat.

“Missed ya,” he mutters against the freckled chest and gets a gentle kiss on his curls in return.

He’s home.

This once was his room above his mother’s pub, but Robert made it their home.

[morgue-ratt]

omg bestie from the dark prompts

Breeding/forced pregnancy with Lester or one of the twins? but lately I've been a huge slut for dark!Lester, @slasherlouvre can confirm

Hello!! And thank you again for the request!!!

I feel like I need to tell you that I wrote some of this at work and actively hiding my journal from my coworkers during my break. Anyways! I hope you enjoy.

Lester Sinclair in Happy Anniversary! /// 632 words

Warnings: Stockholm syndrome, breeding kink, dubcon

LESTER had brought home a cake, a true delicacy from the nearest occupied town. Lemon cake frosted with vanilla buttercream and pretty purple piping that read Six Month Anniversary, Lester and Sweetpea! in swooping script. He’d deemed your transformation from captive to somewhat willing partner worth celebrating and hey, you weren’t about to turn down cake. 

    It had been six months, half a year since you’d last tried to escape, since you’d been outside this miserable cabin without Lester at your side, keeping a vigilant eye on you. You hadn’t realized it’d been so long since Lester had to tie you to his bed with his belt when he was away at work, giving you a jack o lantern smile as he explained it was all for your own good, someday you’d understand that. 

    Someday had seemed impossibly far off as you’d tried to worm out of the belt securing you to the headboard but… as it turns out someday  had arrived. As you stood at the edge of the bed you helped Lester out of his tee shirt and ran your hands across his torso, bringing your lips to his and deepening the kiss as you unbuttoned his jeans. 

    Lester laughed; “Eager little thing, don’tcha worry none, sugar. I got whatcha need.” 

    You both scrambled to get undressed before you fell backwards onto the bed, letting Lester climb on top of you, covering you in his usual sloppy and frenzied kisses before pulling back and looking down at you with an almost starry look on his face. You smiled back nervously; “What?”

    “Ya just so damn pretty, can’t blame me fer starin’” He gave you a toothy grin as he fished himself out of his boxers and ran his hand down the length. 

    “Please Lester,” you pouted. He’d been teasing you all afternoon and you weren’t above begging, ready to cry from frustration.

    “Aw, I can never say no to you, can I?” He lined himself up with you and watched your face. “You want this, sugar?” He taunted. 

    “Yes!” You couldn't keep the desperation out of your voice. “Yes, Lester please. I want you, I need you, please.” 

    He couldn't hold himself back any longer and thrust into you, relishing your expression. You cried out in pure bliss as you finally had what you wanted. Your name falling from your lips spurred him on even more and he snapped his hips to meet yours, seething himself fully within you. 

    Watching you moan and feeling you clench so perfectly around him was almost overwhelming. You begging for him, for his touch, for his cock was almost a dizzying contrast to how… difficult you’d been only a few months ago. Lester pulled your hair and your lidded eyes focused on him as he asked; “You want me, sweet pea? You really want me?”

    You stumbled over your words, he could barely make out the specifics, just enthusiastic agreement and an almost sinister smirk crossed his face, but you were too lost in pleasure to be worried. 

    You wanted him. You really wanted him. He buried himself deeper inside you, unable to hold back a moan as you clenched around him. “Fuck, fuck. Yes!” The idea was making him crazy, you pregnant with his kid, showing you off and everyone knowing what it meant. You were his, all his. 

    Lester couldn't restrain himself any longer and he came deep inside as the final shudders ran through his body. He stayed above you, breathing hard. 

    You were suddenly taken out of the moment as dread settled in your chest like a dead bird. “Les?” You asked, staring at him with wide eyes. “Lester, what did you you--” You trailed off as you saw his sheepish smirk which gave you all the answers you needed.

[quicksandblock]

MCYT Demographic Survey Part 2 RESULTS

IT’S TIME!!!

Once again, thank you so much to everyone who participated! 1,654 people total responded to this - about four and a half times as many respondents as the first survey. It’s honestly incredible. I’m so happy the rest of you are as interested as I am in this stuff :D

The increased turnout is also why these results are being posted two days later than I’d intended. I want to give a HUGE thank you to my friend @quincepastey​ and my sibling @orestes-swimming​ for helping me out, and by helping I do mean they did basically all of the technical stuff for me, because my knowledge of spreadsheets was not up to the task. So thank you to Cupid for organizing all the data from questions 3 and 4 into something comprehensible for me, and thank you to Kal for making the charts! They are absolutely the MVPs and everyone reading this should go check them out. Thank you guys so much <3

Reblogs of this post are very appreciated. It would be awesome if the info about the results could reach everyone who submitted a response, so if you reblogged my first post about this survey, please consider reblogging this one as well!

For your convenience, here’s a link to the results of the first survey I did six months ago. Now - on to the results!

Question 1: What is your age range?

Compared to the results of the first survey, we can see that things have changed a bit! Specifically, the fandom has shifted just a little bit older. The solid majority of the fandom is still in the 15-17 year old range, but it’s gone down from almost half to closer to 40%. Almost a third of the fandom are ages 18-20, up from close to a fifth six months ago. 21-25 year olds have increased from about 10% to about 14%. And the youngest segment, 13-14 year olds, have gone from almost 20% of the fandom down to 12% - the sharpest change of all.

Finally, nearest and dearest to my own heart, there are now 26 whole people in the fandom aged 26-30 and 9 people aged 30+. Old Squad is growing, folks. We are... the 2% 😎 Special shoutout to the person who said their 15 year old kid got them into the fandom. I hope you know just how cool you are.

These results are interesting, but it’s also impossible to say how accurate the data is. This survey and the previous one were only posted on my blog, and they only reached a wider audience through the reblogs of my followers. So do these changes reflect actual changes in the demographics of the fandom as a whole, or is it just that my followers (and the people who follow them) have shifted older? To try to avoid this bias in the future, I may reach out to some well-known younger bloggers and ask them to reblog the next survey I do so that I can reach a more even audience.

Question 2: What is your gender?

Apologies for the small text, but there were so many unique write-in answers that I wanted to include them all. You may want to open the image in a separate tab for better quality.

In contrast to the age question, the gender spread of the fandom has remained pretty much the same. About half the fandom is still female, the nonbinary crowd has increased from 20% to 25%, 7% of us are male, almost 7% are genderfluid, and about 5% are agender. Just like last time, most of the write-in responses fell into the vague categories of either genderqueer or questioning.

No surprises on this one! The fandom continues to be overwhelmingly female and queer. Next time I think I’ll include genderqueer and questioning as options to try to catch some of those people into a formal category. All y’all are so valid, especially the person who wrote in their gender as “soup” <3

The results for questions 3 and 4 will be under a cut, because I don’t want to completely destroy people’s dashes.

Before I get into the last two questions, a couple notes. First, I want to explain how I came up with the list of creators, since a lot of people were either excited or disappointed by the fact that a few different people were on there.

On the last survey, this question was a write-in, and I had to transcribe and collate all the answers by hand to come up with the actual number of people who followed each creator. For this survey, I simply took the list that came out of the previous one and pasted it in! I also added a few people who no one wrote in six months ago but who are much more prominent now (Ranboo being the biggest example). So if you were excited to see your favorite small creator listed as an option, they were there because someone wrote them in last time! And if you wrote in your favorite small creator here, they’ll be an option on the next survey. The list is entirely crowdsourced and it will expand with each survey.

That said, the same also applies for more controversial creators. Specifically, I’m talking about CallMeCarson. Several people questioned my decision to keep him on the list - and to be honest, I considered taking him out. But in the end I decided to leave him in as an option for the sake of completeness and consistency with the previous survey. I want to emphasize that this is not me condoning his actions. But for the sake of the data, I felt that it was best to leave him in.

That said, let’s move on to questions 3 and 4!

Question 3: What creator(s) do you primarily follow?

So, it’s harder to compare with the previous survey on this one, and that’s purely because on the previous survey I didn’t have the help I did here. The chart I was able to make for the results back in October was frankly trash. Also, the fact that I split “followed creators” into two questions - primarily and casually followed - definitely throws things off. However, we can still do a certain amount of comparison!

The most obvious change is Ranboo. He straight up was not on the previous survey at all - I think he’d been streaming for less than a month at the time. Now, about 55% of respondents listed him as someone they primarily follow. The Dream SMP itself has also jumped dramatically. Previously, about 5% of people wrote in Dream SMP. That has increased to over half. Quackity has gone from less than 2% to about 30%. Karl has gone from 4% to 30%. Phil has gone from about 8% to a little under 50%. The SBI have jumped from 11% to over 40%.

Techno has gone from about 50% to over 60%. Tommy has gone from 45% to over 55%. Wilbur has jumped from 43% to 55%. Tubbo has remained steady at about 38%.

Dream has apparently dropped some of his following percentage-wise, falling from 50% to about 35%. However, George, Sapnap, and the Dream Team itself have all jumped from 10-12% to almost 30%.

I’m not going to go over the rest of the list, because that would just get way too long. However, I will drop a link to the spreadsheets of data for this survey and the previous one, so anyone who wants to can do some comparison of their own!

Question 4: What creators do you casually follow?

I won’t do as detailed of a comparison on this question, because there’s nothing to compare it to - this question wasn’t on the previous survey. However, it’s interesting to see how many more people follow Fundy, Nihachu, BadBoyHalo, Captain Puffy, Eret, Awesamdude, and Jack Manifold casually rather than as a primary favorite. Out of the top twelve, Karl, Quackity, Phil, and Tubbo are the only ones who don’t have a major discrepancy between the amount of people who follow them casually versus primarily.

I would be curious to hear people’s thoughts on why that’s the case! Personally, I would guess it’s a combination of each of their approaches to lore on the Dream SMP, the frequency and times of day that they stream, and the people they tend to make content with and be associated with by the fandom. I may go into that more later, but this post is already very long, so I’ll hold off for now. Here’s a link to this question’s spreadsheet for anyone who wants to take a closer look!

...And that’s a wrap! Good grief, this got long. Kudos to anyone who actually read the whole thing because I know my attention span would be challenged. I’m already thinking about the next survey - a couple people suggested that I add in questions about orientation and nationality, and while I want to keep the survey pretty tight in its scope, I am considering it. It would be even more data to process but it would be interesting to know!

I would love to hear people’s thoughts on these results! I’m only one person, so I know there’s interesting stuff I must have missed. Please, please feel free to reblog with your thoughts and observations! A lot of work went into this (both from me and from Cupid and Kal! Thank you guys again!), so I’m really hoping to hear what people think about it :D

I plan to reblog this and reply to some of the things people wrote in at the end, so stay tuned for that. And once again: thank you all for your interest in this project of mine <3 See you with another one in six months!