#she is stripped of all original wants and even just simple comforts and quite literally transformed into a cullen

[theglguidetowebcomics]

Full review: Girly

What’s Pink, insane, NSFW, hilarious, and somehow heartwarming at points? This comic is a ride and a half, and I’m genuinely surprised more people haven’t heard of this one… I’ve been wanting to talk about this one for a WHILE. 

So let’s talk about the elephant in this room… Because I think it just ate someone’s couch. 

Slightly NSFW review with spoilers below.

Girly, by Jackie Lesnick was a webcomic that ran between 2003 and 2010, (and really has some of those early webcomic hallmarks). Its monochromatic pink, vertical, with a poppy early cartoon feel. It’s also listed as a romantic comedy, which is… correct, but cuts a whole lot of what makes this comic good, short. 

This review was always going to be one of the 4 I really struggled with. And not just because I lost it the first time without a back up in a code glitch, got distracted by a pandemic, then procrastinated my way to finally making a second version in my new backup folder… No, well also yes but no. This was a comic I read when I was younger (and should NOT have read  when I was younger), and have always had a soft spot for. I’ll admit as much as this comic has its flaws or weird moments or just weirdness in general, its one of the few comics I’ve found myself rereading in its entirety more than once. And no matter how much I know it's coming, find myself sobbing, uncontrollably, at the final panel. There’s surprisingly a lot of heart in this comic, and a whole lot of honesty in just the direction the author took this weird little thing. But, first let me take of those rose tinted glasses as much as I can… (actually that might not work too well with a pink comic seriously whats with all these early 2000s lesbian comics being PINK?). And give this old comic a look and a bit of a dust. but , first...

Sex.

Getting to the point - page 3 of “Girly”

Girly is a NSFW comic. It’s not shy about it either. It hits the audience (and the main character) over the head with it literally in the first pages. It has sex positive characters, a sex positive world, some characters with… sex powers almost, and Dildos, a whole lot of dildos. Some even with smiley faces on them. It’s a pretty unavoidable part of the comic that makes up a large core of it’s humour and is baked into its wacky world. So if that’s not your thing, and it’s not really skippable in this case, you won’t like this comic.

But, if you’re alright with that part of it this might just be a hidden gem. Moving on.

Art

Artwork is always interesting in webcomics. They’re usually one man shows, have a weird niche / strong influences, and or usually go on massive journeys as the art improves. Girly is no different here. 

Girly starts out rough. Some poses are wonky and its a bit scratchy. Technically speaking it has a few issues, which is fine. Its a free webcomic, from the 2000s that didn't copy and paste faces. (Won’t name names, you know who you are). You can’t be too harsh on a free comic, though.

However, what the art style does, even early on is set the style and feel of the comic. Anime inspired faces, bold outlines, and blocky silhouettes that were really popular with 90’s and 2000s cartoons. It has a newspaper, manga comedy strip vertical style, too. It fits the style of story well as a poppy wacky story. It's the perfect art style it could take.

Its rough in the beginning, but moves on from its scratchy days, to loose pen brush, to finally a polished free hand poppy style. It gets more technically advanced as it goes along, but it keeps its core style throughout. It’s fun, a little unhinged, and just pares perfectly.

The one issue I have with the art is it comes off as a bit cramped. It certainly matches the energy of the story, but it also feels like it doesn't let the characters have any breathing room in the frame. It comes off as squashed, and can make some character poses hard to read. That’s the only complaint I can find though. The issue even fixes itself later in the story, but just very very close to the end. It looks great there, but the majority of the comic is a little cramped. Still that’s just a small complaint.

Nitpicking here but some panels need a lil more room

This a humour comic foremost. It's the biggest part of what makes Girly specifically Girly.

Humour

The humour is mostly wacky nonsense, playing off its insane characters, physics defying world, everything being dialed up to 11. It also works a lot like satire, poking at what influences it, and playing with cinematic expectations. The first page has Otra shooting someone into space on a rocket because they annoyed them, the first “adventure” the character’s go on is stealing everyone’s pants because they couldn’t find anything else to do. Then there’s the kidnapping adventures, knight trials, and slice of life shenanigans that happen. All of it as wacky as the last. I haven’t really found any other lesbian comics like it. Its not everyone’s tastes, but it is certainly unique.

If you’re into a willy wonka tunnel of over the top characters and plots, you’ll like Girly.

Characters

Girl is a LONG comic, it ran for 7 years. The art evolved, the story writing, jokes, and themes along with it. It was originally meant to run for only 50 strips... and it ended up with 764. 

so, there’s a lot to unpack.

Firstly, the premise of the story is somewhat simple. It focuses on Otra. The kinda straight man to the entire universe. She starts out almost depressed, out of place, and bored of the wacky inhabitants of her world. Until one of those wacky residents smacks her over the head with a giant dildo and won’t leave her alone for the next 7 years of run time. 

What follows is the sullen Otra being pulled around by the always cheery and zany nonsensical Winter as the sidekick for bizarre adventures. Otra’s depressive grounded view keeps the bizarreness funny, while Winter cuts through her negative attitude and causes a lot of the over the top plot. Leaving Otra to warm up to the world, and Winter to get less reckless as they balance eachother out. It’s a fun dynamic, and works as an emotional core of the story. No matter how weird the plot and rules of the world are, their relationship keeps the story somewhat focused and rewarding to see develop.

An example of bold wacky character designs from even early on

The comic isn’t just about them, though. As an ensemble comic there's plenty of side characters that go through arcs and beats as well. From el chubacabre, the man that woman find so irresistible that they sleep with him as soon as they see him; detective Clapjaw the street wise detective who is very bad at his job; Officer Hipbone and police guy from the cute P D; captain fist the ever popular bad at his job superhero who gets all the credit; the news reporter obsessed with captain fist; the woman with babies; Steak;  the elephants that just… appear and eat buildings; among many many others. A lot of whom also have nicely written character arcs and depth in later chapters. Many of the character however are simple and remain simple, which isn’t a bad thing. For such a large cast, having a diverse range of strange characters with strong identities and looks even if a bit simple stops it from getting bogged down. It strikes a good balance. Plus there’s plenty enough of characters with more depth later on. 

 All the character’s are insane, and over the top in a way that really sets up the world they live in and how it works... as dysfunctional as it is. There’s something very Cartoon Network about all the characters, but with some wider influences. something about  dumb characters, with very specific goals and quirks that work on their own physics to feed into the high energy insanity of the world. Its entertaining to read, and leads to a weirdly charming feel of the comic. 

Story and plot

For the bit people actually want to know about. What is it about?

Just a little bit of influences...

For the style itself the comic comes off as a mix between early 2000s slice of life-y anime, 2000s cartoon Network, and a dose of 2000s webcomic sarcastic action/adventure flare. It definitely has one of the most pronounced styles that I’ve seen, and even if it's very much a webcomic of it’s time it also goes a bit beyond that into something that feels personal to the author and honest. Its a batshit comic. But, it wears its influences on it’s sleeve and really plays with tropes and ideas the author found engaging at the time. It somehow comes off as refreshing in just how willing it is to go weird or niche for no other reason but because it wants to. It's what I appreciate most about the comic. It’s honest.

The overarching story of the comic is without a doubt about Otra and winter growing together as people. But with a comic that’s run for 7 years a little bit more happens in the journey, at least you hope it would. Girly runs on chapters, 15 in total (with 15 having sub chapters due to being the story’s climax), and each one of those chapters follows a different plot or adventure with Otra’s and Winter’s developing relationship gluing them together. 

The plots themselves are wild and vary a bit in quality. But for a long comic that’s understandable and expected. They go from solving elephant problems, super villains, body swapping, fantasy parodies, and all sorts of strange things. Sometimes a few plots drag and a few character arcs feel a bit bland. It still manages to be entertaining all the way through though. The plots themselves work to get the character’s to play off each other and explore the strange world it takes place in. Exploring evil teddy bears, or an entire town devoted to cheap gags. No matter what, all the plots work in fleshing out the world and pushing character’s out of their comfort zone or forcing them to change. There are some that are less fun than others, but none of them manage to be boring or useless. Which for a long comic such as this, is quite an achievement.

Conclusion

Girly is a hidden gem, Its an insane sex positive comic. A loose style and even looser physics. It’s bold and unabashedly itself. But, at its core it's about the love story of Winter, the wacky insane woman needing to slow down and open up, and Otra, a sullen woman who’s deemed herself only worthy of being on the outskirts of society. It’s two people growing together in a world that’s up to its ears in care bears, sentient dildos, earth shattering cloning, and jabs at 2000’s paste it comics. And somehow it all sticks together.

The characters resonated, at least with me, which may be the nostalgia talking. But by the end of the comic I can’t help but  think back on how long it took them to get there. The bits that made me laugh (a lot of them), the stupid parts, and the character’s arcs, as over the top they could be at times.  It may not everyone’s cup of tea. But it has a lot of heart at its core. (If you get past all the dildos). 

For all it’s flaws and weird bits. I still find myself going back to Girly. 

Maybe now, some more people will too.

[bffsoobin]

Windflower

01| 02|03|04|05|06

↳ after a heartbreak you find yourself in a small town looking for purpose. you find employment with Choi Soobin and his impressive ancestral home. when you start to fall in love again, there’s no way for you to predict what you find in the depths of the home and Soobin’s mind.

➤ hanahaki au, fluff, angst

Word Count: 2,438

Warnings: Light swearing, Soobin being a cutie pie, me not proofreading. I think that’s it??

A/N: This does include the writing that was part of the preview post I made, but it is the first official chapter of Windflower! Please know that genre and warnings will change with every chapter I post! I also don’t quite have an upload schedule, sorry about that!! Hope you all enjoy nonetheless! 

•:•.•:•.•:•:•:•:•:•:•:•☾☼☽•:•.•:•.•:•:•:•:•:•:•:••:•.•

Your car groaned in protest as you turned into the parking lot of the quaint diner. Giving the dashboard two loving yet harsh hits with the palm of your hand seemed to do the trick. Now silent, the beat up blue car seemed to quietly thank you as you settled between the white painted lines of a parking space and shut off the engine. It was a gray, overcast day but humidity hung in the air wherever you went, making your hair puffy and the back of your legs stick to the cracking leather of your driver’s seat. Heaving a sigh at the uncomfortable stickiness, you pulled down the mirror from the roof of your car to survey the reflection staring back at you. 

It’s a startling thing, to look at yourself in a mirror and barely recognize your face. Your skin was dull and starting to break out, the bags under your eyes had seemingly never been more prominent than they were in this moment. Your fingers danced over the darkened skin, wondering at what point of your trip you began to look so worn down. Was it the moment you left your apartment? The twelve hours of mindless driving with no destination in mind? Or had this degeneration begun the moment you found yourself completely alone in life? 

You snapped the mirror back up against the roof and rubbed your hands over your face. Mindlessly, you pushed through the items littering your passenger seat until you clasped the familiar quilted fabric of your wallet. As soon as you stood up outside of your car, a wave of dizziness sent you grasping at the top of your car for support. You needed food more than you had originally estimated. Your legs were still a bit shaky from disuse as you walked toward the small white building. Portions of the paint had peeled off in jagged strips to expose the tightly stacked brown bricks waiting underneath. The simple clear door displayed a sun-faded open sign with handwritten hours of operation. As soon as you pushed the door open, the smell of grease and fresh apple pie invaded your senses and your face involuntarily shrunk up in disgust. Another thick paper sign attached on a tarnished metal stand boasted a cheerful cursive that read “Please Seat Yourself!” You could hear a radio playing faintly from somewhere in the building.

Almost every booth in the rectangular dining area was vacant, save for one elderly couple sharing a plate of fries. The floor was sticky under your feet as you made your way to a booth, and whether the texture was a result of the humidity or a lack of cleaning, you couldn’t tell. Sliding into the booth was familiar, almost comforting as you thought back to all of the times you had slid into booths with your friends at dinner, or slid yourself into a booth at the coffee shop near your apartment to work on a paper. Well. Your old apartment. The thought of adjusting to past tense created a scowl on your face as an unsuspecting waitress approached your side. She cleared her throat and caught your attention. To your surprise, she was fairly young, maybe in her late 30s; and she stood in her bright blue blouse and skirt uniform with a cock to her hip and a serving tray tucked under her arm. 

“Hi, hun. My name is Melissa, what can I get ya?” the woman’s tone was deceivingly cheerful, given the slow restaurant and heavy air. You heaved a sigh and looked down at the thin paper menu. It wilted in your hand as you picked it up and you soon abandoned the idea of even trying to read through it. 

“Hi. A vanilla milkshake and fries, please.” The order was so simple that Melissa didn’t even write it down, just nodded and turned to head into the kitchen to relay your order. A dull buzz warned you of the beginning of a headache but you expertly pushed the feeling aside and decided to ask for a glass of water when she came with your order. Mindlessly, you began searching your phone for places to stay in the tiny town you had stumbled upon. This hadn’t been the kind of place you expected to end up for the summer, but you were never one to plan anything. Enthralled in your scrolling through motel listings, Melissa scared you as she set your order down in front of you. She caught a look at your phone and your face flushed in embarrassment. How much of an obvious tourist could you be? You asked for a glass of water in an attempt to shoo her away, but when she came back with a glass covered in condensation she didn’t leave. 

“Not from around here?” it was a rhetorical question, but you gave her props for trying to ease you into the conversation. You shook your head, not really caring to elaborate on where you came from as you shoved a few fries into your mouth. 

“I don’t usually talk to customers like this, but; well, we’re dead today and I saw you looking at places to stay on your phone. I don’t recommend any of them. Especially not to a young pretty girl like you. Most of them are way too pricey for their rooms. And the Moonlight motel is literally run by a druglord. He’d gobble you up,” she shivered at her own words. 

“Well, where should I stay, then? Unless I missed a Best Western on the way in, I don’t have many other choices,” you deadpanned, hoping to hide the nervousness that was rising in your stomach. If you didn’t stay here, where would you go? But then again, why do you want to stay here so bad in the first place? You took a slurp of your milkshake as you contemplated. 

“Look, it’s sort of a town secret, but you remind me of my niece, so I’ll just tell you now. There’s this estate- gated, two story house, old timey stuff, gorgeous garden” Melissa waved her hands around as she spoke, chipped red fingernails putting on a show of their own. “It’s called the Flower House, actually. It’s been passed from generation to generation, since the town was founded. The boy who owns it now is just about your age, but he’s been living there alone since his cousin moved away for college years ago. He’s a lovely boy, we love when he comes into town, it just isn’t often.” you raised your eyebrows at her, trying to figure out how this mysterious boy and his ancestral house had anything to do with your housing predicament. “Long story short, he came around a few weeks ago looking for anyone who would be willing to help him keep the house and yard clean. No pay, but it’s free living in a beautiful home. And he’s not bad looking either.” she winked suggestively. “If you want, I can give you the address and you can go talk to him?”

You looked into her eyes, sparkling with hope of giving you a helping hand. “Okay, yeah. Sure, what have I got to lose?” Melissa hurried away to get writing materials as you continued eating with renewed vigor. 

As Melissa cleared your minimal dishes away, she set a ripped piece of paper in front of you that simply read;

“Choi Soobin, 476 Gardenia Dr.”

After paying and being sure to leave your helpful waitress a generous tip, you hopped back in your car and began your journey to discover the mysterious Flower House.

The drive through town was oddly peaceful, even with the grumbling of your car to accompany you alongside the pop songs on the radio. Air whipped into your windows as you drove by houses, small restaurants and one single chain grocery store where everyone seemed to be shopping. Stopping at an intersection with a single blinking stoplight, your phone instructed you to turn left. You passed the town’s schools, elementary and highschool; all huddled onto one campus with a large parking lot separating the two. The electric sign posted reminders of the last day of school for the students as you sped by. The farther you got away from the school, the older the houses became. Some were rotting apart, others covered in creeping vines. The street gradually slanted upwards as you continued to drive towards your destination. At the end of Gardenia Drive stood a towering home with a multitude of windows circling the entire building. A large chimney stood out on the top, one of the only signs of the home’s age; as the outside was wonderfully kept. The most impressive feature was of course the garden, for which the house gained its nickname. Your mouth hung open as you tried to fathom the sheer amount of flowers that were in full bloom on the front lawn. Blues, pinks, purples, reds and whites all stitched together in a beautiful quilt of florals. Some ivy was growing up the old wrought iron gates and the trunks of a few towering trees. While the growth made other houses look dated and worn down, the ivy here only added to the elegance that took your breath away. With your car parked on the road right outside, you exited your car to approach the gates. 

Fumbling with your hands, you navigated over the brick path leading up to the intimidating 10 foot tall gates. Despite the obvious history of the metal, a modern doorbell buzzer and camera system was installed just to the left of the entrance. It was harder than you’d like to admit to raise the courage for pressing the button. Your mind blanked as you performed the action, not knowing what to expect. A voice crackled through the speakers and made you jump. 

“Who’s there?” a smooth voice inquired. Suddenly you were unsure of what to say.

“I, uh. I’m Y/N. A waitress at Russ’ Diner told me to come talk to you about an um.” your mouth was suddenly going dry. “A living arrangement?” A small exclamation of understanding was music to your ears. 

“Okay! Hold on, I’ll be right over to the gate!” The static disappeared with the voice. You looked down at your phone out of habit and realized you had no reception. Figures, as you were sort of in the middle of nowhere. It didn’t matter right now anyway. You put the device in the back pocket of your shorts just as the gate began creaking open and welcoming you onto the property. You could faintly make out the shape of a body making its way toward you through the dense trees. 

When he stepped into your line of sight, sunshine managed to peek through the thick blanket of clouds that had been permeating your entire visit and bask him in a wash of gold. He was tall, with long legs covered in the material of light wash skinny jeans. The knees were a bit dirty, and you recognized the stains as a mix of grass and dirt. He was wearing a simple white t-shirt that clung perfectly to his wide shoulders and showed off his defined waist. 

Not only was he dressed in a way you definitely didn’t expect, but his looks threw you even farther into surprise. His face was evenly tanned, and not a single blemish could be found. Suddenly, you became all too aware of the dismal state of your own complexion and fought the urge to bring a hand up to cover your face from him. Dark, hooded eyes examined your form as you stood awkwardly on the path and waited for his next words. He seemed amused by your lack of introduction, and chuckled a little as he asked, “Y/N?” 

Hearing your name broke the spell that his beauty had put you under and you nodded. His face lit into a smile as he beckoned you further onto the land with a waving hand. You followed him closely and caught his words as they floated in the wind back to you. “I’m Soobin. This house belonged to my great-great-great uncle and his wife. Well, wives.” He chuckled to himself as he led you into a gazebo. Soobin settled into one of the wooden chairs situated around a matching table and gestured for you to sit in the one across from him. A pit of nervousness built in your stomach at the close proximity between the two of you. The table was only three feet wide, and Soobin’s long leg stretched in front of him and decreased your distance even more. Up close, you could see the permanent upturn of the corners of his mouth, and the sparkle in his brown eyes.

His honey brown hair ruffled in the breeze that passed you by and he closed his eyes at the feeling for a moment. “So,” he began suddenly, “you were at Russ’? Who sent you my way for the job?” He clasped his hands together and rested his chin on the new structure. He blinked owlishly as you took a deep breath. 

“Yeah, I just came into town for the summer. Melissa served me and she told me that all of the motels here are pretty shit,” Soobin laughed and nodded at that, and your heart skipped a beat. “So she gave me your info. Said you might be able to give me a better place to stay if I helped you out.” 

“Ah, I see. Melissa is right, though. Those motels are awful. I definitely wouldn’t want to see you staying there.” He appraised your face for a second while he paused. “If you want the job, it’s yours.” He stated as if it were the most casual thing in the world. You sputtered. 

“Wait, what? That quick? You don’t even know anything about me! I could be a murderer!” He laughed openly at you now, and the sound stirred an emotion in your stomach you hadn’t felt in months. 

“Well, are you? A murderer?” 

“No! Of course not.” Soobin nodded and crossed his arms over his chest. 

“So, can you clean? Cook a decent meal? Drive to the city for groceries? Water some plants?” You nodded at every question he raised and watched as his smile upticked more with every bob of your head. 

“Then you’re perfect. Welcome to the Flower House.” He stood, frame towering over your still sitting being and offered you a strong looking hand. Ticking his head toward the massive home behind him, he grinned. “Tour?”

[delaneytveit]

Like the Ocean

its Lance’s birthday!! Here’s a little fic I literally thought of while trying to sleep last night! I hope you guys like it! 

“So these things-” 

“Relics, Lance.” Pidge corrected him again. 

“Yeah, those. What exactly makes them so important? And why do we have to get them now?” 

Allura sighed, obviously annoyed at Lance’s reluctance to join the mission. Why couldn’t he just do as he’s told for once? 

“You were the one that felt so insecure about your place on the team.” She didn’t mean for it come out as harshly as it did, and it caused her to wince though she knew she had to continue. “To obtain these relics, each of you must undergo the Trials of the Paladins. If you succeed, you return with the relic. If you don't...” 

“We don’t return, do we?” Of everyone on the team, it was clear that Lance was to one who most wanted to return home, and it broke her heart to think that she was the one keeping him from that. But she also knew that he had to be strong. Only the strongest may be a paladin, and if a little homesickness was going to keep Lance from being the Blue Paladin, then he shouldn’t have been chosen in the first place. 

Her silence seemed to answer his question, as he didn’t push anymore. 

“I have the utmost confidence that you will all return.” She spoke finally, and though shaken, Lance sat up straight and attentive. He could do this, she thought. 

The next varga was spent in preparation, briefing each of the paladins on where they would be landing to reach their respective trial. She could not give them their actual task, for she didn’t know. It was part of the Trials that only the Paladin participating would be aware of their task. Soon the Paladins were on their way to their respective planets. 

+

To say that Lance was concerned was well, and understatement. He knew the importance of this mission, despite what Pidge and Keith may say, he did take it seriously. But he couldn’t get the idea out of his head that he may not even be the true Blue Paladin. 

He had spent many late nights wondering why Blue had chosen him, wondering why him, out of everyone else, and wondering if he really was just a temp until someone more worthy came around. 

After all, he was only a cargo pilot. 

Despite Blue’s constant reassurances flooding his mind, that he could in fact do this, he wasn’t completely convinced. There was however one thing he knew for certain, he would give his life for his team. He would complete this mission for them. 

The planet he landed on was definitely not what he expected. A lush green planet with rivers and springs that created the most intricate pattern in the ground. It was beautiful. 

He followed the tracker to a clearing on the planet, just past a grove of what looked like orange trees, if it wasn’t for the weird pastel blue of the fruits. In the middle of the clearing sat the only evidence of non flora inhabitants. A large stone building surrounded by a courtyard of mosaic - like marble. It was beautiful really. 

He circled around it and landed Blue just on the outskirts of the clearing. 

“Okay Lance, you got this.” He took a finally steadying breath before standing up from his pilot chair and made his way out of the cockpit and out of Blue. 

The first thing he noticed when he stepped foot on the planet, was the florally scent in the barely their breeze. It smelled of roses and jasmine and honey. He took his time enjoying the scents as he made his way to the building, that as he approached he realized looked more like a temple. 

An alien, with long dark purple hair and bright pink skin met Lance at the steps to the temple. Any other situation, Lance wouldn’t have hesitated a pick up line, or even a suggestive joke towards the being, they were honestly breath taking. Contrary to popular belief, he knew quite well that there was a time and place for such a thing, and this was neither the time, nor place. 

“Blue Paladin, Welcome. We have been expecting you for many Deca-Phobes.” They spoke, their voice soft but he could tell there was a haste to it. “Follow me.” 

He did, he followed the guide deep into the temple before stopping in front of a large stone door. 

He watched as the guide knocked twice on the door before a voice called out from the other side for them to enter. 

When he entered, he was immediately surrounded by a group of aliens that looked almost identical to his guide. He was so caught up in the surprise that he hadn’t had time to fully comprehend that they were stripping him of his armor until he was left in nothing but his underarmor. 

“Wha-” 

“You have no need for that here.” the voice came from behind him, he turned to see a figure dressed in the brightest colours, hair a silver grey, and skin a dark blue. Save for those variations, he could tell that this one was of the same species as the others. “This is a place of peace and reflection, Blue Paladin, Guardian of the Water.” 

He let them lead him to another room, perfumed with incense that reminded him of the jasmine he had smelled outside. He let them undress him before entering the steaming bath that stood before him. He let them dress him in their silks as this was not the place for armor, he must be at his most comfortable for the trials. 

Despite how easy it was to do all of this, how much he enjoyed the pampering and relaxation, he knew that the trials would never be this easy. He was right when the original guide handed him a cup of tea. They had led him into yet another room, this one empty except for a stone slab in the middle of the room.  

“Your trial to to enter Krywon and fill this vial with the water of the Alkori, the most sacred river.” 

“Seems simple enough.” He did as instructed and sat on the slab of stone, a plush blue pillow at the head of it. 

“It would be dangerous to think so. Krywon is in your language, The Land of the Dead. only the dead may enter.” 

Lance felt all the air release from his lungs, so this was it then. He looked towards the tea that was being placed in his hand. 

“So this then, it will...” 

“Kill you? Yes, it will be quick and painless. Almost like falling asleep. However, the properties will only have their desired effect if you drink willingly. If say one were to force it onto you, you would be stripped of any chance of returning to the land of the living.” 

Lance nodded before looking back up at the guide. “And how exactly do I return?” 

The guide gave him a small smile before placing a chaste kiss on his forehead. 

“That you must find for yourself Blue Paladin.” 

They stood back and looked at him expectantly. 

Lance stared at the light Carmel color of the liquid, at the steam coming from it. I can do this. And so, like in the cockpit of the Blue Lion, he took a final steadying breath. Before he could hesitate he emptied the cup into his mouth, and swallowed. The bitter taste of the liquid overpowered the burning sensation on his tongue. 

“See you on the other side.” he gave the guide a small smile, which they returned as they helped guide his already lethargic body down to a laying position. 

His eyes were getting heavy and his breathing slower, he was sure that in any other situation he would have begun panicking, but here he would not. He could not. And so with a smile on his face, he looked to the skylight and let the rays of this foreign sun wash over him. 

“You will do great things, Blue Paladin.” 

The sound of the guide’s encouragement was the last that he heard before he finally closed his eyes. 

+ 

As with everything, Lance was the last to return. The others having already eaten dinner by the time he finally made his way into the Blue Lion’s Hangar. 

“Lance!” Pidge yelled barreling straight for him the second his feet touched the floor of the hangar. “Where were you?” 

Lance laughed hugging her back, Hunk making his way over to the two with tears in his eyes. “We thought something happened to you.” 

Shiro suggested that they move to the lounge so everyone could relax and hear of Lance’s trial. 

Lance listened as the others told their stories first, a bowl of food goo in hand that he shoveled into his mouth. 

He heard of Keith, who was forced to climb to the tallest point on an actively exploding volcano. His quest to retrieve a singular rock, still hot from the magma but cold to the touch, the markings of the Red Paladin engraved by the lava. 

He listened as Hunk told his story of his journey into the deepest cave on his planet to relieve a crystal. He joined in the laughter at Hunk’s description of his fight with the giant insects that inhabited the cave. 

Pidge spoke of her trip through a dense rainforest to retrieve the rarest flower that existed on that planet. Apparently only one blooms every 20 deca-phobes. 

Shiro’s was the scariest tale. The thought of having to travel to the highest peak on a planet and attempt to catch lightning in a bottle shook Lance to his core. 

“So what about you, Lance?” Hunk was all too excited to hear about his friend’s trial. 

Lance sat for a moment, deciding where he should start the story. The beginning is as good of a place as ever. 

“Wait wait wait... you mean to tell me that while the rest of us were hauling ass through dangerous territory, you were getting...pampered?” Pidge was beyond belief, no wonder this guy took so long, he probably took a damn nap and forgot he had places to be. 

Lance chuckled at that. “Yeah I guess, my trial was to retrieve this.” He held up the small vial of the swirling liquid. It still looked the way it did in the river, pastel blue and sparkling with minerals. 

He let the team gape at the liquid, it was beautiful. It took a bit for even Allura to calm down.

“No, but really Lance, how did you get it?” Shiro knew there had to be more to the story than Lance just sitting on his ass. 

“He probably just walked outside, you heard him, there were rivers all over the place.” Keith scoffed, getting over his initial amazement. 

“The water inside, it's from this specific river. I guess it's like their most sacred of whatever.” Lance sighed, there was no way to truly convey the importance of the water without showing them the source. An action he refused to even debate. “Its called the Alkori.” 

“Did you have to go through a dangerous forest?” Pidge asked.

“Or a cave?” Hunk piped up.

Lance laughs, but there’s an unease that can’t be hidden. 

“No, the Alkori...it doesn’t exist in this...world.” 

“What do you mean in this world? Where is it? Did you go to another alternate reality?” Pidge was practically bouncing up and down in her seat as she rambled. She only stopped when she realized the length of silence that came from her friend. 

“Lance?” 

Lance looked up from his hunched shoulders, wiping the tears that threatened to run from his eyes. 

“Lance, where was it?” Shiro placed a comforting hand on Lance’s shoulder, clearly something was bothering him to make him act such a way. And Shiro was way past concerned. 

“...the afterlife.” 

Keith laughed at that, a hearty chuckle before realizing that he was the only one. “The afterlife? Really? And what, you just walked right in there?” he spoke, quick to compose himself. 

He watched as Lance shook his head, “No living being is allowed to cross into Krywon. The land belongs solely to the dead, only the dead may enter.” 

“...so how did you get there? Or did you get a ghost to do your bidding?” Hunk half joked. He didn’t like where this was going. His friend, his very much alive friend was sitting right next to him. Clearly he had something up his sleeve to get the vial. Clearly he couldn’t enter, he was alive. 

“Only the dead may enter.” Lance spoke softly, almost a whisper. “So I had to become one of them.” 

The room was quiet, no one believing what they were hearing. Even the mice had stopped their squeaking, looks of concern pointed towards the Blue Paladin. 

“They gave me this tea,” he continued, “God, it tasted horrible, like microwaved pedialite. But it was effective.” 

The silence was deafening, it reminded him all too much of his time spent among the dead. If the quiet scared him before, now...it was terrifying. 

“20 minutes.” he stopped, taking a shaky breath. “You could say that I was legally gone for 20 minutes. But God, it felt like hours, days even. I wasn’t sure if there would even be anything left for me to return to if I did come back.” 

“...you...you died?” Hunk stared at his best friend through blurry eyes. The man he’s known since they were seven. The kid that even despite his bad days always seemed so alive. 

Lance nods, taking another shaky breath. He refused to lift his head again, refused to let them know that he almost gave up, that he couldn’t even last 20 minutes being dead, when others spent eternity. 

He was alive, now. 

He was here, now. 

He did not let his team down. 

“It was the only way.” 

He kept his eyes on the bottle held in his hands, the swirling hues of blue and grey that he had literally given his life for. 

“When I was there, I met this woman, I guess you could say we kind of have like a cult following now.” He waited for the tell tale laughs or eye rolls from his friends, but received nothing, all of them much too focused to the fact that their friend had entered a world the only way he could. “She made me realize what it actually means to be the Blue Paladin. Why blue chose me in the first place.” He let his voice taper off as he remembered her. The sad girl who saved his life though he couldn’t save hers. 

“That’s right!” Pidge all but yelled, startling the entire room. “We never got to hear about what qualities the Blue Paladin has, because Lance-” 

“couldn’t keep his mouth shut? Yeah. I know it now. At first I thought she was fucking with me, but the more I thought about it, about you guys. It actually made sense.” 

“Blue Paladin, Guardian of water, flexible in both mind and body, adaptable-” 

“calm like the streams, playful like the tides, yet relentless like the waves. With a loyalty that knows no bounds,” Allura rose to her feet and took the few step towards Lance before kneeling in front of him, her hand pushing his face up gently so sea blue eyes met galaxy magenta ones. “This paladin brings balance, and steadiness to Voltron.” 

Lance reciprocated her smile, before bringing his hand up to meet hers and puling it away from his face. He placed the small vial in her hand, “You missed one.” 

Confusion filled her as she tilted her head, “No I don’t think I did, those are-” 

“With a protectiveness that will be the death of him.” Lance spoke carefully. 

Lance was surprised when Allura reached up and wrapped her arms around his neck, Hunk and Shiro were quick to follow, and soon, everyone was surrounding Lance in a tight embrace. He almost couldn’t hear Coran over the layers of bodies circling him.

“Protect as you may, Lance, but stay alive. That would be enough for all of us.” 

[trashfor-imagines]

My Senpai | 4

Ushijima x Reader

Summary: You’re Goshiki Tsutomu’s older doting sister, second year at Shiratorizawa and captain of the girl’s track & field team. At your brother’s first practice you sneak in to support him and end up meeting the impressive force that is his captain. Warnings: None really. Mentions sex. Spoilers: We’re encroaching on manga territory. Takes place after Karasuno v Shiratorizawa.

Author’s Note: Sorry for not updating in forever! I lost my original chapter and got discouraged. I started rewatching Ushijima episodes to refresh my grasp on his character.

[1] | [2] | [3] | [4] | [5]

-

It was a shock. You never thought Shiratorizawa was capable of losing this year. Ushijima appeared unaffected, but that was just him. It was always mental for him and he had the ability to act with a sort of chivalric grace whenever faced with conflict. God, your boyfriend was really cool. Your brother, however, it broke your heart to see him cry.

After the award ceremony, you raced down to wait by the bus. Ushijima walked out first, his head held high. Noticing you, he simply rested his large hand on your head before getting on the bus. Quiet hello’s and thanks for coming’s were whispered to you. Your little brother could barely make eye contact, the last one to get on the bus. Reaching for his hand, you gave it a squeeze before letting it go and heading for the bus that brought the cheer squad.

The ride felt long. You spent most of it listening to music and playing with the sleeve of Ushijima’s spare team jacket he’d given you shortly after dating. You smiled and chatted occasionally with your fellow students, but the topics of discussion were focused on how Ushijima and the third years were doing. They expected you to have the answers and quite frankly, you thought it was obvious.

Getting back, you made your way into the gym to see the team working on serves. You sat quietly on the sidelines and watched as everyone gave their all, letting out their frustrations from the day. You never knew you could find the slams of volleyballs to be comforting to where they could put you to sleep. Or maybe you were just exhausted. Either way, you woke up from being carried.

“Wakatoshi,” you mumbled, snuggling closer to his chest.

The two of you snuck into your dorm room, stripping down into your underwear and entangling under the sheets. Ushijima’s body was like a radiator, warm and comforting.You ran your fingers through his hair patiently. If he wanted to talk, then he would. Until then, you whispered little praises to him, pressing kisses to his shoulder between sentences.

“I won’t lose again,” he spoke quietly.

Months passed and things continued to go well between the two of you. They were better than ever honestly. During Christmas you visited each other’s families at his request. You didn’t even have to prompt it! Your parents loved him. They thought he was quite the protector type and approved. His mother ended up accepting you once she realized you were intelligent and genuinely loved her son. Your personality had definitely thrown her for a loop.

Graduation was soon approaching and the two of you decided on a five year plan together. Long nights were spent discussing goals and dreams, wondering if they would be compatible with one another. He intended on going pro right after school; the Schweiden Adlers seemed most likely and they were based in Oita. You still had your third year of high school to finish, but you were applying to Kyushu University for architecture. It was in Fukuoka and closer than your other options to Oita. It was just a couple of hours by train or car. You also had plans to stick with track and field and keep your spot on the national team for as long as you could. You both had your eyes on the 2016 Olympics.

For a year the two of you managed to maintain a healthy long distance relationship.

After graduation, there were farewell and congratulatory parties almost every day, but the most fun for you was going apartment hunting, together. It was like a vacation, enjoying the beaches and hot springs. You spent a week staying at his apartment where the lease was ending soon. He said the two of you needed a new place together, that his current apartment wasn’t fitting enough for you. On your third day in Oita, Ushijima decided on the place, a 2 bed and 1.5 bath townhome instead of a one and one apartment. When you told him it was a bit expensive, he said it was perfect because he wanted you to have your own space at home to study for school without being bothered by him. You cried right there and he handled it like a champ. The two of you moved in a week before you started school.

“Wakatoshi!” you called to him from the rooftop terrace. He appeared, sticking his head out from the sliding glass door. You wiped your cheek, smudging dirt across your face. “Can you help me move this bag?”

He slipped on his outdoor shoes and walked over, lifting the bag of dirt and moving it to one of the two raised garden beds that he built earlier today. The two of you had plans for a small vegetable garden. “I thought we were going to plant seeds after lunch. I’m almost done cooking.”

“I know, I just got really excited. I was staring at your beautiful work and couldn���t help myself,” you cooed, giving him starry eyes.

Sighing, he set the bag down where you needed it before taking your hand and dragging you back inside. “We’ll do this after lunch. Together.”

“Aw, are you jealous I tried to start before you?” He didn’t say anything in response, making you grin. “My handsome farmer, I’m so sorry.”

After lunch, the two of you filled the garden beds with dirt and carefully planted seeds for carrots, lettuce, tomatoes, peas, basil, parsley, rosemary, thyme, marigolds, lavender, and scarlet plume celosia. Ushijima had done quite a bit of research on complimentary plants. Hours really. Hours spent doing online research and drawing diagrams of how the garden should be set up for its fullest potential.

You were watering one of the garden beds when you caught a glimpse of Ushijima squatting with a spade in his hand. It was so cute how concentrated he was and how much attention he was giving this simple task. Biting your lip, you sprayed him briefly. He blinked, as if not comprehending what happened and looked up, as if blaming the sky. A muffled laugh escaped you. You went back to watering the garden bed as he went inside. Minutes later you heard the glass door slide open and didn’t pay much mind to it. Suddenly you felt chilled and were thoroughly soaked. Moving your hair from your eyes, you looked up to see your boyfriend holding a bucket over your head.

“Wakatoshi!”

Soon you were off to university, moving into a small dorm room with a single suitcase. Your dorm was littered with photographs of you and Ushijima and it was hard to cope with the fact that you wouldn’t see him through at least the rest of summer, maybe not even until the end of September if your school’s track team did well.

For a month you and Ushijima would call or FaceTime every night and tell each other about your days. He was quite proud of the garden the both of you planted and would send you progress photos and then describe what he saw in fine detail. Honestly, you didn’t realize your boyfriend was capable of being so invested in something other than volleyball. There were a few times you tried spicing up your phone calls, but honestly Ushijima didn’t get it. He was terrible at phone sex. It was fine though. Summer break was.... just a few months away.

It was a Saturday night after track practice when you got a phone call from your boyfriend.

“Wakatoshi! You’re calling early. I haven’t gotten back to my dorm yet,” you spoke, excited to hear from him.

“(Y/N), I’m lost.”

Your brows raised in surprise. “Lost, how? Do you need me to look up how to fix something?”

“No, I’m somewhere on your university’s campus.”

You felt your heart skip and you immediately ran toward main campus. “Okay well tell me what you see.”

In thirty minutes you were in your dorm taking a shower and Ushijima was reading the newest shonen jump he picked up at the train station on your bedroom floor. You came out with your hair in a towel and one of Ushijima’s t-shirts you had stolen. He set aside his magazine and pulled you down into his lap, holding you tight.

“I’m so surprised you came. I’m so happy,” you squealed, burying your face into his neck and running your fingers through his hair.

“I missed you too. I can stay for two days, but then I must go home.”

Pulling back, you let your fingers run over the stubble on his jaw, pouting a bit, “So what do I owe this short visit?”

His stare was intense and a faint blush kissed his cheeks. “I recognize that a few times you’ve tried to... initiate some things on the phone. I admit I’m not very good at it, so hopefully my presence now can make up for my... lack of experience.”

“Wakatoshi,” you breathed out in surprise, gazing at him with so much love. He literally traveled almost three hours because you were horny without him. Pulling the towel from your hair, you knocked him over onto his back as you jumped him.

Visits like these happened sporadically and soon it was fall. Track and field season was over which meant you could make your weekend visits home to Oita. You’d leave Wednesday nights and head back to school on Sunday mornings. Despite the second bedroom serving as a private study for you, you found yourself curling up to Ushijima almost always - as long as he wasn’t busy.

This was life for a couple of years. The two of you had become quite the duo. In fact, throughout your relationship, you had only argued about two things:

You broke your phone once and he wasn’t able to contact you and he freaked out from not knowing what was going on.

He forgot your anniversary and cancelled on your date for volleyball and you laid in on him for it.

Things were great until the 2016 Olympic qualifiers came around. You had broken a metatarsal in your right foot at the first qualifying meet of the 2015 season. You were out for the next eight weeks and even then, you weren’t going to be in shape to qualify because you had to go through physical therapy and get your athletic abilities up to par. Your coach told you that staying on the national team, going pro, and qualifying for 2020 was still possible for you. It didn’t stop the feeling of complete and total devastation that wrecked you and you were jealous.

Ushijima wasn’t sure of how to help you; he’d never seen you so vulnerable before, never seen you so sad, but he did his best to support you, even if that meant being a punching bag. He was consistent, despite things he had going on for his own Olympic goals.

After two months it was summer break. You had to go through physical therapy and you moved back home to Oita, transitioning to online classes for the second term of the year. Because Ushijima’s love language was different from most, you found yourself being forced to do your PT homework exercises, no matter how down and bratty you got.

“Wakatoshi, I don’t want to do stairs,” you groaned, curling up into a ball on the couch.

“You must, or you won’t be ready to start training any time soon,” he replied simply.

Your foot was throbbing and you were on your period, and everything just felt like shit. All you wanted was to watch anime and eat the small bag of chips you had hidden under the blanket you were under. Ushijima had been so strict with your diet and honestly all you wanted were trans fats, sugar, and carbs. With ease, he ripped the blanket from you, exposing you in your underwear clutching a bag of Calbee honey butter flavored potato chips.

“You should get up and walk the stairs now,” he said, prying the bag of chips from your hands, “if you want these back.”

Throwing your legs over the couch, you winced, balling your hands into fists in frustration. You got up, favoring your left foot, which he noticed. He walked up the stairs and sat on the top step, waiting for you to follow. Biting your lip, you moved slowly, trying to ignore the pain. There were 14 steps to the top and you had to go up twice and down twice. You were doing fine until your second trek up the stairs. It was a misstep and you slipped and you were clinging to the stair case, crying. It was embarrassing for you to be like this in front of him. This sweet giant quickly enveloped you in his arms and had you lying on your side of the bed, gently caressing your foot as you sobbed through it.

When you were calm again, Ushijima left for a while before returning, dinner in hand. The two of you sat in bed and had the meal he made in silence. You’d barely eaten, but you waited until he finished before you curled up to his side.

“I’m so sorry, Wakatoshi.”

“I would be surprised it you took this easily. You’re a competitive person. It’s one of the things I find attractive about you,” he replied. He wrapped his arm around your shoulders, his fingers gently running up and down along your own arm.

“Really?” you asked, feeling shy. He hummed in affirmation, glancing down to make eye contact. Smiling, you played with the hem of his shirt that was beginning to ride up. “What else do you... find attractive about me?”

“You’re thoughtful, kind. The way you pursue your passions and you’ve encouraged me to pursue my own; you believe in people wholeheartedly.” A thoughtful expression settled on his face as he spoke on effortlessly. He paused and his brows furrowed briefly before settling into a relaxed expression. “You’re beautiful.”

Placing a kiss to your forehead, you watched as he got up and headed to take his evening shower.

While you couldn’t compete, you concentrated on therapy and school and finished your courses early for your degree. You picked up a simple class to stay enrolled until your four years at school were up*, this way you could go back to competing your last year of university. The summer of 2016, Ushijima took you with him to Brazil. Japan didn’t win, but the competition was incredible. You got to meet with track and field athletes and it reignited your passion for competition.

You’d graduate come spring and then your focus was on 2020 Tokyo.

-

*In Japan, early graduation doesn’t exist. It was explained to me that if you attend a 4 year university, you have to be a student for 4 years before graduating, even if you complete your degree early.

tag list: @hihiq​

[tvdversefanfiction]

Origins of Magic

Warnings: I do not own the rights to the television series “The Originals”, “Vampire Diaries”, or “Legacies” and do not own any of the characters within the TVD universe, I am making no profit from this and have no intention for this fanfiction series except for readers to enjoy. 15+ Mild to Strong Violence, Strong Language, Witchcraft, sexual scenes, and sexual references. F/F, F/M, M/M, Other.

PART ONE HERE

Chapter 11 - A Hybrid in Greece (Part Two)

Klaus and Davina stood within the underground tomb located somewhere underneath the city of Athens, Greece, standing in front of the now half opened stone coffin where a man who looked like he was in his late 40s lay, the man in question being the supreme witch of the light coven, the coven of Divinity, Auxentios who lay there lifeless, although it may have been the supreme witch’s body, another spirit was about to inhabit it, the spirit of Kayne Black. “What the bloody hell?” Kayne wondered, as he opened the eyes of his new body, before climbing out of its coffin. “Of all the comebacks in all of the worlds, how the hell have I wound up here?” “Wait, you did not expect Estevan to dump your body in this ancient witch’s?” Davina asked, confused by Kayne’s shock, as Klaus remained too shocked himself to talk. “Well I figured things would be trickier this time around considering I have no body, but I did not expect to be in the body of my sister and brother’s possible father that’s for sure.” Kayne admitted to the harvest witch, as he now stood in front of her, in the body of supreme witch Auxentios. “I guess Estevan thought it would level the playing field but considering my mother was the woman who put Auxentios here in the first place…wait where is Estevan?” “He...” Davina began to say but was quickly interrupted by Klaus. “He sacrificed himself to bring you back he said he did not want to hurt another innocent that you should not feel guilty, he’ll be happy knowing you get to live again.” Klaus said, finally managing to speak, his urge to comfort Kayne overweighing his shock for the situation. “Oh,” Kayne said with a sigh of sadness, as tears formed in the eyes of the man he was now possessing. “I guess he really committed to that no killing anybody stick…he will be missed but his sacrifice will not go in vain.” “He will be missed?” Davina questioned her fellow witch. “The guy was your husband and all you have is he will be missed?” “Do not get me wrong I am deeply saddened for the death of a dear, incredible and trusting friend but a marriage of love it was never.” Kayne explained to her. “Our ill advised marriage was a power play because of Estevan’s status among the dead it turned into a great friendship that lasted centuries, one that taught me many things about my own mortality but love was something I learned not to mess with a long time ago…” “Yes, on that note we should really get to your plan on killing this bitch of a mother of yours and getting my siblings back from her imprisonment.” Klaus stated, eager to change the current conversation, eager also to get back to their main mission. “Save your siblings and my siblings Niklaus, I’m not back within this mortal realm to be played like a puppet, your siblings will be saved as will mine but first I need to make a quick stop within this city, to see an old friend who just so happens to also be an old foe.” Kayne replied to Klaus, making sure the importance of saving his family was known to both the hybrid and Davina, while cryptically also pointing out that their time in Athens had not quite come to an end.

Kayne Black stood there in nothing but a towel within his hotel room in Athens, looking at his reflection on the glass of his hotel window, uneasy with the sight of someone else looking back at him, as he began wondering if he could ever get used to this new reflection or even if he’d have the time to do so considering his brother Magnus would try to kill him once again, and if he did not their mother sure would. “If it makes you feel any better this older version of you is almost as hot as your original body.” Klaus stated after vamp speeding his way into Kayne’s hotel room. “Yeah considering I was all too recently burned alive, hot is probably the worst thing to describe my new body.” Kayne joked, as he turned around to face the original hybrid. “I was hoping Estevan wake make the most of what my sisters and I broke and found a way to bring me back in my own body, however, I’m sure he had his reasons for my current state and whatever they are I cannot argue with them considering it cost him his life.” “Do you remember that day you and I got lost in the woods?” Klaus asked him, catching the witch off guard with his question. “Those woods were treacherous I got lost in them many times, if it were not for spells and potions I’d still be lost in those woods.” Kayne replied, pretending not to know what Klaus really meant. “I mean the day we got lost and chose to remain lost for what felt like days…” Klaus reminisced with a soft smile on his face. “How we completely lost ourselves in each other, left no surface of the others untouched…and longed to spend all of eternity in that glorious moment.” “I tend not to look backwards, especially on beautiful lies…I may never have truly loved again after you Niklaus but Estevan gave me something you could not, a true love, perhaps not the one in stories but his loyalty was everything to me.” Kayne admitted to his former lover. “The focus now is for Estevan’s sacrifice to not be in vain, that we do not allow Annabella, Kol, Primrose, Rebekah or Elijah to die as well as him.” “What makes you think your mother has taken your siblings hostage too?” Klaus questioned the witch. “She is their mother as well as yours and it was not her who killed you but your brother…” “As for Magnus we killed him first so that is nothing more than a petty grievance to be worked out brother to brother, however, my mother is diabolical in every way and I cannot nor will not allow her corrupt my sisters any further.” Kayne responded to Klaus, knowing his siblings were far from innocent, but refusing to believe they were as bad as their mother. “I am thankful you trusted me enough that I am standing here but I need to know that I can trust you before we go any further.” “Do you even need to ask?” Klaus wondered, hurt by this, but understanding it at the same time considering their complicated past. “I may not have the same heart to break like you did once before but my siblings are the only constant left in my life so I am going to trust you Niklaus Mikaelson but I promise you my mother will seem like a wall flower in comparison if you so much as harm a hair on my siblings’ heads.” Kayne both threatened and promised the man he once loved.

Klaus, Davina and Kayne had found themselves in the backroom of a local restaurant, located within the city of Athens, having walked straight through the busy restaurant, the customers and employees instantly enchanted by a spell that took Kayne mere moments to cast as they walked through the restaurant and into the back room, as they now stood in front of a seemingly plain brick wall. Kayne gave Klaus a not so knowing look, not so knowing because Kayne was now wearing a new face, which told Klaus what he had to do, and wasting no time at all, Klaus began charging at the wall with his superior speed, attacking it again and again until he broke through it revealing another shocking scene for both Klaus and Davina. “I think I’m going to have to move to Athens!” Davina declared, as she and Klaus looked on in shock as they saw a room covered in ancient marble from floors, walls, to ceiling as a pure golden fountain with no water springing from it. “Okay can we spare the dramatics this time around and just get to the bloody reasoning as to why the hell this whole theatrical charade is needed right now!” Klaus snapped at Kane furiously, having had enough of his time in Greece. “It is simple enough inside this fountain holds the last remaining bone of the real original witch, the one who granted the first covens their power.” Kayne informed them both as he walked into the marble room and began walking over to the fountain made of gold. “Wielding into a blade made of bone, I believe that the hollow’s followers or foes copied our method of thought where that is concerned…however this blade wields the power to strip any witch of all their power forever not to mention delivering a killer blow while doing so.” “It’s always knives or daggers with this family.” Davina complained, unamused by Kayne’s reveal, as Kayne pulled the bone blade out of the gold fountain and held in his hands, looking at it with admiration. “So, all we have to do is stab the bitch and all our problems are solved?” Klaus asked Kayne, completely unconvinced. “If it was that easy why did we have to resurrect you?” “Because if I am right the blade’s power can only be harnessed by the blood of its descendants which means its either made for Auxentios or Sapphire…let it is not the latter considering that I’m no longer of her blood in this body.” Kayne continued to reveal to both Davina and Klaus, as he began cutting his hand with the bone blade, waiting for a reaction from the blade. “It does not take a genius to work out no sign is a bad sign here…” Davina guessed out loud, only to quickly be silenced as the blade made of bone began levitating itself out of Kayne’s hands before launching itself into his chest, causing Kayne to fall onto his knees as he struggled with the pain, making a worried Klaus vamp speed over to him. “What’s happening?” Klaus frantically asked while trying to hold a clearly in pain Kayne. “This part was not mentioned…” Kayne said as the pain inside of his chest suddenly stopped, and he slowly stood back up. “With the risk of being too literal I think this body I’ve found myself is now officially the weapon against my mother.”

Greece had brought many surprises to Klaus and Davina including the introduction and death of the mysterious necromancing Estevan, the revival of Kayne in the body of ancient witch Auxentios and a trip to a local restaurant to find a mystical dagger which had now implanted itself in the body of Auxentios which was also possessed by the spirit of Kayne. However, Greece was not having all the fun, or better put all the magic was not residing within the city of Athens, as meanwhile in the city of New Orleans, Rebekah had found herself trapped within a dungeon under the compound after a showdown with the supreme witch Sapphire Black. “I cannot believe that after everything your mother has done, the fact you killed the bitch in the first place and her complete lack of interest over your brother’s death, and yet you are playing the part of mummy’s little golden girl.” Rebekah snapped at Annabella, who walked up to Rebekah’s cage door, holding a bag of blood for the original vampire to drink. “I have lived a very long-life Rebekah, a life even longer than yours and I have never met any witch anywhere near as powerful as my mother. It took Magnus and I all we had to take her down the first time and even then, we had luck and surprise on our side.” Bella attempted to explain to Rebekah. “She could fix what we broke without even trying and I’d never seen Kayne again…I cannot think of a fate worse than that…you of all people should understand that.” “What I understand Annabella, is the fierce woman whom I once loved has wavered over the centuries into a shell of who she used to be…you protected Primrose and Kayne by killing your mother and then your brother.” Rebekah argued with her. “That woman would have found a way to save her siblings and put her mother back in the ground where she belongs.” Before Bella had a chance to respond to Rebekah or think over the original vampire’s words, Bella had found herself falling to the ground unconscious, as Rebekah was shocked to now see Rose stood in Bella’s place, holding a rock in her hands before dropping it to the ground. “Listen blondie, I do not like you and you do not like me however, I hate my bitch mother way more and that bastard Magnus is going to die the moment I get close enough for what he did to my brother!” Rose revealed to the Mikaelson sister, making it clear to her enemy that they were now allies. “How about you and I show my dear mother who the real big bitches of this world really are?” “I cannot believe I am saying this Rose, but you are quickly beginning to become my favorite.” Rebekah said with a sinister smile, ready to get some revenge, Mikaelson style.

[star-light-fae]

The best example of a couple to describe Irisia and her husband Arcus is Jessica and Roger Rabbit. To quote Eddy Valient: “What do you see in him?” to which Jessica Rabbit replies: “He makes me laugh.”

As for Irisia’s initial origins, one could use the example of Ragyo and Ryuuko from Kill La Kill. But Irisia is not aware of her past or her heritage.

Some know that before Dakuryon, the Archdevas used to have a Queen. Some time long before the end of the Argon War and the loss of the Storm Barrier that closed off the Northern Arun region from the rest of Arborea, the Queen had a child, a daughter to be specific.

Unfortunately, this child was found to have no affinity for blood magic at all in her body. Because of that, she was left to be dumped in the garbage and most likely extra fodder for more blood magic and demokron experiments. Irisia’s father, a scientist to the Archdeva Queen, took the baby and attempted to run. Eventually he was cornered at the Storm Barrier by various guards who had given chase. He tried to forcibly cross the barrier but ending up losing his life as the gaps were not big enough for his size. Fortunately, the infant’s body was small enough to bypass the hole within the barrier easily. The baby was then found some distance away from the Storm Barrier within the rest of the Arun continent. 

This child was placed in an orphanage in Castanica and given the name Irisia. To this day, she does not know that she is actually an Archdeva by blood. Growing up without any love given to her, Irisia found comfort in the world of exotic dance. The least she could do was provide temporary comfort to those who needed it, as she never had such love given to her as a child. It became her purpose to give love to others so they wouldn’t have to feel the loneliness she felt. Being of Archdeva descent, her sexual stamina is quite high and she did much enjoy using her body to help make money to survive in the world. Even so, she never wanted to settle with a partner as everyone who asked for her to be their’s, all they wanted was her for just her body and nothing else.

When it comes to Arcus, his background is a simple one compared to his wife’s. Born on a farm, he found enjoyment in music and left his family to become a wandering musician. He had joined up with traveling bands here and there. 

Eventually, one of the groups he was with at the time, stopped in Castanica. Upon playing a gig at a tavern known for its exotic dancers, the man laid his eyes on Irisia as she waiting tables between pole-dancing. Needless to say, he was utterly smitten by her.

Arcus asked her out for a (in his words) “hot date”. Irisia was hesitant at first, but she agreed to meet him after work. She had dealt with Sugar Daddies and high-paying politicians who only wanted her for her beauty and body and not her love, but she decided to give Arcus a chance. 

During the time she was to meet Arcus, Irisia waited for him to arrive. When he did, she was surprised to find him dressed up...as a date. The fruit to be exact. A literal “hot date”. Needless to say, Irisia was utterly amused and smitten by Arcus. 

He cared about her as a person and wanted to make her laugh more than just have her for her body. After many enjoyable dates (that didn’t ever end with more than a kiss on the cheek and then lips), Irisia decided to leave her confined life as an exotic dancer and consort to join Arcus in his travels. With his music and her elegant dance moves, the two became a traveling entertainment duo and traveled around Arborea. the two took on the surname Enfys.

Eventually, the two decided to settle down in Kaiator and open a small entertainment business for the populace that was constantly at war as a haven for distraction from the difficulties of the Argon war. They then married and named their business: The Rainbow Emporium.

When they had their first child, Khaeden, the Argon war was getting dangerously close to the city. Fearful for their son’s safety, they sent him of to boarding school elsewhere where he could learn to be a warrior and soldier. They did not realize their poor son had to endure being hazed and bullied and develop internal homophobia. If his parents had known the struggles their son was going through, they would have removed him from the boarding school immediately. Despite this fault, they try their best to be good parents.

By the time the Argon War finally ended and their son had returned home, all grown up, Irisia and Arcus’s entertainment business had grown immensely. The Rainbow Emporium was now a dance school for exotic dancing, music classes, bar that also served as a strip club, and a store for dance clothing and intruments. Their business practices were focused on caring for their employees and making sure they were well off at home. They helped shelter domestic abuse victims and helped them get back on their feet. All their employees are well-paid and cared for. They are also LGBTQ friendly and strive to make both their employees and clientele happy as much as possible (though if the clientele is rowdy, they will be banned from the Rainbow Emporium)

Currently, she and her husband decided to have a second child and this time it was a girl named Aliyanra. Aliyanra, being half-human, did not have horns when she was born so she when she’s a teenager, she ends up having fake ones. 

Both Ali and Khae are embarrassed by their silly parents. You know those silly “sexy” costumes you can buy that are made with cheap fabric and horrendous? (Example: Sexy pizza, sexy santa, sexy, etc) Arcus and Irisia are most likely buying them and playing out silly roleplays in their bedroom, much to both their children's’ chagrin.

After the defeat of Dakuryon, the remaining Archdevas have been trying to regroup and find a new leader and while Irisia cannot use bloodmagic, whose not to say one of her children can’t...The broken Archdevas have done their research and have tracked down the Queen’s descendants. And they will make their move soon...

[insideedensgate]

Jacob Seed/Staci Pratt - Stripper and Sugar Daddy AU

This alternate universe has NO abusive content and it stays in NO connection to original relationship which is based on abuse and torture of various forms.

I do not support abusive relationships, nor do I condone that the original basis of this ships lies within such an abusive contact!

But, and because I think these two could probably be adorable, if moved out of their original universe (and being less abusive and inhuman in certain ways), I decided to try this alternate universe out.

With Jacob not being an abusive monster and Staci being of full control of his actions, his mind and his body.

I decided to inform y’all, that I do not support any abuse or non-consent plot and the basis of the here presented relationship in this piece is not based on any of this.

Thank you very much. x

please klick the keep reading to - yeah, keep reading

nsfw-ish

english is not my mother tongue

also, this was heavily inspired by Frank Ocean's “Pyramids”

Staci started working in that luxurious, upper class strip club in Beverly Hills two years ago

he was trying to get into police school back in the days but they eventually didn't accept him to a lack of physical condition

so he started to train more to try again and eventually fell in love with dancing during that process

his best friend Joey Hudson, he knows her since high school, recently started her part time job as a bar keeper at Eden's Gate (she got a bullet in her leg during her second car chase and had to retire, caused by some nerve issues) and got him the job as a dancer

at first, Staci only wanted to stay for a few month and then find something more reputable, but he soon learned that the dim lights, luxurious and elegant interior as well as the loud music was everything he ever wanted in life

one evening, Grace had called herself sick for the week and it was Staci's time to shine on the club's main stage, he enters the club

Staci is overwhelmed by the red hair, the trimmed beard and the two thousand dollar Gucci suit (he's not a gold digger, he honestly isn't, but a beautiful man with a lot of money and a speedy car? He might drop his panties down a lil' bit)

he also immediately recognized this man as Jacob Seed, the older brother of Joseph Seed, the main investor of the club – and shit, he's fucked as the red haired man moves straight to his table

he only heard rumours about him once being a lawyer for war crimes at the UN and that had to retreat from his position, caused by some dubious incidents no one truly knows of and thus, he is now back in LA, assisting his younger brother John and his famous law firm Seed and Partners

there is some very unspectacular guy sitting right in front of Staci and he feels goosebumps rolling over his body as Jacob literally makes him leave by one of the club's bodyguards – just by a simple dismissive wave of his hand

he sits down and unbuttons his jacket and leans back in the expensive armchair, the whole suit is dark with light pinstripes and a fucking light blue bee pattern

Staci flushes as Jacob grins at him sublimely from below, two fingers gesturing for Staci to come closer

and he drops down on his knees, it is like he is fucking high like that Amanda girl from table 6, when she smokes that stuff Timothy brings in - everything just happens so naturally, the way he founds himself crawling towards the edge of the table

and god, is that man beautiful, his hair looking like liquid copper in the dimmed lights of the club, the dark blue of his suit melting together with the burgundy red of the chair and Staci's world is spinning as he presses his chest to the cold, solid table while pushing his hips up

“Aye, Peaches”, the not so unfamiliar man hums after he let his gaze wander over Staci's body a few times, “Knew you were what I was looking for when I came through that door.” “And what are you looking for, Sir?”, Staci smiles nonchalantly, rolling on his back and aching it, hooking his fingers playfully under the waistband of his expensive lace panties, soaking up every second of the blue eyed gaze darted onto him

when he leaves the club late at night, he has three thousand dollars to spent on his own and he hurries the fuck up, considering the cities' areas he has to cross to get home (he is actually so fucking scared he is getting robbed, but he also doesn't think of taking a taxi either)

 the second he comes home he hides the money under his bed and locking the front door twice and he is pretty sure he just heard gun shots down the road

the next day he takes Grace's place again at 8pm (“If that girl isn't seriously ill I'm gonna rip her extensions off”, Mary whines and Staci laughs at that) and there he is again, 9pm on the second, front seat

“Good evening, Peaches”, he mouths as he sits down and opens his jacket, the suit even fancier today, yet still suiting his red hair and Staci's cheeks turn red, his smile shy and Jacob genuinely laughs at that

and that's the game they play for the following two weeks, cat and mouse, Staci dancing for Jacob and only Jacob (“Nice to see you again, Mr Seed”) even though there are other people around they feel so isolated from the world when they see each other, Staci getting paid like he has never been before with the goal to impress the oldest Seed a little bit more every night

one night Jacob isn't around, the front seat taken by some guy who's sixty or what, and Staci honestly feels humiliated (He has found out, during his exceptional research, that Jacob is in his late 40s, which surprisingly doesn't disgust him at all, no he thinks of it as so attractive, “He is way too hot to be that age”)

when he arrives back in the dressing room there's a small white card, with neat black ink inviting him to Providence the same night

underneath the card is a slim black box, containing a fucking 800 dollar suit in dark green velvet

when he arrives there (this time he didn't even had to consider calling a taxi - someone, Jacob's driver as it becomes apparent, is picking him up in a black Mercedes), the whole restaurant is empty and Jacob is sitting there all by himself, and Staci shouldn't be so surprised but he probably booked the whole restaurant

it is one of the most comfortable date nights (he has to calm the fuck down, he is something like this guy's personal stripper, don't get too emotionally attached there - so he tells himself) Staci had in a long time, they talk about this and that and he eventually, just a little bit, feels his stomach tingle and becoming warmer by the minute

Jacob drives him home, after he had Staci mumble the address three times because he was too ashamed to speak it out loud - “So, this is where you live, Peaches?”, hand softly caressing his thigh, which feels so right “Uh, yes. I know it's not, I mean like - “, “Quite dangerous around here, are you sure you don't want to come with me?” and he would love to, but Jacob has already done so much for him, he just doesn't want to be a burden or something like that

he lays awake until the early hours of the next day, worrying if he pissed Jacob off, if he'll ever see him again

but he does, the next time he has a shift, Jacob is there again, taking a sip of his club soda – with scotch he assumes - on ice as Staci walks out on the stage and all the previous anxiety falls off his shoulders

and lord, he can see Jacob's arousal so clearly from up there, the glass in his hand near his mouth slowly tarnishing, the way he spreads his legs is so obvious it makes a familiar heat rise in Staci's belly

that night, they fuck for the first time and Staci doesn't want it to end ever, everything feels so fulfilling, so right and divine, like it was always meant to be this way, the way Jacob fills him up, makes him sore and leaves him greedy, begging for more and screaming out his name in pure, innocent pleasure

when he wakes up, some five star, many Michelin star prized hotel has delivered an overwhelming amount of fruits and pastries for breakfast and he feels like he is still at sleep, dreaming in his small ass bed in his flat, when he sees Jacob standing at the oven in dark blue silk underwear, brewing coffee and making pancakes

“Mornin' Peaches, I hope you slept well”, and the way he emphasizes his words makes Staci so greedy, washing his still tired body with the hot pleasure of lust

Jacob takes him right there, on the kitchen counter two times before they actually move on to breakfast and it is so peaceful, a lot of laughter and shared stories and Staci suddenly realizes, nearly choking on his strawberries, that it feels like fucking home

after a few days of seeing Jacob on a daily basis, fucking and making out, going out for expensive dinner Staci finds a small box once again

it's a key and an address somewhere in South Park, 20 minutes from the club

“Jacob, no. No, I am not going to accept that”, and even through the speaker of his phone he can hear that beautiful laugh that makes him hot all over, “Why not, Peaches? I thought it would suit you. Also, I don't have to be afraid any more that you'll get shot or robbed – or both, or worse.”, “Jacob, there's no way I'm gonna accept this fucking penthouse”, “Language, Peaches”, Jacob warns, but Staci can literally see the smug grin on the other end of the phone

“Fuck it, he's officially your sugar daddy, no matter what you say, Stace!”, Grace laughs when he tells her that his address changed, and Hudson nearly drops one of the fresh polished glasses. “No, he's not! He was just concerned!”, Stacie tries to protest but he knows she's right and he should feel dubious or shady or like a hooker but he doesn't at all

“Good evening, Peaches”, Jacob whispers into Stacie's ear, his trimmed beard tickling the back of his shoulder as he presses gentle kisses on the soft skin and he leans into the touch, carefully dropping the brush he just applied some highlighter with

“Daddy's boy is looking good”, Jacob continues, sending shivers of anticipation down Stacie's spine, “Do you promise to look even better when I pick you up later, Peaches?” “Yes, Jacob”, Staci whispers and smiles at him in the mirror “Good boy, keep your beautiful head up Peaches. And don't forget that I love you - Staci”, he winks and leaves the dressing room and Staci to himself, blushing in a deep red with a whole fucking swarm of bees starting a love-riot in his stomach

[spamzineglasgow]

(HOT TAKE) Quarantine Phenomenology: The Curious Case of Daddy Conte, by Denise Bonetti

‘Teenage by design’? SPAM founder and editor-in-chief Denise Bonetti, tapping into her Italian roots, takes us on a whirlwind journey around the lustful theme park that is meme space in the time of quarantine. For many, especially those who aren’t on the frontline as key workers, self-isolation is thrusting us back into a rude adolescence. Having exhausted our usual channels of recursive entertainment, where better to look than to the political (yes, wybi?!) heroes of meatspace to fantasise the intimacies and reassurances we’re otherwise deprived of. 

(CW: sexually explicit references)

> Comedian Dan Sebree tweeted that this whole quarantine situation is the closest any of us millennials will get to retirement. The joke is funny because it’s most likely true: the idea of people in my age bracket (mid-20s to mid-30s) ever retiring seems like a fairytale we tell ourselves to keep our boomer parents happy, something we play along to because frankly it’s easier than sharing the extent of our doubts in the future. (Find someone in their 20s who can say ‘when we all retire’ without a shred of irony).

> Sebree is right, most of us are playing retirees now. 80% of your salary to repot your plants, make sourdough, and fend off waves of existential dread here and there: not too shabby - if you used to have a stable job, that is. Things obviously aren’t so chill for quite literally everyone else: NHS workers, shopkeepers, supermarket employees, people on zero-hour contracts (which make up around 9% of all the UK workforce under 25), gig economy workers, freelancers by choice, people whose employers can’t be bothered putting them on payroll, and have therefore decided for them that they’ll have to be freelancers - the list goes on. 

> Yet beyond the retirement vibes, there is a stage of life that seems even more appropriate to represent the mood that this pandemic isolation has been creating. We are feeling manic and depressive, anxious and idyllic, bored and obsessive; we have been dying our hair and we’re allowing social media challenges and email chains to make a comeback ( 😩). We’re raging that we’re being told how & when we can go out, and we want to see our friends like our life depended on it. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but we’ve all gone back to being teenagers. (For some of us, the transformation is even more literal: everyone who’s had to move back to their parents tag yourselves.)

> In ‘Glitching the Collective Mind’ a three-part essay published on SPAM a few months ago, Dan Power noted how ‘spending too long online (or rather, too long outside of the real world)’ can easily give way to ‘feelings of melancholic or manic absurdity’ by way of ‘saturating the mind’ with the infinite possibilities of content. In the same essay, Power reflects on the nature of the virtual space this content is localised in, what Grafton Tanner has called the ‘virtual plaza’: a non-place through which ‘we drift and consume, lulled by the saccharine tones of muzak’. Power argues that what the ‘non-local’, ‘homogenized’ structure of the virtual plaza takes away is precisely that something around which the occupants can build a sense of identity: ‘When the features which distinguish one place from another are removed, stable sense of belonging and understanding are removed with them’. 

> Although Power could not have predicted this current weirdness, I am interested in his linking the internet’s hypertrophic, endless-scroll format, eradicated from any sense of place as we know it, to its capacity both to strip us of our identity, and to reduce us to a melancholic, manic mess - a passive, wide-awake anonymous content-consumer, lying in bed between waves of anxiety. A teenager who is grappling with their identity because they’re not quite sure where their emotions are coming from - literally and metaphorically.

> Critic Amanda Hess has recently written in The New York Times about the comfort of playing childhood video games during the lockdown. ‘It’s not so much that I miss my childhood’, she writes as she becomes re-obsessed with her 11-year-old self’s favourite game, Myst, ‘as that I feel seized by it’. And I, currently taking a break from a 12-hour The Sims 2 Bon Voyage build-mode marathon to write this, can only confirm such claims. 

> I’m sure the fact that we gravitate towards this simple kind of pastime has a lot to do with the fact that no one can be arsed engaging with highbrow content during such traumatic times. (Let me take a break from following the dead count on BBC News by watching Battleship Potemkin, said no one ever.) However it’s not only that we’re drawn to accessible content, it’s that we are drawn exactly to the kind of activities that our teenage selves used to be into. (Otherwise, explain why The Sims 2 is having a resurgence - sixteen years after its release [!], and not either of its two successors.)

> If nostalgia is generally understood as originating more in the disappointments of reality than in the draw of the object of nostalgia itself, then the grimness of the pandemic is also to blame for the current millennial vintage trends. As Hess observed elsewhere, the quarantine has forced us into lockdown with the very devices designed to amplify our obsessions, cranking up that very fixative impulse that makes adolescence the curse and blessing that we all know.

> In Italy, where the full lockdown has been going on for over 5 weeks now, the signs of this 30-going-13 epidemic are in full swing. Everybody knows about Italians competing with each other on who can sing the cringiest medley of 00s songs from their balconies. But there’s something even more beautiful that the Italians are doing, and The Answer May Shock You. Platonic love has infiltrated every corner of Italian social media, and the object, I tell you, is no one other the prime minister Giuseppe Conte.

> Just like teenage love, the obsession is platonic socially-distant just as much as it is carnal. ‘Giuseppe Conte’ has reportedly been amongst the most searched terms on Pornhub over the last few weeks. Spurred by sheer investigative rigour I decided to carry out further research on the platform, and can confirm that the PM-themed content abounds. The material itself varies from adorably chaste, SFW picture montages of the prime minister (‘ITALIAN PRIME MINISTER GIUSEPPE CONTE MAKE YOU CUM HARD’, as uploaded by user TheMinisterOfLove), to the literal hour-long speeches that the PM has delivered to the senate, to more visually explicit heart-reacts to the government’s directives (‘HUGE CUMSHOT WHILE LISTENING DADDY GIUSEPPE CONTE’). 

> Pornography aside, the memes have taken over the Italian gram and Twitter. It all started when influencer and entrepreneur Chiara Ferragni regrammed to her 19.5m followers a post by the Instagram page @daddy.conte back in March, erroneously crediting it to @lebimbedigiuseppeconte (Giuseppe Conte’s Little Girls) - now two of the most popular hormone city pages dedicated to the PM. The content is genuinely too much and too good for me to present exhaustively, but I need to show you some favourites so you can get with the vibe (all from @daddy.conte):

[‘Italian daddy locks his girls home’]

[’From today, I declare your smile illegal’]

[’There’s a smile underneath that face mask’]

[’hey baby’ / ‘daddy come to me, my parents aren’t home’ / ‘WHAT’]

[’don’t you dare get close to my girls’]

[’who wants a goodnight story?’]

[’Hi gorgeous, if you’re reading this it’s because i’ve been trapped in a wormhole the only way for you to free me is to stay home until 4th April please do it there is no time i know you can save me baby’] [lol at how quickly this has aged]

>The spinoffs quickly proliferated, I’m talking dozens and dozens of pages devoted to the PM’s fatherly aura and classic good looks - most of them with not a huge amount of followers; a sort of decentralised, massively participatory network of adolescent erotic surplus. Some of these pages specialise in things like the PM’s smile or dimples (for the more faint of heart), inscribing the phenomenon in that Renaissance love lyric convention of praising the object of love’s beauty through a catalogue of their body parts. 

>A similar sexy/cute type veneration also seems to have developed radially around other Italian political figures such as President Sergio Mattarella, however predicated on a completely different set of desirable traits. Conte’s cult is all about a sort of sub/authoritarian kink power dynamic: ‘Dom daddy tell me what to do’. (Problematic? Potentially. However, wholesome? Absolutely). Mattarella’s cult is inevitably linked to the Italian President’s political function, that of protecting the Constitution, coordinating the three branches of government while heading none. A sort of hands-off grandaddy figure there to break up fights, if you will. Combined with his sweet mannerisms, the result is more of a GILF, sitting-together-on-the-porch kind of desirability, as hinted at by the following meme: (@lebimbedisergiomattarella)

> As a testament to this systematic linkage between quarantine and teenage emotional turmoil, the same dynamic of desire has also developed around political figures in the US. Foremost examples are New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (who we now think might have nipple piercings), and Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear - a ‘clean-cut sex symbol for the coronavirus age’ according to this Salon article explaining how ‘his calm and empathetic leadership’ (read: wholesome daddy energy) have thousands of thirsty people in self-isolation lust after him (via memes, of course).

> The ethos of memes in general is already teenage by design (hypertrophic, impulsive, obsessive, thriving on a sort of possessed desire towards repetition that I refuse to compare to masturbation). But there’s something special about the dreamy, sublimated, Platonic, cute-aggressive nature of these memes in particular that makes them the epitome not only of #quarantinevibes, but also of the virtual plaza’s mood, more broadly.  Quarantine has exposed and legitimised, exacerbated and normalised, the internet’s power to make us regress into horny, anxious blobs. And memes like these are the very crystallisation of that ambivalent process. 

> Analysis aside, we love a meme (always already), and we love a femme fandom moment. We stan the birth of a wholesome masculinity mythology for 2020. I can think of worse Internet Utopias. Now back 2 The Sims.

-

Text: Denise Bonetti

Lead Image credit: @onlyconte (Instagram)

Published: 17/4/20

[guyawks]

For the Want of a Nail

Why did someone have to go and invent fingerless gloves?

When I’d originally decided on what I would do this week, it seemed pretty innocuous. After all, I didn’t have make any prior arrangements or worry about people bailing on me. Women all around the world did it everyday and none of them experienced any consternation about the process. Not to mention it was always something I kind of wanted to do. Painting your nails was just another avenue of self-expression and I was certainly down with that. I’d pierced my ear, shaved my head, tattooed my skin, worn colour contacts and experimented with facial hair. I’d been to Pride. I’d visited drag bars on at least three separate occasions. I was hardly the embodiment of raw, beer-swilling masculinity.

So how did I now find myself hands-deep in coat pockets, shuffling around public transport in my very own metaphorical straightjacket?

It’s not like I hadn’t anticipated that I might get cold feet/hands. So naturally, I planned a contingency. Worst came to worst- if the glares and comments from strangers were too much to bear- I could throw on my gloves and no one would be any wiser that I was wearing a full coat of Silver Moonlight underneath. It was still early spring. Gloves were still a thing. My plan seemed equally foolproof as I darted out the door this morning, a pair of winter gloves balled up in my bag. It is only as I board the tram and the first pair of commuter eyeballs strike me that I remember. Fingerless gloves. I always wear fingerless gloves. Crap.

I take a seat on the relatively empty tram. No one else really seems to care about my nails, thankfully. It suddenly occurs to me that I’m living in Melbourne, my apartment a mere 10 minutes out of the city. This was supposed to be the mecca of alternative hipsterdom. What on Earth was I afraid of? Just as the thought starts to take hold in my mind, I spy a pair of curious eyes trained on my nails. They belong to a middle-aged woman in a black down jacket, her brows quizzically furrowed. Ah yes, that’s what I’m afraid of. Even though her eyes have now relocated, the damage is done. I’m already doubting my immersion idea and I don’t even have any gloves as a security blanket. My silver, glitter-encrusted fingers retreat into my pockets.

The significance of keeping my nails hidden gnaws at the back of my mind. I remember that first Caitlyn Jenner interview with Diane Sawyer, where Caitlyn revealed that she used to paint her toenails and keep them concealed. The first episode of her docuseries, where the camera would often linger on her painted magenta nails in a way uncharacteristic of talking heads: a symbol of how far she’d come. It occurs to me how much meaning painted nails have and just how much of a self-representation they are.

Suddenly my nails feel off, like I’m hijacking something important that’s not mine. Even as I reassure myself that I’m doing this in good spirits, I can’t shake the feeling that this is more of a dare than an experience, akin to a bloke wearing a bra to a buck’s night. A thousand questions spin around in my mind as the tram shudders to a halt at my stop. The doors open, unleashing an exodus of the now crowded tramcar onto the street. Unlike on my other commutes, I take in every pair of painted nails I see. There’s French tips and nail art and stiletto nails that would make Lana Del Rey proud.

And then it finally hits me, the reason why they’re wearing their nails proudly and I’m not. Their nails are a reflection of them. Mine aren’t. I’d chosen mine for shock value. Someone else had painted them for me.

If I’m going to wear nail polish, I need to wear the nail polish I would wear.

Back when cracked nails were all the rage, I remember hounding my sister about how awesome she’d look wearing them. In hindsight, me playing backseat beautician was probably my not-so-veiled way of saying how much I wanted to wear them instead. To me, cracked nails were the cosmetic equivalent of those little porridge eggs that magically turned into dinosaurs when you added milk: a harmless and fun novelty. Yet, it had never actually occurred to me in my 14-year-old mind that I’d ever be in the position to wear them and get away with it.

Now that I’m actually invested in the process of painting my nails, it occurs to me that I don’t even know where to begin. I’d always seen sections for them at pharmacies but I can’t imagine a pharmacy having a particularly large selection. I finally settle on the idea of Big W. I know they have a cosmetics section and if anywhere would have a great, affordable selection of nail polish, it would be a giant department store.

The cosmetics section of Big W is divided into five or six stations, each for a different major brand. I stand there overwhelmed. How had I not already decided on the brand I was going to buy beforeshowing up? I inconspicuously file down the aisle, giving each section the Goldilocks treatment. Maybelline- too expensive. Garnier- not enough range. L’Oreal- don’t they test on animals or something? Revlon… this could do it. A large display of wholesome and diverse colours spans out in front of me- it’s a nail polish display that takes up at least a third of its section and has at least three separate categories. The prices? 14 dollars each, apparently. I bite down a wave of stinginess. It’s an investment, Jeremy, it’s an investment.

The freedom feels maddening, like I’m a child picking out face paint at a strip mall. It’s a curious question to ask myself: what colour do I love enough to literally paint myself with? It has to be blue, I think instinctively. Ice blue, specifically. My eyes immediately begin skimming the shelf in search of it. I’m fascinated with how something as simple as this, as mundane as this, is already filling me up with glee. I’m going to get to look at my favourite colour all the time.  I’m wondering how arbitrary it is, that something this hedonistic is limited to one gender, when-

There.

A greyish, slate blue. Not too bright, not too dark and just matte enough. If you could bottle an overcast day at the beach, this would be it. As I turn the tiny glass bottle over in hands my mind flashes back to that episode of Lizzie McGuire where Miranda gets arrested for shoplifting. Self-consciousness in over-drive, I grab a shopping basket from the pile near the entrance and dump a few non-descript items in it. Good. Now at least if I look questionable, I’ll look law-abiding and questionable. I go back to the Revlon aisle, basket in tow. The blue alone isn’t quite enough. It’s too plain and straightforward, so I add a standard black bottle to the mix. Perfect.

Half the battle won, I turn around to pay at the makeup counter like the sign had directed me to. Except- I can’t find the makeup counter. Yep. As I pace through the Pac-Man maze that is Big W cosmetics, the vital “cosmetics counter” only becomes more elusive. After nearly two straight minutes of attracting the subtle attention of onlookers, I manage to locate an abandoned money till shrouded by a pile of boxes. Wait, so there’s no cosmetics counter? But the sign explicitly said that I needed to come here to pay for cosmetic products.

“There’s no cosmetics counter” chimes a grinning 20-something girl with dip-died hair, apparently sensing my confusion. “Just ignore the signs”.

I hushedly thank her, still taken aback at the sudden interjection.

“Oh and- nice choices” she adds encouragingly as I carry my basket over to the register.

I feel half-embarrassed, half-assured as I pay for my things. On one hand I’d come off looking like a complete novice, which is never a nice feeling. But on the other, I’d just found encouragement where I’d expected judgement. Maybe, this whole time, I’d been getting myself worked up over nothing.

I click open the first nail painting tutorial that comes up on YouTube. The perky voice in the video tells me that I need to start off with a base coat. I borrow a bottle of my mom’s that apparently doubles as a topcoat as well. This is starting to feel more like a game of Jenga than a beauty ritual. How many layers will I need to put on? Trusting the chirpy voice, I proceed to paint on a layer of base coat, followed by two layers of each respective colour on every other nail, and finish up with topcoat. After about 10 minutes of waiting, curiosity gets the cat- and the “cat” trawls straight through the wet cement I’d spent half an hour applying. Yep, my nails are still wet.

A further 30 minutes later, I sit back and admire the final result. It’s pretty sloppy. The colour flows out of and around my nails, swallowing up my cuticles.  My lack of patience is embroidered on every nail in the form of various fingerprints, indentations and scratches. Each surface undulates and ripples as if it were hand-painted by a tiny Jackson Pollock. If my nails were a colouring book, I’d have drawn quite decidedly outside of the lines. Yet, somehow, I love them. For the first time I’m actually grateful for this experience, for giving me the running jump I needed to get out of my comfort zone.

My following week wearing the 2.0 version of my nails is surprisingly enjoyable. The excess polish on my skin even moults off after a couple of showers, much like arthropod assuming its final form. Despite this, the rest of the polish somehow remains intact. Nail polish: 1, Entropy: 0.

Walking into my first lecture of that week with my nails on full display, I feel completely at ease. I stroll in- comfortably on time for once- along with everyone else and spot not even one pair of pupils aimed at my nails. How about the guy sitting next to me, sporting a magnificent mane of thick brown hair? Nope, he’s scrolling through Facebook on his laptop. It’s at this point that I realize that I myself hadn’t stopped to gawk at his long hair. Here we both are, defying gender norms in our own understated ways, and neither one of us could care less. Pulling my laptop out of my bag, I let my hands roam free. Be they clacking on the keyboard or resting inquiringly on my chin, my fingertips are out and staying out. It’s not exactly “woman wears pants in the 50s” but it feels cool to be a pioneer in my own miniscule way.

By the end of the week, I realize that I’ve pretty much dropped the guise of an immersion essay entirely. When people ask why I’m wearing nail polish, I tell them it’s because I want to: that’s not untrue, after all. The last day of my week comes and I finally receive a question from a friend that I’ve been putting off asking myself.

“So now that your assignment is done are you…is that it for the nails or…?”

I stop and think for a moment about the prospect of parting with my slate-blue companions.

One might be interested to know that slate, in addition to being a shade of blue, is also a low-grade metamorphic rock. What this means is that, despite its hardy appearance, slate is one of the finest-grained rocks around. In fact, a well-placed knock is enough to split apart its surface entirely. However, far from rendering it useless, this fragility uncovers a vast array of layers hidden beneath its surface. Slate is a surprising rock- an unconventional and sensitive rock but ultimately, one that is profoundly useful and unique.

“You know what?” I reply. “I think I might hang on to them for a few more days.

[juniperpublishers-fashion-b-blog]

Is ‘Items’ Exhibition Subversive? A New Exhibition at MOMA Dares to Explain and Show Fashion as A Design Object- Juniper Publishers

Introduction

A white T-shirt (item 106) on a dark gray background is not an art Object, but can be found in an exhibition on the sixth floor of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), in New York. The new exhibition that opened on October 2017, "Items - Is Modern Fashion?”, curated by Paula Antonelli, is a bold new reflection on the fashion paradigm of modern society today. Antonelli, disrupts the expectations of the fashion world to appear in all its splendor and glamor at one of the most important museums in the world. There is a great deal of doubt, if fashion lovers can accept it in the affirmative, because it breaks down common images and hard-built paradigms. The term “fashion” evokes images of supernatural glamorous marching models, with scant structures on their lean bodies whose sole purpose is to amaze the sharp-eyed journalists and critics. 'Fashion' is a verbal expression of something changing, which does not survive the dimension of time, and which has no essence or eternal quality. The exhibition creates the exact opposite of this view. While walking on the museum's display floor, the visitor looks around and finds that a high percentage of exhibition items are used by the visitors themselves. This is the white T-shirt that was first created by Hansa for the US Navy recruits in 1903. The white T-shirt as a symbol that repeats itself over the last century is one of 111 fashion items that show vividly that the things we use, for dress purposes in our Everyday life objects, are design objects that have inner truth that cannot be erased, and they have a real source, created at some point by a solid need. And this is a kind of truth embedded in them from the day they were born. We are mistakenly thinking that fashion is a rapidly changing cultural component, capricious and alternately replaced. The exhibition does not ignore this aspect of the fashion world, but it presents the historical fact that the entire form of change and intensive exchange occurs around fixed archetypes, and celebrates most of those items that have not changed substantially and survived many decades of life. The main argument that comes to me as an observer is that 'items' in fashion are like 'standards' in the world of jazz. There are thousands of versions of the standard such as 'Autumn Leaves', and there are thousands of versions for the fashion standard 'Trench Coat' (item 103). This is a simple argument, perhaps a trivial one, but no one has dared to present it in this way, toward the glamorous world of Fashion, and on such a major stage as the MoMA, which seems as a theoretical earthquake.Go to

Is Modern Fashion?

My mother use to say that “the word 'Modern' is no longer so modern.” Antonelli asks this question with bold and courageous action, not because she thinks it's not modern, but because she wants to make a new and powerful argument. Modernity is one of the elusive concepts in Western cultural theories, and it was born in the world of design and architecture. After 30 years or more of uncompromising attack on modernism by many theorists who define the attack as Post-modernism, Antonelli puts a huge banner above everything, with a big question mark. It uses Fashion as the best platform for this theoretical argument, to recreate ground truths for most of the intimate items we use - our clothes. In this way, Antonelli does not blame Post-modernism in the decadent state in which we are, but creates a simple and clear way on the history map of clothing, showing how to build anchors in this ocean. In the course of the exhibition's curiosities, in parallel with obsessive documentation of objects and items, a daring theoretical process takes place in the hall where the words “Modern Art” appear in its own name.The name of the exhibition corresponds to the former design exhibition at the museum, which dealt with fashion, curated by Bernard Rodovsky immediately after the end of World War II (1944), “Are Clothes Modern?” In the exhibition, Rodovsky complains about the fact that the garment as an object is rejected by the art world as an object of artistic creation. Antonelli, expands the question, in a reflective fashion towards the world of fashion itself. A review of 111 selected fashion items includes the cultural contexts and ground from which they grew, but also the sequence of their production processes, the material transformation they have undergone, their ecological impact on the environment, their ability to be produced in millions of copies as an industrial mass product. Those items expanded during the time into various unnumbered versions. In this sense, the reference to the eternal fashion items is like any other industrial product, which is perhaps the main force of the exhibition.And what is missing from it? The exhibition does not emphasize the narcissistic side of fashion, nor does it adorn fashion designers or luxury fashion houses in their context. It lifts the 'items' into sky as modest heroes. The big names of superstars of fashion are hidden in the display, which means that Antonelli is consciously “entangled” in one of the “ego- reinforced” clichés that exist in culture. Fashion is based quite a bit on brands, and a major part of the brands are the designers themselves. Establishing an exhibition on 111 fashion items rather than 111 super-starts from the fashion world demands more than just a rare analytical ability but also public courage.Go to

Items

The items listed in the illiterate list are fashion objects that have evolved to live forever. The T-shirt, the bucket cap (item 019, that the 'Tembel'iconic Israeli hat is its derivative), the sports jersey (item 091), the Jumpsuit (item 051), or the tie (item 100). These objects were created for a specific purpose, and when they were transformed from a single product into a mass product, they were cast as items for which different variations were born. In contrast to technological design items, iconic fashion items do not disappear quickly. When Sony's Walkman came to market in 1979, it became an icon, symbolizing mobile music. But when the technology transferred the music from a magnetic tape to a CD-ROM and then to MP3 files, Sony's Walkman disappeared and evaporated as a product. Conversely, Converse's All-Star basketball shoe (Item 028) was created by Marquis Mills Converse in 1908 in Melden, Massachusetts. Since then it has undergone many design transformations and even imitations. In 2003, the brand was acquired by NIKE, and still over a hundred years after it was born, millions of All-Star shoes are manufactured and sold all over the world, in many different versions of the original. What makes this item so sustainable?The items are arranged from A to Z and therefore item 001 of the exhibition is the LEVIS 501 jeans. (The reference to the item name is only its number 501). The jeans were born from Indigo blue denim pants by a Jewish immigrant from Latvia, Jacobs Davis, who, due to the repeated tears of his clients' pants, invented the idea of inserting metal rivets in the various corners of the pockets and the upper part of the pants. He applied for financial assistance to register the invention, to his cloth merchant Levi Strauss. The jeans quickly spread among manual workers, gold miners, cowboy's and even naval soldiers, and quickly spilled into a wider audience of users, who saw in Levis pants a durable and comfortable status symbol. Levis also began to produce women's versions, and towards the 1960s, the blue jeans pants faded in every additional laundry, became one of the symbols of flower children. Those who thought that the jeans had come to an end as a fashionable product, toward the end of the Hippies generation was wrong. The Blue jeans were able to adapt quickly to the changing fashion, and through new brands that took the lead in the production of jeans, and for those who are wearing jeans as a fashion product, you can see three generations of age today- a grandmother, a daughter and a grandchild walking together - all of them wearing jeans. To the youngest of them the amount of wear on the pants will be the greatest. In general, the wear process of the jeans is more expensive than the pants itself. Washing with stone wash, the process of rubbing and ripping of the jeans in a consistent manner and in accordance with the instructions of the designer. This is not done spontaneously - you do not tell the worker in the jeans factory: 'Come and tear and rub them where you want.' The torn jeans also have a design sketch that shows where to tear, and it repeats itself in the same way in all the pants of the same model. Then jeans can be black or gray, narrowly dreadful or wide, flexible or stiff, but will still have the distinctive characteristics of the jeans and will be sold in stores in the wing of jeans. The familiar characteristics are the same metal rivets, double suture with thick thread, upper pockets, and denim fabric. The production of one pair of jeans requires 2,000 liters of water, and the process produces a lot of pollution that can damage the environment if not handled properly. In 2016 alone, 1.2 billion pairs of jeans were sold worldwide. The fashion industry is the most polluting industry after the oil industry. There are not many industrial products in the world that are replicated in such large variations.The exhibition emphasizes the diverse origin of the timeless items of fashion. Among these items is the straw hat with the black strip from Panama (item 068), the Oxford shirt from England (item 067), or the hijab from the Islamic countries (item 049). There are items originating in Africa, Asia and Northern Europe or the Middle East. Many items come from extreme situations or needs like sports or army. The scenario dictates a concrete shape. The Trench Coat (Item 103), has become a must- have item in the wardrobe of men and women in the West in different styles. But it originated from the veterans of World War I, when the coat kept the pants covered from mud. When an item such as Hoodie is perceived as a useful object on the one hand, it can be drawn into a political object, denoting activists who break away from the environment or miracles from the police. The exhibition stretches the limits of definition to fashion items, one of which is the tattoo covering the body (item 098). Certain items have become identified with famous figures such as the Mao shirt so identified with the historical leader of China, or the Turtleneck sweater (item 104) which has become, together with jeans (item 001) Steve Jobs signature. Perhaps the items of the white T-shirt (item 106) and the graphic T-shirt (item 044) are the most comprehensive and exceed all other items.There are, of course, penetrating questions about choosing the different items from a larger collection. For example, the choice of Dr. Martin shoes. (item 035) and the disregard of the Blunstone boots, which are also common among teenagers. Another shoe that is missing in the list is the French Palladium, which has received many copies and returned to the fashion scene in recent years in various colorful and material versions. In the accessories field, the pants suspenders and the belt are missing, along with others useful items. You can count at least another fifty missing items without difficulty, but this does not weaken the general statement that emerges from the exhibition. Fashion does not change as we imagine, but only nuances and versions of the same iconic items. Few of those items are born every decade. One of them is the Fleece (item 040), which is a product of polished polyester, invented by Aaron Furstein, CEO of Mulden Mills in 1979, and became a product in the Patagonia clothing brand. The aspiration of the Hipster generation to dress with 'authentic' items only reinforces a variety of shops that sell workers' clothes from the 1950s and 1960s, when the identity crisis that created the work on code on a computer is compensated by the image of a woodcutter, a gas station worker, or a miner. The fashionable process of the Norm core trend only reinforces the statement of the exhibition - these items will continue to be consumed indefinitely. It is also a big question mark on romance about vague concepts of 'personal expression', free expression in the context of conscious and voluntary conformism, which seems to represent the spirit of the times more correctly, and the true aspiration of the individual in the age of the social network (

Figure 1

).

In a documentary, I recently watched, about indigenous tribes cut off from civilization in the Amazon forests in Brazil. One of them said, a month after a group of government aides found them naked: “That's good" and he points to his T-shirt (item 044) He removed the flip-flop (item 041) from his leg and said, “It's also very good."

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[derangedknifefreak]

Chara

-Verses-

Void/file travel: Chara randomly appears in timelines/au’s other then her own to mess with them. Past: Chara when she was younger, aka, during the goat family time with Asriel. Possesing Frisk: Chara during her first genocide run. Will be written with both my muses. Non-canon: Anything else you’d like to rp, such as post pacifist or random ships, I won’t say no but I won’t consider it canon for Chara’s story.

About

Full Name: HIDDEN Nickname: Chara >     How’d they get it?: It was the first thing she thought of when she met Asriel.

Age: 14 (but if you count all the timelines she’s been through she’d be around 30 or so) >     Date of Birth: 25 may 1974 >     Zodiac: Gemini

Species: Human Gender: Trans Feminine (Aka, born male, identifies primarily but not completely as female.)

Pronouns: She/Her or They/Them Sexual Orientation: No preference

>     When did they realize this?:Their interests don’t lay in traditional sexual contact, so the gender or species of the opposing party simply don’t matter.

Current Residence: Post Genocide Undertale verse

Fight Abilities

Hand-to-Hand capability: Very quick reflexes and good at dodging, but having a teens body, her punches are virtually harmless. >     Who taught them: Reflexes came naturally but she learned how to deal with monster attacks through multiple playthroughs with various Frisks and Players.

Weapons: Chara will use whatever weapon is available to them and is light enough for them to swing effectively. She has an obvious preference for any weapon with a sharp edge and point, like knives, swords and spears. She usually picks a knife because it’s the lightest and easiest to maneuver. >     Who taught them: Self taught

Physical strength: very little Speed: very fast Planning: She knows all monsters from the original timeline so she can easily plan her attacks around this knowledge, but when she meets a new monster she tends to attack blindly until she’s figured them out. Powers: Can possess anybody. A monsters’ weaker soul doesn’t stand a chance against hers, but the soul of a young determined human could probably expel hers. Gaining LOVE makes it easier for her to possess you.

Family

The only parents Chara truly remembers having at this point are Toriel and Asgore. Before she fell into the underground she actually had a pretty normal family life, but she didn’t get along with any of her family; she simply never fit in anywhere. She was always the odd duck out and not once felt any kind of understanding from anyone. She hates humans primarily because they’re ‘stupid’ and ‘useless’. This hatred only applies to adults as she’s generally willing to give children a chance.

Chara was always a bit closer with Toriel, she appreciated goat mom’s humor and felt accepted and loved by her in ways she never felt before. Unconditionally. She loves Asgore too, but simply has a slightly more distant relationship with him. Asgore was more aware of her somewhat twisted nature, which is probably why he kept her at a slight distance.

Of course she was closest with Asriel. The two shared literally everything together. Toriel had a difficult job just getting them to eat of different plates and sleep in different beds. But despite how close they were their relationship was less then healthy. Chara would manipulate and emotionally abuse Asriel to get what she wanted. Asriel was for the most part unaware of this, but occasionally it would dawn on him that she treated him more like a pet then a brother. He never complained though; he just wanted her to love and approve of him.

Relationships

Virgin?: In the classic sense, yes. However they have been involved in sexual acts of a different nature.

First crush?: You could argue that (genocide!)Sans was their first crush; but it would only be his strength they crushed on, not him as a person. They also have a certain obsession with their frisk and the same goes for Asriel; while they were never in love She considers him hers and used to get really possessive.

Any romantic relationship?: It would be difficult for any relationship with a person this twisted to evolve into a romance, but it’s not impossible. Chara could only be romanced by a personality more dominant then her own, and that person would have to accept her ‘demonic’ nature, and to a certain degree, understand it. Chara is an emotional masochist, she won’t like being hurt physically, but she likes it if her partner can give her the feels. The more it hurts her heart, the better. 

Favorites

Favorite foods: French Snails in Garlic butter [Don’t put them in pie toriel!], Candied apples, Pure Chocolate >     Least favorite food: Pasta’s in general

Favorite colors: Red [BLOOD] >     Least favorite color: Gold

Music: Trance and the gentler styles of house music Literature: Fairy Tales Smell: Lemons Feeling: Bittersweet Season: Fall Pets: Hamster Place: Core Favorite sport: Dancing Possession this character values most: the Heart locket >     Why is it so important to them?:It contains a picture of her goat family and reminds her of the happiest time she had in her life.

Physical Characteristics

Height: 155 cm (5 feet 1 inch) Weight: 45 kg (90 pounds) Body build: Slender Eye Color: Deep brown/ red >     Glasses or contact lenses?: No

Hair Color: Light Brown >     Type of hair: Frizzy straight >     Hairstyle: Chin length, styled outwards

Complexion and skin tone: Pale / Caucasian >     Any particular blemishes?: Her lips are always cracked.

Shape of Face: apple Scent: Salty and Metallic Voice: Medium high Mannerisms: Giggly, seemingly carefree, DISTURBING Health: Physically; she’s literally a walking, rotting corpse. It doesn’t really bother her much though and she can’t exactly get sick either. Her soul (Which isn’t in her body, she’s using Frisks’) is all cracked up and eternally bleeding. Style: Simple and cute, a cross between childish and feminine. She likes sleeves that are too long. Tics: Not exactly a nervous tic, but She cannot stand still when she hears music, ever. She will dance against her own will.

Preferred Clothing

Underwear: Solid colored slips Shirts: stripped sweaters Pants: comfy shorts, leggings Skirts: short, multi-layer Jackets: loose and comfortable Shoes: anything without heels, Short boots Accessories: She doesn’t go anywhere without her locket. Formal wear: She’d purposely wear something old and torn up just to make a point. Sleeping wear: shorts and shirt Swimming wear: children’s bikini

Intellectual/Mental/Personality Attributes and Attitudes

Did they go to school?: She was home schooled both above and under ground. She’s good at exact subjects.

Native language: English >     Do they know any other languages?: No, but she carries a wing dings translation sheet around just in case. Multiverse travel taught her to.

Manner of Writing: Childish, doesn’t use difficult words and keeps her sentences short. Any Mental Illnesses?: So many, but they are undiagnosed. In short, she’s thoroughly fucked in the head. How does your Character see themselves?: “After everything I’ve done, It’s still just me. Nothing’s wrong.” How does your Character believe they are perceived by others?: They think they’re seen as nothing but a demon who only exists to torture and kill everyone around them. This believe is often accurate. How self-confident is your character?: If they don’t feel confident they will just pretend they are so it’s not noticeable. They’re a good actor. >     What makes their self-confidence waver?: Dying to minor monsters

What would embarrass your character the most?: If somebody felt sorry for them. How does your character feel about love: She doesn’t see the point of it.

How does your character show affection/love?: Play around and threatening them longer before brutally murdering them. She may even make you a flower crown. Before forcing you to eat it. Probably. How does your character handle grief?: In short, she doesn’t. She just pretends it’s not there at all. >     What are they like when they cry?: Quietly sobbing while hidden away OR grinning madly while tears stream down when their face with the FEELS. >     What can make them cry?: Being reminded of Asriel’s betrayal or in those rare moments when the fact everybody hates their existence actually gets to them.

How does your character handle physical pain?: She gets mad and makes sure to pay it back triple. >     Emotional pain?: She gets high on it.

Leader or follower?: Follower/ loner ‘big picture’ or ‘little details’?: Big picture Energy level: She’s quite energetic. Describe their sense of humor:  Dry and dark. Very dark. She finds screams of agony especially funny. Hobbies: Playing games and dancing. Talents: Seeing through people, dancing. >     She dances a fast style of contemporary dance.

Extremely unskilled at: Socializing.

Emotional Characteristics

How does character relate to others?: She seem them primarily as tools or sources of entertainment. How does the character deal with anger?: Fight. >     With sadness/ loss?: Smile >     With conflict?: Kill >     With change?: Curiosity

What does your character want out of life?: To be entertained What would your character like to change in his/her life?: Generally they’d answer this question with ‘nothing’ or ‘what would be the point, this world will end regardless’. But occasionally they’ll long for the time they were happy with their family, and wish Asriel had used his powers to get the 6 souls and execute their plan. What frightens your character?: Little white dogs >     Are they afraid of the Dark?: No, they embrace it. >     Death?: No, they’re technically  already dead.

Is your character judgmental of others?: She’s quick to gather what to expect of the opposing party but her deductions are usually accurate so you can’t really call it being judgmental. She’s kind of judgmental of naive people though. Is your character generous or stingy?: Neither, she doesn’t really deal with money. Is your character generally polite or rude?: Rude. Optimistic or Pessimistic?: Pessimistic. Introvert or Extrovert?: Introvert/ behaves like extrovert. Daredevil or Cautious?: Daredevil, no need to be cautious when you’re already dead. Logical or Emotional?: Both Disorderly and messy or methodical and neat?: Messy Would they rather be working or relaxing?: They like to be active. How do they feel about animals?: Pets are pretty cute, she secretly has a weakness for fluffy things. They are most at ease when: Listening to music and dancing alone. >     Ill at ease when: having to behave for some reason in a crowded place; too many people judging her at once.

What is their best quality?: Good dancer. What is their biggest flaw?: Everything else.

Some History

Chara didn’t go through any sort of trauma aside from those caused by her own abnormal personality even as a child. During her childhood she never expressed her inner demons the way she does now. She was actually a pretty sweet child before Frisk showed her it was ok for her to be evil, to be themselves, through doing a genocide run. Since then she has seen, and caused many more broken timelines.

Breaking and recreating the timeline over and over again has caused her soul to crack. Pieces have broken away over time, leaving her with less and less of her ‘good’ self. If she continues the way she has, eventually, she truly will be nothing but the demon called LOVE.

Blank Character profile by Jadeookami@Deviantart

[umusicians]

UM Track By Track : : Something More -‘Dogs Pt. II’

Something More is a Pop Punk band from Bel Air, Maryland comprised of Tim Jagielski (lead vocals/guitar), Phil Rasinski (guitar/vocals), Chad Nunnally (bass/backing vocals), Brian Rasinski (drums/vocals), and Nate Swartz (guitar). Launched in 2011, the band began booking their first local shows, followed by the release of their first EP, Too Many Ninjas, which features standout track “Truth Is…”. On April 14th the band will be releasing their deluxe EP, ‘Dogs Pt. II’ on April 14th via Common Ground Records. Pre-order the EP on iTunes. The band was kind enough to write a track by track for the record which you can check out below!

Quarter Buy In(tro) (Phil Rasinski) We had the idea of putting an intro on our record pretty early on. We have always had intros for our live set and some of our favorite records include intro and interlude tracks. The name "Quarter Buy In(tro)" comes from our love of rolling dice when we're out of money sleeping in parking lots and all you need is a quarter to buy in. Talk in Circles (Nate Swartz) “Talk In Circles” was the first song we wrote together as a band for our EP “Dogs” and really set the mood for the rest of the album. Our goal for the record was to produce a sound that anyone could move around to. As the first single and music video, we wanted to show our fans that we had so much fun with this song when we wrote, performed and recorded it. Lyrically, this song is about a certain type of person that will do anything to talk themselves out of what they did rather than own up to it and apologize. It’s Not About You Pt. II (Tim Jagielski) This song came together in such a cool way that we haven’t really experienced before. We have always wanted to have a female voice featured on one of our songs. Our good friend Tillie came across the original version of It’s Not About You, and she just started singing the hook that is now in the song. Immediately after hearing it we knew that we wanted to have her record it, which she did with Kyle Black and I came by the same studio and added some more parts to it as well. Lyrically it was cool to have her create her own lyrics and give another perspective to the song. The song itself is a journey through the ending parts of a relationship and having another side to the story just fills it out more. Plus the added bonus of shooting the music video for the song with Tillie was an awesome time. All My Best Friends Are Dogs (Phil Rasinski) The title of All My Best Friends Are Dogs actually has a double meaning. Most literally, we are dog people through and through. Four of the five of us used to work at a dog daycare while we were writing this album and for a while after we put the record out. More metaphorically, we were saying that all our best friends are dogs, like when your friends do something questionable and you call them a dog. This meaning definitely is more closely related to the songs lyrics. It was written one night when I was feeling particularly bitter toward a friend that had moved away from our home town and I wrote these lyrics to get out a lot of pent up anger about the whole situation. That's why we love writing music, it provides us a constructive outlet of a lot of our emotions and allows listeners the opportunity to find people that think and feel the same things they do. Keep The Heat Low (Nate Swartz) Lyrically, this song is about looking back on any relationship and reflecting on the end result being okay. Getting over any part of life that abruptly ends is always difficult, but realizing why it happened and how to grow from it can be the best thing in the world. This is one of my favorite songs to play live because of the emotion behind it. Instrumentally, I think this song can connect to any listener. Life is about growing and learning from your past and we think there is nothing more important than that. Maybe It’s Just Me (Chad Nunnally) Maybe It's Just Me is a very unique song to our band. It's one of, if not the oldest song on the record because we had previously recorded it on a different release a couple years ago. The song itself has gone through a lot of changes through the years, both in our live set and the two different times it was recorded. It has a special place in our hearts because of the live energy it brings, but it also has really pushed our band to a whole new level. It's one of the songs that really stuck with friends and fans because of the relatability of the lyrics. The song itself is about struggling to get past your own mental weaknesses and negative thoughts in your head. It's very raw, genuine and in your face but something that we think an audience can connect to on a very real level. Distance & Space (Tim Jagielski) After coming home from one of our tours, I ended up seeing some people that I didn’t quite expect to see. Coming home from that night I wrote what essentially became the final version of this song, which doesn’t really happen that often with our band. The tone of this song is very upbeat and happy, while the context of the lyrics are very reflective of a lost relationship. Everyone loses someone and reflects on the time they spent together and the time they didn’t spend together. It also is a hopeful song about saving any part of that relationship and maybe being able to still have some sort of relationship together with who was lost. Keep it Going, Never Stop (Phil Rasinski) Keep it Going, Never Stop was actually the last song written off the original EP. It was kind of a Frankenstein of a few different ideas we'd had while writing songs for the record. All the music was thrown together just before we went in to make the record and the lyrics were written throughout the process of recording "Dogs", which I think actually created a unique perspective for the song. The first line of the chorus, "Don't just give up because you're afraid of failing", is something we all try to live by on a daily basis and it definitely relates to the process of making the record because we definitely put a lot into the making of the record, and at times it was challenging, but at the end of the process we were so proud of what we'd made and are so glad we did not give up on it. It’s Not About You (Tim Jagielski) As we were finishing up the record and getting our songs together, I realized that I had another song that I had been sitting on for a while. It was originally written as a full acoustic song and I thought it would be cool to have that song on the record. As we were putting it together structurally, it made sense to us to have it build into a full band song at the end. This song is about the journey of a decaying connection between two people. At first you might think that the problem lies with the other person and you need to get out but then they might beat you to the punch and break it off. This is often times way harder to deal with, especially if it comes out of no where. I think a very important message of communication is in this song. If there was honest and open communication happening in any relationship you can deal with it better than just being blindsided and dropped.   Talk In Circles (Acoustic) (Brian Rasinski) Talk in Circles is one of my favorite songs to play live so I couldn't wait to jump in and give it the slowed down feel. At the same time, we wanted to keep the energy that the full version has. For the acoustic songs, I was using a very simple drum set up and special drum sticks to give it a more intimate feel. As songwriters this helped us all to push our boundaries and explore different options to have the song have a different feel. I personally changed a lot of the drum fills in the song in order to make the song less in your face. By doing less, I tried to add more of a warm feeling to the entire song and these acoustic songs as a whole. Distance & Space (Acoustic) (Brian Rasinski) We explored different vocal options for Distance & Space and fell in love with the lower octave melody. We wanted to keep the same vibe of the original song but just make it a warmer feel. We tried to make it as if it was a cold day and this song would be perfect for when your crawl into bed and feel warm and comfortable again. We put more emphasis on the words and melody to make it feel homey and comfortable. Keep The Heat Low (Acoustic) (Tim Jagielski) For this song, I really wanted to capture how tough losing someone is. Bringing in the piano and stripped down vibe of this song I think the lyrics really get to shine. It was also really cool to try something completely different than what we have ever done. Producing a piano and vocal driven song was a challenge for us, but having that challenge really pushed us to make something I think is very unique to us and really crosses out of the strictly pop-punk vibes that we usually have. This song is very important to me for a number of reasons, and I think that relatable feeling comes across even better with this stripped down version. Dogs Pt. II  (Tim Jagielski) Putting out the EP “Dogs” was a step in a more mature direction for us. We have seen the country and done a good bit of touring, and I think that “Dogs Pt. II” shows even more of that trend. We always pull inspiration from our lives and our experiences. With the amount of touring that we do now, there was even more difficulty and struggle that we have dealt with. The theme for this record is a reflection on where you have been and where you want to go. Even though things might seem like they are not going to work out how you imagine, rolling with the punches and pushing through is most important. This record really is a reflection of how we try and live our lives, with positivity winning out over negativity.

Connect with Something More: www.facebook.com/somethingmoreband www.twitter.com/somethingmoremd www.instagram.com/somethingmoremd

[mypinkchapter]

Top 3 Favorites.

Hi friends! I am feeling so thankful because we can now count on ONE HAND how many treatments I have left... FIVE more weeks/rounds to go!!! Praise Jesus! I feel great! #happydance

In the perfect timing that comes only from the Lord, our women's ministry began a new fall Bible study over the book of Job by Lisa Harper; it is a seven week study & when we started up, I had seven weeks of chemo left! How sweet to wrap up these chemo rounds studying a book about finding unlikely joy in the midst of suffering... suffering that isn't even comprehend-able for me. My suffering in comparison to Job's is literally a drop in a bucket. 

With that in mind daily & with the excitement of seeing even more slivers of light at the end of this tunnel, edging closer, I thought it would be fun to reflect on my favorite parts of cancer. Yes -- favorite! In such a crazy turn of events from the diagnosis in April, as we carry on now, this has been such an incredible blessing. I fully believe gratefulness in the midst of the journey has been a huge part of my healing. So, without further ado: lists of my top 3 favorites, cancer edition! 

Top 3 favorite: head coverings

Nothing. Way more people than I would have originally wanted have seen my bald head because hello, it's been a hot Arkansas summer, & I actually like showing off my teeny tiny hair growth to anyone who wants to see!

Baseball caps -- in particular my simple breast cancer baseball cap that was a gift from my bestie, Natalie. Pretty sure I wear it at least 3-4 days of the week, but it's neat how many conversations that one hat has sparked because it answers the pressing question everyone has when they notice my bald head, wondering what cancer I have. So many new survivor friends now!

Multicolor/turquoise scarf from my fellow breastie, Savanah. This was her favorite headwrap during her journey & I think she seasoned it up just perfectly for me because it is truly the only headwrap I feel comfortable/happy in. It's like the scarf just knows how to make a bald girl feel a little better! ;)

Top 3 favorite: perks of having a bald (but really now a "fuzzy") head

I can get ready in under 10 minutes! 

I walk out of the shower & have dry hair in quite literally no time. 

Back in the day, straightening my hair was no simple task & I certainly don't miss all that time in front of a mirror, but I also can't wait for the day I get to turn my straightener back on! #lovehaterelationship

Top 3 favorite: things about the St. B's Cancer Center

My NURSES... unbelievably precious humans that I actually get excited to see weekly. I am so blessed to have our sweet Aunt Sandra looking out for me like no other; she loves like I'm her own & has been the absolute best caretaker. Plus, so many other sweet folks have brightened my days & have taken top-notch care of me. I don't want to forget their names one day -- Mandy, Jyl, Mr. Jack, Tasha, & such a kind volunteer, Ms. Dorothy.

I've had a wonderful oncologist, Dr. Durrani, but my PA, Callie, is someone I have grown to think of as a friend -- she's just a friend that talks cancer with me! And fun fact: we're only four days apart, so to have someone relate-able & my age walking with me through this has been quite the comfort. 

The hours spent in those recliners inside the infusion room have been truly priceless. I have cherished conversations with my “chemo buddies” each week. Between my husband, Mom, Dad, & Gran (plus a few new chemo buddies coming up in my last few rounds!), I have loved the catch-up sessions with those I love the most!  

Top 3 favorite: things about my Riverside family since diagnosis

My kids. Cancer or no cancer, I love my kids. The love, compassion, & respect has been unmatched by both my Jr. High & Sr. High students. The world could use way more kids like the ones I am honored to teach.  

The family I work with on the daily. Something that many don't know is the fact that the sweet, sweet faculty & staff have all been providing dinners three nights a week for my family. Three nights a week, y'all. There is a care calendar in place where we have been provided for since the beginning of the school year until my treatments wrap up in early October. How humbling to have so many people spend time & effort to lovingly prepare a meal or provide a gift card to make our lives easier... I will never forget the generosity & support shown by those I am blessed to work alongside.

Mr. Priest, Mr. Ziegler, Mr. Durham, & Mrs. Priest -- my administration has gone above & beyond with their support. There hasn't been a moment when I had to put my health on the back burner; they have been so encouraging & willing to stand in the gap for me to ensure I can be back to 100% when I am ready & able.

Top 3 favorite: Scriptures since diagnosis 

My go-to & the reference on my Team Erin bracelets: “Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in everything; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness.’ Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may reside in me.” 2 Corinthians 12:9

This past Wednesday night, a sweet friend, Nicole Arbuckle, prayed Psalm 57 over our Bible study & gracious, it was good... so good. I loved verse 1, "Be gracious to me, God, be gracious to me, for I take refuge in you. I will seek refuge in the shadow of your wings until danger passes." 

Top 3 favorite: funny moments since diagnosis

Meeting Chris Harrison at the FedEx St. Jude Classic & he thought I was a St. Jude patient. I told him that aged me backwards 10+ years so I would gladly take that "compliment" of sorts! 

Elly holds onto my head & we both giggle when she does as I get her dressed in the mornings. :) 

Ryan cracks jokes about my bald head & people legitimately have no idea how to react! Example: "Oh yeah, last time you met her she probably had hair but she definitely doesn't now!" *cue awkward laughter* So funny every time!

Top 3 favorite: lessons learned since diagnosis

Embrace the spontaneity. Random ice cream runs with Elly & Ryan. Living in the moment & not fretting so much over what's next, whether that be a big life change or just a simple monkey wrench thrown in an evening plan. Texting your best friend at 2pm that the Backstreet Boys are in town that night & somehow making the arrangement to go & dance way past your bedtime at the very last minute. Modifying & adjusting in the classroom, on the spot, because lesson plans aren't realistic every single day. Y'all, this idea of spontaneity just never came natural & not to say I'm so great at it now, but I sure am learning that some of the sweetest/best memories live in the unplanned moments. 

Trust Jesus. He is good. He has a plan that rivals no other plan I could make for myself. Know that every single moment in stormy seasons is worth it, is purposeful, & I pray will be used to glorify Him. There is NO way I could walk this walk without Jesus living in me & walking in-step with me. 

Savor the days. I have spent 28 years of life truly sweating the small stuff, as the cliché goes. Cancer sure knows how to strip that away & has served as a reminder these past five months that time is far too short & fleeting to waste my days. This has been the greatest perspective shift I could have ever hoped for & never knew I needed. Gratitude has truly washed over me & fortunately, I will never be the same.

"The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in Him, and I am helped. Therefore my heart rejoices, and I praise Him with my song." Psalm 28:7

All my love from my pink chapter, Erin

[smartwebhostingblog]

Autocomplete Presents the Best Version of You

New Post has been published on http://webhostingtop3.com/autocomplete-presents-the-best-version-of-you/

Autocomplete Presents the Best Version of You

Type the phrase “In 2019, I’ll …” and let your smart­phone’s keyboard predict the rest. Depending on what else you’ve typed recently, you might end up with a result like one of these:

In 2019, I’ll let it be a surprise to be honest. In 2019, i’ll be alone. In 2019, I’ll be in the memes of the moment. In 2019, I’ll have to go to get the dog. In 2019 I will rule over the seven kingdoms or my name is not Aegon Targareon [sic].

Many variants on the predictive text meme—which works for both Android and iOS—can be found on social media. Not interested in predicting your 2019? Try writing your villain origin story by following your phone’s suggestions after typing “Foolish heroes! My true plan is …” Test the strength of your personal brand with “You should follow me on Twitter because …” Or launch your political career with “I am running for president with my running mate, @[3rd Twitter Suggestion], because we …”

Gretchen McCulloch is WIRED’s resident linguist. She’s the cocreator of Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics, and her book Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language is coming out in July 2019 from Penguin.

In eight years, we’ve gone from Damn You Autocorrect to treating the strip of three predicted words as a sort of wacky but charming oracle. But when we try to practice divination by algorithm, we’re doing something more than killing a few minutes—we’re exploring the limits of what our devices can and cannot do.

Your phone’s keyboard comes with a basic list of words and sequences of words. That’s what powers the basic language features: autocorrect, where a sequence like “rhe” changes to “the” after you type it, and the suggestion strip just above the letters, which contains both completions (if you type “keyb” it might suggest “keyboard”) and next-word predictions (if you type “predictive” it might suggest “text,” “value,” and “analytics”). It’s this predictions feature that we use to generate amusing and slightly nonsensical strings of text—a function that goes beyond its intended purpose of supplying us with a word or two before we go back to tapping them out letter by letter.

The basic reason we get different results is that, as you use your phone, words or sequences of words that you type get added to your personal word list. “For most users, the on-device dictionary ends up containing local place-names, songs they like, and so on,” says Daan van Esch, a technical program manager of Gboard, Google’s keyboard for Android. Or, in the case of the “Aegon Targareon” example, slightly misspelled Game of Thrones characters.

Another factor that helps us get unique results is a slight bias toward predicting less frequent words. “Suggesting a very common word like ‘and’ might be less helpful because it’s short and easy to type,” van Esch says. “So maybe showing a longer word is actually more useful, even if it’s less frequent.” Of course, a longer word is probably going to be more interesting as meme fodder.

Finally, phones seem to choose different paths from the very beginning. Why are some people getting “I’ll be” while others get “I’ll have” or “I’ll let”? That part is probably not very exciting: The default Android keyboard presumably has slightly different predictions than the default iPhone keyboard, and third-party apps would also have slightly different predictions.

Whatever their provenance, the random juxtaposition of predictive text memes has become fodder for a growing genre of AI humor. Botnik Studios writes goofy songs using souped-up predictive keyboards and a lot of human tweaking. The blog AI Weirdness trains neural nets to do all sorts of ridiculous tasks, such as deciding whether a string of words is more likely to be a name from My Little Pony or a metal band. Darth Vader? 19 percent metal, 81 percent pony. Leia Organa? 96 percent metal, 4 percent pony. (I’m suddenly interpreting Star Wars in quite a new light.)

The combination of the customization and the randomness of the predictive text meme is compelling the way a BuzzFeed quiz or a horoscope is compelling—it gives you a tiny amount of insight into yourself to share, but not so much that you’re baring your soul. It’s also hard to get a truly terrible answer. In both cases, that’s by design.

You know how when you get a new phone and you have to teach it that, no, you aren’t trying to type “duck” and “ducking” all the time? Your keyboard deliberately errs on the conservative side. There are certain words that it just won’t try to complete, even if you get really close. After all, it’s better to accidentally send the word “public” when you meant “pubic” than the other way around.

This goes for sequences of words as well. Just because a sequence is common doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to predict it. “For a while, when you typed ‘I’m going to my Grandma’s,’ GBoard would actually suggest ‘funeral,'” van Esch says. “It’s not wrong, per se. Maybe this is more common than ‘my Grandma’s rave party.’ But at the same time, it’s not something that you want to be reminded about. So it’s better to be a bit careful.”

Users seem to prefer this discretion. Keyboards get roundly criticized when a sexual, morbid, or otherwise disturbing phrase does get predicted. It’s likely that a lot more filtering happens behind the scenes before we even notice it. Janelle Shane, the creator of AI Weirdness, experiences lapses in machine judgment all the time. “Whenever I produce an AI experiment, I’m definitely filtering out offensive content, even when the training data is as innocuous as My Little Pony names. There’s no text-generating algorithm I would trust not to be offensive at some point.”

The true goal of text prediction can’t be as simple as anticipating what a user might want to type. After all, people often type things about sex or death—according to Google Ngrams, “job” is the most common noun after “blow,” and “bucket” is very common after “kick the.” But I experimentally typed these and similar taboo-but-common phrases into my phone’s keyboard, and it never predicted them straightaway. It waited until I’d typed most of the letters of the final word, until I’d definitely committed to the taboo, rather than reminding me of weighty topics when I wasn’t necessarily already thinking about them. With innocuous idioms (like “raining cats and”), the keyboard seemed more proactive about predicting them.

Instead, the goal of text prediction must be to anticipate what the user might want the machine to think they might want to type. For mundane topics, these two goals might seem identical, but their difference shows up as soon as a hint of controversy enters the picture. Predictive text needs to project an aspirational version of a user’s thoughts, a version that avoids subjects like sex and death even though these might be the most important topics to human existence—quite literally the way we enter and leave the world.

We prefer the keyboard to balance raw statistics against our feelings. Sex Death Phone Keyboard is a pretty good name for my future metal band (and a very bad name for my future pony), but I can’t say I’d actually buy a phone that reminds me of my own mortality when I’m composing a grocery list or suggests innuendos when I’m replying to a work email.

The predictive text meme is comforting in a social media world that often leaps from one dismal news cycle to the next. The customizations make us feel seen. The random quirks give our pattern-seeking brains delightful connections. The parts that don’t make sense reassure us of human superiority—the machines can’t be taking over yet if they can’t even write me a decent horoscope! And the topic boundaries prevent the meme from reminding us of our human frailty. The result is a version of ourselves through the verbal equivalent of an Instagram filter, eminently shareable on social media.

More Great WIRED Stories

Tech

[awesomecolorfulcollectorwombat]

Autocomplete Presents the Best Version of You

New Post has been published on http://webhostingtop3.com/autocomplete-presents-the-best-version-of-you/

Autocomplete Presents the Best Version of You

Type the phrase “In 2019, I’ll …” and let your smart­phone’s keyboard predict the rest. Depending on what else you’ve typed recently, you might end up with a result like one of these:

In 2019, I’ll let it be a surprise to be honest. In 2019, i’ll be alone. In 2019, I’ll be in the memes of the moment. In 2019, I’ll have to go to get the dog. In 2019 I will rule over the seven kingdoms or my name is not Aegon Targareon [sic].

Many variants on the predictive text meme—which works for both Android and iOS—can be found on social media. Not interested in predicting your 2019? Try writing your villain origin story by following your phone’s suggestions after typing “Foolish heroes! My true plan is …” Test the strength of your personal brand with “You should follow me on Twitter because …” Or launch your political career with “I am running for president with my running mate, @[3rd Twitter Suggestion], because we …”

Gretchen McCulloch is WIRED’s resident linguist. She’s the cocreator of Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics, and her book Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language is coming out in July 2019 from Penguin.

In eight years, we’ve gone from Damn You Autocorrect to treating the strip of three predicted words as a sort of wacky but charming oracle. But when we try to practice divination by algorithm, we’re doing something more than killing a few minutes—we’re exploring the limits of what our devices can and cannot do.

Your phone’s keyboard comes with a basic list of words and sequences of words. That’s what powers the basic language features: autocorrect, where a sequence like “rhe” changes to “the” after you type it, and the suggestion strip just above the letters, which contains both completions (if you type “keyb” it might suggest “keyboard”) and next-word predictions (if you type “predictive” it might suggest “text,” “value,” and “analytics”). It’s this predictions feature that we use to generate amusing and slightly nonsensical strings of text—a function that goes beyond its intended purpose of supplying us with a word or two before we go back to tapping them out letter by letter.

The basic reason we get different results is that, as you use your phone, words or sequences of words that you type get added to your personal word list. “For most users, the on-device dictionary ends up containing local place-names, songs they like, and so on,” says Daan van Esch, a technical program manager of Gboard, Google’s keyboard for Android. Or, in the case of the “Aegon Targareon” example, slightly misspelled Game of Thrones characters.

Another factor that helps us get unique results is a slight bias toward predicting less frequent words. “Suggesting a very common word like ‘and’ might be less helpful because it’s short and easy to type,” van Esch says. “So maybe showing a longer word is actually more useful, even if it’s less frequent.” Of course, a longer word is probably going to be more interesting as meme fodder.

Finally, phones seem to choose different paths from the very beginning. Why are some people getting “I’ll be” while others get “I’ll have” or “I’ll let”? That part is probably not very exciting: The default Android keyboard presumably has slightly different predictions than the default iPhone keyboard, and third-party apps would also have slightly different predictions.

Whatever their provenance, the random juxtaposition of predictive text memes has become fodder for a growing genre of AI humor. Botnik Studios writes goofy songs using souped-up predictive keyboards and a lot of human tweaking. The blog AI Weirdness trains neural nets to do all sorts of ridiculous tasks, such as deciding whether a string of words is more likely to be a name from My Little Pony or a metal band. Darth Vader? 19 percent metal, 81 percent pony. Leia Organa? 96 percent metal, 4 percent pony. (I’m suddenly interpreting Star Wars in quite a new light.)

The combination of the customization and the randomness of the predictive text meme is compelling the way a BuzzFeed quiz or a horoscope is compelling—it gives you a tiny amount of insight into yourself to share, but not so much that you’re baring your soul. It’s also hard to get a truly terrible answer. In both cases, that’s by design.

You know how when you get a new phone and you have to teach it that, no, you aren’t trying to type “duck” and “ducking” all the time? Your keyboard deliberately errs on the conservative side. There are certain words that it just won’t try to complete, even if you get really close. After all, it’s better to accidentally send the word “public” when you meant “pubic” than the other way around.

This goes for sequences of words as well. Just because a sequence is common doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to predict it. “For a while, when you typed ‘I’m going to my Grandma’s,’ GBoard would actually suggest ‘funeral,'” van Esch says. “It’s not wrong, per se. Maybe this is more common than ‘my Grandma’s rave party.’ But at the same time, it’s not something that you want to be reminded about. So it’s better to be a bit careful.”

Users seem to prefer this discretion. Keyboards get roundly criticized when a sexual, morbid, or otherwise disturbing phrase does get predicted. It’s likely that a lot more filtering happens behind the scenes before we even notice it. Janelle Shane, the creator of AI Weirdness, experiences lapses in machine judgment all the time. “Whenever I produce an AI experiment, I’m definitely filtering out offensive content, even when the training data is as innocuous as My Little Pony names. There’s no text-generating algorithm I would trust not to be offensive at some point.”

The true goal of text prediction can’t be as simple as anticipating what a user might want to type. After all, people often type things about sex or death—according to Google Ngrams, “job” is the most common noun after “blow,” and “bucket” is very common after “kick the.” But I experimentally typed these and similar taboo-but-common phrases into my phone’s keyboard, and it never predicted them straightaway. It waited until I’d typed most of the letters of the final word, until I’d definitely committed to the taboo, rather than reminding me of weighty topics when I wasn’t necessarily already thinking about them. With innocuous idioms (like “raining cats and”), the keyboard seemed more proactive about predicting them.

Instead, the goal of text prediction must be to anticipate what the user might want the machine to think they might want to type. For mundane topics, these two goals might seem identical, but their difference shows up as soon as a hint of controversy enters the picture. Predictive text needs to project an aspirational version of a user’s thoughts, a version that avoids subjects like sex and death even though these might be the most important topics to human existence—quite literally the way we enter and leave the world.

We prefer the keyboard to balance raw statistics against our feelings. Sex Death Phone Keyboard is a pretty good name for my future metal band (and a very bad name for my future pony), but I can’t say I’d actually buy a phone that reminds me of my own mortality when I’m composing a grocery list or suggests innuendos when I’m replying to a work email.

The predictive text meme is comforting in a social media world that often leaps from one dismal news cycle to the next. The customizations make us feel seen. The random quirks give our pattern-seeking brains delightful connections. The parts that don’t make sense reassure us of human superiority—the machines can’t be taking over yet if they can’t even write me a decent horoscope! And the topic boundaries prevent the meme from reminding us of our human frailty. The result is a version of ourselves through the verbal equivalent of an Instagram filter, eminently shareable on social media.

More Great WIRED Stories

Tech

[lazilysillyprince]

Autocomplete Presents the Best Version of You

New Post has been published on http://webhostingtop3.com/autocomplete-presents-the-best-version-of-you/

Autocomplete Presents the Best Version of You

Type the phrase “In 2019, I’ll …” and let your smart­phone’s keyboard predict the rest. Depending on what else you’ve typed recently, you might end up with a result like one of these:

In 2019, I’ll let it be a surprise to be honest. In 2019, i’ll be alone. In 2019, I’ll be in the memes of the moment. In 2019, I’ll have to go to get the dog. In 2019 I will rule over the seven kingdoms or my name is not Aegon Targareon [sic].

Many variants on the predictive text meme—which works for both Android and iOS—can be found on social media. Not interested in predicting your 2019? Try writing your villain origin story by following your phone’s suggestions after typing “Foolish heroes! My true plan is …” Test the strength of your personal brand with “You should follow me on Twitter because …” Or launch your political career with “I am running for president with my running mate, @[3rd Twitter Suggestion], because we …”

Gretchen McCulloch is WIRED’s resident linguist. She’s the cocreator of Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics, and her book Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language is coming out in July 2019 from Penguin.

In eight years, we’ve gone from Damn You Autocorrect to treating the strip of three predicted words as a sort of wacky but charming oracle. But when we try to practice divination by algorithm, we’re doing something more than killing a few minutes—we’re exploring the limits of what our devices can and cannot do.

Your phone’s keyboard comes with a basic list of words and sequences of words. That’s what powers the basic language features: autocorrect, where a sequence like “rhe” changes to “the” after you type it, and the suggestion strip just above the letters, which contains both completions (if you type “keyb” it might suggest “keyboard”) and next-word predictions (if you type “predictive” it might suggest “text,” “value,” and “analytics”). It’s this predictions feature that we use to generate amusing and slightly nonsensical strings of text—a function that goes beyond its intended purpose of supplying us with a word or two before we go back to tapping them out letter by letter.

The basic reason we get different results is that, as you use your phone, words or sequences of words that you type get added to your personal word list. “For most users, the on-device dictionary ends up containing local place-names, songs they like, and so on,” says Daan van Esch, a technical program manager of Gboard, Google’s keyboard for Android. Or, in the case of the “Aegon Targareon” example, slightly misspelled Game of Thrones characters.

Another factor that helps us get unique results is a slight bias toward predicting less frequent words. “Suggesting a very common word like ‘and’ might be less helpful because it’s short and easy to type,” van Esch says. “So maybe showing a longer word is actually more useful, even if it’s less frequent.” Of course, a longer word is probably going to be more interesting as meme fodder.

Finally, phones seem to choose different paths from the very beginning. Why are some people getting “I’ll be” while others get “I’ll have” or “I’ll let”? That part is probably not very exciting: The default Android keyboard presumably has slightly different predictions than the default iPhone keyboard, and third-party apps would also have slightly different predictions.

Whatever their provenance, the random juxtaposition of predictive text memes has become fodder for a growing genre of AI humor. Botnik Studios writes goofy songs using souped-up predictive keyboards and a lot of human tweaking. The blog AI Weirdness trains neural nets to do all sorts of ridiculous tasks, such as deciding whether a string of words is more likely to be a name from My Little Pony or a metal band. Darth Vader? 19 percent metal, 81 percent pony. Leia Organa? 96 percent metal, 4 percent pony. (I’m suddenly interpreting Star Wars in quite a new light.)

The combination of the customization and the randomness of the predictive text meme is compelling the way a BuzzFeed quiz or a horoscope is compelling—it gives you a tiny amount of insight into yourself to share, but not so much that you’re baring your soul. It’s also hard to get a truly terrible answer. In both cases, that’s by design.

You know how when you get a new phone and you have to teach it that, no, you aren’t trying to type “duck” and “ducking” all the time? Your keyboard deliberately errs on the conservative side. There are certain words that it just won’t try to complete, even if you get really close. After all, it’s better to accidentally send the word “public” when you meant “pubic” than the other way around.

This goes for sequences of words as well. Just because a sequence is common doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to predict it. “For a while, when you typed ‘I’m going to my Grandma’s,’ GBoard would actually suggest ‘funeral,'” van Esch says. “It’s not wrong, per se. Maybe this is more common than ‘my Grandma’s rave party.’ But at the same time, it’s not something that you want to be reminded about. So it’s better to be a bit careful.”

Users seem to prefer this discretion. Keyboards get roundly criticized when a sexual, morbid, or otherwise disturbing phrase does get predicted. It’s likely that a lot more filtering happens behind the scenes before we even notice it. Janelle Shane, the creator of AI Weirdness, experiences lapses in machine judgment all the time. “Whenever I produce an AI experiment, I’m definitely filtering out offensive content, even when the training data is as innocuous as My Little Pony names. There’s no text-generating algorithm I would trust not to be offensive at some point.”

The true goal of text prediction can’t be as simple as anticipating what a user might want to type. After all, people often type things about sex or death—according to Google Ngrams, “job” is the most common noun after “blow,” and “bucket” is very common after “kick the.” But I experimentally typed these and similar taboo-but-common phrases into my phone’s keyboard, and it never predicted them straightaway. It waited until I’d typed most of the letters of the final word, until I’d definitely committed to the taboo, rather than reminding me of weighty topics when I wasn’t necessarily already thinking about them. With innocuous idioms (like “raining cats and”), the keyboard seemed more proactive about predicting them.

Instead, the goal of text prediction must be to anticipate what the user might want the machine to think they might want to type. For mundane topics, these two goals might seem identical, but their difference shows up as soon as a hint of controversy enters the picture. Predictive text needs to project an aspirational version of a user’s thoughts, a version that avoids subjects like sex and death even though these might be the most important topics to human existence—quite literally the way we enter and leave the world.

We prefer the keyboard to balance raw statistics against our feelings. Sex Death Phone Keyboard is a pretty good name for my future metal band (and a very bad name for my future pony), but I can’t say I’d actually buy a phone that reminds me of my own mortality when I’m composing a grocery list or suggests innuendos when I’m replying to a work email.

The predictive text meme is comforting in a social media world that often leaps from one dismal news cycle to the next. The customizations make us feel seen. The random quirks give our pattern-seeking brains delightful connections. The parts that don’t make sense reassure us of human superiority—the machines can’t be taking over yet if they can’t even write me a decent horoscope! And the topic boundaries prevent the meme from reminding us of our human frailty. The result is a version of ourselves through the verbal equivalent of an Instagram filter, eminently shareable on social media.

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