#some of the descriptions r niche

[prinvessdior]

Thought I’d share my gf and I’s bingo card for Dragons Rising pt2 so.. spoilers utc

[ellecdc]

girl girl hear me out YAPPER GF X REGULUS!! Pls pls pls like u could do anything u wanted with them!!! I have a few ideas (take any or none)

May be she just walks up to him one day like clearly wanting to befriend him cuz she has a lil crush and just starts yapping about how the great hall had her fave pastry for breakfast today and he's so confused but also intrigued and then she starts sitting next to him in classes and asking him to hang out at hogsmead and she just yaps and sometimes she thinks may be he zones out but then he'll bring up this super niche detail she mentioned last time like "hey what happened to that quill you forgot in the potions lecture?"

they r already dating and she worries she's too much energy and talk for him and tries to be quiet and he's just like r u sick? R u mad at me? What's wrong u haven't gone on a 30 min description/rant about ur day

3. May be someone else brings up she talks a lot and Reggie defends her?

you guys really love your bubbly/talkative readers with Regulus, don't you? (so do i); thanks for your request!

Regulus Black x yapper!reader who didn't think he was actually listening

CW: fem!reader, rolling thoughts, brief mention of difficulty making friends, people talking about reader behind her back, swear words (on ellecdc? nooo [sarcasm])

Your family said that you had an incessant need to fill silence from the moment you could talk. 

“If there’s a room with our daughter in it, you can be certain that it won’t be quiet.” Your mum had proclaimed as she beamed at you lovingly one day.

While it was certainly a trait that your family had always found rather endearing, you felt that it made it particularly difficult making friends once you began attending Hogwarts. 

But the friends you managed to make loved you for it, and they had often stated “you can call her what you want but you can’t call her boring.” 

That didn’t mean your other classmates appreciated your stories or tangents, though. 

Which is how you ended up serving numerous detentions for speaking during class or lectures and disturbing the students around you, and how you’d been cycled through numerous seat partners in potions class. 

And that is how poor Regulus Black ended up stuck sharing a worktable with the likes of you.

He didn’t seem to mind, though. And if he did, well, he certainly never said anything about it.

You were quite sure he tuned you out during your rambles, hardly ever sparing you a glance and keeping his eyes trained on his parchment in front of him as he took dutiful notes during lectures.

Couldn’t be you, however.

No.

You were too busy lamenting about the fact that you couldn’t get more than twenty feet to the mooncalf herd up the hill behind the quidditch pitch before they would all run off. They only came out at night, you see, and you wanted to take some photos of them. Some photos turned into midnight picnics, and picnics turned into sharing apple slices by means of throwing them towards the bug-eyed beasts and watching them argue over the slice until you threw another. But even after feeding them forty seven apples and counting at this point (Winky the house elf from the kitchen was not pleased with you), they still wouldn’t let you get any closer to them.

Your next course of action was to try a smellier and higher value treat; you wondered then if mooncalves could have tuna? Tuna was certainly smelly enough. Well, if you couldn’t entice the mooncalves, you’d certainly entice a cat or two. 

You wondered then if mooncalves and cats got along? Kneazles were nearly the same size as the poor beasts, but cats were much smaller. You figured cats would look at a mooncalf the same way they’d look at a goat. 

You’d seen a cat ride a goat once, not many people believed you, though. You’d have to learn how to make a pensieve one day just to prove it to everyone. You didn’t much care for goats, though; something about their square pupils seemed alien to you. 

Which seemed odd considering there were numerous beasts in the magical world that really were quite alien, yet it was  goats that did it for you.

And why were they always associated with the devil? Was it because of the square pupils? Do you think there’d be a book that explained that?

But you didn’t even realise that the period had ended until Regulus stood and collected his books, offering you a curt nod before leaving the classroom. 

Fuck….do you think he’d let you copy his notes? 

⋆⁺₊⋆ ☀︎ ⋆⁺₊⋆⁺₊⋆ ☀︎ ⋆⁺₊⋆⁺₊⋆ ☀︎ ⋆⁺₊⋆⁺₊⋆ ☀︎ ⋆⁺₊⋆⁺₊⋆ ☀︎ ⋆⁺₊⋆⁺₊⋆ ☀︎ ⋆⁺₊⋆

Merlin’s tits, she never stops talking! I feel bad for the poor sod stuck next to her; Black probably wants to avada himself every class. You heard a classmate mutter as you walked to your workbench, movements slowed as you lowered yourself into your chair and tried not to let their words hurt you. 

You were used to the comments, you were used to the sentiment honestly; did they think it was easy being you? Did they think you didn’t get tired of listening to yourself too? 

Of course you did, it was exhausting; your brain never stopped moving, and apparently, neither did your mouth.

But it did hurt a little, perhaps because Regulus had been quite gracious about it thus far. He had listened to you carry on about the astrological significance of space waste and how that was affecting the magic of the stars. He had listened to you bemoan about the positive impact that centaur migration had on local flora and fauna and how the fencing of fields and forests was going to cause unimaginable damage to the life cycles of such. He also had listened to your morose mooncalf story and the update the next day that you were able to order cans of tuna via owl to the castle.

And he’d not so much as bat an eye at you.

Certainly he’d have said something to you if you bothered him? 

Although, perhaps this was why Slughorn put him beside you, because he knew Regulus wouldn’t say anything; had Regulus done something to anger Slughorn? Was placing you beside Regulus less about you driving your seat mates crazy, but more about being a punishment for Regulus?

Well, you couldn’t imagine Regulus had done anything bad enough to deserve a full term with you as a potions partner.

No, you decided, you would not be his punishment.

So when Regulus entered class that day, and Slughorn read out the instructions for today’s potion brew, you resisted the urge to speak.

You were quiet when retrieving your potion ingredients, you were quiet as you checked and double checked the brewing instructions, and you were quiet as you waited for the potion to reach its boiling point. 

You actually thought you’d done quite well; you sort of wished you had started a timer, this may very well have been a record for you. 

Well, unless sleeping counted. Would sleeping count as being quiet? Oh gods, what if you talked in your sleep too!? You’d have to ask your roommates.

“L/N.” Regulus called as if it hadn’t been the first time he’d done so. “You alright?” He asked, ducking down in an attempt to meet your gaze as you watched a divot appear between his brows.

“Yeah? Why?” You asked, finding yourself furrowing your brows in solidarity; you found Regulus to be too pretty to look so worried. 

He shrugged his shoulders and straightened up, though the space between his brows remained divoted. “You’ve been awfully quiet, s’all.” He murmured quietly, and you were surprised to see a dusting of pink on his cheeks.

“Isn’t that a good thing?” You muttered perhaps pointedly; his eyes narrowing to match the furrowed brows. 

“Says who?”

Your eyes traitorously darted to the students who had been discussing your habits, and Regulus followed your gaze.

He rolled his eyes and muttered something in French under his breath as he turned his attention back towards your shared potion. “Those tossers are just mad that they have nothing of value to say.”

You more felt than heard a disbelieving breath escape your lips as you looked at Regulus in bemusement. 

He didn’t seem to notice though, as he continued to the next step in your potion and carried on. “Did the tuna work?”

You stared at him dumbly before your brain kicked back into gear. “I beg your pardon?”

“The tuna.” He repeated. “For the mooncalves?”

Oh.

“Oh.” You started, giving your head a shake as you tried to find your balance you had long lost during this conversation. “Erm, no, but I did indeed attract a few cats.”

“Ah.” Regulus offered, smiling at you (or at the expected poof from the potion signifying that the two of you had brewed it correctly thus far). 

“Also, I found out why goats are often associated with the devil, but the book you’d be looking for is Biblical in nature.”

You stared at him with your mouth agape as he continued. “There’s a quote where that Christ bloke mentions something about separating people from one another just as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. They’re used as a metaphor for the ‘bad’ or ‘inferior’ member of any group; it could also be understood as the divide between the pure and the wicked. I say goats got a bad rap, though.”

The next step in your potion brewing process was to allow the potion to simmer until it turned a milky white colour, so Regulus lowered the heat before appearing to remember something.

“I almost forgot…” He started as he began rooting through his book bag. “I asked the shopkeep at Brood & Peck, and she said this is a favourite of mooncalves; maybe you’ll have more luck tonight?” He asked as he held out a parchment of beast treats to you. 

“You’ve been listening? This whole time?” You whispered in awe as you took the bag delicately as if  he had just handed you a delicate china dish. 

His brows furrowed again as he searched your eyes. “Well…yeah? I’m rather invested now.” He explained just as your potion turned its intended colour. 

“Very good Mr. Black, Miss. L/N.” Professor Slughorn commented as he walked past your workbench. 

You were alerted to the fact that class was over when everyone’s potions were vanished with a pop and students started to pack up their belongings.

“You’ll keep me posted, yeah? About the mooncalves?” Regulus asked as he started walking backwards towards the door. 

“Sure.” You murmured, earning you a wide smile from the notoriously quiet boy. 

Yes… You’d be more than happy to keep Regulus Black posted.

[helen-with-an-a]

I was thinking a little piece for jflem where both her and her gf are in the Olympic village at the same time but for different sports - maybe they’re pretty fresh with each other too (u can pick which sport but I was thinking something niche like weightlifting or sailing - have fun with it!!)

Hiiii, so I was an artistic swimmer (aka Synchronised Swimming) growing up and that's a really niche sport so I chose that one hehe. Also this is my first time writing for Jessie but i think I might start writing for her properly. I liked the idea of a new relationship but I might make that into a fic of its own so I haven’t included it here. I hope you enjoy this one - I really liked writing it.

Meet Me at the Rings

Jessie Fleming x Reader

Description: Jessie and R reunite in the Village

Word Length: 1.5k

You cried the day you found out you were going to the Olympics again. It was technically your second time – you had gone to Tokyo, but you were counting this as your first proper time since you now had the crowds and the freedom to truly enjoy the competition.

You knew that your country had qualified for the Olympics some time ago now, but with the nature of all team sports, you didn’t know if you were going. You were an artistic swimmer. Some people called your sport easy, or pointless. But you knew what it had taken to haul your team into qualification. There were only 8 spaces on the full team, and 2 reserves. The nerves had been bubbling away since the qualification competition. You had swum in every routine since you made the national squad just before your 17th birthday, but you were well aware of how fickle sport could be. One bad performance, and you wouldn’t be on that plane to Paris. You were at home with Jessie when you got the phone call. The phone call. The one that told you, you had been selected to go to Paris. You could barely remember the conversation – too busy freaking out that you were to be an Olympian … again!

Not even thirty minutes after your phone call, Jessie’s phone buzzed. Her turn. She had confided in you a few weeks earlier that she was nervous about getting into the team. You knew her fears were unfounded – she was Captain for crying out loud. But you understood where she was coming from. It was the anticipation that made everyone nervous.

That night had been … eventful, to say the least. Tears were shed, excitement voiced, nerves expressed, and love shared. It was perfect. Even more perfect was knowing that this time, you were able to see Jessie and probably watch a few of her matches too.

It was far too warm in Paris. It was hot and sticky and sweaty in the bad way. The rooms didn’t have air con, and the tiny little handheld fan Jessie had gifted you before you left wasn’t helping much – although every time you used it, you remembered her little soft smile and wide brown eyes that graced her features when she handed it over. You had been teased mercilessly by your teammates. The blush that bloomed across your cheeks each time you thought of Jessie would have been embarrassing if you were bothered enough. Your coach had joked that you looked like a meerkat whenever someone in red walked past. You just couldn’t help yourself. It had been too many weeks since you last saw Jessie in person. Your training camp had been a month long; the first two weeks being in London and the second half being in Lyon. Facetimes and texts were not doing it for you. You needed to feel her again, you needed to have her arms around you, squeezing you just so and have her pepper kisses into your hair.

You were even more excited knowing that she was soon to be in the same location as you. Her group games had been in St-Etienne, and you had watched her matches religiously – ignoring the jeers from your friends whenever she was on screen. You had never been the biggest football fan, often favouring water sports rather than anything running related. But that had all changed the moment Jessie had entered your life. You were easily her greatest fan. Your off day was Sunday, which meant that more often than not, you were in the crowd, her name and number splashed across your back. But now that she was in Paris – you were shaking with anticipation. Not only of being reunited with her, but you were finally able to be in the crowd. And you hoped she was able to sneak away to watch you too.

Your competition hadn’t started yet, having it be scheduled for the 2nd week of the games. But you hoped she was able to sneak away. Your heart jumped at the thought. She had never been able to watch a full competition in person before. It seemed a little strange, you were at every home game (and a good few away games) yet she hadn’t been to yours. You had brought it up to her once – she reassured you that she watched every moment of the live stream, especially when it was your country’s performance. But your competitions were usually during the season, and often lasted a week or so that she just couldn’t take off from football. You knew this, and you completely understood – especially since she was the one that earned the most … far more than you ever would for your sport. When you first met her, you were training full time and worked two part time jobs to get by. When you eventually moved in with her, she had insisted you drop down to just one. She could see how much it was killing you – the early morning trainings, the late-night shifts, never having free time to relax. You knew with Jessie’s salary you didn’t have to work any extra jobs if you didn’t want to, but that felt wrong on so many levels that you never entertained the thought for more than a few seconds. But all the sacrifice was worth it. You were now in the Olympic village. Waiting for your girlfriend to join you. This is what you had dreamed about as a young girl.

Your phone buzzed,

My J ❤️🤍⚽️: I’ve just got to the village

My J ❤️🤍⚽️: Can you meet me by the rings in like 20 minutes?

My Baby 🩵💙🩵: OMGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG

My Baby 🩵💙🩵: Ur here??????????

My Baby 🩵💙🩵: And yes I can meet u at the rings!!!!!

My Baby 🩵💙🩵: Already omw

The speed you leapt to your feet was comical. You were practically running out of the canteen towards the Olympic rings. You heard your friend’s laughter as you disappeared, but you couldn’t bring yourself to care. Jessie was here. Excitement bubbled up in your chest. You could already imagine her walking over, the grey team Canada jumper on, regardless of how hot it was outside. Her black joggers and white trainers. You could image the little pink blush on her cheeks fanning out over her freckles and her loose brown curls tucked behind her ears. You looked down at yourself quickly, double checking that you looked relatively presentable – although there wasn’t much you could actually do about it now. Walking past a window, you assessed your reflection. Hair? Fine. Outfit? Acceptable. Face? It’ll do. Why did you feel a little nervous? This was only Jessie. Jessie, your girlfriend. Jessie, the love of your life. Jessie, the girl you were head over heels for. Jessie, the person you hadn’t seen in more than a month.

Regardless of how in your head you were, you knew exactly when she was nearby. It was like a signal had gone off in your brain. You looked up, head whipping from side to side as you scanned the crowd.

There she was.

Dressed exactly as you imagined, down to the accreditation worn like a cross-body bag. You squealed, pushing yourself of the wall you had been leaning on and sprinting in her direction. You launched yourself at her. Arms around her waist and scooping her up so her feet were dangling in the air a little. It didn’t matter that you were in the middle of the Olympic Village, thousands of miles away from where you lived. You were finally home. You felt your heart lift, the pressure that had been baring down on you all week, all month really, was gone in a moment.

“Hi, baby,” she whispered, her head buried in your shoulder.

“Hey, J.” You felt the tears welling up. “I missed you so much,” you sniffled.

“I missed you too, my beautiful girl.” You leaned back slightly, using your hands to guide her face out of your neck and taking your time to let your eyes rake across her face. She looked a little more tanned than the last time you saw her. But beyond that, she looked exactly the same. Gorgeous and perfect and safe.

You saw her eyes flick down to your lips, a small smirk dancing on her face. You leaned in, pressing a kiss to her cheek. She frowned slightly, a crease forming between her eyebrows. You kissed the corner of her mouth this time, just slightly too far away from where she wanted you.

“Kiss me,” she whined, a demanding tone to her voice. You knew if you were at home she probably would have stomped her foot.

“So impatient,” you teased, although you were just as desperate to finally feel her lips on yours.

“Shut up,” she pulled you to her, effectively ending any more jokes on your end. She tasted like she always did. Heaven. Her lips were soft and a little chapped. You hummed softly, ignoring the fact that you were essentially making out in an incredibly public place.

You parted eventually, resting your forehead on hers.

“You smell like chlorine,” she smiled, her breath wispy in the best way.

“You taste like oranges,” you countered, pressing another swift kiss to her lips.

She sighed gently, wrapping her arms around your waist.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” you whispered.

“I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else,” she whispered back.

I hope you enjoyed <3<3<3<3

[yeonjuns-beanie]

Licentious Affairs

warnings: 18+, smut, unprotected sex, definitely dub-con, a little non-con, use of restraints, having sex with a demon, some animalistic behaviors, descriptions of blood, biting, degrading, hair pulling and i think that's everything

summary: you and dalton grew closer over the course of the fall semester. you sense a mutual feeling but still, a crush feels forbidden. on the night that dalton decides he needs to unlock all his memories for good, something possesses his earthly form and you’re left at its mercy. 

a/n: when i saw the new installment of this franchise, something about him being possessed had me kicking my feet and giggling. this is 100% self indulgent bc I feel like this is so niche lol. it strays from the events in the film(obvi) but I hope whoever comes across enjoys and i'll get back to my kpop postings shortly :3 ~nero

possessed!Dalton Lambert x female reader

word count: 4.4k

pt.2

The breeze was crisp and the trees were warm bouquets of orange, yellow, and sun-bleached green. As you walked across campus, the leaves crunching under your feet you appreciated the change in season. Wrapping yourself a little tighter in your knitted cardigan, you pulled out your phone checking your notifications. Swiping out of your social media a message from Dalton popped up on your screen. 

van gogh: r u out of class yet 

y/n: walking to the dorm rn

van gogh: okay, i’ve got something to show you

Turning the volume up on your music and stuffing your phone back into your stubby front pocket, you continued your walk to the dorm. Your mind was scattering all the different possibilities of what Dalton could’ve found out. Since the beginning of the semester, his art professor had been unleashing techniques on him to tap into a deeper artistic space. Through this theory of unlocking, he opened up memories that were tucked away so tightly that he forgot they were his own. Throughout the semester, you’ve been forced to be around his revelations as you were his dorm mate, but you’d be lying if you said that you didn’t enjoy his company. 

At first, you thought it was just you being good-natured and wanting to extend a hand to him in a time of need. But as his walls crumbled down you wormed your way in and slowly you found you guys becoming quite close. Opening the main doors to your dorm building the way the air felt never failed to bother you. The brick walls made it constantly humid and it was borderline suffocating with how many bodies passed through the day. Dragging your feet across the floor, you began to feel the day place its weight on your body. You felt another vibration in your pocket but ignored it, deciding to look at the notification once you got settled in. 

Opening the door to your room, you were met with Dalton hunched over the canvas of his current piece. He was so focused on the painting that he didn’t hear you come in until the door clicked shut. You dropped your bag on the floor and he finally looked up. 

“Hey. Didn’t hear you come in.” 

“Yeah, you looked pretty focused on that freaky ass painting.” 

“If not for this freaky ass painting, I’d still be “boring.”’

Flopping onto your bed, you chuckled remembering the first interaction you guys had with each other. You so desperately were trying to break the ice with your roommate and least to say it was the smallest bit painful getting some info out of him. As Dalton added the last few strokes of creativity, he put down his brush and wiped his hands off with a rag. Meanwhile, you were getting lost in his every move. You were tracing him, the way he moved, really just the way he existed. Losing yourself in your thoughts you didn’t hear him calling your name. 

“Y/n…y/n? Are you even here right now?” “Huh?- Sorry was spacing out, long day.” 

You were praying that somehow he wouldn’t think too much of it and just pass it off as you disassociating and not internally doting on him. You sat up as he walked over to your bed, the mattress shifting as he sat. 

“So you know how we learned I can astral project right?”

You nodded and raised your eyebrows urging him to go on. 

“Well, I think, whatever I’m remembering–if I finish that painting I’ll remember everything.” 

You looked at him, brows furrowing and your eyes showing an incredulous type of fear. Memories from the last time he projected flooded your mind. Whatever was stalking that other plane had it out not only for Dalton but for anyone in his vicinity. It left you stricken, but subconsciously you knew you couldn’t leave Dalton to deal with it alone. 

“You wanna…go back again?”

“I think it’s my only option y/n.”

You sighed knowing there was really nothing you could do to get him to think otherwise. You stared off toward the cryptic painting searching your brain for a solution that didn’t involve him going back to that other world. Nodding, more towards yourself, you looked back at Dalton. 

“Okay. When are we doing this?”

There was a small flash of a ‘thank you’ that graced his features. The relationship you shared was beyond the parameters of normal but it was exactly that that allowed you guys to grow so close with one another so quickly. He let out a sigh a dour expression taking over. 

“Tonight.” 

You pressed your lips into a thin line forcing yourself to become comfortable with the reality of the situation. Slightly nodding, you stood up grabbing your bag from the floor. 

“Alright. I’ll be right back. Just gonna run and grab some fairy lights so I can have some source of light in here while you play Sherlock Holmes in the upside down.” 

Dalton cracked a smile, a small chuckle escaping him. It was something that softened the heaviness of the situation, lifting the tension not only between you two but for your anxieties. It also made something flutter in your stomach, something you’ve desperately been trying to swallow scared of what would happen if he were to find out. You were about to open the door but a hand on your shoulder stopped you. 

“Your phone.” 

A gentle smile stretched across his face and there was something softer about him in this particular moment. Maybe it was the knowledge of the impending doom that would ensue in a few hours or maybe it was just two people being vulnerable. You weren’t sure what came over you but the urge to hug him was impossible to pass over and your body moved faster than your mind could react. Your arms wrapped around him finding relief and comfort in him returning the gesture so quickly. 

Pulling away from him you found a certain softness swimming in his eyes that you never noticed before. Feeling slightly overwhelmed and bashful you fiddled with your fingertips attempting to wash away the anxiety that was running through you. 

“Thanks. I won’t be too long.” 

Dalton nodded and you slipped out of the doorway. As you walked down the hallway to leave the building you were fighting a more than enthusiastic grin as you felt those same pesky feelings flutter through your being. If only you had a similar gift to Dalton’s you’d be able to see that he was feeling the exact same way. As soon as you left the dorm he sat back on his bed, his hands trying to wipe away the elation he felt from the hug you shared. He was fighting a similar demon as your own, the fabrication of feelings–a crush. 

As he laid back on his bed he was running through all his favorite parts of you, something that he didn’t think he could say out loud. His mind was in too many places at once, going back and forth between the budding feelings he felt for you and the unfortunate calamity that he was going to have to face not long after you came back. 

Coming out of the corner store, you were surprised by how fast the sun began to tuck behind the mountains. You had an interesting relationship with the fall season, loving how the weather changed and the natural warmness that fall carried. By the same token though, you wished daylight lasted a bit longer, especially tonight. You wished the sun would never set so neither one of you would have to experience the ire that attaches itself to Dalton when the night approaches. 

When you got back into the dorm building, there was a formidable sense of dread that you felt settle in your stomach. You tried to brush it off as anxiety now that the navy blanket of night was cast over the sky, but as you approached your dorm the feeling only worsened. Taking a deep breath as you turned the handle of the door, you exhaled as you entered the room, dropping your bag by the door and tossing the bag of lights on your bed. 

You were about to announce your arrival to Dalton but were surprised to find him asleep on his bed. You were gone for maybe half an hour so you didn’t think he’d be too deep in sleep. Admiring his form you quelled your thoughts by grabbing the box of lights out of the grocery bag and began to unravel them while calling out to Dalton. 

“Dalton…Dalton.” 

Plugging the lights in the wall, you called for him one more time before deciding to walk over and shake him up. But when you turned around, he was already sitting up on his bed. It spooked you because you didn’t hear him move.

“Jesus! Make a noise or you know, yawn or something. Scared the shit outta me.” You nervously giggled. That sickly feeling found its way back in your stomach again and you couldn’t quite figure out why. Moving the string of lights around your bed, you found Dalton being more quiet than usual and you ruled that to be the reason why your stomach was turning in knots. 

“You alright man? You’re being more weird than usual.” 

Silence. Crippling silence. 

Chills ran up your body and you tried desperately to feel some sense of normality about the situation. Dalton got up from his bed and walked over to his canvas, running his fingers over the freshly dried paint. He forced some extra air out of his nose somewhat resembling something of a laugh. You kept yourself on high alert as you walked over to your bag to grab your phone. As you got your phone and turned around your eyes met Dalton’s frame huddled in the corner of the room closest to your bed. 

The way the string of lights illuminated him caused that sinking feeling to turn into something more dire. You started to go beyond the safety of things just being “weird” and recognized it was fear settling into your bones. Dalton’s shoulders were quivering almost resembling what a laugh would look like but no noise was coming out. 

“Dalton, what’s going on? You’re freaking me out.”

Ignoring your intuition, you slowly walked over to him, hoping that the lights would let you see something that you were missing from your distance away from him. You left a couple feet in between you two and you called out to him again, only this time he turned his head slowly in your direction. Any rumination of worry about your friend was quickly replaced with terror once his head turned enough for you to see his eyes. They weren’t his own. They were yellow and held malicious intent. 

You wanted to stand your ground but the gasp that left you made a sound before you could stop it. You watched a smirk grow on Dalton’s face and as you broke your chains of frozen fear, you turned around in an attempt to reach the door. Before you could take your second step towards your escape, your feet left the safety of the ground and your body was flung through the air. 

Hitting the art wall adjacent to Dalton’s bed your body flopped onto his bed, a shield of sheets as your protection. In a poor attempt to quickly figure out an escape you instead were met with the evil incarnate of Dalton. Your heart was pounding, fear and a dread of the unknown at the forefront of your mind. His frame was looming, staring you down like fresh prey. You gripped the bed sheets staring him down trying to convince yourself you weren’t fearful. Your plan was successful, but the longer you looked at him the easier it became for something more sinister to eclipse your emotions. 

Lust. 

A salacious intent swapping out the fear of him for the fear of yourself and your own emotions. Why were you feeling this? Could whatever was using Dalton as a vessel hear your thoughts? How could you look at him the same way after this? All of your questions were pushed to the back of your mind as the door to your dorm slowly opened and Dalton turned towards it. You saw nothing in the doorway but almost like a warning, a low timbre shriek echoed from his throat as a bloody goop tumbled out of his mouth. 

Whatever was entering the door from the other side left, the door clicking shut and his attention was unfortunately back on you. With a feeble bid, you hoped that calling to Dalton would release him of whatever had a hold on him. As Dalton turned around to grab the cord of lights from the wall, the way he stalked back over to you sent a familiar feeling to pool in your stomach.

“Dalton…I know you’re in there. Dal-”

“-To be face to face with what was keeping me from him recently was not what I expected to see. Nor did I expect it to be so filthy.” 

It felt like someone was trying to steal your heart from its chest. There was a certain grit to his tone that was not Dalton’s and you weren’t quite sure if it frightened you or excited you. As he wrapped the cord around his hand he stalked closer to you on the bed. 

“Most would be terrified in a situation like this, but you? I can smell you. It’s hard to ignore really.” 

You backed further to the wall suddenly facing the reality of your situation. Your heart sped up but not out of fear. The closer he got the more aroused you became but you didn’t want to admit that to yourself just yet. Before you had an understanding of what was going on in front of you, your wrists were taken and tied to the bedpost with the cord Dalton was winding up. 

“No!” 

A sudden urge to fight back, you weren’t sure if this was something you wanted under the given circumstances. As you tried to push back against the cord, an unseen force was pinning your body to the bed. Your vision was obstructed by the fabric of Dalton’s baggy long sleeve but the overwhelming feeling of arousal was something you couldn’t ignore when he moved to face you and you looked directly into his yellowed eyes. 

His hand snaked down the front of your body leaving a trail of goosebumps in its wake. It was a twisted feeling, you dreamt of a moment like this but with the given situation you were struggling if it was right. As his hand toyed with the button of your jeans any doubt about the situation was pushed to the back of your mind and a gritty tone echoed in the silence of the room.

“It’s funny. Hearing you think you have enough strength to deny yourself pleasure.” 

You arched your eyebrow confused by his admission. He took heed of this and answered before you had a chance to vocalize your thoughts. He leaned forward stalking over your body before he placed himself next to the shell of your ear. 

“Your thoughts are so loud. Louder than his–if only…he could be the one to see you like this. He’s wished for it.” He pulled away grinning at you in a way that made your walls flutter around nothing. You wondered if the confession of your Dalton “wishing for it” was real or just something the entity used to get under your skin. 

You didn’t have much time to think on the matter as your heart rate picked up again at the unfortunate realization that you, were enjoying this. The smirk that rested on Dalton’s face let you in on the sadistic pleasure of whatever was taking control of him was feeling. Before Dalton moved away from the shell of your ear, he took a deep inhale of the scent of your neck. 

Humming in relish, he nipped at your earlobe gingerly pulling at the skin as he snaked down your body once more. You wish you had more control but the whimper that left your throat was something instinctive. As this primal version of Dalton reached your hips, your zipper was quickly unfastened and your pants were tossed to the other side of the room 

Dalton moved his legs so that he was no longer straddling your own and situated himself in between them. Sliding toward the edge of the bed, he slid down enough to be face first with your messy cunt. Your desire soaking through the fabric leaving no room for doubt in your feelings. Shoving his nose into your drenched panties, he huffed the scent of you a second time causing you to squirm away from the action. 

Closing your eyes and rolling your lips around your teeth, you tried to silence your whines to collect yourself. Once again trying to convince yourself that you had more power over your bodily wants and needs.

“Stop, please.” 

Your plea was met with a sardonic giggle and as you looked down and was met with the sick glow of his yellow eyes. Dalton stalked back up your body, hovering over your face and clicking his tongue at you mockingly. As you were entranced by the figure above you, you failed to realize that he unbound your wrists from the cord. The sudden freedom surprised you but was swallowed by the feeling of his hand slithering in your panties and rubbing his finger across your slick folds. 

Your body shuddered in hedonism, rolling your hips up into the feeling. As one finger slipped its way into your slick cavern your hands found solace in fisting the sheets. As he entered a second finger you couldn’t contain your sounds. 

“Ah~! I can’t believe this is happening. I can’tbelievethisishappening.”

In your stupor of sexual panic, a low chuckle brought you back down to your body. His fingers curled inside of you repeatedly hitting the special spongey spot you cherished so much. As your moans became more frequent and less controlled, he removed his fingers from your pulsating hole and ripped your panties off of your sensitive frame. You whined out not only at the loss of contact but at the sudden cool air that breezed over your skin. Settling into your body you were panting heavily as you stared down Dalton. 

His yellowed eyes still igniting fear but simultaneously leaving you wanton and in a state of ache. That conflicting feeling flooded your brain again and soon felt guilt peering over the horizon. Before you were given the chance to wrestle with your thoughts, Dalton straddled himself over your body. One hand grabbed your face, squeezing your cheeks to pry your mouth open just enough to shove his fingers into your mouth. He looked down at you, a small smirk adorning his face.

“Suck.”

Overwhelmed by the sudden roughness you complied immediately not wanting to make the situation even more escalated. Your eyebrows furrow, your face plagued with anxiety as you watch Dalton come closer to your face. The leftover stain of blood that was on his chin smeared across your lower cheek as his breath fanned over your skin leaving your body wanting more. As he removed his fingers from your mouth, he licks from your chip up to the tip of your nose. Dalton pulls away slightly so he can get a better look at your face as a venomous smile pulls at his. 

He takes the hand that was holding your face and drags it down the side of your cheek as he exhales a phrase that would chill your bones. 

“Everything I’m going to do to you…he wishes he could do himself.” 

The anxiety you felt prior was beginning to trickle back in as you realized the tank top you were wearing underneath the cardigan provided you little safety from the one above. Dalton’s hands slid up your torso underneath your tank top, his hands massaging over the soft flesh of your breast. Undoing the front clasp, your tits pancaked out of the fabric only for one to be caught by Dalton’s rough hand and the other encased by his lips.

You tried to keep a coherent thought, to push back against him but you lacked the mental will due to the rapture spidering through your body. As his mouth left your nipple, the cold air sent shivers through your chest and rippled down your back as his lips savagely placed open mouth kisses along your jawline, nipping at your skin with each release. 

Caught up in the feeling you almost blocked out the sound of his belt becoming undone. But as soon as you were aware, the time to react had come to pass. His cock, hard and heavy was pulled out from the layers of fabric and you felt it tap against your inner thigh. You were suddenly hyperaware of how exposed you were and the understanding of what was about to happen next rushed through you. 

“W-wait! I don’t, I can’t I~ah! Fuck!”

Before you had the chance to form a coherent thought, his cock entered your seraphic walls and his teeth bit at the skin on your neck. A mark that would surely leave a stain in the aftermath. Having already been overstimulated by the situation itself, the stretch of his cock was horrifically sinful. You couldn’t help the fluttering of your walls as he rocked his length in and out of you at a harrowing pace. 

As he finally let go of your neck he huffed out in the intersection of your neck and shoulder. His exhales made your skin humid and left you with another layer of unwanted pleasure. Trying to bring yourself back down to your body, your hand released the binding grip it had on the bedsheets and sought refuge in Dalton’s sweatshirt, something proving to be a mistake. 

A low growl erupted from Dalton’s throat and before you could register what was happening, he had pulled himself out of you and manhandled you to get on your hands and knees. 

“What made you think that you could touch me, hmm?” 

Like a viper his hand webbed itself in your hair, gripping it at the base and pulling your body up. Adrenaline pumping, you were searching for a viable response but came up with nothing but babbles. 

“I-I don’t, I don’t know. I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” 

He controlled the movements of your head, forcing you to crane your neck and stare at him in his amber orbs one last time. Mocking your apology, he cooed at you. 

“Aww, you’re sorry? Why don’t you show me how sorry you are?”

Punctuating his statement by rushing his cock back into your ruined cunt, you cried out at the feeling. He shoved your face back into the bed, his pace now unrelenting and no longer a derivative of pleasure but rather of power. With every thrust you felt the tip of his cock assault your cervix, causing tears to well up in your eyes and dry into the sheets beneath you. It was overwhelming, feeling like all decision was stolen from you.

The only thing that filled the room now were the occasional groans from the figure above you and muffled sobs from yourself. You hated that you could feel the approaching feelings of ecstasy building in your lower stomach. The heat was building and the suffocating squeezes from your gummy walls around his cock were more than enough to alert him to your demise. 

“You gonna cum around me, you filthy slut? Enjoyed every second of this didn’t you?”

The guilt you were warding off finally made its way to the forefront of your emotions but you couldn’t find it within yourself to admit that you did, in fact, enjoy all of this. You settled for denial. Denial would save you from the inevitable self reflection you’d have to face. 

“No, no no I didn’t! I didn’t enjoy it. I didn-!” 

Your body cut you off, your orgasm washing over you reluctantly but comedically in timing. As your body shuddered around him, you heard that same derisive chuckle leave his throat mocking you yet again.

“Keep telling yourself th~aht.”

He pulled himself out of you, spraying his seed across the exposed portion of your back. The warmth felt overt, wicked, and it was something you didn’t want on you. You didn’t have the gall to face the being behind you. Instead, you let your body fall limp against the bed as the being fronting as Dalton stood up and fixed himself back into his clothes. From behind you heard him. 

“Say hi to him for me.”

Not expecting a response from you, he left Dalton’s body. His earthly form collapsing on your dorm floor. You didn’t have the strength to turn and help him up as he came to, too busy wrestling with your emotions as tears pooled out of your eyes. You heard your Dalton groan and stand up reaching to turn on the lamp light on his art desk. As the warm light illuminated the room, he turned around silence and shock devastating him as he took in the sight of you. 

You tried to quell your sobs, but your body kept shaking them out. Dalton slowly walked over to you trying to survey your body without touching you. When his eyes landed on the alabaster stains that painted your lower back a terrifying realization overcame him. 

“Y/n…? Y/n, talk to me.” 

The gentle tone was something you missed dearly despite only being gone for such a short amount of time. It comforted you knowing that the worst was over for at least right now. Dalton kneeled on the floor resting his upper body on the side of the bed. You turned your head slowly, still somewhat expecting to meet those hideous yellow eyes but when you saw the gentle and disconcerted brown pupils you were swamped with relief. Tears still were falling across your face, their frequency diminishing. 

You gave him a weak smile, a small “hey” leaving your lips. Like cracked porcelain, he wouldn’t dare touch you. He couldn’t break you more than he already had. His tone weak and regretful, he scanned over your fragile body trying to understand how this happened. He let his head fall next to yours, burying his head in sheets. 

“What did I do to you?”

[kwillow]

People are too nice to me and send me so many intriguing and prescient questions and scenarios about my imaginary friends. Some of these I would have a hard time responding to with drawings, so I've gotta just use my words (SO MANY WORDS) instead!

So, for all interested parties, in response to those questions, here come some LORE RAMBLES: THEO EDITION.

Asks and answers under the cut!

Thank you! “Strange but interesting” is what I aim for with him.

I don’t think I’ve talked about Theo’s voice before! To be honest, I often struggle to imagine precisely what my character’s voices are; the qualities of my mental performance for them varies from day to day. Still, I think with Theo I can formulate a description of some kind.

I imagine his voice to be on the higher end for a man, though not exaggeratedly so, along the tenor range. He can deepen his pitch purposefully to sound more imposing or masculine, but his voice tends to rise in pitch further and further when he’s tense, like a violin string on the verge of snapping. He speaks clearly and distinctly, sometimes to the point of almost biting off the ends of words rather than having them sloppily run into each other, and only rarely uses contractions. His voice has a slight nasal quality to it at times. When he’s angry, a bit of a rattling growl can edge the end of his words.

When he was young, he was a terrible stutterer. He made a concerted effort to train himself out of stuttering in his adolescent years, but he will still lapse into r-ruh-ruh-repeating his syllables if anxiousness gets the better of him and makes him forget to swallow those extra sounds.

He is an expressive speaker, far more so than he’d prefer. Like his pitch varies, so too does his volume, and he can swing from speaking so softly as to be almost inaudible to screaming with all the volume his lungs can muster in a moment. His cadence is full of exaggerated pauses for effect mixed with swift traipses through less important words said simply for the music of reciting them to himself; his conversational tone sounds more like a performer going through a soliloquy than casual speech. In large part, that’s because he’s had more pleasant experiences with theater than conversation.

As many have noticed, he has also a vocal tic. He makes nasally sounds and guttural grunts and growls involuntarily, more often when he’s nervous or upset about something. As he gets older and his body is less able to shrug off the effects of his little smoking habit, he wheezes and coughs in the middle of his sentences as well.

For most settings, I imagine him speaking in a highly affected Transatlantic accent, but in Amaranthine (which is what I assume people are asking about and what I’m defaulting to for these answers), his accent might be more typically British posh-y, like Received Pronunciation. Or maybe not, I mean, it’s a funny animal fantasy setting, so he could have any accent I like. :P

If you want auditory examples, I think something mixing the high-pitched, sibilant, nasally breathiness of Peter Lorre with the refined yet expressive voice of Vincent Price would get you pretty close to what I imagine. To break from the classic horror actor category, you can also throw in this animated series’ depiction of Doctor Octopus to add the all-important ingredient of “nerd factor” to his voice, haha.

He’s a bookworm, yes, but that means he likes to learn! In his case, he’s also someone who enjoys mastering (or at least getting competent at) new skills and is extremely likely to learn to do something well just because someone thinks he can’t. He also has the benefit of being kicked out of school and extremely unemployed, so for most of his life he had lots and lots of free time to take on all manner of niche hobbies if he so desired!

His drive to learn a new skill is motivated by a combination of practicality, gentlemanliness, a need to know how to handle his own business to have as little outside interference as possible or simple intellectual curiosity (which itself is often a cover for boyish whimsy about Cool Stuff). To give examples of practical skills he taught himself: most people probably wouldn’t expect him to be a good cook, but he learned to do that because his family lost their household staff, and someone had to figure out how to cook beef – and because he wanted to take better care of his mother after she fell ill. He’s a great seamster because he wanted to make alterations to his clothes to better fit his unusual proportions without suffering the indignity of being prodded and measured by some nosy tailor. Where he lives, engines are extremely uncommon, being used only for agriculture if at all, but if Theo did own his own automobile, he would learn how to fix the thing himself as best as he could because he wouldn’t want some stranger poking around in his precious baby. He does know how to repair basic clockwork mechanisms, though! (Even if he won’t fix his own pocket watch for weird sentimental reasons.) He taught himself to be ambidextrous purely because he worried about losing a hand in a freak accident one day. He never wants to be caught unprepared or feel like he can’t handle something on his own if he needs to.

For skills in the “oh but if I could do this it would be so cool – I MEAN GENTLEMANLY” camp… yeah, actually, he does like to fence. He might not be able to hold his own all that well against a trained opponent, partly just because of his own physical limitations, but he knows the footwork and he certainly enjoys fighting stationary enemies while role-playing in his head as a knight. (He would be exceedingly embarrassed if anyone knew that part.) He can dance – but only as half a pair – and play the piano – or at least the chords his fingers can reach. He makes model ships and is familiar with all their parts even though he’s never seen the ocean. He knows a fair bit about women’s fashion and could probably help a lady pick a flattering dress for a gala… if she didn’t mind dressing about decade out of style. He’s a fine marksman, though that does overlap with “practical skills” when you live in a world with monsters creeping around on the edges of towns. And that’s not even getting into his self-taught anatomy lessons! But maybe we shouldn’t get into that, for the sake of our stomachs.

I could keep rambling, but to summarize, Theo lacks worldly experience, but he is a curious little guy and has all kinds of weird skills rattling around in his skull. You never know what he’s gonna know! Except for anything involving successfully interacting with other people. He’s never going to know how to do that.

Theo is the sort of person who enjoys collecting things, in that he is often captivated by the history and sentimental value of objects that catch his eye, likes to have a little hoard he can lord over like a dragon, doesn’t see value in minimalism and is loath to get rid of anything he owns.

However, he’s a homebody who rarely traveled far from his hometown of Northcrest, a small and remote barony, and his family (and therefore he) did not have the kind of financial situation that allowed for many frivolous expenditures. Therefore, he cannot regularly obtain new items for his collections because he would quickly exhaust everything that caught his eye in his own town, and he would be wary of spending his family’s dwindling funds on something that only served to satisfy his own whims. If he were in different circumstances, able and willing to travel more broadly and possessing the kind of wealth that allowed him to fully indulge his fascinations, I’d imagine he’d have quite the collection of art, weapons, antique books, clothing, and other fineries. As it stands, he only rarely adds a new object to his own collections, and he instead contents his inner dragon by attempting to maintain and catalogue the acquisitions made by past Norths that have accrued in their manor over the generations. Still… a toy store in his town has made quite a profit off him by having new model trains in stock around his birthday and holidays.

I don’t think he’d be terribly enthused with an insect collection, regrettably. At least not a live one. Preserved, exotic kinds might at least hold the intrigue of far-off places, but something more mundane (and wrigglier) would repulse him more than fascinate him.

I’m going to say somewhere along the line between “absolutely not” and “it’s complicated.” Theo obviously gets fulfillment from looking after the people he cares about, and in Amaranthine, he’s been in a caregiver role for so long he takes a certain amount of comfort in it. Even so, if he somehow knew people thought that he “wants” the people he’s close with to fall ill, or have chronic poor health, he’d be horrified. Theo’s not exactly the most hale and hearty fellow himself (and he’s also made his health notably worse through the years via his own actions, good job on that bud), so he knows first-hand how miserable frequent illness is. He wouldn’t want someone to suffer through that. Also, witnessing his mother’s slow decline and death was harrowing for him, and part of why he flings himself into caring for Hyden is that he doesn’t want to see something like that again and is doing all he can to keep Hyden stable. It brings him comfort, but the stress of feeling responsible for someone’s health – and the stress of only being able to manage their symptoms and never fix the problem – takes a toll on him, too, even if he wouldn’t say so.

So, he wouldn’t blame a sickly partner for their condition, and he’d be willing to care for them and want to help them, but I don’t think he’d ever say he “wants” someone he cares about to be sick. Would he nonetheless be more likely to get close to someone sick versus someone well? Well, maybe. Theo has a bit of a dependent streak, not in that he needs someone to dote on him, but that he doesn’t feel like he has any worth in a relationship unless he can provide protection or assistance. But someone could easily satisfy his need to be needed in other ways, too. Like someone being clumsy and needing their clothes mended regularly, or having a deadbeat husband they need murdered, you know, stuff like that.

He doesn’t know much, and never cared to ask much either, like you imagine. He mostly just knows they’re not nobility, they do have some mage ancestry and ability, and beyond that aren’t important (according to Jocosa). Besides, as a history nerd, he has little interest in learning about his father’s side when his mother’s side has biographies, tapestries, records of badges and achievements and personal spellbooks in such great measure that he couldn’t hope to go through them all in his lifetime. Does Leonard’s side of the family have even one tapestry? No? How dull.

For his part, Leonard isn’t close to or fond of most of his family and isn’t very candid about his past life before becoming successful, so he was amenable to not talking much about his childhood or ancestry. He would prefer if Jocosa was similar restrained and didn’t extoll the virtues and history of her bloodline constantly, but alas, no. One of the consequences of marrying into snotty nobility, I suppose.

Oh, you’re on to something there! :)

Now, with someone like Theo, whose brain is a Gordian knot of congealing gray matter basting in a cerebral soup of self-deception, neuroticism, and concentrated hatred, it’s hard to point to one thing as the sole cause for any of his many issues. At the same time, I don’t want to just dump the entirety of Theo’s issues with his family and how they impact him psychologically because I worry that I could write a thousand words about it and still have five thousand more in me, and we all have other things to do with our time than read all that. That said, to briefly (ha) touch on what you’ve mentioned…

Many of Theo’s problems with intimacy, with needing to feel useful, with fearing connections with others, and so on do stem from his troubled family history. At least some of his self-loathing is borne from him, at a glance, looking more like the man he most despises instead of being the same long, slim, elegant creatures that form the roots and branches of his mother’s family tree. Although, the irony in that is that all the “bad” genetics that cause him grief and suffering come from his mother’s side – but he alternately blames the cruel gods and himself for being a freak, not his mother or grandpa or any of his weaselly ancestors for that.

It’s also true to say that Theo’s self-sacrificing and self-effacing acts of kindness towards his mother and to others he cares for are done in part to make up for the fact of his own existence. The fact that his beloved mother had to couple with a disgusting, loathsome, degrading, unfaithful cur of a man (have I mentioned Theo really hates his dad yet?) in order to bear him weighs heavily on his mind and warps his self-concept. As much as Theo knows his mother loves him, he also knows – and despises – that he if he’s his mother’s son, he’s also his father’s spawn.

Jocosa doesn’t talk at length about her problems to Theo, or anyone – she wouldn’t want to make Theo feel responsible for her woes and she isn’t the kind of woman to whine about her life’s tribulations besides – but Theo isn’t so ignorant that he can’t pick up on the tension in other’s conversations, read meaning into words left unsaid, or work backwards from what he is told to deduce the rotten truth behind what little he’s told. He knows that everything involving his conception was hard for her, even if she doesn’t say it, and he feels he needs to do everything in his power to make up for the suffering bringing him into existence put her through. ...And I could go on but I think that’s enough to get the picture for now. Have I mentioned I can write a lot of words about Theo??

I think Hyden would know better than to say something like that – out loud. Hyden does try to push Theo into a personal valet role. But Theo has his limits and Hyden is smart enough to not press them (too much, right away). Being referred to as a kind of servant is one of those limits that really pisses him off and would be a one-way ticket to not getting any more pillow fluffing. Also, for as much as he helps Hyden with daily tasks and provides whatever dotage he feels is required of him as an apprentice, caregiver or host, there are tasks a manservant would be responsible for that Theo categorically refuses to do (even though Hyden wishes he would).

I am greatly amused by the thought of someone trying to get a flower crown on Theo. I can’t imagine it’d ever go much better than people trying to put shirts on their cats. He just really doesn’t like situations wherein Stimulus I Have No Control Over Is Happening To Me.

He does tend to flip from fury to (relative) calm depending on the circumstance and the source of annoyance, so you’re spot-on with the variable reactions he could have to a floral intrusion. I would say he isn’t likely to use “witch” as an insult for the same reason as he wouldn’t use “harpy” or “ice queen” as an insult, which is that any kind of derogatory comment his mother was ever called might as well be a compliment in his books. “Harlot” is completely fair game, though.

Thanks a bunch for the kind words on my weird rat guy. So happy you like him!

(Also “dark fantasy rose type flower” made me laugh. God. He’s such an edgelord. Emphasis on the “lord”, with a title and arms and everything.)

Glad you like seeing him! I guess one of the benefits of me not getting particularly exotic with the colors or markings on my furry designs is that you can find associations to actual animals like this! I hope your pet rat had a better temperament than Theo does, though.

…Which sounds a little stupid considering quite a lot of these answers involved me talking at length about Theo being sad and self-sacrificing and crap like that. I swear to God he’s a nasty little bitchboy most of the time. I need to draw him biting someone on the face or insulting someone for being poor or eating someone’s eyeball or something again to balance the scales here.

Note to self.

[nientedenada]

Mages Guild Morass: A Mix-Up over Vanus Galerion's Final Fate

Also posted on r/teslore. A couple months ago, my friend @akaviri-dovah asked a question about Vanus Galerion's timeline.

Ok so I’m reading up on Vanus uesp page again and apparently there was a point wherein he abandoned his guild and left Tamriel?? […] "Over time, Galerion grew bitterly disillusioned with the contrived hierarchies and sinister political environment that the Mages Guild had become. He grew regretful for establishing the guild in the first place, as it had become monster of its own, and was too late for him to fix. After denouncing the guild, Galerion elected to leave Tamriel entirely to travel to other lands. For many years Galerion wandered around Nirn. Eventually, after long his abandonment of the Mages Guild, Galerion claimed that he had found the virtue of magic in his solitary travels." [This description] probably wouldn’t line up with how he still managed to gather so many mages and Lamp Knights (guild specific) in his battle against Manni right?

This question completely confuddled me at first, because it turned out I didn't know my Vanus Galerion lore very well at all. But now I know a lot more and I am here to share a very niche lore puzzle with you all.

I think we're all aware that when the devs imported lore books into ESO, they didn't always make certain the books' contents fit into the previously established timeline. Sometimes that can be explained by Hermaeus Mora moving books about through time, but often books are edited for ESO but some detail is overlooked. This is what appears to have happened with Vanus Galerion.

Origin of the Mages Guild, written by Ted Peterson, has been in every big TES game since Daggerfall except Skyrim. It’s been edited for different games, but the last paragraph is the same in all versions.

One need not be a member of the Mages Guild to know that this carefully contrived hierarchy is often nothing more than a chimera. As Vanus Galerion himself said bitterly, leaving Tamriel to travel to other lands, "The Guild has become nothing more than an intricate morass of political infighting."

In Daggerfall and Morrowind, that is the last heard of Vanus Galerion. This version is backed up by a role-playing thread from 2001 in which Ted Peterson, posting as Tedders, has an exchange with Vanus Galerion (also played by himself)

Tedders: Thank Mara for Vanus Galerion for freeing the Old Ways and founding the Mages Guild. Vanus Galerion: For many long years I did regret that very deed, as it seems I created just another monster of sinister politics. The virtue of magic I found in my solitary travels, many years after I abandoned the Mages Guild and ventured on my own. Tedders: Poor Trechtus. It's too late now.

Oblivion, though, adds a new version of Vanus Galerion’s fate. In Mannimarco, King of Worms, it’s explained that Vanus never did peace out on the Mages Guild. He actually died leading Mages Guild Lamp Knights against Mannimarco.

They say Galerion left the Guild, calling it 'a morass,' But untruth is a powerful stream, polluting the river of time. Galerion beheld Mannimarco's rise through powers sublime, To his mages and Lamp Knights, 'Before my last breath, Face I must the tyranny of worms, and kill at last, undeath.' He led them north to cursed lands, to a mountain pass.

(Short interlude: this is not quite as bad as Mannimarco's own poetry, but it ain't good)

In this text, Vanus Galerion is killed in the fight against Mannimarco

A thousand good and evil perished then, history confirms. Among, alas, Vanus Galerion, he who showed the way,

This version is supported by Mannimarco’s claim in Oblivion that he had Galerion’s corpse in his possession.

I must say, I expected Arch-Mage Traven, rather than his star pupil. I am disappointed to see that he could not face me himself. I have met so many of his predecessors over the years. I developed a particular fondness for Galerion, ill-preserved though he may be.

So, depending on whose version you believe, Vanus either left the guild calling it a morass or led the guild in a final battle against Mannimarco.

In comes ESO to complicate matters.

The ESO Devs did not include Mannimarco, King of Worms in the game, since Vanus Galerion is still alive in ESO. But they didn’t ignore the text. A lot of the details of Vanus and Mannimarco’s early life from Mannimarco King of Worms are fleshed out in the Summerset expansion via. Vanus’ ESO autobiography: Artaeum Lost, as well as in ESO flashbacks to their time with the Psijics.

However, base game ESO stumbled with their version of Origin of the Mages Guild, which still ends

One need not be a member of the Mages Guild to know that this carefully contrived hierarchy is often nothing more than a chimera. As Vanus Galerion himself said bitterly, leaving Tamriel to travel to other lands, "The Guild has become nothing more than an intricate morass of political infighting."

When you bring this book into ESO, you get the implication that Vanus got into a snit at the Mages Guild, left Tamriel to travel other lands, AND THEN came back from abroad for the events of ESO where he’s very involved in Mages Guild business again.

So to sum it up

Version 1: Daggerfall to Morrowind: Vanus is said to have called the guild a morass and left Tamriel at some unspecified date. That is the last mention of him.

Version 2: Oblivion to Skyrim: It's suggested that story is untrue and he actually died leading the Mages guild in a fight against Mannimarco but many believe he instead left Tamriel after calling the Guild a morass.

Version 3: ESO: Doesn't go into Vanus' death because it's not happened yet but keeps details from that Oblivion/Skyrim Version about his earlier life with Mannimarco. ESO devs miss the detail of the morass line referring to Vanus Galerion's permanent disappearance in both Versions 1 and 2.

I think if we go with Version 3, which is the most up-to-date, we would conclude that he did get into an earlier snit with his subordinates, went globetrotting, and then came back to guide the Mages Guild. Centuries later, someone misattributed the morass remark from the earlier situation to the latter disappearance.

Or you could go with time-travelling books.

Or you could just shrug your shoulders and ignore the obvious developer error and continue with the timeline established by the previous games.

UESP has cobbled all these sources into one timeline: ESO Events -> Morass Remark and Exit from Mages Guild -> Leading the Mages Guild against Mannimarco/ Death. But unless we go with the time-travelling books theory, this doesn’t seem possible.

End of Morass Gate.

[gothic-chicanery]

I know I don’t post a lot about my gacha games on main but the gacha drama right now is so fucking funny I’m going to do a little r/hobbydrama about it

So genshin impact is one of the biggest gacha games on the market right now, mostly because it was one of the first to do an open world exploration thing in a gacha game and it didn’t have to worry about much competition. There’s a lot of critique that it has gotten over game mechanics and things like that, but it fills its niche pretty well, so that mostly stayed critique.

Then came Wuthering waves, a new game developed by a different company that was…very similar to genshin. The combat mechanics worked similarly, it was also an open world, there were even characters that looked very similar to characters in genshin. More than that though, all the things that genshin got critiqued over mechanically, Wuthering waves made a point of incorporating. Though the two companies didn’t outwardly fight (genshins company account even reposted stuff promoing Wuthering waves), the gacha fanbase saw this as a pretty direct challenge, some even referring to Wuthering waves as a genshin killer.

Well, the game dropped about a week ago and didn’t live up to expectations. From my own personal experience, the combat system was genuinely so much fucking fun and there were a lot of minor mechanical things that Wuthering waves did that I loved, but the story didn’t get me quickly enough, so it didn’t stick for me. I was one of the luckier ones though, tons of glitches showed up pretty quickly for most people. They responded by giving pretty generous rewards to make up for it, which did a lot to mitigate the issues, especially because they were trying to gain a reputation as a game that listened to their player base and fixed the issues. Besides, free pulls are free pulls.

One such example is a weapon description was mistranslated in Japanese, leading some players to think it was better than it actually was, which caused a lot of people, especially whales who dropped a lot of money on it, to get really mad. Wuthering Waves responded by giving players some pulls, but then decided to go further and tell people to fill out a form for individual compensation.

They then sent out an email to those affected (which apparently included a subtle threat to ban people’s accounts if they tried to refund money spent) but forgot to hit BCC and so EVERYONES email address got leaked. Very excited to see how this turns out

[themainspoon]

Recently I became aware of a musical genre by the name of “Glitchbreak”, a musical genre very closely related to Breakcore and seemingly only separated from it by it’s anime and y2k inspired aesthetic and samples. When you look in the right places it really starts to seem like the reason the genre exists is to refer to a sub-genre of Breakcore that a lot of Breakcore fans don’t like (it also sometimes gets called “anime Breakcore” by these individuals).

So far this is pretty whatever on it’s own. Glitchbreak is sparkling DnB, because it isn’t Breakcore unless it’s from the correct region of France or whatever. But when you look into the artists who produce in this genre I think an interesting pattern begins to emerge that’s worth talking about, especially in the context of this genre essentially being music that was deemed to not be “true Breakcore” by Breakcore fans. Because honestly this whole situation kind of raises some possible red flags for me, and I want to draw attention to that in case I have actually identified a real problem within this niche little online music community, because nobody else seems to have pointed this out.

One really interesting thing to note about "Glitchbreak" as a genre is that none of the artists who apparently make it use the term "Glitchbreak" to describe their music. Despite this, it is recognized as a real genre by streaming services like Spotify and many other sites. It also has a small Reddit community (r/glitchbreak). I personally find this Subreddit incredibly telling in a lot of ways. Firstly is their "Glitchbreak QnA" post (which is actually one of the first things that comes up if you google "Glitchbreak"). In this post they say the following about the musical genre that their Subreddit is about:

What is Glitchbreak and how is it different from breakcore and jungle?

It is a music microgenre that can be combination of different genres, but the main similarity of the songs is a breakbeat or a dnb beat (less common). Aesthetic influences include anime, web y2k, glitchcore and many others.

Why was this subreddit created?

Most people don’t know what to call songs that are not true breakcore. The main reason of this subreddit is to separate anime “breakcore” posts from r/breakcore. This is to lessen conflict in r/breakcore because people would argue that it is not breakcore but actually a ambient-atmospheric-liquid-jungle-mashcore dnb song. Some of the members also dislike anime “breakcore”, so this is the subreddit to post that kind of music

(sic) and emphasis added for the above btw.

Their Subreddit description is similar, if more direct:

I also want to state that this post isn't about the Subreddit. These are just people who wanted to talk about the music they liked but found that they couldn't do so elsewhere, and so they created their own community. They are not the issue here, what they have done is fine, and in fact is something that they may have only had to have done because of the hostility that other communities display towards this "micro-genre".

Now, with this context added, Let's have a look at some of the artists in the “Glitchbreak” genre. This list is in no way exhaustive, but it lists a few artists considered by those in the community to have made "Glitchbreak" music. This list really only exists to show the observation that I'm making in this post. I do not have the time to make a full exhaustive list. This is just an observation, this isn't an academic paper, do not take what I have observed as objective fact. (Here is the Subreddit's list of artists btw in case you want to look through a much longer list.)

Rory in early 20’s: trans lesbian (she/her) (most of this info comes from this page https://en.pronouns.page/@rorynearly20s. That one doesn't mention that she's trans though, we only know that because it was listed on a different [and now defunct] page on the same website, and we can see people talking about it on this community post she made about it: https://www.youtube.com/post/UgkxSi_3DOgeSbn2ceVa416R-AlixvyfYeQw)

Machine Girl: These days Machine Girl is a duo, and they mainly make Digital Hardcore, so the people who make this classification are likely referring to the music produced by the bands founder (Matt) alone, and not to the work they produced with Sean Kelly (the groups second member). Matt is Nonbinary and uses they/them, (I only know this because of a screenshot of the official discord shared in the comments of a Reddit post by user u/weedcop420. if you just want to see the image you can see it here.)

Sewerslvt: Transfem/nonbinary, possibly they/them. To our knowledge was in a wlw relationship for a while. (Information on this artist is a little sparse and obscure for multiple reasons that I don't have time to get into. This is based on what their fans have been able to find/already knew. But the fact that this artist is MtF is confirmed. Their final ever musical project was apparently dedicated to their late girlfriend Angel, we don't know much else. Most of this can be found on the fan wiki. But I won't be linking it here because this artist seems to have deleted a lot of this information from their socials. I only bring them up because they are too large to not mention.)

Vertigoaway: Transfem (She/They) (Pretty easy to find this out: https://vertigoaway.space/details also married to purity://filter, another artist on this list, as seen in her twitter bio: https://twitter.com/vertigoawaypls)

purity://filter: Couldn't see pronouns listed anywhere, but since purity://filter and Vertigoaway list each other as their wives on their social media's, it's pretty safe to assume that purity://filter is a queer woman. (https://www.instagram.com/purity_filter/)

Bye2: Based on what I was able to find, Bye2 seems to be a queer woman. (My sources for this? We know that Bye2 is a woman because they have stated as such in the Youtube comments on one of their songs [it's in a reply to the pinned comment]. And my information on their sexuality also comes from some random place on YouTube: in the YouTube description for their song "Girl Soup多摩市風" we get the following quote "Thank u to This HHot Wife of Mine who recorded it thru the CRT : )" (sic) I know this isn't exactly conclusive proof, but this is the best info I could find. Can we please bring back helpful "About Me" sections? While we're here I would also like to share the official Bye2 website (https://bye2.co.uk/) because I came across it while looking for this stuff, and while it wasn't overly helpful, it is a really fun looking site on desktop.)

So now my point: This genre is basically defined as "not Breakcore", and a whole lot of its top artists seem to be queer and/or women. I think we have to ask ourselves "Why does the music these artists produce need a separate genre?" While not all of these artists would say that they make Breakcore, some do (or did). And yet, their songs are not classified as such, they are labelled as being a different genre that none of them seem to claim or acknowledge.

Now, maybe I've accidentally put on a tinfoil hat here, but the fact that a separate genre defined by what it isn't exists to classify the music of these majority queer and/or female artists rings some alarm bells in my head. This "genre" seems to exist partially to allow these artists to be excluded from other genres. At most it feels like it should be a sub genre, but in reality it seems more like a sort of "anti-genre".

I am not saying that those who use this label are doing this on purpose, or that the concept of micro-genre's is bad in any way (again, the people on the Glitchbreak Subreddit have done nothing wrong). But what I am saying is that I think we should think harder about why this distinction is being made in the first place, because it seems suspect to me. Especially since this doesn't seem like a term that has come from these artists themselves at all (in fact there are terms that come from these artists that could be getting used instead, purity://filter coined "Sextrance"), it exists purely to differentiate them from other musicians who make similar music, and seems to have been born as a result of fans who want to gatekeep the genre's they listen to not only from fans, but artists as well.

Has an entire genre been created to exclude female and/or queer musicians from more mainstream niche genres? I don't know, I'm not claiming that, I just recognized a pattern and felt the need to share it just in case it was meaningful, and maybe it isn't.

[lakegenevaslumberparty]

The middle of The One Official Ice Storm of Texas Winter is an amazing time to be heading to the North Pole with Captain Walton. genuinely tickled by the timing here.

To Mrs. Saville, England. Farewell, my dear, excellent Margaret. Your affectionate brother, R. Walton

As cleverer souls than me have pointed out, Margaret Walton Saville has the initials MWS--the same as Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Captain Walton passes the story on to MWS, and she passes it on to us. We are just one of a chain of readers getting this nesting narrative; and if we tell it to someone else , and arguably even if we just discuss it like this, we become part of its structure. Neat!

There—for with your leave, my sister, I will put some trust in preceding navigators—there snow and frost are banished; and, sailing over a calm sea

doubt.jpg (but I do find the speculation fascinating!)

 My education was neglected, yet I was passionately fond of reading.

Fascinated by this whole " I was educated by reading in the library" thread-- obviously it means someone's not been guided in their thinking by the establishment, and that seems like it should be a Good Thing for a Romantic novel, but it also speaks to a certain level of parental/societal neglect, and especially isolation from peers, and Spoilers and all but that is Not Great here

These visions faded when I perused, for the first time, those poets whose effusions entranced my soul and lifted it to heaven. I also became a poet and for one year lived in a paradise of my own creation; I imagined that I also might obtain a niche in the temple where the names of Homer and Shakespeare are consecrated. You are well acquainted with my failure and how heavily I bore the disappointment

gskdghdsklh ONE YEAR, he tried writing for ONE YEAR and didn't instantly become Homer so that's it!!!

On the one hand I get it, but also. My dude my guy. One Year.

But just at that time I inherited the fortune of my cousin, and my thoughts were turned into the channel of their earlier bent.

I wish everyone disappointed in the arts to come into a huge convenient fortune , possibly via the death of Captain Walton's cousin

Six years have passed since I resolved on my present undertaking. I can, even now, remember the hour from which I dedicated myself to this great enterprise. I commenced by inuring my body to hardship. I accompanied the whale-fishers on several expeditions to the North Sea; I voluntarily endured cold, famine, thirst, and want of sleep...

I feel like our Captain was way more intent on one of these Life Goals than the other.

Not much to say at this point-- I am truly moved by Walton's description of Hypothetical Landscapes, and I'm sure we're all looking forward to reading about his totally calm and successful voyage!

[bijouxcarys]

𝘊𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘞𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘔𝘦 (𝘒𝘢𝘵𝘺𝘢 𝘡𝘢𝘮𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘥𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘬𝘰𝘷𝘢 𝘹 𝘧𝘦𝘮!OC)

Masterlist

Description: (Requested) "Can we have like a really dom lesbian Katya who was roommates with the reader who is pretty sub and they are finally just like heck it let's smut because they're so sexually frustrated and attracted to each other. ugh I love gay"

Warnings: Mentions of hiding one's sexuality out of fear, Smut, strong language, Lesbian AU, dom!Katya, sub!reader, oral sex (both receiving), lesbian sex, slight bondage, slight BDSM, hair-pulling, biting, slight blood warning, anal play, 69, spanking, degradation, scissoring, multiple orgasms, vaginal fingering, slight anal fingering.

"I told you, Kukla. No work for me today. I need to be with you before you go home." Katya plonked herself down beside me on the sofa, crossing her legs excitedly.

I furrowed my eyebrows, tilting my head to look at her. "You're so stupid, go to work." I scolded.

"No."

I rolled my eyes. "You're so stubborn." I shook my head, looking at the TV screen, which was broadcasting some niche Russian reality show that even Katya couldn't comprehend at times.

"Da. I know that. But I want to be with you before your return to your home country, Lynds." She purred in that accent, the R's in her words rolling off her tongue with such deliciousness.

I met Katya when I was looking for temporary accommodation for my year abroad placement at university. I studied Russian literature and to be quite honest, I was pretty decent at it. Until I ended up in a strip club my first night in Moscow and met an enigmatic, charismatic, elegant yet crude woman in her early thirties - she moved with sophistication and knew how to leave you wanting for more. The men would sit at the edge of their seats, drooling over her lacy lingerie and her wavy blonde hair, the bright red lip accenting her perfect face. But the gag is... She preferred the company of other... ladies. Intriguing, to say the least.

I was situated in a hotel at the time, with it only being my first night. The woman at the club took me back to her apartment, and I was anticipating some kind of hot and lust-filled evening. Alas, we naturally ended up having a heartfelt conversation about movies and music. She introduced herself as Yekaterina Petrovna Zamolodchikova. But for short, you could just call her Katya.

My year abroad was sadly coming to an end, and I only had one more sleep at Katya's apartment before I had to hop on a plane for an uncomfortably lengthy journey back home. Here's a tip: if you stay abroad, don't get attached to the people you're living with. And more than anything, do not fall in love.

I could have used that advice.

I chewed the inside of my cheek, looking down at my lap as Katya shuffled next to me, moving her head into my eyesight. Her odd demeanour made me giggle, cracking a grin. "Can I help you?"

Her blue eyes shone upwards at me, her bright teeth exposed. "Da." She kept her manic grin before her erratic expression fell into a more melancholy and serious one. "I will miss you, Kukla. It has been, how you say it, a pleasure having you here." Why did she have to do that?

I had been putting off the thought of leaving, but earlier that morning I had turned in my bed and seen my suitcase and bags packed in the corner from the night before and I couldn't help but have a little cry to myself in bed. Katya didn't know. At least, I didn't think she knew.

"I know..." I said quietly, and as little as possible. I could already feel the sting of tears quickly approaching. "I'll miss you too, Katty..." She nuzzled her head against my stomach as she settled the upper half of her body on my lap. It wasn't the first time she'd embraced me so intimately, but it didn't mean that it didn't send inappropriately-timed pangs of arousal throughout my body. "You're staring, Lynds." Her voice had lowered and the tip of her finger came up to push some hair away from my face.

I swallowed and looked away from her, cheeks burning up. "Sorry..." I'm not sorry, I just want to kiss you and make love to you. I want you to take me and make me yours before I disappear out of your life.

She hummed, lifting herself up so she was hovering slightly over me. "I really will miss you. I have become... Fond of you. Maybe a little too much." When she sensed my confusion and curiosity, she continued. "I dance almost every night for sleazy men who want nothing but my body. They want nothing but a night of hard fucking whilst their wives and children sit at home in front of late night newscast." Her slight inaccuracy in her English made my heart flutter. "When that music takes over my body, Lynds, it is you I think of. I see you sat at the side, cheering me on. It's you who helps me get through nights where I want nothing more than to see my only best friend. She waited for me every night and made sure I was happy and safe. Thank you, dorogoy."

She was dangerously close to me. I could smell the cigarettes and coffee on her breath, hairspray lingering off her from when she styled her hair into a half-up half-down do. She was so beautiful. And I was noticing that with each passing moment.

I trembled under her stare. My core shivered. I was under her spell.

"Katya..." I breathed out, finally taking in her words. "I'm going to miss you so much--"

"Shh..." She interrupted - her finger traveling around to press against my lips. "I am not finished. If I don't tell you this now, I don't think I will ever get another chance. From the moment I saw you, I knew I wanted you. I wanted you for a hot night of love. But now, when I look at you, I want nothing more than for you to tremble under me, your legs shaking, your body completely surrendered to mine. Every day. And now you're going home."

I breathed out. I must have been dreaming. I tried to convince myself of that, but she carried on.

"I need to know if you'll let me do all of that before you go. I need you to know how much you mean to me." Her eyes traveled down to my lips, face inches from mine. "Would you like that, Lynds?"

I swallowed thickly, letting out a breath I didn't know I was holding. I looked up at her eyes, those beautiful blue eyes, and sat up as straight as I could, which brought our faces closer together. A devilish smirk appeared on my face as I pulled out my best attempt as smooth Russian. "Yebat' menya, Katya."

With a low grunt, she grabbed the back of my neck and slammed her lips against mine. My hand instantly flew up to her neck, holding onto it as she deepened the kiss almost immediately.

I let out a small moan when she slipped her tongue into my mouth, and I moved to push her back onto the couch. Her hands gripped onto my hips and pulled me down closer to her, so my body was pressed against hers sinfully.

I sat up on her lap at her physical command and she reached upwards to pull my shirt off over my head. Her eyes feasted on my bare chest, the smirk on her face making it very clear she was happy with the lack of undergarments. She leaned forwards and pressed kisses down my chest, taking her sweet time. Her hands kneaded my ass, pulling me down against her every now and then.

As soon as I felt her lips wrap around one of my nipples, I melted into her. She swirled her tongue, looking up at me with those piercing blue eyes. She gave the same attention to the other breast before flipping us over so she was hovering on top of me.

"Are we really doing this, Katty?" I asked breathlessly as she travelled down my body.

"Da, detka. Are you going to be a good girl for me and shut up whilst I eat your sweet pussy?"

Her words did take me back, my heart sinking in the best way possible. I bit back a loud moan, afraid of sounding too eager. My mind fought between if this was a good idea or not. But at the end of the day, this was probably the last time I'd see Katya for a long time - I had to make the best of it.

"Yeah..." I nodded. "Sorry, Katya."

"Net, Lynds." She growled, pulling me to the edge of the couch and yanking my pants off, followed by my panties. "You don't call your own mommy by her real name, do you, detka?" I shook my head with my eyebrows furrowed and my pussy throbbing beneath her. "Then you don't call your bedroom mommy by her real name, do you?"

"No..." I shakily breathed.

I gasped when one of Katya's hands came down to smack my thigh. "No what?"

I bit down on my lip due to the stinging - the painfully pleasurable stinging - and answered her with a faux baby-voice.

"No, mommy."

"Good girl, dorogoy." She praised, laying kisses up and down my thighs, purposefully missing where I needed her the most.

I tried my hardest not to squirm under her, but the way her hot breath danced over my core was almost too much to handle and my hips wriggled in her tight grip, to which she glared up at me. Much to my disappointment, she stood up from between my legs and yanked me upwards.

"My bedroom, shlyukha."

I obeyed, swiftly turning and making my way towards Katya's bedroom. She took this as an opportunity to swat my ass lightly a few times, testing the strength of my knees. I managed to hold myself up, though, and I made it to her bedroom and her bed without crumbling.

I turned to look at her, fumbling my fingers together. My core throbbed as she proceeded to undress herself. Her tits were threatening to burst out from her black lace bra and her ass looked so damn tempting in her matching thong.

God, she was so beautiful.

"You like what you see, Lynds?" She leaned back against the wall, arching her back just to tease me further. I swallowed dryly and nodded. But she didn't like that. I stood there, embarrassed yet aroused as she pushed herself off of the wall and stood dangerously close to me. "Bend over the bed, lyublyu." She pushed me over, catching myself on my own hands and I automatically stuck my ass in the air for her.

"So obedient for me, detka." She murmured, running her nails over the supple skin of my ass. I could feel my growing wetness dripping down my thighs - it was spread across my skin as Katya ran her hand over it. I flinched at the sudden contact, letting out a small whimper. I hung my head down between my shoulders, just for it to be yanked back up by my hair. 

"Please..." I pathetically whined. She just chuckled evilly, bringing her hand that wasn't held onto my hair down onto my ass, the strong slapping sound echoing of her bedroom walls. I knew there'd be a bruising mark later. She grabbed the flesh of my ass, digging her nails into it. It was so painful. But I loved it. 

"Bad girls do not get what they want, suka. And you are a bad girl, no?" It was like she purposefully thickened her accent in order to turn me on me. And, boy, did it work. "Leaving me all on my own, in this godforsaken country. Where I have to pretend to like dicks for money. God forbid if I admitted I like the pussy. But for now... I can safely say I've been dreaming about this pussy for weeks, dorogoy." She rubbed the length of her fingers down my slit, where I tightened around nothing. 

Katya let go of my hair and pushed my upper body down onto her mattress, where I went completely limp. She pushed my legs apart before moving away. I whimpered under my breath, waiting for any kind of contact. 

I heard her rustling around behind me before feeling something wrap around my ankles. I tried to move my feet, but they were held in place by a metal bar between them. I was trapped, my legs spread wide open for Katya. 

"Look at you, Lynds... Dripping wet for me." She knelt on the bed beside me, resting her arm on my lower back, leaning over me. "Tell me if you want me to stop, detka." I nodded, taking a deep breath. There was no way I wanted to stop any time soon. "Good girl." 

Katya let a thick droplet of her own spit fall onto me, landing between my cheeks and running down to my throbbing clit. The sensation was almost too much to handle, and she virtually hadn't even done anything yet. I bit my lip hard, finding it enticing that it was her spit on my most intimate area. She used one hand to hold me open, whilst the other one ran down from my ass, mixing her spit with my juices. She then stopped at my clit, rubbing slow circles around the bud. 

"Fuck..." I breathed into the mattress, gripping onto the sheets with one hand and biting at my finger with the other one. 

"You're throbbing... So swollen... YA khochu prosto s'yest' tebya..." 

My stomach clenched at her deep Russian. "Please, mommy..." 

"Be patient, little girl. Mommy is going to take care of you." And with that, she lowered her head and strategically lapped her tongue against my asshole, slipping the tip in every now and then. 

"Ugh..." I groaned, arching my back. Katya reached around and grabbed one of my breasts, pinching the nipple in sync with the movements of her tongue. I felt the urge to touch myself, but I didn't want to anger her. "C-Can I... Can I touch myself, mommy?" 

She pulled away and spat on me, bringing her hand down to slap my ass. "Make yourself cum, Lynds. Be a little slut for me. I'm not stopping until you have cum at least three times." She snapped before resuming her actions on my ass. 

I immediately shot my hand to my pussy, slipping two fingers inside. I tried my best to match my rhythm to the one Katya had on my ass, but I was too lost in ecstasy to pay much attention to that. "God, fuck yes, Katty... God, you're so fucking hot." I rambled, reaching out my free hand to hold onto her leg, which was placed somewhat close to me. I reached as close to her pussy as I could, massaging whatever flesh I could get my hand on.

"Cum on your fingers, detka." She mumbled, moving her hand down to rub fast and hard circles on my clit. Everything was being stimulated and I couldn't hold back much longer. I whined and moaned from my dry throat, my walls tightening around my fingers. 

"Oh, fuck, I'm cumming, Katya, fuck, fuck..." I panted, babbling profanities as I pulsed and convulsed around my digits, Katya still vigorous with her own actions. After a few minutes of enduring the sensitivity, I tapped her leg, her weight lifting off of me. I felt somewhat empty as she moved away, but I knew we were nowhere near done yet. 

I fell the most I could on the bed, despite the metal contraption on my ankles digging into my skin as I did so. Thankfully, Katya picked up on my discomfort, and she unlocked me, letting my legs hang freely. 

"Now that you're nice and wet for me..." She started, reaching behind her and unclipping her bra, the material falling and being flung off the bed. Her tits looked more enticing than I'd imagined they'd be. "I'd like to taste you, lyublyu." 

However, instead of doing what I'd expect her to do and get between my legs in front of me, she crawled up the bed on her hands and knees, giving me them sultry blue eyes as she did so, and laid on her back, her head nestled on the pillows. I got up on my knees, looking over her form. She never broke eye contact from me as she dipped her hands into the band of her panties, pulling them down and throwing them amongst her bra. 

"Come here..." She beckoned me over with one perfectly manicured finger, to which I obliged almost straight away. When I got to her, she placed her fingers under my chin, lifting her own head up slightly to catch my lips with hers. We shared what could only be described as a passionate, lusful and hot kiss. Her tongue teased me, giving me a preview of what she could do by circling my own tongue with hers, flicking it in quick motions, before pulling away, a thin trail of saliva connecting us. "You're going to eat my pussy while I eat yours... Aren't you, devushka?" 

My stomach sank in the best way possible, my eyes drooping at the way she trailed her fingers along my neck. All I could do was nod and whisper a struggled 'yes' as I straddled her head, my thighs being tickled by the stray strands of Katya's hair. 

By the time her tongue was on my folds, teasing an entrance, she'd opened her legs for me, her pussy visibly dripping. I, for a moment, admired how she was able to keep her cool when she'd obviously been suffering so immensely. I leaned forward, her hands caging my hips and holding me in place. 

I pushed my hair to one side, resting one of my hands on the bed, lowering my head down between her legs. She tasted of heaven. 

I dipped the tip of my tongue between her own folds, drawing small circles on her clit. I felt her release a small breath as she mimicked my actions, just to take them a step further, her entire tongue licking strips up my aching pussy.  I moaned against her, and her hips jerked up a bit at the vibration. I smirked to myself, realising I had a perfect opportunity to make the master stumble in her glory. 

We both continued to out-lick each other, our movements becoming more and more vicious and determined as time passed. My face was buried between her legs, my entire mouth like a suction cup on her hot flesh. I would not stop my tongue until she'd come. I needed to hear what sounds she made as she came. But, I think my own release was being chased faster than hers. 

I had to pull my mouth away from her to breath and not pass out as I moaned obnoxiously loud at her pussy-eating skills. Her tongue was everywhere. It felt like a vibrator in itself as she flicked it against my clit and moved it around inside me. 

I leaned against her bent leg, looking down at her pussy as I took my hand and proceeded to rub harshly on it, so as to not hinder any of her pleasure at the cost of my own. 

"Fuck! I'm gonna come again, mommy." I squeaked, digging my nails into the back of her leg as I came hard on her mouth, the orgasm way more intense and mind-numbing as the first one. "Shit, it's so good..." I rambled nonsense yet again, but was soon snapped out of it by my need to finish her off. 

I climbed off of her, quickly travelling down the bed and spreading her legs wide, her soaked heat right in front of me. She barely had time to consider what was happening as I resumed eating her out. I slipped two of my fingers into her tight hole, moaning at her taste and the feeling of her wrapped around me. Her clit was swollen and throbbing on my tongue, and I wanted nothing more than to make it so painfully enlarged that she'd scream into air. 

Her hand flew to my hair, pulling at the roots as she began to grind her hips against my face. 

"Christ, Lynds, your mouth is so fucking good." She moaned, making my mind fog up, basking in her noises. "That's it, detka, right there... Ya sobirayus' konchit' po vsemu tvoyemu malen'komu yazyku... Shlyukha... Fuck... Ty moya khoroshaya shlyukha." I flicked my eyes up at her to see she had the hand that wasn't pushing my head into her pawing against her breast, her nipple tugged between her fingers as she arched her back. 

"God, I'm cumming, I'm cumming. Detka!" She pushed me hard against her, as she let out a combination of groans and moans, whines and squeals, riding out her own orgasm and using my tongue to her disposal. 

When she was finally coherant, she sat up and dragged my stunned form towards her, smashing her lips on mine. She bit on my lip harshly, drawing blood and lapping it up. Vampire freak. She used the remainder of her energy to flip us over, lips still connected. My hands travelled from her messy blonde hair, down to her back and then to her ass, where I kneaded the soft yet pleasantly firm flesh. 

She pulled away and got up on her knees, looking down at me. She lifted one of my legs up, swinging one of hers over it, before lowering herself down. I was throbbing again. 

She adjusted herself until her pussy was sat against my own. The sensation was weird, to say the least; I'd never experienced this before. But I sure was happy she was the first person I did it with. 

I let out an airy breath, masked in a moan, when she began to roll her hips, holding onto my leg. You hear about scissoring in fiction, porn, everywhere... And most question its authenticity and whether or not it actually works. 

It fucking works. 

I found out it fucking worked as she angled us correctly, our eyes connected with intense predelection, her hips speeding up by the minute. After a while, I had gotten the gist. And I started to move my hips in time and sync with hers. I lifted myself up, resting back on my hand as we both went at it like wild rabbits. She held onto one of my bent knees as I did the same to her. We pulled each other into one another, giving each other only the best of experiences. 

"You're so beautiful, kukla." She suddenly said breathlessly, her actions not stopping. 

I smiled the best I could, breaking to moan. "So are you, Katty. You always have been..." I threw my head back, moaning loudly. 

"Are you close, baby?" 

"Mhm..." 

"Good... Fucking come for me. You've been so good for me all day, Lynds. Come with me." She shifted herself closer, pulling my upper body against hers so our foreheads were leaned together. Our hips had minds of their own. 

"I'm close. Fuck, I'm so close." 

"You're gorgeous." She complemented with hot breath against my skin. "I don't want you to go tomorrow, fuck! I love you too much to let you go, detka. Please don't go." 

"B-But... I have to, holy fuck, yes." The orgasm awaiting was like a throbbing; I thought it was going to happen, but then it stopped, then it came back, and on repeat. We both came, however, at the exact same time, moaning against each other's faces. "Come with me." 

"I am." 

"No, I mean tomorrow."

"What?" 

"Fuck! Come with me tomorrow! Live with me and be with me, oh my God!" I fell back, revelling in the aftereffects of my orgasm, my mind numbed out into a white mist and my hearing temporarily cut off. 

When I opened my eyes, Katya was laid on her stomach next to me, chin rested on her hands. Her face was flushed red. Her hair was a mess. Her little smile was cuter than ever, despite the sex goddess I was witness to just moments ago. She was perfect. 

"Did you mean it?" She asked, slightly out of breath. 

Did I? 

Of course I did. 

I nodded, bringing my hand up to wipe away some sweat off my forehead. "You've made me... So happy whilst I've been here. And... And I love you. We can be together, build a life. I'll give you everything if you come with me... That's if you want to, of cour-" 

She pressed her lips against mine before I could finish my sentence. When she pulled away, I knew as well as I knew that I was going to die one day that I loved Katya with all my heart. 

"I'd love to come with you, Lynds." 

[kyouka-supremacy]

@nyusenkas Thank you for the tag Nyusa!! Hope you're doing well sweetie 💕💕

Five songs I've been listening to lately! Actually not having been listening to any song in particular lately, so here's five songs I've been thinking about a lot in the last period. With self-indulgent descriptions because I never have anyone to talk about Vocaloid with and it's Saturday sooo

Meltdown - Iroha ft. Kagamine Rin

Easily my favorite vocaloid song ever. Iroha's tuning of Rin is flawless and makes her voice really enjoyable for me despite she's far from being my favorite voice bank. The music is amazing the lyrics keep me awake at night 10/10 play this at my funeral

Patchwork Staccato - Toa ft. Hatsune Miku

Self indulgent Akutagawa song <3 The music is wonderful and the sweet append + dark lyrics is such a haunting combo. Thinking about the “you, I'd rather you just stop existing” line every day

My Love is Hellfire - SLAVE.V-V-R ft. Meiko

Meiko is one of my favorite voice banks but it's so hard to find a satisfying tuning!!!! The tuning in this looks like someone was having so much fun pushing Meiko's voice to its limits, I get why the many high-pitched notes may come off as annoying to some but to me it's lovely to listen to!

Alice in Freezer - Orangestar ft. IA

Another song I think about non-stop, it's just... Ethereal. This is a relatively less known song compared to Orangestar's other compositions, but it's such a favorite of mine... This is what heaven sounds like in my mind. I really like when tuners do that very high-pitched thing with vocals, if that wasn't already clear by the last *check* well all the previously mentioned songs

Common World Domination - Pinocchio-P ft. Hatsune Miku

Pinocchio-P my beloved one of my favorite producers ever!!!! This song is simultaneously amusing and haunting and it's just. So good. Miku's dark append is great and producers should really use appends more because they're so good and so fun to experiment with!!!

Tagging with no pressure!!: @dopposboytoy, @faux-ee, @vero-niche, @lowestechelonabomination, @bethiewhimsy, @tired--turtles, and everyone who wants to do this ( ꈍᴗꈍ)

[thedivineerotic]

What the Funk?!

Vol 1. Part 1

The Foundation of Vaporwave: SynthFunk Pioneers

Vaporwave has been one of my favorite niche subgeneres of music for years now and its easy to tell why. I'm an old soul that was born to relatively older parents who grew up in the 1970s and whose primes were in the 1980s and 1990s so soul, funk and rhythm runs through my veins in ways my peers were not able to understand and ostracized me for. Once I latched onto vaporwave, my ear was able to detect many samples from songs I had heard growing up and been exposed to new ones. Vaporwave is slowed-down (or what we in the South called “Chopped and Screwed” back in the day) synth funk and new wave tracks from the 1980s and early 1990s set to colorful nostalgic yet futurist aesthetics and anime from around that time.

It is where the past and the future meet in the middle and dance all night.

And it has become one of the loves of my life, discovering vintage music that makes you want to get up, dance and be happy.

Here are some recent favorites that I have been hooked on since the past year or so.

The System

Rhythm and Romance (1989)

Description: Coming from in my honest opinion perhaps the single most underrated act in funk and R&B in the 1980s, this album fits its title perfectly. Mic Murphy and David Frank are literally on fire in this album even though none of their past efforts left anything to be desired either. They were vaporwave before vaporwave was a thing. To me, their pop flavored, R&B blessed, synth funk sound and angsty romantic lyrics are quintessential vaporwave material. There is no way you can listen to this album and not want to move, not want to groove, not want to have fun. What they lacked in mainstream success, they more than made up for in giving us the textbook definition of a "buried treasure" in multiple projects that I feel privileged to have dug up. Though having already been making music together for the majority of the decade at this point, the duo arguably hit their zenith on this album and the groove tells it.

Standout Tracks:

Midnight Special

Soul to Soul

Have Mercy

Kashif

Kashif (1983)

Description: Here is another synth funk pioneer who didn't get near the mainstream appreciation that he should have. But being primarily a producer, its natural that he stayed relatively behind the scenes but this time he truly let himself shine through some of the grooviest, smoothest synth baselines you will probably ever hear in your life. His programming and keyboarding skills set the tone for later funkateers such as Teddy Riley and Babyface to take to another level in the 1990s. However, Kashif and this project stand as the prototype in its their own right with synth and baselines both ahead of its time and someone just right on time for his era. RIP to the Great Kashif and before falling down the rabbit hole of his productions for others, hear the man shine on his own in this vaporwave masterclass.

Standout Tracks:

I Just Gotta Have You (Lover Come Turn Me On)

Help Yourself to My Love

Stone Love

Loose Ends

Zagora (1986)

Description: In the abundant world of 1980s dance music, the Brits had something to say. And no one made it as loud and clear as the funk, house and R&B group Loose Ends. These folks produced some of the most addictive combinations of House music and synth funk ever heard on record and set the tone for House music to become the penultimate underground genre in the early 1990s with R&B House legends like Crystal Waters and Soul II Soul. Though their discography goes deep, this album presents them at maybe the height of their powers, delivering a world class synth funk album just before hip hop influenced New Jack Swing came the following year to take over the R&B music scene.

Standout Tracks:

Stay a Little While Child

Slow Down

Ooh You Make Me Feel

Shalamar

Friends (1983)

Description: Achieving perhaps the most mainstream success out of anyone on this list, it's easy to see why Shalamar is still celebrated as icons of early 1980s dancefloor scene to this day. In a time where supergroups still dominated the funk and R&B scene, these three forged their own path and released some of the funkiest grooves you will hear from around that time. What made their sound stand out came from their unique mixture of standard R&B and funk with the then-new new wave scene that was coming out of Britain. As a result, their music has stood the test of time and influenced vaporwave mixes produced by both Black and white, British and American lovers of the genre alike. In my opinion, this album is their most solid and serves to represent the danceable, funky feel of the entire 1980s.

Standout Tracks:

I Can Make You Feel Good

Help Me

There It Is

[computer430]

How to Find Reliable Suppliers for Bulk Intel Core 2 Duo E4600 Purchases

In the ever-evolving world of technology, the Intel Core 2 Duo E4600 (SLA94) processor may seem like a relic, yet it still has a niche market. Whether you’re a business looking to upgrade legacy systems or a tech enthusiast stocking up for future projects, finding reliable suppliers for bulk purchases is crucial. With the potential for scams and unreliable vendors, it’s essential to approach bulk buying with caution and diligence. Here’s a guide to help you navigate the process and ensure you get quality processors from trustworthy sources.

1. Start with Established Distributors

Your first step should be to identify established distributors who specialize in computer components. Major distributors often have a reputation to uphold and offer a level of reliability that smaller or lesser-known suppliers might not. Companies like Newegg, Amazon Business, and Arrow Electronics are well-regarded in the industry. They provide detailed product descriptions, customer reviews, and a clear return policy, which can give you peace of mind.

2. Check Manufacturer Directories

Intel maintains directories of authorized distributors and partners on their website. These lists include companies that have met Intel’s standards and are certified to sell their products. Buying from a listed distributor ensures that you’re purchasing genuine products and receiving support in case of issues. For the Intel Core 2 Duo E4600, you might find that some of these authorized partners still offer older or refurbished models.

3. Use B2B Marketplaces with Caution

Business-to-business (B2B) marketplaces like Alibaba and Global Sources can be valuable for finding bulk quantities of processors. However, they require extra caution. Here are some tips for navigating these platforms:

Verify the Supplier: Look for suppliers with a high rating and positive feedback. Check how long they’ve been in business and read reviews from other buyers. Request Samples: Before committing to a large order, ask for samples to verify the quality of the processors. Use Secure Payment Methods: Always use secure payment options such as credit cards or escrow services to protect yourself from fraud.

4. Engage with Industry Forums and Groups

Industry forums, tech communities, and LinkedIn groups can be excellent resources for finding reliable suppliers. Professionals in these communities often share their experiences and can recommend reputable vendors. Websites like Reddit’s r/hardware or specialized tech forums can be valuable for gathering firsthand feedback about suppliers.

5. Evaluate Supplier Credentials

When you find potential suppliers, take the time to evaluate their credentials thoroughly:

Company History: Research the supplier’s history and reputation. Established companies with a long track record are generally more reliable. Certifications: Check if the supplier has any industry certifications that attest to their credibility and adherence to quality standards. Customer Service: A reliable supplier should offer good customer support. Test their responsiveness by asking questions and evaluating their willingness to provide detailed information.

6. Look for Reviews and Testimonials

Customer reviews and testimonials can provide insight into a supplier’s reliability. Look for reviews on their website, third-party review sites, and tech forums. Be wary of suppliers with numerous negative reviews or unresolved complaints. If possible, contact previous customers directly to get their feedback on their purchasing experience.

7. Verify Product Authenticity

One of the major concerns when buying in bulk is ensuring the authenticity of the products. To verify the authenticity of the Intel Core 2 Duo E4600:

Request Certificates of Authenticity: Ask the supplier for documentation that proves the processors are genuine. Check for Packaging: Genuine Intel processors should come in secure,

branded packaging. Be cautious if the packaging seems suspicious or lacks branding. Inspect the Processors: If possible, inspect the processors physically to ensure they match Intel’s specifications and markings.

8. Compare Prices and Terms

While finding the lowest price is tempting, it’s important to balance cost with reliability. Compare prices from multiple suppliers and consider the terms of sale, including shipping costs, return policies, and warranties. Sometimes, a slightly higher price from a reputable supplier can save you from future headaches.

9. Watch Out for Red Flags

Be cautious of suppliers that exhibit red flags, such as:

Unusually Low Prices: Prices that are significantly lower than market rates can indicate counterfeit or substandard products. Lack of Transparency: Suppliers that are reluctant to provide information about their company, products, or terms of sale should be approached with caution. Poor Communication: Difficulty in reaching or communicating with the supplier can be a warning sign of potential issues.

10. Perform Due Diligence

Before finalizing any bulk purchase, perform thorough due diligence. This includes verifying the supplier’s physical address, checking for any legal complaints or issues, and ensuring that all contractual terms are clear and favorable.

By following these guidelines, you can mitigate the risks associated with bulk purchasing of Intel Core 2 Duo E4600 processors and ensure that you are getting quality products from reliable sources. Remember, the key is to do your research, ask the right questions, and trust your instincts. With careful planning, you can successfully navigate the world of bulk buying and secure the components you need for your projects or business.

Want to buy Intel Core 2 Duo E4600 (SLA94) in bulk from VSTL?

If you’re looking to purchase Intel Core 2 Duo E4600 (SLA94) processors in bulk, consider sourcing from VSTL, a reputable supplier known for quality and reliability. VSTL offers competitive pricing and robust support, making it a solid choice for bulk transactions. Ensure you review their terms and verify product authenticity to make a well-informed purchase.

[quetozcoatl]

For the fanfic game: B, F, and R!

Original ask meme here, feel free to send me a letter!

B: Any of your stories inspired by  personal experience?

One of my old RWBY fics is me angsting about my neurodivergency via the lens of Professor Ozpin. NGL, I'm considering deleting it, it's... embarassing, and not my best work.

On top of that, the backstory for one of my WoW OCs was based on, for lack of a better term, my daddy issues. It's a fucking cringe backstory and it just turned melodramatic and I'm so glad I reworked it.

But for a more light-hearted response, it's a fic I'd like to write. When I was young, one of my teeth was loose. I complained about it to my older brothers, and one of them responded with: "Oh, your new tooth is going to grow into a vampire tooth" ...or something along those lines. Knowing my younger self, she was terrified and probably cried.

I think it's a perfect concept for Klint and Barok van Zieks!

F: Share a snippet from one of  your favorite dialogue scenes  you've written and explain why  you're proud of it.

As much as I want to post a snippet from my roleplaying on WoW, I won't, because it will require a paragraph of lore-dumping, which I am prone to do at a moments notice, just read any of my AU fics.

I have a LOT of WIPs, and some of them do have dialogue I quite enjoy. However, one of them just takes the cake: it's from an AU inspired by Baldur's Gate 3 (a very good game!) and tried to work within the canon of Dungeons and Dragons. In it, Klint is a bard of eloquence, rather than a ranger. I decided to make Balmung his stuffed hell-hound that Mama van Zieks made for him and he cherishes deeply, and my favorite dialogue is Klint talking to that Balmung:

”What was I thinking, Balmung?!“ No one would hear him, he had wards specially installed to prevent that. In here, he was free to talk how loud he wanted to an inanimate object, and no one to judge him for it, either! “Acting like some sort of seductress, touching her with my bare hands!” He gives Balmung a squeeze. “I don't want to be a harlot, and, I must have frightened her terribly with these talons of mine.”

This too, which happens some lines later:

“Hells!” He snatches his head back in. “Can you believe this, Balmung?” The dog did not respond, on account of being just a stuffed animal.

R: Are there any writers (fanfic or otherwise) you consider an influence?

First off, Guillermo del Toro. He is one of my idols and I look up to his storytelling a lot. I love that he does not sacrifice color to tell dark stories, and that his works have taught me to accept that I'll write what I want! Another one is Zack Morrison who writes and draws the webcomic Paranatural, which I have kept up with since high school. They made the swap to a blend of writing and art sometime in 2021, and the descriptiveness and cleverness of the writing has made my jaw drop.

Next, Another one is Eiichiro Oda. That man can casually reference something he wrote hundreds of chapters ago, and no matter how crazy things get, it feels perfectly plausible within the world of One Piece. But unfortunately it's come at a cost due to him being a mangaka, and I must stress the importance of taking care of yourself before anything else.

These two are well-known for their diverse cast of characters, and Zack Morrison does little, but effective things to make the characters stand out even more in the mixed setting and it's genius. However, an honorable mention to Andrew Hussie and Homestuck, for popularizing the concept of using limited things in text like numbers and cases to distinguish the characters.

Now, the next is sillier: Elizabeth Hoyt and Tessa Dare. Yes, they crank out regency romance novels but they know their niche, damn it! My first romance novel was Duke of Sin by Elizabeth Hoyt, and it's helped me really come to terms with the fact that what I read is not necessarily what I want. I love the fantasies romance novels bring, but the idea of actually BEING in a romance makes me want to run away screaming!

[alliancejobs]

How to Start Working as a Freelancer

Nowadays, freelancing is becoming more popular than ever before. You get to dictate the projects you work on, where to work from, and become your boss among other things. If you are interested in freelance jobs, this article will guide you through essential steps for starting out in freelancing and ensuring success in it. Additionally, learn how Alliance Jobs could become the place where you land freelance gigs or post job opportunities for free.

What are Freelance Jobs?

They are contract positions where individuals work for themselves rather than being employed by one company only. Frequently, services of freelancers are offered to different clients who may have multiple projects. Writing, graphic design, web development, marketing consultancy are some common fields of freelancing.

Why Freelance?

The following are reasons why freelancing might be the best thing:

Flexibility: You can work from any point and at any time

Various Opportunities: Work on different projects with diverse clients

Earnings Control: Set your rates and choose projects that suit your interests

Career Growth: Acquire as many skills as possible while expanding professional networks

Steps To Becoming A Freelancer

Identify Your Skills And Services

Begin by evaluating what skills you have and which services they can translate into. You could be good at writing, design or marketing. Concentrate in your area of strength and carve out a niche for yourself.

Create a Freelance Portfolio

A powerful portfolio presents your past works and shows off your skill set to potential customers. What you need to include are your best projects, case studies as well as testimonials. Use platforms such as Behance or GitHub better yet create your own website where you can showcase all these.

Set Your Freelance Rates

Research on how much other freelancers charge for similar services in order to come up with competitive prices that will attract clients while still giving you good returns per hour worked. For instance if the project is complex then it should be priced higher than simple ones since they require more time and expertise from the freelancer this also applies when one has vast experience compared to someone who is just starting out. Additionally consider negotiating rates depending with each individual client’s budget after making known what all fees entail beyond base rate.

Choose the Right Freelancing Platforms

Check out general websites like Upwork, Fiverr or Freelancer where you can get any type of job but do not forget specialized sites related to specific industries. On Alliance Jobs board there are various projects available for people with different skills sets so take advantage if there’s nothing suitable elsewhere; besides being free they also allow employers post their own vacancies here.

Market Your Freelance Business

Advertise yourself across social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter; attend relevant events such as workshops organized by professional groups within your industry while at it connect with potential clients through LinkedIn. To establish authority in this field join niche communities like Subreddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/freelance/) where other freelancers may refer work back forth or seek advice from time to time but remember not spamming them either!

Manage Your Freelance Business

Keep track of deadlines using project scheduling tools for instance Trello boards which allow multiple lists per board depending on different projects each containing various cards specifying work items needed completion before due date such task description brief, assigned person responsible among others.

Overcoming Common Freelance Challenges

Dealing with Difficult Clients: Make sure you have an agreement that outlines what needs doing when it should be finished who pays what amount by which specific date along with any other necessary details such as preferred modes of payment, payment methods and penalties incurred should these terms not met e.g., late fee charges accrue bi-weekly if invoice is over 14 days past its issuance until settled in full and so forth.

2. Managing Irregular Income: Make a budget and put aside money for when you have less work. Broaden your revenue streams by finding several clients or business partnerships.

Conclusion

Becoming a freelancer can be an exciting yet challenging experience. You will be able to create your dream career if you use these tips. Alliance Jobs is the place where one can find free job listings and free posting opportunities. Start working towards success today by taking that first step into this amazing world filled with possibilities.

[maximuswolf]

Idea for a new gaming website about sidequests to see which are "essential" or not so they can be skipped to save time. Please give your input.

Idea for a new gaming website about sidequests to see which are "essential" or not so they can be skipped to save time. Please give your input. I was playing through the Yakuza series recently and completing some of the substories (what sidequests are called in the Yakuza franchise), when a lightbulb went off in my head. Some of these substories add nothing to the story at all and give crappy rewards. Even after having completed some of these games, I can't remember any of them except the ones that added a decent amount of lore to the game and the ones that gave you awesome rewards. In many games, the sidequests take up more time than the actual main story quest and to be honest, many of them are a waste of time.So, I came up with a business idea for a niche video game website. The site is about listing all the sidequests in games and rating them on whether they are essential or not so the player can choose to skip them and save time. Each sidequest will display the rewards for completion and a rating from 1-10.Disclaimer: This site is not for 100% completionists. It's for people that want to save time without missing out on anything important from sidequests.Here is the mission statement I've come up with so far.To be the ultimate resource for gamers seeking to optimize their playtime. We achieve this by building a comprehensive, ever-evolving database of sidequests from across all genres and platforms. Our platform empowers players through the following:Community-driven content: Leveraging the wisdom of the gaming community, we allow users to submit and verify sidequests, rewards, and ratings.Objective and Subjective Ratings: We provide a two-tiered rating system. First, we objectively classify sidequests as "essential" or "non-essential" based on their impact on the main story, character progression, and rewards. Second, we include a user-generated "enjoyment" rating through a voting system to capture the subjective fun factor of each sidequest.Detailed Information: Each sidequest entry will provide clear descriptions and spoiler-tagged details about potential rewards.Advanced Filtering: Our site will allow players to filter games and sidequests by genre, platform, desired rewards, and "enjoyment" rating. This ensures players can find side quests that perfectly suit their interests.Spoiler Warnings: We prioritize a spoiler-free experience. Reward descriptions will be clearly marked if they contain potential story spoilers.Active Community Management: We will foster a thriving community by actively managing user-generated content, ensuring accuracy and maintaining a positive and helpful environment.Ultimately, our mission is to empower gamers to navigate the vast world of sidequests with confidence, allowing them to maximize their enjoyment and optimize their valuable playtime.Do you guys see yourselves using a site like this? Submitted May 07, 2024 at 01:50PM by throwawaysnitch4cash https://ift.tt/g9EcwLG via /r/gaming