#that pretty much sums up today's con

[cherrylssues]

[sigelfire]

Today I've found this post by @diegolunalovegood and in the tags she asked : #Diego Luna#Casa de mi padre#I really want to know the story behind how he got involved#was it he or Gael who learned of the project first?#how did his interest develop?

Well, I started researching, so as to try to help answering her questions and I've found this Collider article where Diego says "he has always wanted to do films like Will Ferrell's and he got to do one in Spanish..."

The video doesn't work anymore it seems... but well, here above are two photos I've found while searching for answers... I know they've been posted before but didn't know they were from GQ

_______

On a second attempt, I searched for answers in the Spanish media, and I've found some videos that are part in English and part in Spanish, like the press conference in Mexico: pt. 1 & pt.2 and some written articles. All of them coincide that:

#I really want to know the story behind how he got involved: Will Ferrell and his working group came out with the idea, cause he always wanted to act in some Mexican soap opera, and also had a great faascination for Westerns. T

#was it he or Gael who learned of the project first? They wanted to film it in Mexico, with Mexican actors, and so they thought of Diego and Gael cause they considered them icons of the Mexican cinema and they were both quite famous already. So, they contacted them and gave them the script and both Diego and Gael were delighted to accept.

#how did his interest develop? Diego liked the script, he was told he had complete freedom to do what he wanted and also he says he felt challenged because there are no films of this kind in the Mexican film industry, they are dedicated to make films for Film Festivals, not to sell them to audiences. So, it was a completely new experience to him. Another thing he found interesting was the social and political matters that the film dealt with, and that the view didn't come from Mexicans but from USA people themselves...

Here are two of the interviews where I took the information (they're in Spanish):

Diego Luna: “Casa de Mi Padre” es una sátira a todo y en español

2. Diego Luna defiende hablar de violencia con humor en "Casa de mi padre"

And here's a video that pretty much sums up the essential of the answers to @diegolunalovegood 's questions (it's part in Spanish and part in English):

[eyeofhurakana]

Title: "Convince Me" Pairing: Sampo x Reader Status: Flirty fluff Reader: No specified gender / Part of the Masked Fools Relationship Level: Close friends in the Masked Fools that have knocked boots from time to time Trust: Moderate-High Summary: You want to leave the Masked Fools to join the Mourning Actors. Sampo wants to change your mind... Quick Note: I headcanon that Sampo is part of the Masked Fools due to a certain scene at the -end- of Belobog’s story arc. If you don’t know the Masked Fools, they are simply a group that worship Aha, live hedonistic lifestyles, and do not take life seriously. Their antithesis is the faction known as the Mourning Actors that denounce Aha - even though he technically pays their cab fare… (I’m not kidding. Aha is wild.)

   

Today is a good day. 

You are two weeks, five days, and however many hours and minutes in turning over a new leaf. No more bar-hopping in a harlequin mask with your ludicrous companions. No more instigating lovers’ tiffs or silver lining happy endings for an easy laugh. No more taking action just for the shiggles.      

It’s a huge deal to leave your old life behind, but you’ve made your peace. After some very careful deliberation (over a few minty cocktails mixed with tears of frustration), you finally knew what you wanted. The path of the Elation simply wasn’t for you.

Now, if only your friend would simply accept that, then life would get a whole lot easier for you. He managed to catch you in the alley just behind the tavern. You had hoped to slip by unnoticed, but clearly there happens to be some snitches among the Masked Fools. 

“Come now. I leave for Jarilo VI for a few months and end up coming back to this?” he whines as he strides up to you with palms open in disappointment. 

Sampo pouts at you as if he’s been told that he had to work gratis. 

“Before you ask, I heard from the others. Be straight with me. You’re not serious about this, right?” he asks conspiratorially as if trying to get in on the joke before everyone else, “Just another one of your good ol’ switcheroos? It’s not like this would be the first time.” 

He tilts his head at you with mock innocence. His bangs swing while trying to peer into your face.

This is a common tactic of his.

You avoid staring at him as you know how this works. This isn’t the first time you’ve tried leaving the Masked Fools. As a follower of the Aeon of Nihility once said, ‘You may gaze deep into the vast grandeur of the stars, but do not glance at the abyss of the void... for it holds nothing except for the ability to make mortals lose all reason and thought.’ 

This pretty much summed up exactly what would happen every time you eyed the smooth-talking merchant for even one second too long. It’s no wonder he chose Nihility of all things.

At your silence, Sampo continues speaking with what sounds like a friendly voice of concern, “Hey… Think about this. A Pathstrider changing their paths is one thing. But transitioning from one of us to a Mourning Actor of all things? You?”  

His tone nearly tricks you into thinking that he might have genuinely felt a sense of imminent worry. Though on that last few words, despite his best effort, his voice cracked.  

You can’t help it. You look.

As expected, Sampo’s face is not nearly as distraught as he tried to make himself sound. Instead, he fights off an amused smile to no avail. His cheeks slightly puff as he half-heartedly resists the urge to laugh. He raises his gloved hand, pressing against his curving mouth just as a few choked laughs manage to escape regardless. 

Those emerald eyes of his shine with unwavering amusement as if you are his favorite stage act. To him, this is probably another one of your infamous long con pranks. 

Which is an entirely fair assumption… 

You are quite the mischief maker. 

Were.

You were quite the mischief maker. New leaf. Turning. Right. Focus.

Of course, your hedonistic brain much rather focus on his towering height, broad shoulders, and alluring cologne… 

Focus!

“Yes, me,” you reply with practiced calm while not engaging in his puerile behavior, “I’ve done my time as a part of the Masked Fools. The World’s End Tavern will be fine without me. Besides, it’s time for a change.”

Silence befalls the two of you. 

The mirth in his face dampens slightly, yet he somehow manages to keep that signature pearly white smile of his.  

“Please, you expect me to believe that you’ve already forgotten just what kind of people the Mourning Actors are? The morose life they live? They’re a stick in the mud! Every last one of them. And-” he proclaimed while stepping forward to lean a bit just to gently boop you on the nose, “-you’re no stick in the mud.” 

He then planted his hands on his hips as if he made the most compelling argument of all time. In his head, it seemed that not even Nous the Erudition would be able to refute it. 

“You’re too fun,” Sampo adds with playful finality.  

He looks so excited and proud of his ridiculous reasoning that you can’t help but start to already feel nostalgic. After all, joining the Mourning Actors meant that you couldn’t see Sampo anymore. They fiercely denounce Aha whereas the Masked Fools exalt Aha. 

There’s no middle ground to be had here.  

“A very eloquent argument, Koski,” you finally say with a light shrug while not meeting his eyes. 

If Sampo had dog ears and a tail, they would be perking up right about now by how elated he looked. It seemed to him that you were relenting to his wise judgment. 

“Perfect! Now let’s head back. I heard they’re doing half off on mimosas!” he tells you excitedly before making off for the direction of the World’s End tavern only to quickly notice your footfalls weren’t behind him. 

He turns around to see you still planted in place with your gaze off to the side.   

“Hmph. Still not convinced though, huh?” Sampo says with an odd sense of calm that you’re not used to seeing him have. 

He nears you with a thoughtful look. You stare back, uncertain as to what he might be scheming. A composed Sampo is a rather disconcerting sight… yet not unwelcome. You thought he only had three modes: goofy, flirty, and whiny. 

This was… very different. 

For a moment, you felt your heart waver.  

“Hmm… Should I do the lean then?” he offers with a suggestive raise of his brow coupled with a smirk.

As Sampo asks this, he’s already committing the action of leaning forward with his hand outstretched to plant his hand on the brick wall behind you. He’s definitely using that specialty haircut of his to his full advantage. The long bangs veil a single eye, leaving you under the undeniable smolder of the other.

He smiles with his mouth upturning more on the right before biting his lower lip with a slow pull as he continues to peer down at you. 

“Well?” he asks with his voice dropping into a full bewitchment mode, “How’s this?” 

Sampo leans even closer, completely encroaching into your personal space to the point that you feel the air tightening. 

“Still thinking of leaving?” 

His gaze flicks down to your lips, knowing full well you can tell. They lift back to you as if in question. Though you can’t even remember what the original question was anymore. 

Damn.

He got you. 

You stared too long into the pretty abyss again. 

Now there was no getting out until he chose to go offworld again. 

“Ha… I guess I better luck next time…” you concede slowly while eyeing him closing in for that final descent. 

“Mm. Or not,” Sampo teases slyly with hooded eyes just before stealing your soul once again through a kiss that cannot be described in mere words… 

This isn’t your first kiss with him… but these ones are different than what he usually does. 

You can typically withstand the regular type. 

But here… his fingers dig deep through your scalp while his other hand grasps around the side of your neck. His thumb guides your chin upwards, placing you in a vulnerable position for his ‘treatment’ thanks to your sudden willfulness to defect to the other side.

“Mm!” 

You strain your senses as his hands start to travel, making every pleasure nerve fire up, unable to stifle the desperation of the starving hedonist inside of you.  

It doesn’t help that Sampo has a way of shoving so many sensations at you that your brain proceeds to short-circuit. Your natural instinct is to go with the flow. It’s what made partying with the Elation so much fun. 

You can hear him chuckle over you in appreciation of your lack of resistance as he presses you further against the wall, keeping you in place as he carries on with a more... persuasive argument. 

‘You’re not going anywhere’ is what it really means. 

It’s what it always means. 

Oh well. 

There’s always next time~.

======

AN: Heh. It’s up to you if you planned this out just for Sampo to react this way when he got back. Also, if you made it this far, thanks for reading. =D You're a gem, and I hope you have a wonderful day.

[spacefi3nd]

Before u ask me i actually dont evn know why I like bounce boy so much it's becoming an issue. Anyhow .. here's a little drabble of my king getting sum barely legal ass why ,??? cause it's been haunting me evr since I thought of it . @x-neurotoxin-x

do I need to give warnings ?? I'll do it tho - erm .. dub con bordering non con ?? Errr b boy is like 20 n my oc is 16 so .. age gap? Stalker .. manipulation .?? . thigh fuckinv .. groping um just alot of something idk. .. mutually screwed up

---

It was late , really late . The neighbourhood was practically empty . No screw that it /was/ empty the only signs of life where the faint buzzing of the street lights and the odd twinkling sounds of convience stores door being pushed open .

Despite all that Bounce Boy still had a job to finish his patrol - then , then he could go home to his shitty apartment and rest.

The thought almost made him swoon with joy .

Today had been a paticularly demanding day - petty thieves , robbers , villians of all the sort- not a second of rest and it had left him feeling irritated and sore .

Plus ... he caught a silhouette in the corner of his eye and inwardly groaned . Something- no- somebody had been tailing him and he was pretty sure they weren't going to leave him alone.. he sighed to himself.

Might aswell get this over and done with .

He continued his clueless act as he mused over his options . He was looking for a little stress relief.. somebody to just beat the shit out of .. woah . The thought sent a jolt of excitement down his spine .

Today had been so shit . He'd so earned it and this person had been stalking him so it wouldn't even be his fault !

His next movements were sudden and quick the figure barely had time to react as his limbs stretched out unnaturally , wrapping around and dragging them closer ..

"Wait! Wait! O-one second!!" He squinted at the voice trying to make out their appreance - pale yellow hair with black roots , scarred face? Yikes. mismatched eyes- aannd a school girl . Shit !

He had wrapped around her the other already drawn back into fist and he twitched with frustration as he lowered it unwinding himself from her .

What a bummer . He couldn't help but feel a twinge of disappointment . He let himself wallow in the feeling as he watched the girl brush herself off .

God . Why was she even out so late , was she just looking for trouble ? In school uniform no less ?

Whatever. He really wanted to go home now .

" Man i hope i didnt scare you ! You should be careful creeping about like that if I hadn't taken a good look at you , ya would've been picking your teeth up off the floor!" He chuckled good naturedly as the girl smiled up coyly at him , tugging at her skirt .

"haha .. sorry . I just um . " she looked around as if checking her surroundings before taking a step closer to him . "M'just a really big fan!! I-you saved me today !! I don't know if you remember .. and i just didnt get the chance to thank you !! Ohh you were just so cool .. i thought I was gonna die!!!-"

He nodded politely at her gushing as he caught himself from cringing .

As flattering as fans were something was definitely off about this one .

He had saved people sure but what type of crazy tailed someone just for a thank you?

He was not trying to get into all that tonight .. Or actually.. He let his eyes run over her figure absent mindedly .. could he ..

Knee highs and a short skirt ..he shook his head he reaally should get going.. he could ever so slightly make out the colour of her bra .. the color constrasted with her brown skin-

no !

He tried to think of something -anything- else but the damage was already done and the small feeling of disappointment grew into something else.

This was definitely on her , he could feel the cogs in his brain turning as a more genuine smile grew on his face .

So he really shouldnt .. but . He needed to take out todays feelings on something - anybody . The idea was becoming more and more appealing the more he thought about it ...it would so not be his fault !!

She was practically asking to be dealt with .

Following him all the way here , the way she was tugging at her hair and fingering at her opened collar , pushing her chest out - he would be doing her a favour . Right?

The girl pulled out a blue marker from the waistband of her skirt , finally taking a breath as she gestured at herself "And um.. could I have an autograph."

He took the pen from her . "Where should I sign? I don't see any paper. "

He gave a huff of bemusement . Partly at his own thoughts cause what was he thinking? He needed to get to bed before he could think of anyymore fucked up shit.

"Just.. over here.. " she spoke a little breathlessly not really looking at him as she unbuttoned her shirt and tapped a little over her sports bra . "I hah.. I don't have any paper . "

What.the.fuck.

This wasn't him . This was NOT on him .

She knew she just had to . He really shouldn't entertain this .. he uncapped the pen .. He shouldnt .. his hand rose steadily to her chest .. he could hear her breath hitch with excitement as he pressed down a little harder than necessary.

"So .. do you always ask strange men to sign your tits?" He commented almost off handedly as he wrote down his signature .

Way slower than needed .

looping the letters with steady fingers . "Just the hot ones..." she muttered her eyes fixitaed on his hand. When he'd finally finished curling the y until a little heart - over kill maybe - he remained hunched over her breathing in her perfume.

"I think .. I think you didn't just come out here for an autograph." The girl shook her head slowly . "You gotta be honest with me , "

He had his lips pressed to the shell of her ear ."What did you really want. " she shuddered leaning into him , the gesture had his ego rocketing . "..you..." his hands wrapped around her as she pushed herself back slightly so she was peering up at him through her lashes. "Is that-"

He kissed her before she could say anything else, before he could start to think about right or wrong.

He pushed her backwards into an alleyway -it was way more dark and dimmed . Just perfect .

The girl had her arms wrapped around his neck returning his kisses with more fever as she pressed up against him. Bounce Boy pulled away , the girl trailing after him burying her head into his neck .

"Wait wait.. " he puffed out . His hands gripped at her waist ,his hips jutting forward . confirming what had so eagerly rubbing against him . "Are you a cross-dresser or something?"

The question hung between them as the girl slowed her frenzied suckles and kisses at his neck . "No . I'm a girl today. " Her fingers drummed against his shoulder , her voice soft. "..Is that a problem ? "

The strange urge to comfort her built up in his chest as he grinded up against her more deliberately , relishing in the soft groan that reverbated against his shoulder . "Nah."

He pulled away turning her around before he could start to psychoanalyse his feelings .

Her chest was pressed up against the wall .He pressed his hand down onto her back , encouraging her to arch up .

"Fuuck." He practically hissed to himself when he flipped over her skirt.

One hand eagerly fumbling to undo his zipper while the other inched downwards cupping and squeezing at the warm and inviting flesh .

"Omigoddd-" The girl leaned into his every touch , she was so.. inviting and allowing it made him feel dizzy .

He pumped his cock slotting himself in between her thighs unable to stop the low groan as she squeezed her thighs together , tight ,

"Such a slut.. shit.." the whole situation was making him feel delirious . The power he had over her . Her willingness . The wrongness . It was perfect.

. "Aren't you? Coming all the way out here to get fucked in some alleyway ?" The girl whined below him her elbow jutting back and forth . "Yeesss fuck ! M'so happy I wanted this soo bad!"

She gave out a choked moan . "gonnacum!" He leaned his head over her shoulder . Watching her cum splatter onto the wall . Laughing in slight disbelief as her body trembled , dipping down slightly , only held up by how he was holding onto her .

The sight was really bringing him to the edge , he could feel the familiar tightening in his guts .

His movements becoming more frantic . He pressed wet kisses onto her shoulder and the side of her neck. "Shitshit Jus'what i fuckin needed .. ah you're soo good n soo soft."

He cums and it makes him see white , had it been that long ? His cums sticky and coats her inner thighs , mixing with the splatter against the wall. He let's himself catch his breath before the clarity of the situation really settles in.

Fuck .

He pulls away when he's sure the girl can stand up on her own adjusting her skirt ,he's not an asshole , and tucks his cock back into his pants.

The girl straightens up and the sight almost gets him hard again , looking at him like he's the best thing on earth, her eyes wide , his cum dripping down her thighs and his signature smudged slightly against her chest .

He really needs to get going .

"Um..make sure you get home safe .." he pauses as he realises he doesn't even know her name . God .

The girl catches on "Saiyah.." She's not really looking at him anymore but scuffing her trainers against the floor mumbling .

"What?"

Curiosty overpowering his morals again..

"I didn't hear you."

"I said.. I really enjoyed myself.. " She smiles up at him , swiping a finger across her thighs and popping it into her mouth , suckling,

It takes him all his strength to turn around to leave her standing there slurping at his cum and finish his patrol .

When he does finish - Late enough that the sun's peeking through when he's climbing into bed . He can't stop thinking of her . He groans and rolls around pressing his pillow to his face .

What was wrong with him ?!

[mnictasbcl]

RK800, Egg hunter eggstraordinaire

Relationships: Hank Anderson & Connor

Characters: Hank Anderson, Connor

Tags: Fluff, domestic fluff, father-son relationship, Swearing, Crack, Easter, Egg hunt, mention of religion but the characters are not religious, Found family

Summary: Hank teaches Connor the meaning of Easter: eggs. Connor finds that he enjoys the ‘hunt’ part of an ‘egg hunt’.

 Read it on AO3! Or, read below!

Connor was surprised, to say the least, when he was woken up on a Sunday morning by Sumo charging into his room with… fluffy rabbit ears on his head?

What was even more of a surprise was Hank following after him, given that it was before nine in the morning.

“…good morning, Hank.”

“Mornin’.” Hank smiled, fastening an identical pair of rabbit ears on his head. “Uh, I thought you’d be up earlier, to be honest.”

Connor stared at him, slowly sitting up in bed. “I don’t follow. Did we have plans to go somewhere today? I wasn’t aware.”

“Nope. We’re staying at home today.”

“Okay…” He cleared his throat, LED spinning yellow as he tried to determine what the hell was going on. In the end, he decided that it was best to ask. “What’s going on?”

“Me and Sumo are waking you up.” Hank replied, helpfully.

“That’s usually my job, to wake you up… Are you feeling okay, Lieutenant?”

“Aw, shut the fuck up.” Hank rolled his eyes, smirking. “Are you really telling me that, that I’m the one who’s more excited about a holiday? After the fuss you made over Christmas?”

“Tinsel…” Connor mumbled, a longing look in his eye, before shaking his head to snap out of his trance. “I, uh… a holiday. Today?”

“Correct. Go on, look it up on your supercomputer brain. I’ll wait.”

Connor did just that, and was shocked to see that Hank was talking about Easter Sunday.

“Are you religious, Hank? I’m sorry, I didn’t realise.”

“Hell no. Nothin’ wrong with religion, but it’s not for me.” He shook his head. “Nah. Why’re you asking that?”

“Easter is a primarily religious holiday…”

Hank shook his head. “Not necessarily. Rest of us folk can celebrate it if we want to, in our own ways. Personally, I celebrate it by eating too much chocolate and feeling sick from it.”

“That doesn’t sound very pleasant…”

“Can it, tinsel-man.”

“Alright. So, it’s a holiday about eating chocolate, but since I’m an android… I can’t see what I could do to celebrate it.”

“Well, I mean, I guess it doesn’t have to be just about the food. It’s also about the theme. The aesthetic, if you will.” Hank tapped the bunny ears on his head. “It’s about spring, new life, all that shit. It’s about eggs.”

“Eggs?” Connor looked up. “That’s oddly specific.”

“Well, you know, chickens and all that shit. Eggs pretty much sum up Easter. I did arrange a little thing I used to do with… with Cole, in the house, if you want to try it.”

Connor smiled. “I’d love to. What is it, though?”

“Ah, I think you’ll like it. It’s an easter egg hunt. For humans, you hide chocolate eggs around the house and someone else has to find them… for androids, I had trouble comin’ up with what to hide, but… it’s still eggs.”

“Eggs? Sure, I’m in. Give me a moment to get ready.”

Once Hank had left and Connor was choosing an outfit for the day, he began to grow interested in the concept of Easter. Eggs weren’t bad, conceptually. He’d never eaten one, being an android who couldn’t consume food. But, their roundness, their shape, their girth… he could say he was a fan.

So, it only took him a few minutes to throw on some clothes before he left his room, and found Hank and Sumo waiting in the living room.

“I’m ready, Hank. When do I hunt the eggs?”

“Jesus, Con, you sound like you want to fuckin’ kill the eggs!”

“Sorry, my… hunting days may not have fully left my system.” He apologised.

Hank waved him off. “Eh, whatever. Maybe that means you’ll enjoy it more? Who knows. Anyway, let’s go over the basics of the egg hunt. I’ve hidden some eggs around the house. Like, actual eggs, not chocolate ones. Now, I know you can’t eat them, but, uh, you can decorate them later if you want.”

“Sure.”

“Great. So, you just start lookin’ around for them, and I’ll sit here and give you clues if you get stuck. Make sense?”

“Okay. I’ve got this, Hank.”

Something about the activity awakened an old spark in Connor. A mission, he’d been given a mission. Find the eggs, hunt the eggs.

And so it wasn’t long before he’d seen the first one. Stashed behind a photo lay a whole egg. He grasped it in his hand so tight it almost cracked.

“Got one!”

“Great! Don’t break it, please.”

And then, the second. He found the egg in the cabinet beside the TV.

“Egg down.”

Egg number three was hiding in a dish in the kitchen.

“Say, Hank, where do I put these eggs?”

“Oh, shit, I forgot to give you a basket.” Hank walked over to him, handing him a small woven basket. “Here.”

And soon, the basket was almost filled. Once he didn’t have to struggle trying to hold eggs in his hands, he focused greater on the task at hand. His eyes became primed to see the speckled, shining surface of the eggs. One behind the counter; one in the sink; one under a table; one in a jar—

“Connor, slow the fuck down! It’s been three minutes!”

“No, Hank, you don’t understand. I have to find the eggs. I have to hunt them.”

The egg hunt finished five minutes after it had started. Connor brought the basket full of eggs back to Hank, panting softly.

“Eggs… done.”

“Now that was a hell of an egg hunt speedrun if I’ve ever seen one. Uh, did you have… fun?”

“Yes. I… I enjoyed hunting the eggs.”

“Great. I’m gonna make myself a pot of coffee.” As Hank walked past Connor, he patted him on the shoulder. “Good work hunting the eggs, son.”

Connor nodded, smiling, before his gaze fell back on the basket of eggs. He was a good egg hunter.

[frenchy-and-the-sea]

OC-tober Day 2: Glass

(from @oc-growth-and-development’s OC-tober list)

A much shorter response for today’s prompt! I’m expecting most of the rest of them to come in at about this length too. That said, I’m pretty happy with how it came out!

Today’s prompt is about Finn, crime and knives. Which is to say, it’s about Finn.

~250 words 

----

The sight of glass always made Finn's hands a little twitchy.

You couldn't call him 'thief,' really. Tradesman, sure. Con artist, maybe. A right mad genius, most assuredly. But for all his charm with locks, Finn wasn't much suited to skulking around dark corners and risking his neck on badly placed furniture. He was just too good-looking for that. 

Still, it was hard to ignore the windows that loomed above him, with their edgings of thin decor glass, and not pity the wealthy fools inside that didn't know how easily they came free of their settings. Finn himself had a knife sharp and slender enough for the task, tucked neatly away in his belt. Thirty seconds, a lucky break in the crowd, and he could very easily stumble across a bedroom, or an office with some tidy sum squirreled away, or -

The pointy stub of an elbow suddenly jabbed his ribcage, shocking him out of his mental ransacking of the place. When he turned, Davin was glaring at him.

"Stop," he said, without context.

"I wasn't," Finn snapped, also without context, because his brother was stupid, but he was not quite falling-for-Finn's-innocent-act stupid. "I was just looking."

"You're always doing a bit of 'just looking' before you do something daft," Davin sneered. He jerked his chin up to the window overhead and said, "That's a money-changer. Piss him off, and Alex will skin you for a pennant."

"Alex would have to be tall enough to reach me, first," Finn grumbled, but begrudgingly followed his brother’s gesture out towards the main boulevard, keeping a mental mark on the building behind him.

He could always come back later.

[storysims]

SNOWY ESCAPE - CAS REVIEW ❄️

I've literally spent the last two weeks wishing I had the alpha build back, just so I could use CAS again. 🙈 Pretty safe to say that I really enjoyed this one!

I was provided with an early access copy of Snowy Escape to review via the EA Game Changers program!

I know I normally keep it pretty chill at the start of my reviews, but I have been waiting to complain about this since literally October 21st.

Let me write paint you a picture - you’ve just opened Snowy Escape for the very first time and you’re excited! You scroll through the new clothes - most of them are lovely. And oh, what’s this? A jacket sweater thing? You look through the swatches - lovely neutral color combinations that are super usable. Only one swatch left to look at and it’s THIS WEIRDO. 

WHO DECIDED THAT THIS WAS THE WINNING COMBINATION. W H O

Now to be fair, there’s also a weird pink swatch... but at least it keeps with the ‘solid colors’ theme. Where did the stripes come from, EA?

All jokes aside, there’s honestly very little I disliked about this pack. There’s a few glitches, but most of my complaints are purely nitpicking. 

Since we’re already here, let’s talk glitches. I continue to wonder if quality control tests clothes on all body types, because this is just glaringly obvious. 

I did report the first glitch during my time in alpha (glad to see it was fixed! 🙃), but didn’t catch the second until I was dressing a thicker waisted granny earlier today.

One of my favorite things about Sims 4 is the ability to have different body types, especially when compared to the whopping two choices from Sims 2. Honestly though, what’s the point when clothes don’t fit correctly? 

Thankfully, the majority of CAS is really nice. The items themselves aren’t too stylized (which is always a concern with a themed pack), but there’s still loads of fun patterns for your more colorful sims.

I was a little worried going into the pack that we’d either get all casual clothes or all outdoor cold weather attire. In my opinion, the sims team did a really good job of giving us a mix of both!

It’s hard to imagine players not having Seasons, but they’re definitely out there! During alpha, we only had the base game. It all made me wonder - how useable is the cold weather gear for those who don’t have Seasons? 

Without Seasons, the only area with cold weather is Mt. Komorebi itself. It’s really nice that those players will get to experience snow, but it’s a pretty limited area. Four lots, an onsen, some slopes, a hiking trail, and a trek up the mountain. With easily half of the assets being geared towards bundling up, I think I would have preferred one or two more casual pieces instead.

I say this every review lately, and I’m just all but positive I’ve been yelling about it since Get Famous. BUT THE TEXTURES! THE DETAILS! ✨

The first time I turned the first sweater around, I actually gasped. I just love the details on items like these - you don’t necessarily spend a whole lot of time considering what the back of your sim looks like (or maybe you do, no judgement), so seeing things like this brings a little bit more ‘life’ to the sims for me.

It’s definitely worth noting - the shirt underneath the feminine sweater matches a new skirt! So you can pair the two for a really nice dress effect.

Toddlers aren’t left out of this pack, which is always an absolute delight to type! All but a few of the adult hairstyles are also available for the little ones, and they get some super cute new clothes.

For some reason, I didn’t snap a picture of any snow gear. Thankfully, @mysteriousdane​ took literally the cutest picture I’ve ever seen. Her CAS shots from this pack are amazing, as usual. Be sure to give her posts a look! ❤️

Kiddos get some of my favorite outfits, honestly. That cardigan outfit? The flower dress? The jacket with those wonderful jeans?! 

Just like toddlers, the kids get most of the adults hairs as well, but with one notable exception - 

This is literally my favorite hair in the whole pack, and it’s not available for adults. Choices like this honestly just confuse me - you’ve taken the time to convert new hair to be usable for all ages, but this specific hair is age locked? Why?

Last, but certainly not least, school uniforms!

All students in Mt. Komorebi will wear these automatically when attending school. Students in other worlds will still attend school in their normal clothes, but there’s nothing to stop you from dressing them in these yourself! Thankfully, they aren’t locked in CAS.

Rounding out CAS is two new traits and two new aspirations.

PROPER These sims tend to disapprove of other sims improper behavior such as mean or mischievous socials, but find themselves happier in formal outfits and have a much easier time with friendly and romantic socials.

ADVENTUROUS These sims seek out new and unique experiences!

I did play with both traits, and Proper was by far my favorite. It gives a cute spin on existing interactions - like courting a sim or getting ‘respectfully closer’. 

The two new aspirations - Mt. Komorebi Sightseer and Extreme Sports Enthusiast are pretty much summed up in the title.

The sightseer aspiration feels a lot like the other location aspirations from City Living and Island Living. I would love to see a different take on these types of aspirations in future packs. They’re far too easy - it just doesn’t feel like a whole lot of thought goes into them. 

All in all, I really enjoyed CAS in this pack. If you have Seasons, I’d go as far as to consider it a must have (not just for CAS, but the pack as a whole). If you don’t have Seasons, weigh the pros and cons! You’re getting a lot of cold weather stuff that I really don’t think you’ll use outside of Mt. Komorebi.

[theodora3022]

Headcanons of Yandere! Inasa Yoarashi

Request: Reader is a female UA student with a strong wind quirk, Inasa Yoarashi met her during the provisional license exam. She is not particularly charming or beautiful, but she peaked Inasa’s interests. Normally, she is a friendly person. However when he tried to talk to her, she would give a curt reply, clearly wants nothing to do with him. What angers him more is: She is close to Shoto Todoroki! Little did Inasa knows she is avoiding him because she is insecure about her control over the winds, she fears that the winds might favour Inasa and she would be left quirkless. Head canons please. Today is the wind boy’s birthday and there’s just so little content of him...He is underrated.

Notes: Interesting suggestion! Today is indeed his birthday, I shall tend to your request at once! I been wanting to write about him for a while ngl, but I just cannot find an exact idea. Thank you for this amazing idea, anon. There’s not much information about his personality so I don’t worry this being OOC hehe.  Sorry if this turns out to be a bit Yandere… Man this took way longer then expected, please enjoy!

Update: Sequal No.1, Sequal.2(Coming soon)

Some of this is inspired by @reinawritesbnha​‘s post. Go give it a read! It’s one of the best I ever seen.

Warning: Violence(non-graphic), yandere, kidnapping, dub con, implied breeding kink (? Idk this is the first time I wrote something like this)

You are a strong pro-hero in training. You can command airflows to your will, any gas is under your disposal. It is only a matter of time before you become the big three of your year. Even Bakugou does not want to anger you. You are a powerful tempest towards your enemies. Overall, you are quite confident about your abilities. 

That is, before you met Inasa Yoarashi during the provisional license exam.

When you first saw him, you feel this sense of…familiarity. Even though you never met him before, you cannot shake this feeling of connection with Inasa.

Then you felt his cold glance towards your direction. But when his eyes met yours, his lips curl up into a big grin and bowed slightly.

“I am Inasa Yoarashi, also known as Gale Force, from Shiketsu High. And what is your name, beautiful miss from UA?” Man, he is loud.

Ah, so he is Gale force. You learned about him when picking out your hero name, he also has a wind quirk. Then it strikes you: what if the winds like him better? What if they just abandon me while he is around? Those thoughts make you feel helpless, the scenario of being quirkless terrifies you to no end.

The blush of being called “beautiful” is gone, instead you replace it with a stoic face: “Pleasure to meet you, Mr Yoarashi. I am (F/N) (L/N), also known as (hero name). Come on Shoto, they are almost starting, we should get going. Please excuse us.”

You walk away, smiling at Shoto. Leaving Inasa there, angry and confused.

He immediately regrets withdrawing his application from UA. If he had been in your school, it is him you would smile and befriend now, instead of that wicked Todoroki! The way you are calling his first name, so intimate, just sends anger through his brain.

So, you have a wind quirk too, huh? No wonder he feels this instant connection with you.

Froze there for a couple of seconds, until Nagamasa Mora called him. “What has gotten into you, Inasa? The exam is going to start soon.” Ashamed to admit his true feelings, Inasa would brush off the older man’s concern, and pretend nothing had happened.

Words cannot describe how he felt when he saw you in your hero costume. Like Inasa, you had chosen to put a thick jacket on. The skies can get quite cold, after all. His looks practical, with multiple tubes to help regulate the air currents. But your grey coat looks like an expensive piece from a boutique, the edges even has fur for decorations. Inasa think your look fits for a scroll in the snow, instead of a battlefield. It’s probaly for disguise to fool villians. You have not fully button up the coat yet, he can still glimpse the (favorite colour) spandex bodysuit underneath. If this has not been an exam, Inasa swears he would ask you to go to dinner with him, here and now.

Feeling his gaze fixated on you, you tense up nervously. Is he finding ways to take the winds away from me? Horrified, you decide to stay far away from him during the exam as possible.

Shoto noticed your nervous state, he asks you what is wrong. You shrug, stating it is just pre-exam stress.

Every time Inasa sees you and Shoto’s friendly interactions, his heart bleeds. But he decides to wait until after the exam to take any action. He also decides to impress you with his outstanding performance in the exam.

When you choose the furthest area from him, it left him feeling disappointed. So he chooses a tall building as his battleground, to better utilize his quirk and to watch you from afar.

Unlike his approach with winds, which focus on intensity and strength, your winds concentrate their efforts on speed. Stealth and fast, most people only catch your afterimage in the corner of their eyes.

Your strategy is creating vacuums around their heads. When your opponents are choking due to lack of oxygen, you press them against a solid surface to knock them out. Then you score with the tennis balls, done. Simple yet effective. It has only been five minutes into the exam, and you are already finished, with minimal efforts of two people unconscious.

Inasa saw all of this from the top of the building, of course. Like an assassin of the night, you move with such grace, and that speed of yours! Truly amazing. He had never thought of creating vacuums before. He guesses this is one of your ultimate moves.

He might just be curious about you before, but after seeing you fly around with that incredible swiftness, Inasa find himself becoming more smitten with you.

It is settled in his mind: he has to have you. Just imagine how what a power couple you two would be! The wind duo will be invincible. And your children would have the strongest wind quirk ever.

In the break room, you sigh with relief; you reached your goals: stay furthest away from Inasa as possible and passing with negligible efforts. Taking out your (favorite snack) from your backpack, you decide to reward yourself a little.

But then you find Inasa grinning at you across the room. Your good mood vanishes instantly.

Talking to Shoto to distract yourself from his burning stare, you felt his gaze moved away.

“That Yoarashi guy, I saw him in the entrance exam for recommended students. I was surprised that he went to Shiketsu.”

Phew. You were delighted to hear him say that. You would not want to deal with this situation on a daily basis.

Before you can feel that delight, however. Inasa invites himself into your conversation.

“Your speed is incredible! The way you master your winds is truly impressive. We should train together sometime. We can share our experiences on the winds!”

Being the nice person you are, you did not ignore him, trying to bring yourself to like him. You do want to share experience with a fellow wind user.

You did not notice how he left Shoto out of the conversation, completely. Not that he wants to socialize with Inasa, but still.

To Inasa, you remind him of the warm spring breeze. A ray of sunshine, easygoing and friendly, the complete opposite of Todoroki.

Of course, you are unaware of his ridiculous plans involving a future together and children. You just see him as a enthusiastic, loud boy.

Shoto can feel his obsession thoughts for you, however. After Inasa left to prepare for the second part, Shoto warned you subtlety. But you did not take it seriously, saying that is just how Inasa make friends. “He’s like that with everyone. No need to worry.”

The second exam you devoted yourself into rescuing. Shoto said he would deal with the villain. So you just focused on dealing with injured “civilians”. After gaining knowledge of their “injuries”, you lift the debris with winds and deliver them to the first-aid station.

It was after the exam you find out the two had fight while dealing with the villain.

They did not pass. You comforted Shoto about it, leaving Inasa upset. He failed the exam too; he needs your comforting words just as much as Todoroki!

You exchanged numbers with Inasa upon depart, promise him to train together soon. You fear of inferiority is gone; being this close to him, you can sense his power is not as strong as yours. Evidently it is him who should worry about falling out of the wind’s favour.  

Your friends, especially Mina, tease you about your little encounter with the other wind user. Calling him your “Shiketsu boyfriend”. You yell for them to stop, saying you only seen him as a friend.

Inasa’s friends are pretty much the same. Although he is a year younger, his sociable nature made him approachable. He shows off now he got your number, and they all laughed. “She can create vacuums and suffocate people; I would hate to get on (y/n)’s bad side.”

After the exam, he wrote out his plan of attack, staying up until 2am to do so. Shiketsu forbid its students to have any romantic relationships, so Inasa wasn’t planning on having one with you. Your relationship with him will remain platonic until you both graduate.

It involves an arranged marriage and an immense sum of dowry to bribe your parents. His father always taught him to go after what he wants with all his might. Inasa cannot wait until you graduate and move in with him. It is such a shame a powerful hero like you have to become a homemaker so soon. But he cannot have you swinging around the city in spandex, they are for his eyes only. He wants to keep you in the safety of his house, to train his brood of offspring. Yes, that is what your prestigious UA diploma for-for his children’s head start in life.

Stalking you would be difficult since you can sense the movement of air around you. They report any abnormalities to you at once. So he watched you from afar, how you shoot across the sky like a bullet to go to school every morning, how you relaxed in mid air during lunch break, or how you laugh with your friends outdoors.

Sometimes you would feel like someone is watching you, but the winds say all clear. So you just mark it as you are being too self-conscious and do not care.

You two would occasionally text and train together/help each other with homework on weekends, getting lunch together afterwards. him acting like nothing less then a gentleman. You start viewing him as a friend, despite what Shoto said before.

Inasa is glad that you did not seem to take interest in any boys during your high school time. If you end up inTodoroki’s arms, he does not know what he will do to Shoto.

A week after you graduate UA your parents told you they have received a marriage proposal. They have already accepted it, so there is no room for negotiation.

You are shocked to surprised finding your intended to be Inasa Yoarshi. You thought of him only as a training buddy prior to this.You ask to postpone the marriage until you become a full pro-hero but was shut down rather brutally. He said he will provide for you. There is no need for you to work when he can just take care of everything.

“Don’t worry, love. I’m going to take such great care of you! You can teach the children at home, so they can get a head start in hero life!”

Avoiding him would be pretty easy considering your speed, you can carry on with hero work as if nothing has happened, even moving to another city. However if this goes on for too long, Inasa will kidnap you.

Most likely to steal you away from your apartment at night, as he is as good at being stealthy as you. You live alone, it was a breeze. Some Chloroform and ropes would get the job done. 

You would wake up in a nicely furnished room one morning, quirk-cancelling collar locked on your neck. With chains long just enough to reach the bathroom.

Inasa hates seeing you upset, but it is all going to be better once you get used to your new employment: his sweet wife, the mother of his children.

Will consider letting you go outside for grocery shopping if you been good, with his company of course.

He would never raise a hand on you, no matter how much you screams and reisists him. Being so understanding, Inasa knows you need some time to come around. 

He loves nothing more then watching you do domestic chores, this man got issues. He expects you stay at home, cook dinner for him and take care of him. Which is a nightmare for you, since you despise housewife life.

You are so helpless without your winds to protect you, so you tried to rip this goddamn collar off everyday. But it was futile: only Inasa has the key.

You went to bed with him just to get some time outdoors, since your claustrophobia is acting up. You didn’t expect him to be so gentle and soft. But you regret it soon after because he become insatiable afterwards.

Then two months later you found yourself in the bathroom, staring at a positive pregnacy test. 

Once Inasa knows about your condition, he will loosen the restrictions. You can now use your quirk under his supervisions: it’s excerise, and the two of you both need it.

He would take you to comittee events, to go visit his friends, even letting you see your friends from time to time. You also got your phone back, but with a tracking app installed on it. 

Now all he has to do is wait a couple more months to meet his child.

[werepartofthemasterplan]

EPISODE 5 - TO CRAUGH (TM)

So, I already watched this week's episode (I had my hopes high since I read somewhere that it was the best of the season... oh boy, if this is the best, I don't know about the worst...).

I will be doing my sum-up some time in the afternoon-evening, since I have a busy day at work today.

Let me say 2 things:

Minerva is recalled once more.

Arnaud and Amy already have more screentime than Bruno last season.

Bonus thought (specially for @mereth): at the end of the episode, Pol says he is not going to fall in love EVER... Just indulge me in proving him wrong :-P.

OK, ready or not, here I go, you can't hide...

First edit, intro:

Angel is working at the Satanasa (waitering not so well, to be honest).

He and Pol meet up to go together to the Philoparty. Pol arrives at the bar with Bolaño and introduces her to Dino, who is already charming her. Seems like Pol has told him a lot about her. (Truth to be told, it's just AWESOME to see Poncela and Pujalte together...)

Pol and Angel leave for the party in Pol's bike (very resemblance to the episode 8 temp 1 scene after he gets the bike and after Bruno leaves... yes, I have to squeeze Bruno somewhere... your problem, not mine!). Pol is eager for things to come back to normal. He wants to tell everyone about the HIV.

Second edit:

They get to the party (all dressed up in Louis XV and Marie Antoniette costumes...). They put on some costumes.

Biel is already there, as well as Arnaud, Amy (I don't know why but yeah.... and Pol is really happy to see Amy, don't know why either) ... and Oti appears going down the main stare like a queen.

Rai's palace. Rai wants Alfonso to iron one of his shirt for the party before going home (Alfonso was just leaving but has to stay to do it....).

Some Vicky and Alfonso bonding.

While he is ironing the shirt, he opens a closet to find all the suits and clothes and watches and hats from Rai's father.

Third edit:

Bolaño and Dino talking and the Satanasa. Really the best part of the episode. They talk about life and kids and stuff... If you had to watch just one part of the episode, I'd chose this one and the one with them at the park....

Back to the Philoparty. Oti wants to take part at the Plato's Symposium debate at the end of the school year.

Biel is A JERK. I preferred last season's Biel. He is really stupid this season.

Oti gets mad with Biel because he thinks he's better than her.

They are going to do a high heels race... all very original and new *sarcastic cough*

Rai arrives and he is very uptight and defesive towards Pol, who is trying to make peaces with him for not having been around or in a good mood for quite a while...

Pol doesn't understand what's going on with Rai.

Biel goes to appologise to Oti. Blah blah blah... Biel wants to have sex with her again. Blah blah blah... I don't really know if Oti says no or maybe...

Fourth edit:

Vicky has vertigo (like meeeeee!!!! it really sucks when it happens!! I pitty her so much). Alfonso has to stay to take care of her. He tells her that he also suffers it. More Vicky and Alfonso bonding.

Back to the party. Normally, I don't say anything about these things but this one is fucking outrageous. Amy is saying that rural Spain reminds her of Arkansas but Cataluña has so much personality... So, fuck you Hector... I mean, Amy....

Pol is trying again with Rai but he's just as hurt as before.

Biel is drunk and talking about love vs sex.

Back to the Satanasa. (Mejor frase de la noche: "¿no te encantaria tener un "cal" en español?" :-D :-D :-D) Dino wants to do a makeover to Maria.

Back to Rai's home. More Alfonso and Vicky bonding but Vicky catches Alfonso trying one of her husband's suits and gets mad... very ridiculous all...

Back to the party. Everyone is drinking too much, including Pol. Biel tells Rai that he had a thing for MINERVA. Biel doesn't have feelings for her anymore but Rai does.

Maria's makeover. She looks really pretty. They have a heart to heart about their hopes and wishes...

Party again: Pol is drunk and so is Rai. Rai feels isolated by Pol because he hasn't been around lately. He's even "jelous" of Axel and Rai ends up in the patios' pond, all wet.

Pol tells Oti that he doesn't feel alright and he thinks it's because of the medication, so he has to tell her.

Rai calls Alfonso to bring him some dry clothes to the party and asks him for Pol's clothes because otherwise, it would take too long (Hector had to have an excuse for Alfonso to sneak into Pol's drawers and find the pills... which of course, he does).

Fifth edit:

Pol tells Oti and she asks him if that the reason he's not with Axel... he just nods.

AND HOLD YOUR FREAKING PHONES!!! Pol says: "Thank god we didn't fuck that day at my house...." mmmmmmm.... hello???? you know who you fuck in those days at his house....????????? YES, EXACLY, VoldeBruno... This is ridiculous.

Back to the conversation. Oti tells him that she'd love for him to fuck her now. Pol looks at her and, surprise, she introduces him to the term "condom", which apparently, Pol has forgotten it exists. Oti tells him that for her he is the same person and that she is proud of her friend...

The high heels race, which Biel wins.

And one more punch to the gut: A "La casa Azul" song sounds... I hate you, Hector.

Pol's room. Alfonso asks Gloria if she knows what the pills are for and why Pol hides them. They look at the name in internet and they find out what they are for. Alfonso is really really angry/sad. He wants to confront Pol about it but Gloria asks him to wait for him to accept it and once he has it assumed, to go to Pol and ask him.

Back to the end of the party, they decide to go to the beach to see the sunrise.

Pol and Rai are friends again.

Maria and Dino having chocolate con churros for breakfast.

Alfonso cannot sleep.

Maria and Dino having another amazing conversation. And here is where the episode title comes from: Dino making Maria cry and laugh at the same time: TO CRAUGH.

At the beach, they are all talking about nonesense and planning to travel and to go to Argentina to see MINERVA (another punch!). And Oti tells that they are going to fall in love in each country that the go to. Pol is really pensive and out of it, AND THAT'S WHEN HE SAYS: "I will try not to fall in love. It's better being around friends".

And final punch in the gut: again "La Casa Azul"....

FIN.

Ok, so so so many wholes... but the bigest one is 1'78 meters, slender, beautiful as fuck and it responds to the name of BRUNOOOOOOO. I even have a pic, Hector... look.

[jordanr770-blog]

America Needs Some Talent

 I just needed someplace to write down my thoughts so here we are!

I have been watching America’s Got Talent since season 11 when the ukulele girl won. I personally didn’t vote for her but can understand why she won. Same goes for season 12. I was rooting super hard for Diavolo but can understand why puppet girl won. Season 13 had some of the best acts ever (Shin Lim-winner) and I know a lot of people disliked her, but Courtney Hadwin should have at least  gotten 5th place over sob story “I’m such a good person and I hit my wife” Michael Ketterer. Kodi Lee was the obvious winner of season 14 and I personally thought he deserved it over the other acts. Other people did not think it was well deserved, and that’s ok too.  

Last season we got a spoken word poet in the form of Brandon Leake. I did not enjoy the act AT ALL and was kind of mad that he won, but I will say that even though I did not enjoy him, spoken word poetry is indeed a talent.

Now, you may be thinking that season 16 would be a smidgeon of an improvement over season 15. Talent and reality shows should probably strive to become better every season. But if you thought this show isn’t capable of getting any worse, you haven’t been paying attention because this show will always find ways to disappoint. Last night we were told everyone voted for an INSPIRATIONAL speech giver as the winner. Or I’m sorry, apparently he does magic. His name is Dustin Tavella. But the thing is, he was HORRIBLE at both storytelling AND magic and nowhere near deserved the win. “It was well deserved.” How? How is a kindergarten level “magician” worth a million dollars and a Vegas show? I believe the show in Vegas is about an hour and a half and I am curious as to what is he going to do in that timeframe? Talk about how the folks living in Vegas are living in sin while simultaneously throwing paper in the air MAGICALLY? I’m sure the audience will go wild over that. Or maybe during all of his shows he will adopt a kid a day from different countries and then spend about an hour talking about Little ZimZam’s harsh life and while he’s babbling  he’ll be semi incorporating his poor magic skills into the act in the last minute so the poster stating he’s a magician didn’t TECHNICALLY lie so nobody is getting their money back. I really don’t know. I have a lot of thoughts. 

Plus, his sob story just did nothing for me whatsoever. Good for you for adapting 11 children, unless it has to do with whatever your act is, shut the hell up and do the trick! Not once did this guy impress  or give even the best of a performance of the night. It was always 8+ minutes of “inspiration” and tirades about how we as a society need to be good to one another whilst doing crappy magic. Let me tell you, I know next to nothing about magic but even I could tell he was a less than stellar magician. Even calling him a magician is somewhat laughable. In reality he's a motivational speaker who does terrible magic tricks and  who always somehow manages to suck at said terrible magic but America apparently doesn’t notice him screwing up his terrible magic because he’s too busy telling them to look at a crumpled up piece of paper or a ladder or the new photograph of his adopted son who has an extra eyeball or whatever. It’s stupid.

Last night for his final performance Dustin’s act was, and I kid you not, telling us all to be nice. FOR SEVEN UNNECESSARY MINUTES. And I do believe he started to fake cry. Dude, you’re acting is about as good as Heidi Klum’s. You can't act and you can barely do magic. Why are you here? What is your talent? Did he really join a talent show to become some type of inspirational God of obvious wisdom? If that’s the case, he should have gone and done a Ted Talk, many less victims of mediocrity that way. America somehow  put him in the top 5 with actually talented people? I think not. The act itself was not impressive and he did the same thing every time, just told a different sob story. If you have to rely on a sad story to win, you don’t deserve to win a show where talent is the main objective. 

In case my last few paragraphs were not made abundantly clear, I am not a fan of this dude. At all. I read a comment which stated that a message is not a talent and whoever said that is 100% correct and summed up my feelings pretty accurately. I'm not a fan or boring and basic tricks combined with even worse stories. He's the living embodiment of a motivational meme and anyone who voted for this guy is  gullible and can fight me. Maybe people “voted” for him because he attempted to pull on the heartstrings? But because I sold my heart long ago his act didn’t effect me as much. /s But I swear every year they make it more clear that the entire show is rigged. 

Well, maybe the voting ISN’T rigged entirely and all the boomers  (first time I’ve ever used that term) and antivaxxers and easily swayed by sob story people on Twitter and Facebook voted for him. Doubtful, but you never know. HE WAS SO FREAKING BAD!!!

We are all allowed to have opinions and just because you don’t agree with me that doesn’t mean I am an awful person who deserves DEATH. I keep getting responses and messages on Twitter from angry folk who are calling me heartless because I questioned WHY they voted for him. “Well, IIIII gave Dustin all 10 of my votes!” That’s nice Karen. That is also not an answer and I cannot stress enough how much I do not care that you voted for the phony used cars salesman. Go tell your Prince from Nigeria all about it. Another guy got mad and reported me for “yelling at strangers.” Which is kind of a typical thing people do on Twitter. And I wasn’t even yelling! Lol. 

And another point I’d like to make (about this and  in general) is people really need to stop using the terms “all of us” and the word “we.” I am my own person and you do not get to speak for me. 

“We were all crying when we saw him perform!” - No WE most certainly weren’t. I was seething with anger, yes. Crying? Not even close.

“His magic touched all of our hearts!” WHAT MAGIC? WHERE WAS THE MAGIC IN THIS MANS ENTIRE ACT? I MUST HAVE MISSED IT AFTER I PASSED OUT FROM HIS 7 MINUTE LONG STORY ABOUT HIS BORING LIFE. 

His win was a complete insult.

* I personally voted for Aidan Bryant, but I really wanted Unicircle Flow to win before they got kicked off due to the judges having a tendency to suck at picking during judges choice. *

Edit: I apologize if this wasn’t articulated very well or if it seems I basically said the same thing over and over. To be fair it was 3 am when I wrote this and I was still irritated and questioning everything. Still doesn’t excuse the fact that this guy was lame and doesn’t deserve a Vegas show. My mom told me earlier today that people on the Internet are mad about his win and that it’s not fair to take it out on the guy, which I suppose is kind of true. Not exactly his fault the general public has failed and shown their stupidity yet again. If anyone is to blame it is the people who actually voted for this doofus. And AGT. And yeah, I guess I will blame him as well. But I’m not saying go to his Twitter or Instagram or whatever and call him out for being a con artist and bully him. 

I think the MESSAGE =P I’m trying to display here  is that someone has no business being on a talent show unless they have talent; self explanatory. A message isn’t talent. Being a narcissist isn’t talent. Exploiting your kids and wife isn’t talent. Speaking can be a talent (comedy, that poetry guy, acting, improv, probably a lot of other stuff I’m forgetting about) but one shouldn’t call themselves a magician if one is really a way less cool garage sale version of Talky Tina. Magic IS talent but if you want a million dollars you better have skills that are on par or better than the professionals. 

[jaydicksummerexchange]

JAYDICK EXCHANGE: AUGUST 31

[ ❤ Works posted so far! ❤ ]

WE’RE AT 102 EXCHANGE WORKS FOR 2020 YOUR CREATIVE POWER CANNOT BE CONTAINED! I cannot stress how amazing this number is as we only had 71 sign ups. That’s a lot of treats from some very amazing artists and writers.  Please continue to add your stories and artwork to the collection! It’s always open. If you’d like your treat included in our promotional posts, please have it completed before midnight EST September 3.

Here are today’s fanworks! Please leave a comment and kudos for the author if you enjoy their work. Authors/artists will be revealed September 3rd...ISH!

If this room was burning (I wouldn’t even notice) by anonymous for pissvinegarandacrowbar [FIC, Mature, No Warnings Apply, JayDick] 

Additional Tags: Post-Game(s), Developing Relationship, Angst, Implied - Friends with Benefits

Summary: Ever since Knightfall, Dick has felt like the floor is on the ceiling and everything he’s holding onto is slipping through his fingers. But tonight Penguin has decided to throw a party in Gotham, and Dick is furious and looking for a good time.

He’d Trade His Guns For Love by anonymous for strikeyourcolors [FIC, Explicit, No Warnings Apply, JayDick] 

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Thieves, Con Artists, Casual Sex, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Hand Jobs, Oral Sex, Anal Sex, Complicated Relationships, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot

Summary:  Moments later, Dick has made his way through the crowd and is hanging off Jason's shoulder, whispering into Jason's ear, his breath tickling the short hairs at the nape of Jason's neck. “If you're here for good old Kathy's trinkets,” he purrs, “then, ohh, Little Wing, I'm afraid I beat you to the punch on that one.”

Dick butts into one of Jason's meticulously planned scores and gets "punished" appropriately.

Perfect Day by anonymous for Hedgebelle [FIC, Teen, No Warnings, JayDick] 

Additional Tags: Fluff, Humor, Weddings, Groomzilla, Wedding Planning, Wedding Night, Kissing, JayDick Summer Exchange

Summary: “I ordered white lilies, not pink! How do you think my fiance will feel when he walks out here for his big day and sees these monstrosities instead of his favorite Easter lilies? Are you trying to ruin our whole wedding with your incompetence?” 

The florist looks like he might piss himself. Dick rushes over before things get any more out of hand.

-

It turns out Jason is a bit uptight about making everything perfect for his and Dick's big day. It's up to Dick to prevent his fiance from having an aneurysm, and from possibly murdering a florist...

Lazarus by anonymous for 3ssen [ART, Teen, No Warnings Apply, Dick Grayson & Jason Todd] 

Additional Tags: Post-Apocalypse, Steampunk, Alternate Universe, Pre-SlashFanart

Summary: There's a boy in the Wastelands, unaging, preserved in the bright, green fluid of the Lazarus Cores - the last human from Before the End.

you can mend a heart that's frail and torn (i'm worn) by anonymous for DDDemosthenes_1986 [FIC, Mature, No Warnings, Dick Grayson/ Jason Todd] 

Additional Tags: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Post-Red Hood and the Outlaws #25, Jason Todd Deserves Better, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, Jason Todd Has Daddy Issues, Protective Dick Grayson, Dick Grayson Has Daddy Issues, Pre-SlashSelf-Esteem Issues, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Past Character Death, Trauma, Aftermath of Violence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Pining Dick Grayson, Jason Todd Feels, Hurt Jason Todd, POV Dick Grayson, Bruce Wayne is a Bad Parent, Dick Grayson cares, References to Forever Evil (Comics)References to Nightwing #30

Summary: “My biggest mistake was coming back. That made me human. That made me not perfect. That hurt his rep, ruined the pretty little tale he’d conjured in his head. His little pedestal he’d build for self-flagellation after patrol. Don’t you see Dickie? The whole family loved me as a corpse. They didn’t love me when I came back filling graves with criminals. Even you…”

Jason gives a self-depreciating laugh, hugging himself and looking down.

“Even you.”

A Good Soldier but not A Good Son.

***

Not all wounds are skin deep, and some conversations have been a long time coming.

May We Together (Become Greater Than the Sum of Both of Us) by anonymous for MFLuder [ART, GEN, No Warnings, Dick Grayson & Jason Todd] 

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Star Trek Fusion, Vulcan Jason Todd, Betazoid Dick Grayson, Alternate Universe - Space, Xenolinguist Jason Todd, Engineer Jason Todd, Command Track Dick Grayson, Diplomat Dick Grayson, TOS/AOS uniforms bc reasons, reasons being, jason in red and death jokes, and also command gold has a nice ring to it, Shippy Gen, Fanart

Summary:  Starfleet Cadets Jason Todd and Dick Grayson celebrate a successful mission simulation.

The Edge of Heaven by anonymous for slifer the sky noodle [FIC, Explicit, No Warnings,  JayDick] 

Additional Tags: Alpha!Dick Grayson, Alpha!Jason Todd, Anal Sex, Knotting, Dick in Lingerie, Dirty Talk, Buttplugs, Unconventional Relationship, Omegaverse

Summary: for the JayDick Exchange 2020 prompt: Alpha Jason and alpha dick, teeeeensiiiion and dick likes taking knots?? Thank u god bless

if I could tell you I would let you know by anonymous for solomonara [Teen, No Warnings Apply, Dick Grayson & Jason Todd]

Additional Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt Jason Todd, Protective Dick Grayson, Pre-Slash, could be gen too

Summary: Jason sits up slowly, letting the comforter fall away to reveal bandages criss crossing his whole torso. There’s no way he did them himself. Besides not remembering it, the way they were wrapped suggests someone else’s hands. The question now is who.

The bedroom door opens at that moment, and Dick Grayson steps in.

Like a Dark-Haired Rapunzel by anonymous for Zillabird [ART, Teen, No Warnings Apply, Dick Grayson/Jason Todd]

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Mythology, Alternate Universe - Historical, Indian mythology - Freeform, Shahnameh, Zal and Rudabeh, Fluff, Long Hair, Jason Todd has Long Hair, Jason Todd is a Prince, (ess), Dick Grayson is also a Prince, Boys Kissing, A lot of research went into this okay, Fanart

Summary: The lonely, sheltered, handsome Prince Jason meets Dick - also handsome, also a Prince, but very much the successor of his father's sworn enemy.

It's love at first sight.

Cleaning Teams by anonymous for prompt_fills [Fic, General Audiences, No Warnings Apply, Dick Grayson & Jason Todd]

Additional Tags: Batfamily (DCU), Sibling Bonding

Summary: Short drabble of the Batkids attempting to clean the manor for Alfred.

[pikapeppa]

Cullen solo smut: Personal Correspondence

In which Cullen has some private commander time when he receives a rather PERSONAL letter from Piper. 😏 Also, some conversations just because they’re fun.

~5200 words; read here on AO3 instead.

Beautiful sexy art by @schoute​​!!

Cullen was bored.

That wasn’t to say that this meeting with Josephine and Leliana was boring. The issue they were discussing was quite important, in fact: an odd flurry of activity among some minor Orlesian noble houses that seemed related to red lyrium. Despite the importance of the issue, however, the unfortunate truth was this: any discussion involving Orlesian nobility inevitably drove Cullen’s otherwise-disciplined attention toward… well, anything else. 

He forced himself to listen as Josephine tapped her quill thoughtfully on her tablet. “We must be cautious if we approach the de Mouriers,” she was saying. “But I do believe we will get an answer more quickly from them than from Marquise Courtmance.”

“Quicker may not be better, Josie,” Leliana said. “If my spies slip into the Courtmance compound under the guise of servants, they can get a clearer and less roundabout answer.” 

Josephine twisted her lips. “I’m not so sure. I have heard that the Marquise’s butler is particularly stringent about monitoring the comings and goings within her estate.”

Leliana smiled faintly. “Yes, he certainly is.”

Josephine blinked. “Ah. I see. Who told you of their… liaison?”

“Nobody needed to,” Leliana replied. “It was evident at the Winter Palace, no?”

Josephine opened her mouth to reply, but Cullen had had enough. He planted his palms on the table. “Shall we make a decision, then?” he said. “The Inquisitor left the choice in our hands. We should settle on a course of action and move on.” 

“We can’t rush this, Cullen,” Josephine said earnestly. “Every move we make will have a ripple effect across all of Orlesian society, like— “

“—like stones thrown into a pond, yes, I know,” he said impatiently. He folded his arms. “I for one would be thrilled to simply throw stones at the lot of them, but what do I know?”

Leliana smiled serenely. “Now now, Cullen,” she said. “Just because every Orlesian family is trying to marry their daughters to you, it’s no reason to pout.”

Josephine giggled, and Cullen scowled at them both. “I’m not pouting,” he said. “And even if I were, I think it’s a perfectly good reason to pout. Why are they hassling me?” He shot Josephine a resentful look. “Why aren’t they hassling you? You’re just as marriageable.” 

Leliana’s smile widened. “Josephine isn’t as pretty as you,” she said slyly.

“It’s true,” Josephine said happily. “I have yet to hear anyone composing any songs about my hair.”

Cullen double-taked at her. “Composing–! Where – who is composing songs about my hair?” he demanded. “We need to stop this at once.”

Josephine delicately patted her mouth, and Cullen scowled again; she was clearly trying not to laugh. “Unfortunately, we cannot afford to invest the resources into stopping these dastardly songwriters just now,” she said.

Cullen gave her a reproachful look. “You said just this morning that you convinced the Merchant Princes to invest a large sum to our coffers.”

Josephine let out a tiny cough, and Leliana spoke in her stead. “Well, I’ve heard that the ballads about your hair are boosting morale among the soldiers. Especially out at Griffon’s Keep.”

Griffon’s Keep? Cullen thought in annoyance. Was Rylen encouraging the men to engage in these sorts of foolish hijinks? Cullen ought to speak to him about it. 

Then again, if making up songs about his hair was boosting morale among the men…  

He sighed. “Fine. Let them sing about my blasted hair if it amuses them. Are we finished here?”

“Nearly finished,” Josephine said soothingly. “Just as soon as we decide on a course of action.”

Cullen sighed again, then waited with increasing restlessness as Josephine and Leliana discussed the pros and cons of addressing each noble house. When it was finally decided that they would send Leliana’s spies to the Courtmance mansion, Cullen exhaled in relief.

“Are we done here?” he asked. “I have a dozen reports waiting for me.”

Josephine smiled and gave him a small bow. “Yes, Commander. Thank you for your patience.” She drifted toward the war room doors, and Cullen began to follow her, but Leliana held up a hand to stop him. 

“There is one more thing,” she said. “A letter for you.” She pulled a letter out of her pocket. 

It was a rather grubby letter that was sealed with a crude wax seal of a ‘P’. Cullen raised his eyebrows as he took it. “This is from Pipe— from the Inquisitor,” he said.  

“Yes,” Leliana said. “I see no harm in you receiving her… personal correspondence directly.” Her lips curled in the tiniest hint of a smile. “In any case, nobody else can read her handwriting. It’s quite atrocious.” 

“It… yes, it is,” Cullen said. In fact, Piper’s handwriting was so dreadful that her official reports were dictated to Varric or occasionally Dorian when she was in the field, or even Solas on the odd occasion. 

Cullen fondly studied the filthy letter for a moment, then frowned at Leliana. “Receiving these directly, you said. You no longer feel the need to screen these?”

She shook her head. “If there is anything of relevance to our cause, you can pass it on to me.”

Cullen peered suspiciously at the unopened letter, then at Leliana. “Why do I get the feeling you already know the contents of this letter?”

“I don’t,” Leliana assured him. “But it doesn’t take spies to know what is happening around the castle. I suspect that I don’t need to know what that letter says.”

Her tone was rather bland now, but her expression held a trace of humour. Cullen’s ears began to warm, but he straightened and nodded politely. “All right. Thank you,” he said. “I’ll, er… thank you.” He awkwardly patted the letter, then nodded to Leliana once more and left the war room. 

He tucked the letter carefully into the inner pocket of his mantle, then strode purposefully back to his office. Once he was alone in his office, he eagerly broke the wax seal and opened the letter.

A dried flower fell out and crumbled into pieces on his desk.

Cullen’s eyebrows shot up in dismay. “Blast it,” he muttered. He put the letter down and tried to reassemble the flower, but it was no use; the poor dried plant was so crumbled that some parts of the leaves were little more than flakes of greenish-grey.

He gazed guiltily at the dead flower, then sighed and picked up the letter, and his eyebrows rose again: Piper’s handwriting was even more scrawly than usual. Had she been drunk while writing this?

Dearest Commander Golden Boy,

Greetings and evenings from the Exalted Plains! There are a lot of fucking statues here. So many fucking statues. And I mean a LOT of them. The humans reallllllly wanted to mark their territory here. It’s pretty gross. 

Cullen smiled to himself. She’d most certainly had something to drink prior to the writing of this letter.

My official fancypants report will have all the important shit in it, so I saved the good shit for you. For example, Dorian nearly stepped in some actual ram shit today. He practically jumped into Varric’s arms when he realized there was shit on the ground and it was so fucking funny.

What’s some other good shit? This flower I sent you is called Andraste’s grace. Not crystal grace, ANDRASTE’S GRACE. GET IT STRAIGHT. Though if you really want to get it straight, it’s felan’asahngar in Elvhen. It means ‘lucky plant. It’s good luck, see? My kind of plant. I’m sending you one for luck. Dorian says I’m too drunk to be sending anything anywhere aside from sending my ass to bed, which makes noooo sense because there are no beds in the Exalted Plains, DORIAN.

Anyway, this plant is for you. It’s for luck. I’ll bring you another one just in case this one gets all roughed up, though. But DON’T TELL DORIAN I LISTENED TO HIM.

What’s some other good shit? I miss you.

Cullen’s belly did a pleasant little jolt. Piper had only told him once before that she missed him while she was away on her forays. She brought little souvenirs for him and spent as much time with him as she could whenever she returned to Skyhold, but she rarely said that she missed him.

A warm feeling was swelling in his chest. He slowly sat down in his chair and continued to read.

I miss you. I miss your face. Did you know I like looking at your face? Because I do. Everyone likes looking at your face because it’s a really handsome one but I like your face more than anyyyy other face. I like looking at your lips when you smile and I like your scar. I want to lick it.

Cullen’s heart leapt into his throat. He instinctively covered the letter with his hand even though he was alone, and for a moment he sat in his chair trying to breathe normally. 

This letter really ought to wait until he wasn’t working. Leliana was right; it was very personal, which meant he should really be saving it until later. 

The letter was like a beacon beneath his palm, drawing his attention despite his faint feeling of guilt. After a few tense seconds, he picked it up and continued reading. 

You know what I really want, Golden Boy? I want to put a big huge kiss on those nice scarred lips of yours. You have lip scars and I have lips scars so we should definitely kiss more. We should kiss all the time. Kissing allllll the time. I wish we could kiss right now. I wish I could have my tongue in your

Someone knocked sharply on the door, and Cullen jumped. He slapped a hand over the letter on his desk. “Wh-who is it?” he called.

“It’s Cassandra,” she said. “I wish to discuss something with you.”

“Just — just a moment,” he called out. Flustered and embarrassed, he hid the letter under some other papers on his desk and stood up from his chair.

Then he realized that he couldn’t stand right now. Not unless he wanted to draw attention to what Piper’s personal correspondence was doing to him.

He immediately sat back down while silently cursing his own body, then arranged his face into a neutral expression. “Come in,” he called.

Cassandra briskly entered his office and launched straight into business. “We should discuss Emprise du Lion. You have seen the preliminary reports from Sahrnia?”

“Yes,” Cullen said in the most professional tone he could muster. “They’re troubling.”

“They are disastrous,” Cassandra said brusquely. “Townspeople disappearing, unaccounted for? The Inquisitor has agreed that we will go there immediately upon her return from the Exalted Plains, but it was my hope that…” She frowned suddenly. “Are you all right?”

He blinked. “Pardon? Yes. I – why do you ask?”

“You are flushed,” Cassandra said. “Do you feel unwell?”

Damned blasted cheeks, he thought furiously. “I — no. I’m not unwell,” he stammered.

Cassandra’s frown deepened with concern, and Cullen realized what she was thinking about: his lyrium withdrawal. He relaxed slightly; at the very least, he could reassure her on that front.

“Cassandra, I swear to you, I’m well,” he said. “My… symptoms are controlled. The aches and pains are largely gone.” The nightmares were another matter, but they weren’t disrupting his daily activities, so it didn’t bear mentioning to her again.

She took a step closer to his desk. “If you require a break, you have only to ask. We can–”

“I don’t need a break,” Cullen insisted. “I am able to do my duties for the Inquisitor.” The Inquisitor, who was also the woman he loved. The Inquisitor, who was braving the dregs of the civil war in the Exalted Plains. The Inquisitor, who wanted to lick the scar on his lip and place her perfect tongue somewhere...  

His manhood pulsed again, and he forced his face not to react. Unfortunately, Cassandra noticed his discomfiture nonetheless. “Are you certain you don’t have a fever?” she asked. “We can summon a healer–”

“No!” Cullen blurted. “No. I don’t require a healer, I’m… nothing is wrong. I am…” He trailed off uncomfortably. Why in the Maker’s name did his reading of Piper’s naughty letter have to be interrupted by a Seeker of Truth, of all people? 

Cassandra was still staring at him with a combination of sharpness and worry, so he was forced to give her a hint of the truth. “It’s personal,” he muttered shamefacedly. 

“Personal?” she said. “What does that mean?” Then her eyes dropped to his desk and to the crumbled flower that was sprinkled there – a sign of Piper’s well-known hobby. 

Cullen couldn’t decide whether to be relieved or horrified when Cassandra’s face went blank with recognition. “Ah,” she said. “Oh. I – I see.” Her cheeks went bright red, and she immediately changed the subject. “Alban Poulin is managing the villagers who remain in Sahrnia, but they continue to disappear. Do you think it might be worthwhile sending some troops…”

Cullen forced himself to listen to Cassandra, and eventually his shameful excitement waned as he returned to the usual activities of work. By the time Cassandra left, with Cullen’s promise to look over the map of Emprise du Lion for places to fortify with troops, he was almost feeling like his usual focused self. 

He regretfully swept the dried flower off of his desk and into the wastebin, then pulled Piper’s grubby letter out from under the other papers on his desk. I will save it for later, he told himself. If the remaining contents of this letter were as… titillating as the parts he’d read thus far, it would be truly inappropriate to keep reading it now during his working hours. 

He tenderly smoothed out the edges of the letter and folded it up again. He opened the drawer of his desk and lowered the letter into the drawer.

Then he hesitated. How much harm would it be to just finish reading that last sentence? The sentence that he’d had to stop reading when Cassandra knocked on the door?

He sat there thinking for a few seconds longer. Then he unfolded the letter and continued to read.

I wish I could have my tongue in your mouth. But not just your mouth! I want my tongue on your neck and your chest and your scars do you have scars on that big handsome body of yours? I bet you do. If you have scars on your face then you definly definitely have scars on your body and I want to lick all of them. I wonder if you have any scars on your abs? Are there any scars on your thighs? Because Cullen, I would lick every last

Someone knocked on the door, and Cullen flinched. “What?” he barked.

A timid voice called through the door. “It’s, er. It’s Scout Jim, Commander.”

Cullen growled in frustration. His cheeks and groin were tingling in a terribly pleasant way, and it was completely and utterly inappropriate. 

He took a few deep breaths to calm himself. Then Jim knocked on the door again. “Commander? Are you–”

“Enter,” Cullen snapped.

Jim slowly pushed open the door. “C-Commander, ser? Krem was wondering – I mean, Kremisius Aclassi, he and Bull’s other men – a-and women, my apologies–”

“Spit it out, will you?” Cullen snarled. “I haven’t got all day.”

Jim’s face blanched, and Cullen immediately felt guilty. He pinched the bridge of his nose, then gave Jim a frank look. “I apologize. Please, give me your report.”

Jim swallowed hard and bowed. “Serrah Aclassi said you offered to train with him and the other Chargers today in the lower courtyard. They’re waiting for you.”

His gut twisted in dismay. He had completely forgotten about this appointment, thanks to his… distraction. “Thank you,” he said to Jim. “Let Krem know I’ll join them shortly.”

Jim saluted and left his office, and Cullen roughly scraped a hand through his hair. He stared longingly at Piper’s half-read letter, then refolded the letter and carefully locked it in the top drawer of his desk before going to train with Krem and the Chargers. 

After two hours of hard training with the Iron Bull’s people, Cullen felt much more fortified to tackle the rest of his day. For the remainder of the day, he was focused and determined and attentive: he caught up on reading all of the less urgent reports from the last few days and composed his replies, and he developed a plan to heighten the defenses of Emprise du Lion until Piper and her party could venture there. He worked with Bonny Sims to start figuring out a more efficient way to get supplies out to the Storm Coast, and he ate supper in the barracks with his men. And all day long, he very deliberately did not touch his desk drawer with its dangerous and tempting contents. 

It wasn’t until later that night, when Cullen had finished all of his tasks for the day and even some of the tasks he’d planned to do tomorrow, that he finally opened his desk drawer and pulled out Piper’s letter. 

He nervously licked his lips as he unfolded the letter. But before he could fully open the letter, he paused.

He rubbed the paper nervously between his fingers. Then he placed the letter on his desk and started preparing for bed. It wasn’t very late, only about two hours past dusk, but Cullen was rather tired from the long and hard-working day he’d had. It only made sense for him to take his armour off now and have an early night. 

He locked all the doors that led from the battlements into his office, then stripped off his armour and hung it carefully on its stand. He put on his loose cotton sleeping trousers and washed his face and brushed his teeth.

Then, with Piper’s dirty letter in hand, he climbed into bed. And finally, at long last, he continued to read.

I wonder if you have any scars on your abs? Are there any scars on your thighs? Because Cullen, I would lick every last one of them. And you could lick my scars too if you want. I have a lot of scars so you’d be hard at work for quite a while, Golden Boy.

He took a slow breath. Licking Piper’s scars? Licking any part of Piper’s lithe body? He… Maker, he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t thought about it. In truth, his thoughts of Piper were becoming more and more heated as time went on. With every week that passed, with every pressed flower she sent from the wilds and every enthusiastic kiss she gave him upon her return to Skyhold, Cullen felt closer and more comfortable with her. And with that closeness and comfort came an undeniable urge to be… very close and comfortable with her. 

He kept on reading. 

I wonder what you’re doing right now? Are you standing in your office looking all studious and sexy? Maybe you’re sitting in your chair being all busnessy businesslike. If I was there in your office I’ve be sitting in your chair with you and you can bet we wouldn’t be doing business because I’d be kissing you. I really like kissing you. You give really good kisses, nice kisses with nice scarred lips and it’s like your usi you’re using your entire big hard body to kiss me when you bend me back against the desk like a big handsome warrior. You can bend me back over that desk anytime, Commander. 

He paused and took another shaky breath. Piper’s words were like hot coffee, pouring through his throat and down to his belly and below with a thrumming sort of heat that was bringing his manhood to attention. 

Bending her back against the desk… Now that she’d mentioned it, he couldn’t stop imagining it and remembering how good it felt to do just that. To have Piper pressed back against his desk while he kissed her, his hands on her waist and her thigh sliding up along his hip as he carefully pressed himself against her front… 

His manhood was straightening in his loose trousers, but he didn’t mind, not now that he was alone in his bed at night with no one to bother him. He avidly continued reading the letter.

Now I’m just going on and on and Varric should probably have taken this quill and parchment away from me but I’ve never liked kissing anyone as much as I like kissing you. Kissing you is better than sex with anyone else I really like kissing you a lot. A lot a lotttttt. Kissing Cullen. I hope you like kissing me a lot too because I’m going to kiss you so hard when I get back to Skyhold and that’s a promise and Piper Lavellan always keeps her promises unless the promise is to pay my tab to Cabot ALWAYS.

Cullen gazed at the letter, excited by her words in more ways than one. Did Piper really feel that kissing him was better than sex with her other lovers in the past? If that was so, then… then Cullen was thrilled, because he felt the same. He had never felt the same connection to anyone else that he had with Piper. He had always hoped to find this sort of comfort in another person, this feeling that he could finally truly relax and be himself, but he had never managed to find it. Eventually he had begun to wonder if perhaps that sort of connection would never happen for him. After what had happened at Kinloch Hold, followed by everything he’d seen in Kirkwall, Cullen had started to wonder if… well, perhaps he was too guarded to permit the kind of connection that he sought. Perhaps he was too… damaged. Too scarred by mistrust and anger and regret to believe he could trust anyone else to see beyond the damage. 

In her letter, Piper had mentioned scars. But the scars that Cullen harboured weren’t the sort that could be soothed with a stroke of the hand or the sweep of a tongue.

But maybe... maybe they could be soothed, if the hands doing the soothing were Piper’s.

He swallowed hard, then looked at the letter once more. 

Now I’m in my tent. Dorian tried to take my quill away because he think I’ll regret writing this in the morning but he’s wrong. This is the best fucking letter I ever wrote. Someone should frame this fucking letter it’s so good. And now that I’m in my tent, you can think of me crawling into my bedroll to sleeeep. And you remember how I told you I like to sleep, don’t you?

He certainly did remember. As though he could ever forget Piper telling him that she slept naked.

His manhood pulsed at the tempting thought of Piper’s naked body, and he finally gave in: he slipped his hand into his trousers and wrapped his fist around his length. 

He stroked himself, and a rush of pleasure rippled through his abdomen. He shifted his hips restlessly, then settled back against his pillows and continued to read the letter.

Okayfineiconfess I don’t sleep naked in the field because the boys are around and NICE TRY BOYS, THIS ELFY ASS IS FOR CULLEN’S EYES ONLY. Even though you haven’t seen me naked yet but you can if you want to. You know you only have to ask, right? You say the word, and I’ll get naked for you. Naked for Cullen. Nakednakednaked on your bed or your chair or even on your desk with all your papers all over it.

Cullen dragged in a breath and stroked himself firmly. Piper naked on his desk? Piper sitting on his desk while he was trying to work, naked as the day she was born? Naked aside from the intricate tattoo on her lower sternum that peeked teasingly through her billowing shirts, that is. That tattoo that clearly extended beneath her breasts, though Cullen didn’t yet know just how far it extended… 

He closed his eyes and leaned his head back. Now all he could imagine was seeing the full span of Piper’s tattoos. Imagine if she was sitting on his desk and leaning back on her hands so he could stare at her – so he could take in the full extent of the pale ink that crossed her bronze skin, and the full extent of the scars that she’d bragged about in this letter, and the precise shade of pink that her nipples would be… 

He sighed longingly and squeezed his shaft. Would Piper’s nipples be a deep dusky pink, or would they be more of a warm peach? If he was to run his tongue over them, what kind of sound would she make: would she cry his name, or would she gasp? Or maybe she would growl like the fierce little thing that she was? 

Piper. He groaned softly and ran his palm along his rigid length. He desired her terribly, and he was getting increasingly frustrated with himself for not taking their relationship in the direction that they both so obviously wanted. Piper was clearly willing, and Cullen was willing too – Maker’s breath, was he ever willing. ‘Willing’ was an understatement, in fact; Cullen wanted Piper more desperately with every kiss they shared in his office and every heated look that passed between them over the table in the war room, and… and he didn’t want to disappoint her. 

Piper had more experience than he; she was well-travelled, and Cullen knew she’d had her fair share of lovers during her travels. And then there was Cullen, with his paltry handful of partners many years ago, and… Maker, he didn’t want to disappoint her. She was special, more special and more important than anyone he’d ever known, and he couldn’t bear the idea of disappointing her. Nor could he bear the thought of their first time being a rushed and frenzied moment between the endless meetings that they both were constantly being pulled into. Piper was special, and Cullen wanted their first time to be special and for her to enjoy herself, and…

And the more he ruminated about this, the more anxious he was going to get. Perhaps there was something to be said about a more Piper-like impulsive approach. 

Perhaps having Piper naked on his desk wasn’t the most terrible idea.

His manhood pulsed against his palm, and he stroked himself more quickly. Perhaps having Piper spread naked on his desk was a good idea, actually. If she was sitting on his desk and he was sitting in his chair, he could push her legs apart and really make sure she enjoyed herself. She’d written that she wanted him to lick her? Well, that was precisely what Cullen would do if she was spread wide on his desk. 

He imagined Piper lifting her hips to request the touch of his tongue, and his manhood throbbed eagerly against his stroking hand. He inhaled sharply and pumped his hips toward his hand, and he imagined what it would be like to feel her soft and tender folds against his lips while he kissed her so thoroughly that she was gasping. 

Piper’s naked body on his desk, her naked thighs spread beneath his hands, her dewy taste on his tongue… Cullen groaned and squeezed his shaft harder, stroking himself with rising speed and ardour as he imagined her. Imagine her hands clutching his hair as he lapped at the glory between her legs. Imagine her hands smoothing over the broad scar that ran from his left collarbone to his right pec, then her tongue sliding hotly over that same scar as she slid off of his desk and down to her knees…

His pleasure ratcheted higher, and he gasped and bucked his hips. Imagine if Piper was kneeling between his legs while he sat in his chair. Imagine if she was pushing her gorgeous mass of hair back and bowing her head over his lap and her perfect scarred lips were parting to take him deep…

“Please,” he gasped. Imaginary-Piper smiled at him, that cheeky heated smile that he loved so much, and then his manhood was sliding through her lips and down to the heat of her throat.  

He stroked himself more desperately, and with every stroke he imagined Piper’s exquisite mouth moving up and down his shaft. A blissful and torturous minute later, his climax burst with a blissful rush that fanned through his thighs and up to his throat. 

His pleasure spattered over his belly, and he gritted his teeth silence himself. When the heady rush faded away, Cullen let out a long and satisfied sigh, then lifted the letter once more. 

To his amusement, the final paragraph was written in a slightly neater – and clearly sober – hand.

Well shit, I clearly fell asleep before finishing this letter last night. I’m of half a mind to not let this fucking thing see the light of day but now Bull is daring me to send it and I never say no to a dare. I hope you enjoy Drunk and Rowdy Piper Lavellan!

Also… eh, might as well go full sappy for once. I miss you. A lot. And this letter might just brighten your day, so why the fuck not. 

Don’t work too hard, Golden Boy. ❤️

- Piper xxxxx

He chuckled softly. Piper truly was a creature of chaos. He gently placed the letter on his bedside table, then glanced ruefully at the evidence of his own pleasure that was still spattered on his belly. 

He’d expected to feel somewhat guilty about this, but to his own surprise, he simply felt sated. Or as sated as he could be when he was in his bed alone, at least. Now imagine if he wasn’t alone – if Piper was here instead, sprawled beside him and obscured only by her mass of silvery hair… 

Cullen sighed again, more wistfully this time, then gingerly rose from his bed to clean himself up. Once he was tidied up, he climbed back into his bed and blew out the candle, then gazed up at the stars through the hole in his ceiling. 

For now, he was in his bed alone. But as he closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep, he was comforted by the idea of Piper being in bed beside him. 

Someday soon, that thought would become a reality. Someday, when Cullen mustered his courage, he would have his heart’s desire, and Piper would be in his arms and in his bed.

Until then, he would be satisfied with the messy scrawl of Piper’s personal correspondence. 

[kannibal-kink]

Ok so y’all, I’m writing a fanfic with Rosie in a pretty significant role and I was like “damn, we hardly know anything about her!” So I thought, you know what, imma get my grubby little hands on google and do some research. So here’s whats I got on Rosie:

Time period: Def 1800s… narrower? About late 1830s - 1880s is my range. Age at death? Age expectancy was like 40 back then so??? (To compare, 75 is life expectancy in the US today). Most of our Hazbin friends died pretty early, but I suspect Rosie is on the older end (mostly because she gives me big mom vibes, but she does seem more mature and poised than other characters so far). Anyhow, I did my work under the assumption that most characters tend to gravitate towards the styles of their topside life.

First, when did people even use the word “emporium”??? Well, according to our lovely friend Google (because all the Nice Official Dictionary sites told me “well it was used first around like 1500s!” Neat! But irrelevant) it’s usage peaked in about 1837. And then did a nosedive in 1870. So I started there, and went onto her Style.

Let’s dip our toes in first and start with the top! Hats! Her hat is Super Distinctive, and, lucky for us, only started becoming common and popular in a Super Specific time: 1850s and 60s. They were replacing bonnets, and were, would ya look at that: wide-brimmed, pretty flat crowns, and, a few short years later, feathers and flowers were common decorations. Sound familiar? Oh yeah. Crowns got higher from here on out (we see a high-crowned hat on her reference sheet actually!) because of hairstyles (our next topic!). (Source: https://vintagedancer.com/victorian/victorian-hat-history/ )

We see in the show and every single official and reference artwork of Rosie with a hat on. So… we don’t really know what’s under the hat (tentacles? A chipmunk? A second face?). Probably more hair. A lot more hair, actually. Having your hair down was considered ~intimate~ and Respectable Women Don’t Do That (not that anybody in Hell necessarily functioned under respectable society). But up-dos hidden under your hat, with wavy bits framing your face? Super popular. So, fair chance she actually has lots of pretty hair hidden under that hat. In hindsight, this actually told us nothing about where in the 1800s she probably lived whoops. (Hair Source: Same as hat source and http://www.whizzpast.com/victorian-hairstyles-a-short-history-in-photos/)

Since we’re going top-down, let’s get into make-up. Now her make-up style changed quite a bit between her reference sheet and her appearance in the show, so I’m gonna go by her pilot cameo since that’s more recent. Notice something she doesn’t have that almost every other character does? Eyeshadow. (And a nose, but that’s none of my business). Eyeshadow was … not a thing back then. You just put oil on your eyelids to make them… catch the light??? Anyway, natural beauty was a big thing, and lots of make-up was apparently largely (and incorrectly) associated with prostitutes and “immoral women”. Mostly make-up was white powder (applied with rabbit’s feet sometimes???? Heavens sake people), rouge, and *le gasp* lipstick (very controversial). Having rosy (ha) cheeks was a Really Good Thing. (If you look closely on the pilot image you can actually see she has very pale pink cheeks like Charlie’s!!!) Also, big lashes were good. Which she has! On the other hand lipstick was, if you wanted to avoid controversy, just a bit of beeswax. (Source: https://vintagedancer.com/victorian/victorian-makeup-beauty-guide/ )

Now, last and certainly not least, my favorite part… Dresses! I found a lovely source that summed up each decade quite neatly! Let’s start with the first possible connection to Rosie:

in the 20s, wide shoulders! That’s about it.

In the 30s, that shoulder moved down to the sleeves and the waistline was, well, at the waist. Also, ankle length skirts with lots of petticoat support.

40s get closer, as sleeves became more tight-fitted, and the fabrics tended to be solid, darker colors. In the pictures included, we see a waistline much closer to Rosie’s. Also the neckline was high during the day and wide during the evening, which, looking at Rosie’s reference sheet on the wikia, looks to be fitting. This decade has our first pretty solid Rosie-looking dress.

The 50s (unfortunately) introduces hoop skirts which were, preferable to 20 petticoats, I guess, but like. Doorways. Gotta weigh the pros and cons there guys.

But! In the 60s we see the first bustles! Which, I’m gonna guess is going on in Rosie’s dress. Also, the wrists are fitted, something in most of Rosie’s dresses, minus the one from the pilot.

In the 70s, specifically later on, the high and low necklines are still the same and fitted sleeves are still in. Bustles weren’t as extreme, going down to wearing a small hoop, but skirts were looooong. Like, drag on the floor behind you long. Pretty. Impractical, but pretty. Also synthetic dyes had just been invented, so garishly bright color were now in fashion.

The 80s just got ridiculous: bustle’s back, dresses weigh more than a newborn baby, and corsets.

(Sources: Over decades: https://vintagefashionguild.org/1800s/ 70s: https://fashionhistory.fitnyc.edu/1870-1879/ )

So yeah! Wow, that was a lot. Anyway, takeaway? Hats suggests she was part of the young in-crowd during the 50s-60s. Same with make-up, though it didn’t specify much of a time period, people got more open as time went, but even in the 80s and 90s that… wasn’t much. Dresses, best fit is in the 40s, with a little similarity in the 30s, but not much. The 50s defining feature is hoop skirts, but in the 60s we get to bustles, and we’re looking closer to Rosie again. By the 70s, we’re not changing a ton, mostly alterations of the 50s and 60s. So, assuming she died on the later end of her expected lifespan (late 30s), I’d say it’s pretty safe to assume that she was born in the early 40s, teens in the 50s, 20s in the 60s, and died later in the 70s.

(If anyone has anything to add, please do so!!! Want more fun tidbits for Rosie? Look up the hat pin scare of the 1900s, those long hat pins came into production during the 1830s so chances are it was happening earlier too! Also Boston marriages, but I’m still looking into that myself.)

[chuckvstheuniverse]

Rules: Just checking in!

Thanks for tagging me @carasynthias and @aliciaclarkes​! I hope you’re both doing well 💕

How has your day been: It’s been pretty good! I’m mostly cleaning today and I’m checking out more Comic Con stuff later (I love Comic Con time!) 

The last thing that made you smile: Gunner doing something cute haha

What’s keeping you entertained these days: I’ve been reading A LOT, playing with Gunner, and doing jigsaw puzzles. 

If you’re in quarantine/isolation, is there anything you’d like to achieve during this time: Finally reading The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Tolkien’s other writing! 

Post a selfie if you want:

Well, since I’ve never taken a selfie, I’m going to follow Bee’s lead and post something that sums up my summer! This is pretty much the only picture of me on my phone right now. It’s from last year but this my summer! 

Tagging:  @zacscottysnl, @lostkate815, @theawkwardestasian, @deathtoallmodifiers, @luckythirteenmd, @commander-leksa, @aheartfulloflexa, @maywemeetagaincommandr, @coneheda, @whydoineedtodothat, @adcjasmin, and @lluthor ​! No pressure! 

[sadboyayeron]

THE ONLY VALID MORIYAMA Nikoshi Doe

I came up with this Idea of Kevin having to raise Rikos son who’s name I decide would be Nikoshi Doe aka Niko

Enjoy

So If you Read “Tapping on my Chamber door” 

You know Nikoshi’s mother, Naima Dixon was born in Jamaica but came to the states at a young age after her mom past away.  She lived in the Bronx with her Aunt. She had tight curls aften in box breads or corn cornrows and dark skin with light brown eyes. She was 5’8.  Had a muscular build from all the years of track and had a scholarship to run at Eager Allen University. She was soon to have a spot on the olympic team for long jump, 100, 200 and 400 meters. She was then pregnant with Nikoshi after her and Riko started there little hook up.  The knew of each other but they first met in class.  She noticed Riko looking at her.

“Like what you see.”  I was trying to catch him off guard but he didn’t even look surprise.  But then he smiled.  Something sharp that left me feeling tingly, similar to how I feel before racing.  

“Not to bad, no.”  He chuckled, looked me up and down before he landed back on my eyes, “Want to sit.”

He left me in a trance and I took a seat next to him and sat my books in front of me.  I tucked some braids behind my ear and looked at him again, he was looking back with a smug smile on his face.  

At first I was thinking Nikoshi was Rikos frozen sperm and his mother was forced by Rikos uncle to have him BUT I decide that Riko died before he knew about Naima being pregnant She found out she was pregnant and went to Riko’s uncle for help and he said to give him the kid and she could get her scholarship Back.  So she agreed naming him “Nico” but sadly she died while giving birth from bleeding out. Tesuji doesn’t use that name and changes it to ‘Nikoshi’ stripping him of any last name (Doe) putting the kid into the system in the same place she grow up in Bronx. Ichirou is informed of Nikoshi ten years later after having his Uncle killed. Who then informs kevin.

Nikoshi is from the Bronx has a accent when he speaks. He knows Spanish because of the amount of Dominican and Puerto Rican foster parents he’s had.  Kinda understands broken english two because one of his foster brothers was from Jamaica which is cool because he knows he’s half Jamaican and some type of asian. He wears beat up high top jordan 1s baggy ripped jeans and long sleeves with a baggy jacket. He plays soccer because the system put him on a team and he’s very fast. He didn’t have much clothes but his best ones are the uniforms and he’s fine with that. He also plays street basketball and baseball with some kids in the area.

Kevin has to take Nikoshi in, according to Ichirou. Bringing Neil and Andrew with him. Ichirou just sent him a picture a kid and he was confused until he got that call that explained everything. He doesn’t need to explain who the kid is because you can clearly tell from the picture. Though the kid has milk cholclate skin, and curly hair that falls around his head in a fro.

When he frist sees Nico he has a scrape scab on his cheek, bruises on his wrist and purple knuckles. His ears a surprisingly pierced.

They find out Nikoshi Doe goes by Niko, he likes chocolate and cafe con leche (coffee), he likes shoes, he likes the color green, he uses a lot of slang and sometimes uses broken english and spanglish words, he’s quite but hyper and doesn’t know how to say still, asks why a lot, he hates math and likes to read, he loves listening to music it’s his safe place, he was diagnosed with ADHD/ADD and takes a pill in the morning and after noon on school days, he doesn’t like the way the pills make him feel, he likes Bee, Bee suspects Niko my be Borderline but it’s hard to tell, Kevin explains Riko was too.  When they go to pick up Nikoshi they are informed of his diagnoses. 

“So Kevin Day, It is very nice to meet you my husband loves watching you guys play Exy,” She smiled at them and then opened a drawer in her desk pulling out two folders.“ Now these paper were just printed out today.  One from Nikoshi’s Doctor and another from his psychologist.”  Kevin straightened his back more at that.

“Psychologist?”  She looked up at Kevin.

“Yes, a lot of children in foster care go to see a therapist.  It helps cope with abandonment and makes sure the kids are transitioning well in their new homes.”  She opened one of the folders.  “Nikoshi saw a therapist who recommended him to a psychologist.  He was diagnosed with ADHD/ADD and given medication.  He went through three different medications before he was put on Focalin XR.  His biggest issues are impulsivity, managing feelings, and energy.  There is more information in the folder with getting the prescription at a pharmacy and things to know about his behavior.  He takes Focalin every morning before school, its not needed on the weekends but to long off it isn’t the best idea.  Though if you want him off the medication, if you ever come to adopting him you can do that.”  She looked towards the other two. “Will you two be helping take care of Nikoshi.”

“Yeah we are, is there anything else we need to know.  If he needs a therapist we already got that covered.  We can send her the information.”  Neil replied with a bored tone but

“Thats good to know, he just saw the doctor last week.  He gained some weight and is now at a more healthier weight then he was before.”  She sighed. “You have to reminded him to eat, he forgets to and he doesn't ask for food.  The foster home he was just at was good with keeping a schedule, he ate, took his meds, ate at school, had a snack at home, soccer practice and then dinner.  He gets distracted and has little habits that cause him focus to much on random things.  The meds take away his hunger also, so it important that he finishes.”  She then closed both folders and stacked them together before sliding them to Kevin.  

Kevin didn’t know how to process that.  This information sounded to familiar.  He always had to remind Riko to eat something.  Riko would go days without eating, or sleeping, or even both.  It got so bad the master had to tube feed him because he past out and didn’t get back up.  Niko always got back up.  He was taken out of his thoughts when the lady, Jennifer stood.  He picked up the folders and got up following Andrew and Neil out the door.  Nikoshi was still sitting in his chair, he was singing his legs slowly and seemed fixated on his hands.

“Nikoshi, these gentlemen here are going to be your new guardians,”  Niko looked up at them.  He got a better look at there faces, now that the glasses were off he could easily recognize who the taller man was with the chess piece on his cheek bone.  He was confused o say the least.  This had to be some sick joke, or a stupid stuPID dream.  He looked at the other too, the screw that littered the red heads tan face and the man with blond hair and black studs.

“Deadass?”  He blurted out suddenly.  Fuck.  He did not mean to blurt that out.  Kevin day looked taken back by his statement and the other too snickered from slightly behind him.  The lady looked horrified.

Riko used to self harm, stop eating for days, wouldn’t sleep for days either.  His uncle had to force him into a tube feeder once because of this.  Kevin and Riko had to see a therapist and she diagnosed Riko. His uncle disregarded it and gave him sum type of pills that made Riko’s anger at himself turn down a bit but he was more depressed. He tried to commit 3 times after. Kevin made him promise not to. He flushed the pills and started to abuse others.

Kevin explains this to Neil and Andrew.  They then try to learn more about BPD.  They watch youtube videos, read articles and books on it till they had a better understanding of the disorder.  They learn about the self-destructive tendencies and suicidal gestures that are quite common with the disorder.  They all try there best to build a good support system. 

Niko has a hard time with his identity and ‘who he is’,  he tries to remember that Kevin wants him and isn't going to abandon him, he tries to keep his shifts in moods to himself but in only makes things worse.  He tends to shut down in his room more often then not.  He finds himself getting angry at little things knowing he shouldn’t but he still does.  Anger attacks aren't as bad as the empty feeling he gets sometimes.

When Niko meets all the foxes he drifts more towards Nicky for whatever reason.  He finds that he like Nickys happy vibes and feels it radiate from him.  He likes to soak in it.

Niko likes talking to Neil, he gets candy from Andrew, and he likes playing Exy with Kevin. He didn’t like school and says it’s hard for him but he still makes honor roll no problem.

During the second month of school when he first started living with Kevin he expriences racism for maybe the first time.  He didn’t have any friends, nor knew anybody.  He could tell he was different from the other kids.  They were mostly white with a splash of color here and there.  The way they talked and walked was different then how he did.  He didn’t grew up with white picket fences like they seemed to.  They dressed different too.  He didn’t like the stares he was getting from the kids in his class.

“Nice hair are you a girl?”  One of the boys said, with his little click at his back.  It was recess and Niko stuck to staying to himself drawling in his note book that Andrew gave him. 

“No.”  The boys continued to laugh.  He hated when people talked about his hair.  He didn't like his hair.  Especially when his foster mothers always tugged and pulled on it.  That wasn't just it though.  It reminded him of his foster father Mr. James.

“Such pretty hair.”

The boys crept closers and Niko started to feel closed in.  One of them pulled out scissors and two grabbed him by the shoulders.  One talked about how there dad said them Black boys need to cut there hair.  Another used a slur Niko heard a lot back in the Bronx, used it himself when with the kids in the neighborhood but he never heard it used like this.  He started to struggle but another one grabbed his face and held him down so his face fell between his knees.  He felt chuncks of hair being cut of from his head as they fell down his back and some at his feet.  

He felt his eyes water and struggled harder.  He kicked the one to his right in the shin, knowing how much it hurt from when he played soccer with out shin guards.  The kids let go of that shoulder and he swung his arm hitting another kid.  They all let go once they heard a teacher yell at them.  Niko reached for the scissors and threw them in the grass.  The boys ran away and Niko was left to look at the small and large chunks of his hair on the concrete.  He didn’t mean to bother anybody.  He didn't ask to have this type of hair.  He didn’t ask to be different.  Sometimes he missed the Bronx but then remembered his foster sister getting shot, and his doped up foster parents he used to end up with.  He didn't want to go back, but he found himself missing it sometimes.

Nobody asked abut his hair during the rest of the school day.  Not even his teacher.  Its fine he didn't want to bother anybody.  When Andrew came to pick him up he was wearing his hoodie.  Today Neil and Andrew were coming over, so was Aaron.  Aaron practically lived with him and Kevin now though.  He said nothing on the way home.  He didn't want to bother them.  He was trying his hardest not to.  

But then he got home he went straight to the bathroom and locked the door.  He didn’t hear Kevin nor Aaron calling him.  He stared in to the mirror and glared at himself.  Disgusting. You look like a girl. He ripped off his hood and he felt something in himself crack.  His hair was clearly uneven.  Some areas you couldn’t tell but he could see how his curls on his forehead were shortened compared to the pieces on the sides.  He could tell where every spot was that had been cut, like there were circles showing him where to look.  A broken sob cut through his throat.  The tears rolled down his cheeks.  He always thought he was an ugly crier.  He grabbed his hair and pulled.  He kept pulling till he felt arms wrap around his torso.  He wanted to fight who ever they were off but he couldn't.  They grabbed his hands but they couldn't pry them from his hair.  He heard someone calling his name and found a face to that voice.  He noticed another person accompanied him in the mirror.  Holding on to him.  It wasn’t his voice he heard though.  He saw the other three at the bathroom entrance but it was Aaron standing closest to him.

“Niko its okay, let go buddy.”  He didn’t know if he meant his hands or his feelings but he let them go.  He saw more pieces of hair fall through his hands but ignored it and them screamed.  Kevin turned him around and held him again.  Kevin lowered himself to his knees to let Niko cry and scream into his neck.  He rubbed his back till he calmed down.  Neil and Andrew left to prepare some ice cream and play music.  Kevin noticed the hair that fell to the floor and so did Aaron.  It didn’t match the amount that should still be connected to his head.

Niko told them what happened at school with less emotion then he displayed before.  They were all furious but chose to keep it inside to comfort Niko.  They called the school and told them what happened.  The school apologized but Kevin still wasn't letting Niko go back to that school.  He transferred Niko to another and reassured him it was okay and it was the same distance anyways.  They took Niko to the babor shop and they evened out his hair.  He got it cut some on the sides as well, allowing the back and top to be longer.  His hair showed more off his forehead and ear piercings now.  He felt more exposed, but was happy with the hair cut.

When he meets Dan she gives him oils and creams to put in his hair.  Even showed him how to wash it too, Matt helps.  He got to meet there kids.

Allison braided his hair down for when he graduated Elementary School.  She teaches how how to do other things like twist, braids, and box braids.

When he goes to college Renee helps him bleach the ends of his hair blond.

He has nightmares often. And likes to have hot chocolate to calm his nerves. He gets irritated easily, they learn. When he gets irritated he stops talking and fidgets, tapping his foot and cracking his knuckles. 

Kevin’s night terrors slowly fade as Riko’s dark shadow fades into Nikos warm glow.

Niko definitely learns how to skateboards when Aaron gives him his old one. Kevin likes to watch them practice it together.  Just like Aaron likes to watch Kevin teach Niko Exy.  He joins a team in Middle School.  He's definitely going to be something.

Hope you guys like this.  Leave ask and suggestions about Nikoshi Doe. I would love to hear about it and write the prompts.  

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Pluralistic: 06 Mar 2020 (Stunning RPG dice, Shell funded climate denial, Church sends US predator priests to Mexico, South Korea is beating covid-19)

Today's links

The most beautiful RPG dice I've ever seen: And you can also make your own.

The king of Dutch climate denial was secretly in Shell's pay: Frits Böttcher was a packrat, and his papers detail exactly how he was paid to sow climate doubt. He was very good at it.

American Catholic officials helped priests who preyed on children escape to Mexico: At least 51 "credibly accused" priests left the US and took up positions abroad.

A grifty AI company conned the state of Utah into giving access to everything: Banjo claims it will predict and head off terrorist attacks, mass shootings, and child abductions without invading anyone's privacy.

Clearview AI says it only lets cops use its facial recognition tool but it's lying: Investors, cronies and pals got to literally use it as a party trick.

South Korea's beating covid-19 with free testing: Testing is part of the free national health system, and 140,000 tests have been administered.

The web is unusably beshitted with terrible ad-tech: "No, I don't want great articles."

For $3, a robolawyer will automatically force data brokers to delete you and sue the ones who don't: Donotpay meets the CCPA, it's like peanut butter and chocolate.

:

This day in history: 2005, 2015, 2019

Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

The most beautiful RPG dice I've ever seen (permalink)

Sasha is a spectacularly talented RPG dice-maker, whose online store features the most beautiful dice I've ever seen – and as if that wasn't enough, she also sells dice-making kits to use at home.

https://www.sunshadeauarts.com/sunshadeauarts-academy/

Last month, ahead of the C2E2 con, she posted a series of new, not-for-sale (argh) dice that embed a variety of materials inside large D20s to form nebulas, clouds, alien landscapes, menacing eyeballs, and eldritch scenes. Check them out for yourself!

https://twitter.com/sunshadeauarts/status/1232722877008490497 https://twitter.com/sunshadeauarts/status/1229445585717035010 https://twitter.com/sunshadeauarts/status/1232795390916911104 https://twitter.com/sunshadeauarts/status/1233370655216881664 https://twitter.com/sunshadeauarts/status/1233380666810806274

It's hard to say what these will cost; comparable dice on her site sell for $400. They're handmade, beautiful sculptures, after all.

https://www.sunshadeauarts.com/product/less-than-perfect-midnight-aurora-handmade-resin-inkless-titan-d20/

At that price, they're maybe too expensive for a gift for yourself, but as a graduation present, maybe? And that said, it's exactly the kind of thing I sometimes buy to celebrate selling a new novel, and that's on my roadmap for THE LOST CAUSE, my post-GND, truth-and-reconciliation novel, so I'm definitely putting a reminder in my calendar.

The king of Dutch climate denial was secretly in Shell's pay (permalink)

Club of Rome founder Frits Böttcher was the Netherlands' leading climate denier. He died in 2008. Investigative journalists combing through his papers, discovered that he was paid €500K by Shell and others to sow doubt about climate change.

https://www.ftm.nl/dutch-multinationals-funded-climate-sceptic

His network pushed out scientific frauds like the idea that excess atmospheric CO2 would be "good for plants" through books, lectures and reports.

He was good at it. His work was crucial to stalling action on climate change in the 1990s. Despite this, his 24 sponsors dumped him in 1998 after the signing of the Kyoto Protocol, worried that outright climate denial had lost credibility.

No wonder! This was the guy who'd called climate science "a witch-hunt on CO2" and declared "Our planet is not a greenhouse."

In his papers, Böttcher notes that after he published these frauds, Shell contacted him and offered him giant sums to keep it up and amplify it. The work was personally commissioned by Shell managing director Huub Van Engelshoven. Böttcher was a packrat. His papers in the Noord-Hollands Archief in Haarlem stack 15.9m tall. Inside of them is an eye-wateringly detailed account of how wealthy, planet-wrecking firms deliberately and maliciously paid for climate denial.

That means that we now can name names. We think of climate denial as a kind of emergent property with no human agent, but as the world drowns, roasts, and writhes with pandemic, we have the names and addresses of the people who engineered that situation for their own gain. We know who his political allies were: the VVD party. When the Netherlands' dikes fail and the country begins to drown, these politicians might still be running for office.

It's tempting to think of the climate crisis as something we all bear responsibility for, because we didn't sort our recycling or because we didn't use the underfunded, anemic public transit options available to us. But efforts like this – from Platform Authentieke Journalistiek and Follow the Money – show we were corralled into our complicity by a network of super-rich plutes for their own gain, who knew they were wrecking the world and dooming our children but did not care.

American Catholic officials helped priests who preyed on children escape to Mexico (permalink)

A new instalment in Propublica's outstanding coverage of the Catholic Church's complicity in sexual abuse by priests shows that dozens of American priests who raped children were relocated to Mexico, where they continued to rape children

https://www.propublica.org/article/dozens-of-catholic-priests-credibly-accused-of-abuse-found-work-abroad-some-with-the-churchs-blessing#178005

These priests found new postings thanks to glowing letters of recommendation from church officials who knew that they had been accused – or, in some cases convicted – of raping children in their parishes. Some fled to Mexico to avoid prison, resisting extradition for years.

Not just Mexico: Propublica found 51 "credibly accused" US priests who are currently working in Mexico, Ireland, Nigeria, and the Philippines. Some of them continued to draw pay from their US parishes while they settled in abroad. Parishoners' donations paid for the predators who victimized their children to escape justice.

One priest, Jose Antonio Pinal, wrote letters to Church officials blaming the boy he raped, saying, "that he is not innocent of the situation he wants to blame me for completely." Pinal is still ministering in Cuernavaca. He claims his longrunning rapes of a 15-year-old were consensual, but "he was a minor; so, legally, I am screwed."

When he moved to Mexico, Sacramento church officials wrote to him promising to support him, so long as the new diocese promised to "protect the diocese of Sacramento against any financial liability for any acts committed by you while working in that diocese."

Some of these priests are listed as "inactive" in Church websites, but are still ministering in Mexico. Rev. Jeffrey David Newell, admitted to sexually abusing another 15 year old, and called it a "mistake." He currently serves in Tijuana. Newell says it was a single slip up. Other survivors of his abuse have filed lawsuits against his old US archdiocese. Newell calls their claims "totally absurd." His name has been removed from Church lists of "credibly accused" sexual predators in the clergy.

These predators' survivors are alive and deeply traumatized. And thanks to the inaction, complicity and even encouragement of US Catholic church officials, these priests are ruining the lives of new children all over the world.

A grifty AI company conned the state of Utah into giving access to everything (permalink)

The State of Utah has secretly contracted with "Banjo," a grifty "AI" company, to analyze all the surveillance and internal data generated by all the state's agencies.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200305/13422544042/ai-company-has-access-to-pretty-much-every-piece-surveillance-tech-state-utah-owns.shtml

Banjo gets all the 911 calls, CCTV camera feeds, license plate readers, and internal state databases, and its proprietary, secret algorithm will comb through all that to direct law enforcement.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/k7exem/banjo-ai-company-utah-surveillance-panopticon

The company claims there are no privacy concerns because it has a patented system for anonymizing data. The patents do not disclose their anonymization method, and every other attempt at this kind of anonymization has fallen prey to "re-identification" attacks.

Banjo gets to locate a facility inside the Utah DOT HQ, and will operate in all 29 counties, state university campuses and 23 cities (including Utah's 10 largest cities). The company's making $20.7m on this contract over five years.

Using FOIA requests, Motherboard retrieved records showing how Banjo got Utah officials to help it sell its services ot the state. When Motherboard questioned the officials about this, they flat-out lied and denied it. The Banjo pitch claims that they'll head off terrorist attacks, mass shootings and child abductions in realtime. The company provides zero evidence that they have ever done such a thing, or that they ever could.

But that lack of evidence didn't deter Utah AG Ric Cantrell:

"They do have case studies. I'm waiting for case studies from Banjo. I'm still waiting for information from them."

Uh, maybe you should have seen the studies before putting Banjo's servers behind your firewall?

Clearview AI says it only lets cops use its facial recognition tool but it's lying (permalink)

Clearview AI is another grifty "AI" company cutting secret deals with law enforcement to use its facial recognition tech, which relies on a database of nonconsensually scraped social media photos.

They claim only cops get to use this. It's a lie.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/technology/clearview-investors.html

Clearview investors, clients and cronies all have logins to the system. Long before it was selling to cops, these people were literally using it as a party trick, getting people at parties to give them photos to subject to Clearview analysis, just for shits and giggles.

For example, billionaire John Catsimatidis used it to freak out his daughter, sneaking a pic of her data while she was at a restaurant and then IDing the guy and texting her with the guy's bio while she was still eating with him.

An investor named David Scalzo gave the app to his children: "They like to use it on themselves and their friends to see who they look like in the world. It's kind of fun for people."

It sure seems like Ashton Kutcher also got to run around and use it without limit or accountability. Last time I checked, he was also not a police officer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNhYqLbsAGk&feature=youtu.be

One tech expert, Nicholas Cassimatis, uses the app as "a hobby."

Your 21st Century panopticon, folks, brought to you by compulsive liars who ask us to trust them not to get it wrong.

South Korea's beating covid-19 with free testing (permalink)

South Korea has tested 140,000 people for Covid-19. The tests are free for all as part of the nation's public health program. Testing has led to world-leading containment of the disease.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-04/south-korea-tests-hundreds-of-thousands-to-fight-virus-outbreak

President Moon Jae-in calls it a "war" and has put the country on the kind of footing that you'd expect of any existential threat, sidelining the interests of industry in favor of national survival. They're testing 10,000 people/day. Results are available in hours. You can get tested at drive-through testing centers. The kits are 90% accurate and were developed by a domestic producer, Seegene Inc.

America is learning that offshoring high-tech manufacturing to save on labor costs and allowing its private sector to dominate its healthcare resulted in a brittle situation where it can't produce reliable tests, and the unreliable tests are only available to the wealthy.

The fate of uninsured, untested, untreated Americans is not theirs alone. They're the ones preparing wealthy Americans' food and cleaning their homes.

We have a shared microbial destiny that no amount of neoliberal doctrine can handwave away.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/01/shared-microbial-destiny/#covidclasswar

The web is unusably beshitted with terrible ad-tech (permalink)

The web is unusably beshitted and encrufted with popups, interstitials, rolldowns, nagware, paywalls, autoplaying video, ads that scroll with the page, and worse. I haven't looked at the web without an adblocker in years and it's still barely usable.

https://www.cjr.org/first_person/the-infinite-scroll.php

The modern web's equilibrium is "as terrible as possible, without being so terrible that you stop reading," or, worse, "as terrible as is necessary to get you pay to bypass the paywall."

In the CJR, David Roth publishes one of the most pitiless, accurate, evocative descriptions of using the modern internet of cruft.

"The page loads, and a little video ad box rises from the bottom left of the screen and begins buffering. Then a big box pops up over the small one with an offer to subscribe to the paper at a special promotional rate… As you contemplate it, the video begins to play in a muted spasm. This throws a scrim of gray over the rest of the page, making it impossible to read…While you've been triaging a second small video player has floated up into the middle left of the screen. You manage to close these various boxes, and now you can scroll. For a few seconds, anyway, until another ad creeps down from the banner ad above the headline."

But Roth isn't merely complaining here. He's also digging into the underlying reality: dwindling margins, short-term thinking, monopolization of the ad-market, and a buyer's market for ads that lets advertisers demand worse and worse of publishers. Publishers are staffed with people who are "perpetually maxed-out and stressed and scrabbling for a dwindling and finite amount of money." They're choosing chumboxes and other garbage because they want to keep the lights on.

This happened before, of course. It's an HTML5, CSS-enabled reprise of the pop-up wars, where exploding inventory and finite advertising allowed advertisers to play publishers off against each other with increasingly obnoxious, intrusive pop-ups.

These were unbelievably terrible, even by modern standards. Pop-ups would spawn at 1px X 1px, making them invisible, autoplaying audio. Others would sense your mouse heading for the close box and move themselves away from your pointer. They'd spawn 3 more pop-ups for every one you closed, or 300, until your computer ran out of RAM and crashed, taking all your work with it.

These pop-ups didn't go away because publishers won the battle. They went away because of pop-up blocking.

When Opera, and then Mozilla, turned pop-up blocking on by default, users finally had a meaningful reason to prefer one browser to the others. One browser was usable. The other one let pop-up ads crash your computer and eat your unsaved docs. As users switched en masse to blocking browsers, publishers could tell advertisers, "Look, we'll run any garbage ad you tell us to because we need your money. But if it's a pop-up it will be blocked by the majority of our users. They just won't see it."

The pop-up wars were won because technologists helped users exercise technological self-determination. But increasingly, browser vendors are ad-tech companies. Even when they're not, browsers are being designed to serve publishers (who are under advertisers' thumbs), not users.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/open-letter-w3c-director-ceo-team-and-membership

We should address monopolies in ad-tech and browsers, we should create meaningful privacy protections via a federal privacy law with a private right of action. But all of that needs to be accompanied with legal cover for users who assert the right to unshittify their web sessions.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

This won't just protect users, it will protect publishers. It's one thing to prohibit publishers from intrusive advertising. But it's another altogether to make that kind of advertising literally technically impossible.

For $3, a robolawyer will automatically force data brokers to delete you and sue the ones who don't (permalink)

The always-amazing Donotpay has a new robot-lawyer service: as part of your $3/month, they'll serve every data-broker with a demand to purge your records under the CCPA, and sue the ones who don't.

https://fortune.com/2020/03/05/delete-location-data-privacy-personal-information-donotpay/

Data-brokers don't just drive nuisance calls, they also expose you to risks like being doxed and swatted, or having your identity stolen, including by stalkers and bounty hunters who exploit mobile phone tracking to get your realtime location. Every single person should purge their data from every single data-broker, period. Donotpay targets the top 20 brokers and facial recognition companies, including Clearview AI.

Donotpay automates opt-outs for these companies. It also automates suing companies that don't comply or those that make illegal demands like requiring you to send a scan of your driver's license before they'll purge your records. Once you're signed up, you can opt out your whole family, and even your friends. If you don't want a $3/month sub (which gets you tons of other awesome robolawyering), you can just sign up once, pay $3, purge your records and cancel.

Fulfilling deletion requests costs companies about $10. You can use them punitively. Any time a company pisses you off, you can just file a data-deletion demand under CCPA.

When Donot pay started, it was Ios only and I couldn't use it. Somewhere along the way, they got a web interface, too. I just signed up. I'm gonna pay for the wifi on my flight this afternoon just so I can explore all its options.

This day in history (permalink)

#15yrsago Bram Cohen's Stanford talk on BitTorrent https://web.archive.org/web/20051124040524/http://stanford-online.stanford.edu/courses/ee380/050216-ee380-100.asx

#5yrsago DMCA abuser ordered to pay $25K to WordPress https://torrentfreak.com/wordpress-wins-25000-from-dmca-takedown-abuser-150305/

#5yrsago Albuquerque PD encrypts videos before releasing them in records request https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150221/17074630102/albuquerque-police-dept-complies-with-records-request-releasing-password-protected-videos-not-password.shtml

#5yrsago Judge who invented Ferguson's debtor's prisons owes $170K in tax https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/06/ferguson-judge-owes-unpaid-taxes-ronald-brockmeyer

#5yrsago Hartford, CT says friends can't room together unless some of them are servants https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-hartford-scarborough-street-house-0218-20150217-story.html

#5yrsago Finnish millionaire gets EUR54K speeding ticket https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-31709454

#1yrago Zuckerberg announces a comprehensive plan for a new, privacy-focused Facebook, but fails to mention data sharing and ad targeting https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-zuckerberg-privacy-pivot/

#1yrago Ruminations on decades spent writing stories that run more than 1,000,000 words https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2019/03/lessons-learned-writing-really.html

#1yrago A thorough defense of Modern Monetary Theory https://www.forbes.com/sites/johntharvey/2019/03/05/mmt-sense-or-nonsense/#62e9ed235852

#1yrago GOP lawmaker driven mad by bill that would decriminalize children who take naked photos of themselves, delivers a frenzied rant about anal sex on legislature's floor https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2019/03/05/39511377/a-bill-decriminalizing-teen-sexting-passes-the-house-causing-republican-to-scream-about-anal-sex-on-the-floor

#1yrago Bounty hunters and stalkers are able to track you in realtime by lying to your phone company and pretending to be cops https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/panvkz/stalkers-debt-collectors-bounty-hunters-impersonate-cops-phone-location-data

#1yrago From prisons to factories to offices: the spread of workplace surveillance and monitoring tech https://datasociety.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/DandS_WorkplaceMonitoringandSurveillance-.pdf

#1yrago NH GOP lawmakers mocked gun violence survivors by wearing clutchable pearl necklaces to gun control hearing https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/06/gop-lawmakers-wore-pearls-while-gun-violence-victims-testified-activists-were-outraged/?utm_term=.addd1b7a24f8

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Emptywheel (https://www.emptywheel.net/), Slashdot (https://slashdot.org), Naked Capitalism (https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/), Super Punch (https://superpunch.net/, Bas van Beek (http://www.basvanbeek.com/).

Hugo nominators! My story "Unauthorized Bread" is eligible in the Novella category and you can read it free on Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

Upcoming appearances:

Museums and the Web: March 31-April 4 2020, Los Angeles. https://mw20.museweb.net/

LA Times Festival of Books: 18 April 2020, Los Angeles. https://events.latimes.com/festivalofbooks/

Currently writing: I'm rewriting a short story, "The Canadian Miracle," for MIT Tech Review. It's a story set in the world of my next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation. I'm also working on "Baby Twitter," a piece of design fiction also set in The Lost Cause's prehistory, for a British think-tank. I'm getting geared up to start work on the novel afterwards.

Currently reading: Just started Lauren Beukes's forthcoming Afterland: it's Y the Last Man plus plus, and two chapters in, it's amazeballs. Last month, I finished Andrea Bernstein's "American Oligarchs"; it's a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I'm getting really into Anna Weiner's memoir about tech, "Uncanny Valley." I just loaded Matt Stoller's "Goliath" onto my underwater MP3 player and I'm listening to it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: Disasters Don't Have to End in Dystopias: https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/03/01/disasters-dont-have-to-end-in-dystopias/

Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we're having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020.

"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a very special, s00per s33kr1t intro.