#the site can take up to a day to sync

[ambersky0319]

I saw a class that I really wanted to take open up and IMMEDIATELY changed my schedule

Thing is the first class is literally today. It is a morning class. And I just enrolled in it 5 minutes ago (about 5:20 am)

So

I'll probably have to make sure I get into the classroom early and have a little chat with the professor because I don't have access to the site yet and with how quick the enrollment happened idk if I'd even be on the roster yet

[sceletaflores]

I COULD PLAY THE DOCTOR (I CAN CURE YOUR DISEASE)

pair: logan howlett x fem!reader

wc: 4.1k

contains: 18+ SMUT MDNI, swearing, established relationship, logan's pov, written with origins!logan in mind, nat veering dangerously closer to a/b/o territory with every passing day, rut cycles, oral sex (fem!receiving), fingering (fem!receiving), multiple orgasms, gratuitous amounts of dirty talk, p in v, rough sex, biting, hair pulling, size kink, belly bulging, pussy pronouns, one (1) single use of the word daddy, scent kink, pain kink, breeding kink ofc, knotting (don’t look at me…), squirting, porn w/ plot, no use of y/n.

nat’s note: don’t look at me…i don’t know how many times i swore up and down i’d never write something like this but i’m a confirmed liar apparently so…here. i mean i just figured i'm in a rut artistically so therefore the only answer is writing logan in a rut physically...i can do what i want and i don't need to explain myself or my horny thoughts. also, i debated posting this in the wake of everything that's gone down over the past two days that is still escalating and will continue to escalate in the coming weeks, but i think everyone could use a little escape from how scary things may seem right now. take a break from all the terrifying news sites and read about logan wanting to breed you :) kisses!

divider by angel @saradika-graphics!

it's been another six months, and logan needs your help...

The burn starts on the walk home from work, a pulse of heat deep in Logan's gut that grows with every step.

It spreads slowly, sinking into his muscles and seeping up his spine as he rounds the last corner, your place less than a block away now.

It caught him off guard this time, an itch burying itself under his skin earlier in the day only to get worse and worse as he worked.

He usually knew the signs well enough to feel them start creeping in, and he was dead sure it wasn't for another few weeks.

Apparently, he was wrong.

Logan’s jaw clenches as he picks up his pace, every nerve ending in his body straining to break into a full blown sprint at the thought of you, all alone and waiting for him.

His fingers curl into tight fists, nails pressing into his palms to ground himself, though it’s hardly enough. The faint scent of you drifts up from his shirt, not even a long day at the lumberyard enough to drown it out.

By the time he reaches your door, his heartbeat is a heavy thud in his ears, syncing with the building ache of desire wracking through his body like the earth rattling boom of a raging thunder storm.

He fumbles through getting his key into the lock, hands unsteady as he tugs the door open with a little more force than necessary and finally steps inside.

The second he closes the door behind him, the heat surges, thrumming through his veins and flooding his chest. Your scent fills the air completely, stronger now, wrapping around him so thick and sweet.

"Darlin'?" His voice comes out rougher than he intends, but he's beyond caring.

Your voice floats from the other room, casual, warm enough to send a jolt through him. Logan drops his axe from his shoulder, leaning it against the door as he starts down the familiar path to your bedroom.

You're spread out on his side of the bed—oblivious, curled up with a book, wrapped in one of the flannels he must have left the last time he stayed over.

Just the sight of you does something to him, like a match dragged against a strike pad, damned on setting everything ablaze.

You glance up, and the soft smile on your lips falters as you catch sight of him.

Logan knows what he must look like, his eyes all dark and predatory, chest heaving as he rakes his hungry gaze over you like a wolf watches a lamb grazing too close to its den.

He doesn’t say anything at first, just stalks toward you with a purpose that’s as undeniable as the heat pouring off him in waves.

The book slips from your fingers, forgotten, as you lean back, the small sound of your breath hitching under the weight of his gaze is music to his ears.

Logan pauses at the edge of the bed, towering over you, letting himself drink in the way you look. So soft and serene, like some kind of invitation that begs him closer. His flannel draped loosely over your shoulders–shrouding you in his scent. 

The urge to pounce on you fights against his normal instinct to savor every second, to draw it out until the heat pooling in his gut becomes downright unbearable.

“Been thinkin’ about you all damn day,” he mutters, voice thick and dark as molasses, rough from restraint he’s quickly losing. His knuckles brush against your thigh, then tighten, holding you in place as he leans down, his breath hot against your neck. “Thinkin’ about what I was gonna when I finally got my hands on you.”

Your skin blooms with warmth beneath his touch, and he grins against your neck, the edge of his teeth grazing you just enough to make you squirm. He growls low in his throat, that itch he’s been fighting nearly all day clawing its way up to the surface with a vengeance.

The primal urge inside of him screaming to claim claim claim take take take mate mate mate breed breed breed.

You tilt your head to the side with a soft sigh, freeing up more space for him to nose along your skin. “Is it time?”

Logan's breath catches as your question hangs in the air, thick with anticipation. The soft simplicity of it ignites the wildfire burning in his gut, every ounce of restraint slipping away like sand through his fingers.

“Yeah, baby,” he growls, slipping his fingers under the worn cotton of your shorts, feeling the bare skin beneath. “It’s time.”

You shift, hands going to the buttons of his flannel like you’re going to take it off. Logan stops you, taking your wrists in his free hand.

“Don’t,” he breathes, shaking his head hard enough that his hair flows with it. “Leave it on.”

The thought of you covered in his scent, of his scent mixing with yours to claim you on a level only he can discern sends his mind buzzing.

You look up at him with those wide, trusting eyes, and something in him cracks wide open. The tenderness of your gaze pulls at him, like a tether pulling him back from the edge, but that heat still smolders in his blood, fierce and unyielding.

Logan runs his thumb along the racing pulse of your wrist before he drops them. His hands venture lower, fingers pressing against the inside of your thigh, tracing a deliberate path that makes your body tremble under his touch.

You let out a shuddering breath, the scent of your arousal swirling through the air is enough to make him crave more.

In one rough tug, Logan yanks you towards the edge of the bed as he falls to his knees. Your hips held tight in his hands as he lurches forward, burying his nose in the soft junction where your leg and inner thigh meet.

He inhales deep, greedy lungfuls of your scent. A guttural growl rumbles through his chest, his eyes screwing shut at the sheer amount of too much that courses through him. He feels dizzy with it, high on the pheromones pumping from you in waves.

You’re soaked already, the wet fabric of your shorts melded to the shape of your cunt. He can’t help but run his nose along the slick seam of you, reveling in the way your legs twitch on either side of his head, in the short gasp you let out.

“Logan.” Your voice is nothing but a mewl, pleading and desperate.

“Missed you,” he rasps, his voice rough, almost unrecognizable. The edge of need in him makes his hands shake, sliding up your thighs, urging them even further apart as he settles between them.

Logan’s fingers dig into your skin, he lets his thumbs brush up, hooking them into the waistband of your shorts to tug them down your legs in one sharp yank. He groans at the sight of you completely bare, no underwear.

“Fuck, look at you,” he grates, his thumb coming down to slip through your dripping cunt. Your hole flutters desperately around him, needy little clenches like it’s trying to suck him in. “She’s all ready for me, huh? Been waiting for me to come home and give her some attention?”

“Please,” you whimper, your voice thick with longing, the sound going straight to his head, clouding his thoughts. 

Logan’s pulse races as he watches your body arch instinctively toward his touch, the desperate need in your eyes igniting the raw urges coursing through him.

He can’t deny you; he never could. You’re a feast laid out before him, and he’s starving.

Logan leans closer, letting his tongue flick out to taste you like he’s wanted to since he left for work this morning. 

“Fuck,” he breathes, closing his eyes and losing himself in the moment. He licks a broad stripe from your entrance to your clit, savoring the way your body responds, the way your legs tremble and your hips twitch against his mouth, seeking more. “Tastes like fuckin’ heaven, sweetheart.”

The taste of you is intoxicating—sweet and tangy, flooding his senses with every drag and swirl of his tongue.

Logan can’t help but moan against you, the sound vibrating through your body as he dives deeper, his nose nudging against your slick entrance as he shakes his head back and forth like an animal—rubbing the plush skin of your inner thighs red and raw with each rough drag of his coarse beard.

Every flick of his tongue sends a shockwave through you, and he revels in the sounds you make—each whimper, each moan, a siren’s call urging him deeper. He laves his tongue around your clit, sucking it gently, pulling at it with his lips as you writhe beneath him, begging for more. 

He keeps your thighs spread wide, two strong hands pinning them to the mattress so he can devour you just the way you deserve, the sharp dig of your heels into his shoulders only spurs him on.

Your hands bury themselves in his hair, tugging him closer, and he groans into you, letting his tongue delve deeper, seeking out every bit of sweetness he can coax from you. 

It’s pure sin, each sound you make, each shiver that runs through you as he takes his time, drinking you down like a man starved. 

The ache in him intensifies, his own need growing, pulsing. He’s hard, has been hard since he walked through the front door.

His cock strains against the zipper of his jeans, need pulsing in time with each pump of his blood through his shaft, circling around the base, threatening to expand even without the tight grip of your pussy surrounding him. His hips jerk up on their own volition, desperate for any friction.

“Just like that, Logan,” you gasp, voice breathy and trembling with pleasure. 

The way you say his name—raw, desperate—makes his blood run hotter. He grips your thighs tighter, anchoring you to the bed as he drinks you in, wanting to lose himself in you completely.

Logan pulls away just long enough to catch his breath, looking up at you with lust-drunk eyes, drinking in the sight of your sweaty cheeks, your heavy-lidded gaze, the way your chest rises and falls with each shuddering breath.

The pulse of his cock intensifies, urging him to speed things along. The base desire of his own instincts is getting harder and harder to ignore under your adoring stare.

He feeds his fingers into your clenching hole with no warning, a satisfied smirk tugging his lips up at your sharp gasp. He runs his tongue along his bottom lip, the entire lower half of his face still shining with your essence.

Your cunt swallows him, two thick fingers sinking into the velvety heat like it’s nothing.

Logan groans as he feels you clench around him, your walls fluttering and drawing him in deeper. “That’s it, baby,” he mutters, his voice hoarse with need. “So fuckin’ ready for me, so ready for daddy’s fingers in your pussy.”

Your mouth drops open in another devastatingly desperate noise, your hands twist his hair roughly, soft breasts rising and falling each time you gasp for air. The dim light of the sunset filters in through the blinds, highlighting the curves of your body, slick and shining with a thin sheen of sweat.

Every clench of your walls around his fingers shoots a thrill straight to his cock, making him ache with the urge to bury himself inside you. The overwhelming need to take you completely, to mark you and fill you, pulses through his veins until he feels like he might explode.

But he’s not done tasting you yet. Not until you’re practically dripping onto the sheets.

He lowers his mouth back to your core, sucking your clit into his mouth as his fingers pump faster. The sudden intensity makes your thighs shake around his head, and he grins against you. He wants to see you fall apart—wants to feel it.

“Logan—please, I…” You can barely get the words out, voice breaking as your whole body strains against him, desperate and needy.

The wet slap of his palm against your spit soaked cunt is loud in the quiet of your bedroom, blending with the loud keens that fall from your parted lips. He crooks his fingers, rubbing at that soft, spongy spot inside of you.

“Come on,” he mutters, slick lips brushing against your clit as he speaks. “Give it to me, baby. Show me you're ready for my cock."

He drags the sharp edge of his canine against your pulsing clit with barely any pressure, and you're coming.

Your whole body tenses, back bowing off the mattress as you let out a broken cry of his name. The bite of your nails digging into his scalp feels harsh enough to draw blood, a feeble attempt at grounding yourself against the onslaught of pleasure. 

Your trembling thighs tighten around his shoulders, gripping him like a vice as your shaking cunt gushes around his fingers. Logan groans at the feeling, eyes slipping shut as you drench his wrist and chin in your juices.

Even then, he doesn’t let up, fingers pumping relentlessly as he draws out every pulse, every aftershock of your climax, every tiny spray of your release splashing against his wrist. 

He’s lost in the feel of you—slick and trembling under his hands, the scent of your release filling his lungs, thick and intoxicating.

You slump back against the bed, body limp and spent. His own need is a driving, aching force now, clawing at his insides, demanding more.

He slips his fingers free from your dripping heat, dragging them through the wetness coating his chin as he licks them clean with a growl, savoring every taste.

“Good girl,” he purrs, voice thick with pride and satisfaction as he pulls back, leaving your thighs twitching in the wake of his touch. But he still isn’t finished. Not even close.

You barely have time to catch your breath before Logan crawls up the bed, his eyes locked on you, pupils blown with need. He looms over you, hands planting on either side of your head. His cock grinds against you through the rough denim, and you can feel just how thick and hard he is, throbbing through the fabric, demanding to be freed.

With a low groan, he shifts his hips, dragging his bulge along your soaked cunt, sending another jolt of pleasure racing through you. His hands are all over you, gripping your waist, hot and possessive.

“Feel that?” he asks, pressing his lips the wild flutter of your pulse, the need to sink his teeth in the soft skin of your neck raises the hair on the back of his neck. “That’s what you do to me baby. Got me hard as a fuckin’ rock, just aching to be inside you.”

Your arms circle his shoulders, clawing at the fabric off his shirt. “Need you inside me, Logan. Please, want it so bad.”

The pure need lacing your words, your scent calling out to him, the way he can feel the front of his jeans getting soaked through with the slick pouring from your cunt all pull him deeper into the recesses of his hind-brain. 

The mounting desperation to stuff you full of his cock finally reaches a fever pitch.

With a deep growl, Logan rears back as far as he can bear, just enough to tear his shirt over his head before he fumbles with the heavy buckle of his belt to free his aching cock.

He shoves his jeans down, boxers quickly following until there’s nothing separating him from the cool air of your bedroom. His cock springs free, hot and flushed an angry red color, drooling from the tip enough that it drips down to stain the pretty floral sheets of your bed.

Your eyes zero in on him, mouth dropping open at the sight. His cock so heavy it doesn’t curve upward to slap against his stomach, instead it hangs down to sway between his thighs as he moves closer. 

Your legs spread as he nears, slick covered thighs parting to make room for him to slot between them. So obedient, so good, so well trained.

Logan takes himself in his hand, nearly wincing at the blazing temperature of his skin. He secures his hand around the base, squeezing where his knot threatens to pop before he’s even got in you.

He slips the angry head through the folds of your cunt, slapping it against your clit with a wet ‘thwack’ sound. He can feel the way it twitches and shakes, just as desperate as him.

“Look at that,” he mutters darkly, eyes glued to where he’s laid his cock flat against your stomach, leaking pre-come all over your soft skin. “How’s it gonna fit, baby?” He shifts his hips, sawing his length back and forth to see just how deep in you he’ll be.

Your glassy eyes drop, a broken moan passing through your slack lips when you take in the sight. Your hips rise off the bed, grinding your cunt along the seam of his heavy balls, along the prominent vein trailing up the underside.

“Don’t worry, baby,” Logan grits out, eyes hooded and dark as he watches you grind against him. “You’re gonna take it all. Gonna make you feel every last fuckin’ bit of me.”

He groans, gritting his teeth as he presses in further, each inch a battle against the tight, molten heat that grips him like a vice. Your body shudders as he fills you, your slick warmth pulling him deeper and deeper, and he sinks down until he’s fully seated, his hips flush with yours. 

The pressure is mind-numbing, your walls clenching around him in rhythmic pulses that make his vision blur. He stills for just a second, savoring the way your body stretches around him, hugging him in a way that feels like it was made for him alone.

Logan watches your face as you adjust to the stretch, your brows pinched together, each breath coming fast and shallow, your eyes glazed with pleasure.

Then, your hands come to his shoulders, nails digging little crescent moons into his skin as you nod your head, ready.

It’s all the confirmation he needs. His hips pull back before he slams in again, the force of it jolting your whole body. He presses his forehead to your shoulder, teeth bared as he muffles a snarl against your skin.

Logan thrusts again, and again, and again, hips setting a merciless pace as he watches the way your breasts bounce with each thrust, each little shudder.

His mouth waters with the need to taste, to sink his teeth into your supple skin hard enough to pierce clean through, hard enough to scar.

Sweat drips down the length of his spine, across his brow. It mats down the hair scattered over his chest, his dog tags slick with it when they bounce off his skin with each thrust. The grip of his hands tightens on your hips, it’s taking everything in him to hold back and yet he knows you’ll still bruise tomorrow. 

Pretty hues of dark purples and yellows in the shape of his fingers, ones he’ll catch you admiring in the bathroom mirror, pressing your own fingertips into them to feel the dull ache—to remember this moment.

“Made for this, aren’t you?” he rasps, his voice dark and possessive. “Made to take me, to be mine.”

The words barely leave his mouth before he’s bending down to capture your lips in a searing kiss, swallowing your cries as he drives into you, pushing you both closer to that sweet edge.

“Fuck, Logan,” you gasp, breaking the kiss as your body trembles under him. “Can–ah!–can feel you in my stomach…”

Your hand drops from his shoulder, slipping between your bodies to rest over the sweaty expanse of your belly. Logan’s eyes follow your path, a feral growl bursting from his chest before he can stop it.

He’s transfixed by it, sure that if he pressed his hand to the soft skin of your lower stomach right over your own, that he’d feel it. Feel the way his cock punches up against your insides, so deep it's like he’s rearranging your guts to make room.

“Fuck.” His voice is nothing but a gravelly rumble, hoarse and dark as midnight. His hips speed up impossibly faster, chasing the feeling of your clenching walls choking the length of his cock so tight he thinks it might snap off at the base.

The flimsy headboard of your bed slams against the wall, creaky mattress springs screaming under his ministrations.

You feel like salvation, like the first rays of light after too many years spent in the dark.

He feels it with each kiss of his cock against your cervix, in the way your lips fit in the junction of his neck, in the red welts your nails leave on the skin of his back. He feels alive, truly alive, for the first time in decades.

“Say my name,” he grates, his hand cupping the back of your neck, coaxing you to look up at him, lips close enough to taste the heat radiating from his skin. “Tell me who you belong to.”

"Logan," you gasp, your voice breathy, edged with desperation as he pushes you closer to the brink. "Yours. Only yours."

A broken, shaky noise falls from his lips as he buries his face in your neck. He mouths at your skin desperately, presses his nose to where your scent is the strongest. 

Flashes of his release spraying your insides play behind his closed eyes, thoughts of drenching you so thoroughly that it has to take only forcing his hips to slam against the rippling muscle of your ass like you have your own magnetic pull. He feels it building, the slow swell of his knot presses against your folds, ready to burst.

“Come on, honey,” he begs, thumb coming down to rub slow circles over your slick clit. “Come with me, soak my cock. Show me how much you love it, how much you love me.”

Pathetic little uh uh uh’s fall from you with every thrust, broken up only by the breathy whines of his name as he pounds into you hard enough to push your body higher up the mattress. Finally, with a loud roar, he stuffs his growing knot inside of your cunt. 

Logan’s teeth sink into your neck before he can even think twice about it, the thick spray of his come filling you as his hands pull your hips down even further over his cock. He needs to be as deep in you as possible, to press forward until he can’t anymore, until his aching balls are flush with your gushing cunt.

He watches with rapt attention as you come with a loud wail, just from the feeling of his knot slotting into place. The clamp of your thighs over his hips is nearly as tight as the way your cunt seizes around him like it’s scared he’ll leave.

He groans at the over stimulation of your cunt milking his cock. Your slick leaks around the base of him, your shaking hole plugged so full it can only slip along the creamy ring to splash weakly against his thighs and hips.

Logan licks along the spot where his teeth pierced your skin, planting one last kiss before he’s taking you in his arms and rolling onto his back atop the mattress. The plush comforter sticks to his skin, your own sweaty body slipping against his as he tries his best to not jostle you too much while keeping you stuffed full of his cock.

He holds you to his chest until your breathing evens out, until your body stops trembling on top of his, until you’re nosing along the column of his neck.

“Logan?” Your voice is tiny, hoarse and scratchy. He feels your hand drawing absent minded shapes along the skin of his stomach. A circle, a star, a figure eight, a heart.

“Yeah baby?” he says, pressing his lips to the crown of your head, eyes slipping shut at the content feeling that spreads through him.

“Love you,” you murmur, voice soft but sure, the words slipping out without hesitation.

It’s the first time you’ve said it today, and hearing those three words from you sends warmth flooding through him.

Logan shifts slightly, pulling you even closer, his hand moving to the back of your head, cradling you with a kind of tenderness he used to think he’d never be capable of. “I love you too, darlin’. More than you know.”

Your body relaxes against him, the lingering effects of your shared intimacy still buzzing through your limbs, but now there’s a sense of peace, of safety, and a deeper connection.

He can feel the way your fingers curl lightly against his skin, the quiet smile that must be tugging at your lips as you press a kiss to the side of his neck.

And in that moment, with everything settled around him, Logan knows that this, right here, is everything.

tags are now in the comments! if you want to get tagged for any of my works just fill out this form!

[thaylepo]

Most people have probably been culturally exposed to archaeology enough to know excavation is done on a grid, but for extra context I'll go into the lesser-known "You've Heard of First Grid, What About Second Grid" techniques.

For sites thick with cultural material like debitage (flakes of stone from knapping stone tools, which can number in the thousands in a single 1x1 metre square in sites I've worked at), or with very difficult conditions or soil matrix (like above), or sites that are excavated commercially and need to be done speedily, the site is divided into a grid of numbered units (1x1 in North America usually), and each of those units can be further subdivided in its own smaller 3-dimensional grids of area and depth.

These divisions can vary widely based on the needs and preferences of the archaeologists, but it means that each section of dirt is removed methodically and seperately, given its own paperwork and ID tags that record exactly where and how deep it came from, the day it was excavated, drawings and notes and everything, and packed up all nice and neat (ha! Sorry, lil joke. Fun fact: sharpie pens are as useless to write with in the rain as uncooked linguini), for processing later.

Functionally, this means that every section of dirt removed in this way has as much contextual information recorded as the archaologists in charge deemed necessary for the material and research. Even once washed and sorted, any material found in each seperate section can be "placed" in the 3-dimensional location of the site from which it was removed.

You still record in situ artifacts as you find them, such as large bones, tools, diagnostic artifacts, features like post holes, firepits, building remains, etc., and those all get the same context info recorded too. But for statistical analysis of things like soil composition, pebble size and distribution, or hundreds/thousands of tiny bone fragments or stone chips, processing that is just much, much more efficiently done in the lab than in the field. You record everything you can, but the field is messy and it is too easy for things to get lost or mixed up together. Bag it and tag it, is the motto of field work.

I hope this allays some concerns about how context is still kept for things like the Chonk 'o Clay XD

No problem; just push it through the screen!

[mountainsandmayhem]

hey hun!! for your 500 followers celebration could you do 📝, of a scenario in which joel comes home to find you all cramped up and in pain since you began your period and he decides to be the comforting little man and cuddles you to death??

(no pressure!! 🥰🤗)

-vii💗💗

Joel: Period Master

18+, but mostly fluff

Joel Miller x Fem!Reader

AN: Thank you sweet Viv for this ask. This is based in the Little Dove universe, but Sarah and Ellie are teenagers and living at home. 💋 also, I 100% did not edit or proof read this. Sorry!

Joel has had a long ass day. A joke of a day really. First the concrete was late, then someone broke the powered wheelbarrow so they were moving gravel by hand. Then it started raining and they scrambled to cover everything, the job site soon became a muddy mess. He’s desperately looking forward to a hot shower and a glass of whiskey.

He pulls into the garage to see your vehicle already parked, which is strange since you had plans with a friend for after work drinks.

He trudges from the truck to the back door, mud still breaking off his work boots along the shiny concrete floor of the garage. He toes them off before heading into the back entry. Your heels are tossed on the floor, work bag and jacket haphazardly placed on the bench.

“Babe?” He calls from the back door, walking around to the family room to find his two daughters curled up on the couches.

“Hi girls. Where’s your mom?”

They both shoot daggers from their eyes, Ellie clutching the blanket tighter around herself and Sarah flipping the ice pack that’s draped across the back of her neck.

Shit, already that time.

The joys of living with all women….they’ve synced up. His usually sweet teenagers daughters turn extra moody, but Joel is the supporter of this family in every way, so he is always prepared for this time each month. Sarah, usually the sweet tooth, needs salt and chocolate milk. Ellie, usually the salty one, needs Diet Coke and green gummy frogs. All things Joel keeps tucked up in a cupboard, or in the back of the beer fridge in the garage.

He sneaks quietly back into the living room, putting the emergency supplies for the girls down on the coffee table as they watch Dirty Dancing.

Ellie looks up at him with sad eyes, tears welling in the corners. “Thanks, dad.”

He crouches down beside her and rubs her lower back through the big fuzzy blanket she’s cocooned in. “You’re welcome, kiddo. Do you need anything else?”

Sarah’s head pops up from her couch, “Mom’s not doing well. You should go be with her.”

He kisses both his daughters on the foreheads, taking a big breath before walking down the hall to your bedroom. Nothing in this world breaks his heart more than seeing you in pain. He knows some months can be worse than others, he knows about the bloating and the large clots you deal with. He knows that you can be insatiably hungry one minute and throwing up the next. He knows that your cramps can have you on the floor in the matter of seconds most of the time.

He opens the door as quietly as possible, finding you curled in a tight ball under the down filled duvet, just your hair peaking out the top. The room is stifling hot, the air almost thick, it feels like being in Phoenix in July as he pads over to the bed.

“Baby?” He whispers, carefully climbing up beside you, trying not to disturb you. A lesson he learned a few years ago when you had finally gotten comfortable, only to be brought to big crocodile tears when he moved a pillow that was tucked against your back.

A sad groaning whine leaves your throat as his large palm dips under the blanket to cup your forehead. “Sweetie, you’re burning up.”

“I’m freezing,” you whine, pulling the big blanket tighter around you.

“Ok, baby girl. I’m here now,” he says, standing and stripping down to his boxers briefs. You peek your eyes over the blanket, watching the way his strong body flexes and relaxes, the muscles ripping as he moves. The summer sun has tanned his arms a beautiful golden brown.

He wanders around to lay behind you. “Let me in, honey.”

You let go of the blanket so he can slip under, his warmth immediately sinking into you, heating your sore and achy body all the way to the bone. “You’re practically naked under here, Little Dove.”

You sink back into his heat. “Don’t look, I’m wearing the worst granny panties and one of those super pads.”

His hands trail around your slides, a large palm resting on the very bottom of your belly where the cramps are, hand sliding under the band of your incredibly unattractive panties. “You’re sexy to me no matter what you wear.”

Joel begins kneading the muscles of your lower abdomen, simulating the contracting of your uterus and the pain begins to ease. You moan and relax more into your perfect man.

“That feel good?” He says in a deep, gravel filled whisper.

“Mm-hmmm,” you hum, closing your eyes and finally feeling relief from the debilitating cramps.

Joel pulls you in tighter and kisses your shoulder. “I’m sorry you’re suffering, baby. I’m going to take care of you. Anything you need, I’ll do it or get it.”

“DAAAAAAD!!” Sarah and Ellie call in unison from the couch. “PIZZAAAA!!!”

You snort a little laugh. Poor Joel, having to deal with all these uterus’s.

“Pizza party?” You ask.

“Anything for my girls.” He hums, stubble grazing the shell of your ear.

“Anything?” You say mischievously.

“You’re not painting my toe nails again”

“Damn. I have this new hot pink that I think would really suit you,” you tease.

Joel’s quiet for a moment, still kneading the muscles absentmindedly, but with incredible care and precision. “I’ll lend you my favourite sweats and t shirt if you stay away from my toes.”

“Deal,” you say with a wince.

“What’s wrong?” Joel says, pulling you onto your back so he can look you over. Concern etching his eyebrows.

You reach up and rub the creases spot with your thumb, his eyes meeting yours. “Butt hole cramp,” you say flatly.

Joel smirks down at you, at this angle your swollen, heavy breasts are on display for him. “Want me to kiss it better?”

“You’re a menace, Joel Miller. And our daughters will riot if we don’t get them pizza soon.”

Joel lends you his clothes and helps you get dressed before sliding on his jeans and t shirt. He kisses your forehead and helps you to the lazy boy chair, brining your king sized duvet with him to wrap you up.

“I’ll be back with pizza,” he says to the group.

As soon as he’s out of ear shot Ellie pipes up, “do you think if we play this up we can get him to let us paint his toe nails again?”

[karespocketboyfriends]

𝚃𝚊𝚕𝚔 𝚃𝚘 𝙼𝚎

𝙺𝚒𝚗𝚔𝚝𝚘𝚋𝚎𝚛 2024 𝙳𝚊𝚢 𝚃𝚑𝚒𝚛𝚝𝚎𝚎𝚗

Sylus X Evie (OC)

Warnings -> 18+ NSFW (Dirty talk, voice kink, use of ‘sir’/‘sweetie’/‘kitten’), situationship dynamic

An original fan-fiction for Love and Deepspace. I appreciate reblogs but reposting to Tumblr or any other site is not okay with me.

Logically, throwing my phone at the wall will not fix it.

Emotionally, however, it will make me feel better.

But a broken phone means I won’t be able to listen to the audiobook I purchased the other day, if I can even get it to work. It was playing just fine at home, but now that I’m at the base, it’s been refusing to load. Or rather, it’s loading, but the audio isn’t working.

I let out a long, deep exhale and close my eyes for a moment, trying to summon the patience not to crush my phone between my hands - not that I’m strong enough to do such a thing. I should have given up several minutes ago. Listening to a spicy audio book isn’t necessary to get my work done, but it sure would make the mind numbing list of tasks I had to do today easier.

At least the scenery is different tonight. Instead of my office at the base, my paperwork and I are occupying the large kitchen counter of Sylus’ private suite in the hotel. His hotel, where an important meeting is currently taking place. It’s not very often that I skip out on a meeting, but from time to time, the boss will ask me to hang back. This is one of those times.

The sound of the front door opening and closing has me looking over my shoulder. Sylus strolls languidly into the kitchen, his black ‘Boss Man’ jacket hanging off his shoulders. His expression is calmly neutral, not a hint of a clue as to how the meeting went.

I put my phone screen-side down on the marble counter and give him my undivided attention. “Welcome back, Sir. How did it go?”

“As expected. I refused his offer.”

I nod my head in understanding. Even over the phone, while I was arranging the meeting last week, the other party sounded kinda fishy. “I’m sorry it went that way, Sir. Hopefully the next one will be worth your while.”

Sylus tilts his head, a playful smile pulling at his lips. “You know, something rather interesting happened during the meeting. It was right at the crux of it, too.”

I twist in the stool until I’m facing him completely. “Oooh, there’s tea.”

“My phone pinged as if it had synced up to something. Then, a man’s voice came through the speaker. He was saying some rather… explicit things.” He taps his finger against his temple. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you, Evie?”

I blink up at him. Feel the blood drain from my face. Reach behind me for my phone. “Can’t say that I do, Sir.”

“No? But it sounded so much like those novels you love so much.” Sylus grips the edge of the counter on either side of me, heat warming his eyes. “I didn’t realize you enjoyed listening to those scenes, too.”

Fuck. Fuck.

I swallow and pretend I don’t want to throw myself out the window at this very moment. I don’t think the janitorial staff would appreciate having to clean my guts off the sidewalk. “He just has a nice voice, that’s all.”

That only makes him more amused. “Oh, so it’s his voice you like.” Sylus leans in closer, and I shiver as his breath tickles my ear. “And here I thought you preferred mine.”

My thighs squeeze together on their own accord. Sylus’ voice is perfection. It’s deep and makes my stomach do flips, a wonderful mix of velvety and husky and makes my heart race against itself.

I subconsciously lick my lips, and his eyes track the movement. “I do prefer your voice, Sir.”

With a hum, he pulls back a little and looks at me. He doesn’t drop the cage that is his arms, though. His gaze flicks down for a moment, smirk growing when he realizes what kind of reaction he’s getting. My breath hitches, heart starting to pound.

“That makes me very happy, sweetie.” He tucks a lock of hair behind my ear, trails his fingers down my cheek. “Stories are nice, but if you want to hear such naughty things, then you don’t need to turn to someone else to have those needs met.”

I can’t help but squirm, my body’s natural reaction to the whirlwind of feelings rushing through me. “L-Like what?”

Sylus chuckles and moves his hand to my chin, angling my head to bring me closer to his lips. “Like how tempting you are when you show me those eyes. It makes me want to strip you down and ruin you.”

Lust makes my eyelids grow heavy. “Go on.”

He smiles and traces my lips with his thumb. “I’ll start slow. Tease you with my lips and fingers until you’re begging for me in that pretty voice of yours.”

I sink my teeth into my lower lip, trying to suppress the moan bubbling on the tip of my tongue. The imagery his words bring is delightful.

“Then, I’ll take my time tasting every single inch of you. I won’t stop until I find the sweetest spot.” Sylus draws a slow line down my chest, working his way to my stomach. “And when I find that spot, I’ll keep going until you come.”

I’m panting now, my jeans suddenly too tight. A dull pulse starts in the pit of my stomach, one I recognize well.

Sylus keeps going with the verbal torture, dragging his finger down past my belly button, being ever careful with my piercing. “And only after you’ve come for me like a good girl, will I give you the rest of me. I’ll satisfy you so deeply, you’ll think of me when you pick up a book again.”

This time, I can’t stop the moan. My voice is breathy and shaky when I regain enough sanity to respond. “I-It sounds like you’ll be walking away with a lot of scratches, Sir.”

He lifts my hand to his mouth and presses a light kiss to the back of it. “From you, kitten, scratches are a prize.” Hands dipping beneath my thighs, Sylus lifts me from the stool and sets me right on the counter.

I squeak, but don’t fight him. “B-But, your other meetings-”

“Can wait.” He cuts me off, eyes narrowing as he helps me discard my jeans. “I’m in the mood for a feast right now.”

SFW Masterlist || NSFW Masterlist || Kinktober

[sorcerous-caress]

You’re so right dude. Imagine a Halfling and a Human get together and they’re besties they’re bros who just happen to have friendly cuddly sex and then they create a porno together lmao.

They upload it expecting like very minimal engagement and suddenly it blows up. I think it’s because of the versatility in both of their races. A halfling that tugs their human partner’s hair and tells them how they want to be eaten out or fucked or strapped then can also be a moaning mess within the next video.

A human who speaks seductively and charms the halfling can also be put on their back holding onto the blankets for dear life. They can be tender, soft touches and tickles. They can do roleplay: a hurt human who needs the mommy/daddy halfling to be nursed back into shape. A human friend who coaxes the other into their lap. They can go hard and sadistic.

Can you imagine the sponsors/donations/subscribers they would get!?

A noble elf who wants to be in the middle of that. A voyer who wants to watch the debauchery. Who wants to be the director. A soldier orc or a dragon born who wants both of them on their cock/strap. A demon or a fiend whose trying so hard to get them into a pact.

Same braincells! You’re a genius dude aldjaka. Sorry for me rambling, you can send me back to horny jail.

Off topic but I really like how we are embracing the "onlyfans" and porn streamers with donations type of content in smut. Because you know most written smut and novels still refuse to acknowledge the current culture and technology developments.

Like maybe sending each other dirty pics was something hot and risky before, but in today standards if it's not a frisky discord calls or timer-delete nudes then it just feels...out of touch with the current technology you know? Sex toys that sync up to apps exist and are very common today, and so are the many streaming sites and Twitter porn accounts.

So when a smut novel comes and it's supposed to be set in the modern age with our current technology but they make them use their phones only to what, sext or send a nude during work? It comes off as very tame in comparison to what technology is capable of today and how well it mixes with sexual stuff.

The trends in kinks change too, like before it was all about matching underwear and spanking, but today it's all about gooner stuff, mindbreak and oral. Back a few years ago, there was this obsession with squirting, then the pee fact came out, and everyone let it die slowly.

For example, if you wanted to tell how old the person who wrote a smut piece is, just find out how the smut treats anal. Younger adult generations are more chill with it as a normal everyday thing, while millennials treat it as something that hurts, but they'll still do it, and boomers think it's something more extreme than literal whipping bdsm.

Younger adults smut these days are more inspired by hentai mixed with unrealisticly thick pop star beauty standards, while Millennials had this weird porn phase where they pretended their porn was superior to everyone else's by making it classy? You know those black and white gifs and the really skinny boddies. That's why there is a push these days to present the porn as shameless in every possible way, it's a cycle and the generation after us will look at our trends with disgust and take a more "classy" approach and claim their porn is better.

Also it makes me wonder if people in 1800 also wrote stories like this but about being a show girl or something similar. They definitely did. Weren't there like sexting hotlines back when phones first became a thing where people would call a number and talk dirty to someone? Porn is always evolving my man.

Don't ask why I know so much about porn trends and history, that is none of your business I am well adjusted.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand.

Demons and porn are very interesting in dnd! It depends on how you view demons really, but for me I like to imagine that every sin they commit is pushed to the extreme.

So "shameless casual sex" is right up their alley, and you know who shares the same view but for different reasons? The halflings who see it just a casual bodily need between friends. Like yes you can be lovers but it's not necessary.

It is funny to imagine a bundle of sunshine and a literal fiend of hell having something in common, but they do.

The human is just going to their friends with benefits house, a cute little hafling with the most adorable riverside cottage sorrounded by berry bushes.

Smell of applepie baking in the oven is in the air, their hafling friend no doubtly is inside and the human opens the door and steps in because they have a spare key.

Only to be met with fucking asmodeus the arch-devil sitting on a wooden stool and sipping tea in a ceramic floral cup with strawberry prints on it. The devil from the fucking hells just waves at you while your halfling friend explains how asmo came here because they are such a huge fan of the videos you made and wanted to personally extend compliments.

Just the idea of great beings being so enamoured with the little human and their little friend hafling. A great ancient dragon leaving piles upon piles of gold and gems on your doorway each morning as their way to pay for your onlyfans subscription since the dragon doesn't have a credit card.

An angel shooting down from the literal heavens and breaking through the cottage wooden roof, rings of fire and 8 wings and all. Just to deliver their fanletter they wrote for you and the hafling, also a smuty fanart they drew. All 600 eyes look away all shy and flustered as they ask you to sign a framed picture they have of one of their favourite scenes.

[butchdiaz]

hiiiii your edits are so incredible!!! i've been thinking about trying my hand at video editing do you have any tips?? also how does one source clips lol

hope you're having a good day :)

hi!!!! thank u so much! for sourcing clips, i did it the hard way by downloading full episodes and screen recording the clips i wanted w quicktime which is a lengthy process that takes up a lot of space on ur laptop LOL but i really wanted HD footage and didnt know any other way when i started and now i just have my own little library of clips.

here is a lifesaving site to download eps if u dont wanna/cant torrent. i forget who made it but if someone knows lmk so i can credit!

after i had done all that i discovered that there were these magical things called scene packs that are more popular over on twitter. where u can easily download every buddie scene in s2-4 for example that took me hours to record myself 🤦🏽‍♂️ i dont really have any specific sources for u bc im not on twitter. sorry ik thats not very helpful LMAO but if u ask around/search for them i know they are out there!

and uhhh as far as tips go here are some things i personally think about while editing! everyone has different styles and methods though:) this got long accidentally so its going under the cut oops

- i like to try and tell a story w my edits so im almost always thinking about that first and foremost. like how can i tie the beginning to the end and have a satisfying climax etc. i try to work with the song and highlight the emotional/tonal shifts in the music with my editing

- on that note, i am very influenced by the music while im editing cause i want my edits to LOOK like how it FEELS when im listening to the song. i think my best example of this is im afraid i love you. the drop in the chorus feels like a punch to the gut everytime and i really wanted to visuals to reflect that so it would be the most powerful. hence: soft lovey dovey looks galore and then BAM! SHOOTING. these comments fills my heart with glee cause it makes me feel like i did a good job capturing the feeling the song gives me.

i also really love the way the beat comes in in the second verse of that song and i made sure to sync up the shots to the beat at that moment instead of the words in order to highlight the musical shift. (i always think about how @ilostyou loves that verse and calls it bouncy, it makes me feel like i achieved my goal!!!!)

- the little details and nitpicky stuff goes a long way! like painstakingly making sure clips hit right on time with the beat/the words if thats ur intention. it may seem like a chore at the time but it definitely pays off for me at least

- i also think a LOT about composition, and how to make edits flow smoothly so that the viewer can follow the story easily. if i have a bunch of faster clips in a row im going to try to make sure the focus stays in the same place so the viewers eyes dont have to jump around to find what they are looking for. its easier to explain w an example so in happy to be here, for these three shots on the word "en-gi-neer" i wanted the order to go frank -> dr salazar -> buck.

because then it goes back to frank for "listening" so i wanted space between when it shows him AND i wanted it to end on buck cause he's the most important. but the original shot of dr. salazar was flipped so at first it looked like this:

and i didn't like how ur eyes had to go back and forth so fast, so i flipped the middle clip. it was much easier to process all three clips in quick succession if the subject didn't move. hope that makes sense!

[canmom]

yarr harr, fiddle de dee [more on piracy networks]

being a pirate is all right to be...

I didn't really intend this post as an overview of all the major methods of piracy. But... since a couple of alternatives have been mentioned in the comments... let me infodump talk a little about 1. Usenet and 2. direct peer-to-peer systems like Gnutella and Soulseek. How they work, what their advantages are on a system level, how convenient they are for the user, that kind of thing.

(Also a bit at the end about decentralised hash table driven networks like IPFS and Freenet, and the torrent indexer BTDigg).

Usenet

First Usenet! Usenet actually predates the web, it's one of the oldest ways people communicated on the internet. Essentially it's somewhere between a mailing list and a forum (more accurately, a BBS - BBSes were like forums you had to phone, to put it very crudely, and predate the internet as such).

On Usenet, it worked like this. You would subscribe to a newsgroup, which would have a hierarchical name like rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated (for talking about your favourite TV show, Babylon 5) or alt.transgendered (for talking about trans shit circa 1992). You could send messages to the newsgroup, which would then be copied between the various Usenet servers, where other people could download them using a 'news reader' program. If one of the Usenet servers went down, the others acted as a backup. Usenet was a set of protocols rather than a service as such; it was up to the server owners which other servers they would sync with.

Usenet is only designed to send text information. In theory. Back in the day, when the internet was slow, this was generally exactly what people sent. Which didn't stop people posting, say, porn... in ASCII form. (for the sake of rigour, that textfile's probably from some random BBS, idk if that one ever got posted to Usenet). The maximum size of a Usenet post ('article', in traditional language) depends on the server, but it's usually less than a megabyte, which does not allow for much.

As the internet took off, use of Usenet in the traditional way declined. Usenet got flooded with new users (an event named 'Eternal September'; September was traditionally when a cohort of students would start at university and thus gain access to Usenet, causing an influx of new users who didn't know the norms) and superseded by the web. But it didn't get shut down or anything - how could it? It's a protocol; as long as at least one person is running a Usenet server, Usenet exists.

But while Usenet may be nigh-unusable as a discussion forum now thanks to the overwhelming amount of spam, people found another use for the infrastructure. Suppose you have a binary file - an encoded movie, for example. You can encode that into ASCII strings using Base64 or similar methods, split it up into small chunks, and post the whole lot onto Usenet, where it will get synchronised across the network. Then, somewhere on the web, you publish a list of all the Usenet posts and their position in the file. This generally uses the NZB format. A suitable newsreader can then take that NZB file and request all the relevant pieces from a Usenet server and assemble them into a file.

NZB sites are similar to torrent trackers in that they don't directly host pirated content, but tell you where to get it. Similar to torrent trackers, some are closed and some are open. However, rather than downloading the file piecemeal from whoever has a copy as in a torrent, you are downloading it piecemeal from a big central server farm. Since these servers are expensive to run, access to Usenet is usually a paid service.

For this to work you need the Usenet servers to hold onto the data for long enough to people to get it. Generally speaking the way it works is that the server has a certain storage buffer; when it runs out of space, it starts overwriting old files. So there's an average length of time until the old file gets deleted, known as the 'retention time'. For archival purposes, that's how long you got; if you want to keep something on Usenet after that, upload it again.

As a system for file distribution... well, it's flawed, because it was never really designed as a file sharing system, but somehow it works. The operator of a Usenet server has to keep tens of petabytes of storage, to hold onto all the data on the Usenet network for a retention period of years, including the hundreds of terabytes uploaded daily, much of which is spam; it also needs to fetch it reliably and quickly for users, when the files are spread across the stream of data in random places. That's quite a system engineering challenge! Not surprisingly, data sometimes ends up corrupted. There is also a certain amount of overhead associated with encoding to ASCII and including parity checks to avoid corruption, but it's not terribly severe. In practice... if you have access to Usenet and know your way to a decent NZB site, I remember it generally working pretty well. Sometimes there's stuff on Usenet that's hard to find on other sources.

Like torrents, Usenet offers a degree of redundancy. Suppose there's a copyrighted file on Usenet server A, and it gets a DMCA notice and complies. But it's still on Usenet servers B, C and D, and so the (ostensible) copyright holder has to go and DMCA them as well. However, it's less redundant, since there are fewer Usenet servers, and operating one is so much more involved. I think if the authorities really wanted to crush Usenet as a functional file distribution system, they'd have an easier time of it than destroying torrents. Probably the major reason they don't is that Usenet is now a fairly niche system, so the cost/benefit ratio would be limited.

In terms of security for users, compared to direct peer to peer services, downloading from Usenet has the advantage of not broadcasting your IP on the network. Assuming the server implements TLS (any modern service should), if you don't use a VPN, your ISP will be able to see that you connected to a Usenet server, but not what you downloaded.

In practice?

for torrenting, if you use public trackers you definitely 100% want a VPN. Media companies operate sniffers which will connect to the torrent swarm and keep track of what IP addresses connect. Then, they will tell your ISP 'hey, someone is seeding our copyrighted movie on xyz IP, tell them to stop'. At this point, your ISP will usually send you a threatening email on a first offence and maybe cutoff your internet on a second. Usually this is a slap on the wrist sort of punishment, ISPs really don't care that much, and they will reconnect you if you say sorry... but you can sidestep that completely with a VPN. at that point the sniffer can only see the VPN's IP address, which is useless to them.

for Usenet, the threat model is more niche. There's no law against connecting to Usenet, and to my knowledge, Usenet servers don't really pay attention to anyone downloading copyrighted material from their servers (after all, there's no way they don't know the main reason people are uploading terabytes of binary data every day lmao). But if you want to be sure the Usenet server doesn't ever see your IP address, and your ISP doesn't know you connected to Usenet, you can use a VPN.

(In general I would recommend a VPN any time you're pirating or doing anything you don't want your IP to be associated with. Better safe than sorry.)

What about speed? This rather depends on your choice of Usenet provider, how close it is to you, and what rate limits they impose, but in practice it's really good since it's built on incredibly robust, pre-web infrastructure; this is one of the biggest advantages of Usenet. For torrents, by contrast... it really depends on the swarm. A well seeded torrent can let you use your whole bandwidth, but sometimes you get unlucky and the only seed is on the other side of the planet and you can only get about 10kB/s off them.

So, in short, what's better, Usenet or BitTorrent? The answer is really It Depends, but there's no reason not to use both, because some stuff is easier to find on torrents (most anime fansub groups tend to go for torrent releases) and some stuff is easier to find on Usenet (e.g. if it's so old that the torrents are all dead). In the great hierarchy of piracy exclusivity, Usenet sits somewhere between private and public torrent trackers.

For Usenet, you will need to figure out where to find those NZBs. Many NZB sites require registration/payment to access the NZB listing, and some require you to be invited. However, it's easier to get into an NZB site than getting on a private torrent tracker, and requires less work once you're in to stay in.

Honestly? It surprises me that Usenet hasn't been subject to heavier suppression, since it's relatively centralised. It's got some measure of resilience, since Usenet servers are distributed around the world, and if they started ordering ISPs to block noncomplying Usenet servers, people would start using VPNs, proxies would spring up; it would go back to the familiar whack-a-mole game.

I speculate the only reason it's not more popular is the barrier to entry is just very slightly higher than torrents. Like, free always beats paid, even though in practice torrents cost the price of a VPN sub. Idk.

(You might say it requires technical know-how... but is 'go on the NZB indexer to download an NZB and then download a file from Usenet' really so much more abstruse than 'go on the tracker to download a torrent and then download a file from the swarm'?)

direct peer to peer (gnutella, soulseek, xdcc, etc.)

In a torrent, the file is split into small chunks, and you download pieces of your file from everyone who has a copy. This is fantastic for propagation of the file across a network because as soon as you have just one piece, you can start passing it on to other users. And it's great for downloading, since you can connect to lots of different seeds at once.

However, there is another form of peer to peer which is a lot simpler. You provide some means to find another person who has your file, and they send you the file directly.

This is the basis that LimeWire worked on. LimeWire used two protocols under the hood, one of them BitTorrent, the other a protocol called Gnutella. When the US government ordered LimeWire shut down, the company sent out a patch to LimeWire users that made the program delete itself. But both these protocols are still functioning. (In fact there's even an 'unofficial' fork of the LimeWire code that you can use.)

After LimeWire was shut down, Gnutella declined, but it didn't disappear by any means. The network is designed to be searchable, so you can send out a query like 'does anyone have a file whose name contains the string "Akira"' and this will spread out across the network, and you will get a list of people with copies of Akira, or the Akira soundtrack, and so on. So there's no need for indexers or trackers, the whole system is distributed. That said, you are relying on the user to tell the truth about the contents of the file. Gnutella has some algorithmic tricks to make scanning the network more efficient, though not to the same degree as DHTs in torrents. (DHTs can be fast because they are looking for one computer, the appointed tracker, based on a hash of the file contents. Tell me if you wanna know about DHTs, they're a fascinating subject lol).

Gnutella is not the only direct file sharing protocol. Another way you can introduce 'person who wants a file' and 'person who has a file' is to have a central server which everyone connects to, often providing a chatroom function along with coordinating connections.

This can be as simple as an IRC server. Certain IRC clients (by no means all) support a protocol called XDCC, which let you send files to another user. This has been used by, for example, anime fansub groups - it's not really true anymore, but there was a time where the major anime fansub groups operated XDCC bots and if you wanted their subs, you had to go on their IRC and write a command to the bot to send it to you.

XDCC honestly sucked though. It was slow if you didn't live near the XDCC bot, and often the connection would often crap out mid download and you'd have to manually resume (thankfully it was smart enough not to have to start over from the beginning), and of course, it is fiddly to go on a server and type a bunch of IRC commands. It also put the onus of maintaining distribution entirely on the fansub group - your group ran out of money or went defunct and shut down its xdcc bot? Tough luck. That said, it was good for getting old stuff that didn't have a torrent available.

Then there's Soulseek! Soulseek is a network that can be accessed using a handful of clients. It is relatively centralised - there are two major soulseek servers - and they operate a variety of chat rooms, primarily for discussing music.

To get on Soulseek you simply register a username, and you mark at least one folder for sharing. There doesn't have to be anything in it, but a lot of users have it set so that they won't share anything unless you're sharing a certain amount of data yourself.

You can search the network and get a list of users who have matching files, or browse through a specific user's folder. Each user can set up their own policy about upload speed caps and so on. If you find something you want to download, you can queue it up. The files will be downloaded in order.

One interesting quirk of Soulseek is that the uploader will be notified (not like a push notification, but you see a list of who's downloading/downloaded your files). So occasionally someone will notice you downloading and send you a friendly message.

Soulseek is very oriented towards music. Officially, its purpose is to help promote unsigned artists, not to infringe copyright; in practice it's primarily a place for music nerds to hang out and share their collections. And although it's faced a bit of legal heat, it seems to be getting by just fine.

However, there's no rule that you can only share music. A lot of people share films etc. There's really no telling what will be on Soulseek.

Since Soulseek is 1-to-1 connections only, it's often pretty slow, but it's often a good bet if you can't find something anywhere else, especially if that something is music. In terms of resilience, the reliance on a single central server to connect people to peers is a huge problem - that's what killed Napster back in the day, if the Soulseek server was shut down that would be game over... unless someone else set up a replacement and told all the clients where to connect. And yet, somehow it's gotten away with it so far!

In terms of accessibility, it's very easy: just download a client, pick a name and password, and share a few gigs (for example: some movies you torrented) and you're good.

In terms of safety, your IP is not directly visible in the client, but any user who connects directly to you would be able to find it out with a small amount of effort. I'm not aware of any cases of IP sniffers being used on Soulseek, but I would recommend a VPN all the same to cover your bases - better safe than sorry.

Besides the public networks like Soulseek and Gnutella, there are smaller-scale, secret networks that also work on direct connection basis, e.g. on university LANs, using software such as DC++. I cannot give you any advice on getting access to these, you just have to know the right person.

Is that all the ways you can possibly pirate? Nah, but I think that's the main ones.

Now for some more niche shit that's more about the kind of 'future of piracy' type questions in the OP, like, can the points of failure be removed..?

IPFS

Since I talked a little above about DHTs for torrents, I should maybe spare a few words about this thing. Currently on the internet you specify the address of a certain computer connected to the network using an IP address. (Well, typically the first step is to use the DNS to get an IP address.) IPFS is based on the idea of 'content-based addressing' instead; like torrents, it specifies a file using a hash of the content.

This leads to a 'distributed file system'; the ins and outs are fairly complicated but it has several layers of querying. You can broadcast that you want a particular chunk of data to "nearby" nodes; if that fails to get a hit, you can query a DHT which directs you to someone who has a list of sources.

In part, the idea is to create a censorship-resistant network: if a node is removed, the data may still be available on other nodes. However, it makes no claim to outright permanence, and data that is not requested is gradually flushed from nodes by garbage collection. If you host a node, you can 'pin' data so it won't be deleted, or you can pay someone else to do that on their node. (There's also some cryptocurrency blockchain rubbish that is supposed to offer more genuine permanence.)

IPFS is supposed to act as a replacement for the web, according to its designers. This is questionable. Most of what we do on the web right now is impossible on IPFS. However, I happen to like static sites, and it's semi-good at that. It is, sympathetically, very immature; I remember reading one very frustrated author writing about how hard it was to deploy a site to IPFS, although that was some years ago and matters seem to have improved a bit since then.

I said 'semi-good'. Since the address of your site changes every time you update it, you will end up putting multiple redundant copies of your site onto the network at different hashes (though the old hashes will gradually disappear). You can set a DNS entry that points to the most recent IPFS address of your site, and rely on that propagating across the DNS servers. Or, there's a special mutable distributed name service on the IPFS network based around public/private key crypto; basically you use a hash of your public key as the address and that returns a link to the latest version of your site signed with your private key.

Goddamn that's a lot to try to summarise.

Does it really resist censorship? Sorta. If a file is popular enough to propagate enough the network, it's hard to censor it. If there's only one node with it, it's no stronger than any other website. If you wanted to use it as a long term distributed archive, it's arguably worse than torrents, because data that's not pinned is automatically flushed out of the network.

It's growing, if fairly slowly. You can announce and share stuff on it. It has been used to bypass various kinds of web censorship now and then. Cloudflare set a bunch of IPFS nodes on their network last year. But honestly? Right now it's one of those projects that is mostly used by tech nerds to talk to other tech nerds. And unfortunately, it seems to have caught a mild infection of cryptocurrency bullshit as well. Thankfully none of that is necessary.

What about piracy? Is this useful for our nefarious purposes? Well, sort of. Libgen has released all its books on IPFS; there is apparently an effort to upload the content of ZLib to IPFS as well, under the umbrella of 'Anna's Archive' which is a meta-search engine for LibGen, SciHub and a backup of ZLib. By nature of IPFS, you can't put the actual libgen index site on it (since it constantly changes as new books are uploaded, and dynamic serverside features like search are impossible on IPFS). But books are an ideal fit for IPFS since they're usually pretty small.

For larger files, they are apparently split into 256kiB chunks and hashed individually. The IPFS address links to a file containing a list of chunk hashes, or potentially a list of lists of chunk hashes in a tree structure. (Similar to using a magnet link to acquire a torrent file; the short hash finds you a longer list of hashes. Technically, it's all done with Merkle trees, the same data structure used in torrents).

One interesting consequence of this design is that the chunks don't necessarily 'belong' to a particular file. If you're very lucky, some of your chunks will already be established on the network. This also further muddies the waters of whether a particular user is holding onto copyrighted data or not, since a particular hash/block might belong to both the tree of some copyrighted file and the tree of some non-copyrighted file. Isn't that fun?

The other question I had was about hash collisions. Allegedly, these are almost impossible with the SHA-256 hash used by default on IPFS, which produces a 256-bit address. This is tantamount to saying that of all the possible 256KiB strings of data, only at most about 1 in 8000 will actually ever be distributed with the IPFS. Given the amount of 256-kibibyte strings is around 4.5 * 10^631305, this actually seems like a fairly reasonable assumption. Though, given that number, it seems a bit unlikely that two files will ever actually have shared chunks. But who knows, files aren't just random data so maybe now and then, there will be the same quarter-megabyte in two different places.

That said, for sharing large files, IPFS doesn't fundamentally offer a huge advantage over BitTorrent with DHT. If a lot of people are trying to download a file over IPFS, you will potentially see similar dynamics to a torrent swarm, where chunks spread out across the network. Instead of 'seeding' you have 'pinning'.

It's an interesting technology though, I'll be curious to see where it goes. And I strongly hope 'where it goes' is not 'increasingly taken over by cryptocurrency bullshit'.

In terms of security, an IPFS node is not anonymous. It's about as secure as torrents. Just like torrents, the DFT keeps a list of all the nodes that have a file. So if you run an IPFS node, it would be easy to sniff out if you are hosting a copyrighted file on IPFS. That said, you can relatively safely download from IPFS without running a node or sharing anything, since the IPFS.tech site can fetch data for you. Although - if you fetch a site via the IPFS.tech site (or any other site that provides IPFS access over http), IPFS.tech will gain a copy of the file and temporarily provide it. So it's not entirely tantamount to leeching - although given the level of traffic on IPFS.tech I can't imagine stuff lasts very long on there.

Freenet Hyphanet

Freenet (officially renamed to Hyphanet last month, but most widely known as Freenet) is another, somewhat older, content-based addressing distributed file store built around a DHT. The difference between IPFS and Freenet is that Freenet prioritises anonymity over speed. Like in IPFS, the data is split into chunks - but on Freenet, the file is spread out redundantly across multiple different nodes immediately, not when they download it, and is duplicated further whenever it's downloaded.

Unlike torrents and IPFS, looking up a file causes it to spread out across the network, instead of referring you to an IP address. Your request is routed around the network using hashes in the usual DHT way. If it runs into the file, it comes back, writing copies at each step along the way. If a node runs out of space it overwrites the chunks that haven't been touched in a while. So if you get a file back, you don't know where it came from. The only IP addresses you know are your neighbours in the network.

There's a lot of complicated and clever stuff about how the nodes swap roles and identities in the network to gradually converge towards an efficient structure while maintaining that degree of anonymity.

Much like IPFS, data on Freenet is not guaranteed to last forever. If there's a lot of demand, it will stick around - but if no nodes request the file for a while, it will gradually get flushed out.

As well as content-based hashing, the same algorithm can be used for routing to a cryptographic signature, which lets you define a semi-mutable 'subspace' (you can add new files later which will show up when the key is queried). In fact a whole lot of stuff seems to be built on this, including chat services and even a Usenet-like forum with a somewhat complex 'web of trust' anti-spam system.

If you use your computer as a Freenet node, you will necessarily be hosting whatever happens to route through it. Freenet is used for much shadier shit than piracy. As far as safety, the cops are trying to crack it, though probably copyrighted stuff is lower on their priority list than e.g. CSAM.

Is Freenet used for piracy? If it is, I can't find much about it on a cursory search. The major problem it has is latency. It's slow to look stuff up, and slow to download it since it has to be copied to every node between you and the source. The level of privacy it provides is just not necessary for everyday torrenting, where a VPN suffices.

BTDigg

Up above I lamented the lack of discoverability on BitTorrent. There is no way to really search the BitTorrent network if you don't know exactly the file you want. This comes with advantages (it's really fast; DHT queries can be directed to exactly the right node rather than spreading across the network as in Gnutella) but it means BitTorrent is dependent on external indices to know what's available on the network and where to look for it.

While I was checking I had everything right about IPFS, I learned there is a site called BTDigg (wikipedia) which maintains a database of torrents known from the Mainline DHT (the primary DHT used by BitTorrent). Essentially, when you use a magnet link to download a torrent file, you query the DHT to find a node that has the full .torrent file, which tells you what you need to download to get the actual content of the torrent. BTDigg has been running a scraper which notes magnet links coming through its part of the DHT and collects the corresponding .torrent files; it stores metadata and magnet links in a database that is text-searchable.

This database isn't hosted on the BitTorrent network, so it's as vulnerable to takedown as any other tracker, but it does function as a kind of backup record of what torrents exist if the original tracker has gone. So give that a try if the other sites fail.

Say something about TOR?

I've mentioned VPNs a bunch, but what about TOR? tl;dr: don't use TOR for most forms of piracy.

I'm not gonna talk about TOR in detail beyond to say I wouldn't recommend using TOR for piracy for a few reasons:

TOR doesn't protect you if you're using torrents. Due to the way the BitTorrent protocol works, your IP will leak to the tracker/DHT. So there's literally no point to using TOR.

If that's not enough to deter you, TOR is slow. It's not designed for massive file transfers and it's already under heavy use. Torrents would strain it much further.

If you want an anonymisation network designed with torrents in mind, instead consider I2P. Using a supported torrent client (right now p much just Vuze and its fork BiglyBT - I would recommend the latter), you can connect to a torrent swarm that exists purely inside the I2P network. That will protect you from IP sniffers, at the cost of reducing the pool of seeds you can reach. (It also might be slower in general thanks to the onion routing, not sure.)

What's the future of piracy?

So far the history of piracy has been defined by churn. Services and networks grow popular, then get shut down. But the demand continues to exist and sooner or later, they are replaced. Techniques are refined.

It would be nice to imagine that somewhere up here comes the final, unbeatable piracy technology. It should be... fast, accessible, easy to navigate, reliably anonymous, persistent, and too widespread and ~rhizomatic~ to effectively stamp out. At that point, when 'copies of art' can no longer function as a scarce commodity, what happens? Can it finally be decoupled from the ghoulish hand of capital? Well, if we ever find out, it will be in a very different world to this one.

Right now, BitTorrent seems the closest candidate. The persistent weaknesses: the need for indexers and trackers, the lack of IP anonymity, and the potential for torrents to die out. Also a lot of people see it as intimidating - there's a bunch of jargon (seeds, swarms, magnet links, trackers, peers, leeches, DHT) which is pretty simple in practice (click link, get thing) but presents a barrier to entry compared to googling 'watch x online free'.

Anyway, really the thing to do is, continue to pirate by any and all means available. Don't put it all in one basket, you know? Fortunately, humanity is waaaay ahead of me on that one.

do what you want 'cos a pirate is free you are a pirate

[siremasterlawrence]

Double Edged Words

Based on a true story from Thanksgiving

I am sitting in for Thanksgiving night dinner at exactly at eight a loud ping comes in when I receive a text from a former friend of mine who recently apologized to me for some actions and I reluctantly forgave him the biggest mistake of my lives since that whole family is full of assholes

He jokes to me I am like a dry turkey then he goes on bashing me with way too many more food scenarios as a joke so I am really not in the mood the next day to deal with him or anybody on my first red carpet event let alone his parents.

His father who I see is completely dressed to the nines for the first time he usually is a mess walking the red carpet with his hand waving at me as I roll my eyes and offer my hand to shake but instead I wake up from my day dream.

I sigh a bit later in the bathroom after the ending of the premiere he blocks me in the bathroom placing his hand on my shoulder as I realize it is him then think for a second I have my chance.

He wants to take a selfie with me but I get a bit giddy letting him set up the flash I say to him I’ll do it but the light start to flicker and I am annoyed but move on asking him if he could see into the frame.

He stares deep into the light as the lights of flash blind him on and off leaving me with perfect excuse to put him under by using the camera to take a picture of him I begin to play with his mind.

He freezes on command at a stance unable to move except to blink allowing me some time to formulate a plan so wicked I might lose myself in it but I carefully concoct until the minute his eyes pop open.

He comes to life stretching his hands in the air, yawning so loud it would scare the ghost of the hand any and never noticing me I do stop and play with his hair but he does not even react.

“You can’t seem me, you hear my voice the voice of reason.”

“You did not treat your son’s friend Lawrence right you have to pay the piper.”

“No need to speak, their is only one think you can do.”

“You need to pay for your issues”

“You can start by being his slave “

“Kneel at his feet and kiss it”

“Know you are his property”

“Love him, love for him “

“Obey all his commands”

“Boom”

“Huh! Hey! What happened?”

“Oh Master! How can I please you?”

His eldest son Robbie is in hell seeing his old man doing something so out of character as he stands on stage looking like a damn ass fool and doing as his ex pal say like in a Hypnosis show.

Unfortunately for him the music starts to hit playing a beat he cannot stop it raises into the threshold of the roof he starts to do a very stupid dance consuming him loosing it in into a stream of insanity.

“Join us Robbie follow everything your father does.”

“Oh Master! How can I please you?”“Hope Everyone! Pay Attention Please” I say to the crowd.

“Meet my pal Jon! He is a asshole”

“Yes! I am the worst type”

“Hahahaha” the crowd erupts

“A real monkey! This one”

“Enter the audience while I sing”

“To all you fuckers who I hate “

“Let me play you a song “

“Ooooohhhhhh! Yyyeeeaaaahhh”

“I bet you think you won, like a dagger plunge into my soul”

“Killing me on site…lalalala “

“No such luck and I am here to fight “

“Break a few bones, a good whip and we still won’t be right as rain”

“I can see you dancing now”

“Addicted to my every word “

“Clap your hands and give me some to “

“Strip your close “

“Nanana”

Colton is the younger one grinding his ass on the floor as my debut single for the movie is burrowing deep into their brains nothing can stop it now as I am subliminally in his head reprogramming him in everything way and manner possible.

“Colton you look good in pink”

“Take it off “

“Dance your ass off”

“Showcase your body”

“Woo so smooth”

“You want to do it “

“My body is your play ground “

“You cannot deny me”

“You see it the flash “

“Blinding lights “

“The world spins”

“You have fallen “

“Just like the sound of my voice “

“Your heart beats”

“We join as one “

“Pumping in sync”

“You have fallen for me”

“You are mad and crazy “

“Give in for me”

“Leap off the ground“

“Sweet dear my bliss”

The end

[topconfessions]

lol @ those anons giving u shit for keeping it real and not being a biased delusional fan who will eat up whatever half assed fan service their faves say or do

also..... do they think you're like. new to this????? i urge that/those anons to go take a longggg look at this blog and see what year u started posting. like you've BEEEEENNNN here you're probably the oldest still active top related blog on this site. and you're still here like wow!!! i appreciate this blog so much, and i trust your opinion/insights into who he is as a person

i think u have a lot of credibility to your name tbh, like i said, all it takes is to check out the date of some of the older posts. i'd take your word for it any day over the fairly new and fresh impressions of those who literally only JUST found out about him

like you people have known him for 15 minutes, we've been here for 15 YEARS!!

Girl it comes with the territory. They're just flies on the windshield lol. I feel indifferent and neutral. It's 2025 not 2005. Not 2015 either. We barely have anything to go on anymore minus GD performance he did at that award show recently where he got crap for potential lip syncing (but we know their sound team is ass). I'd accept the trolling if we were like ateez, seventeen, nct or bts and actively had so much content for the BB guys like the old days or MADE era, but we don't.

I think I mentioned it long time ago but I was like everyone else here I WAS DEEEEEEEEEEEEEP into TOP & BB. I lived and breathed BB especially him. Ultimate bias, Ultimate crush, I had a MASSIVE FOLDER of allll his pictures. Dated a guy who loved TOP too and we would write fanfictions together about our fave idols. Made friends back then through BB. So much man. You couldn't tell me shit about them cause I would stab you with a fork if you didnt praise them lmao.

I would stay up late at night to watch the mama awards and other shows that would happen online. It was an amazing time but it wasnt healthy compeltely cause it...I can't put it into words how it does something to you mentally but mentally and emotionally it keeps like a hold on you.

I kinda realized I lost a lot of my teen years and other years just being engrossed in TOP. I don't regret it at all cause he was great and I loved every bit of it but then you get older and realize on a bigger scale they dont matter anymore unless something like this show pops up to breathe new life into one of the members.

So I've been there. I've been through it all. I was even there and so immersed into 2ne1 vs SNSD. Wonder girls and 4minute. GD & Kiko saga..gd & dara ship, gd and CL ship. Minzy and Bom issues. I was there before blackpink ever existed.

Shit I remember when Jay Park started AOMG for the first time. I remember the first time we saw Lee Hi in that competition show. I was there when hyuna came out with bubble pop. I lived and breathed it girl. I was there when girls day came out with female president and expectation then something. I was there when Sulli was still good with FX and didnt have the dynamic duo cruty motherfucka grooming her. I was there when Lee Hyori was the bluerprint for all these baddies solo baddies today and I was there when Hyolyn & Ailee were deemed the good vocalists. I was there when Dean dropped bonnie and Clyde for the first time and was a pretty boy. I was also there when Zico had the girl from AOA running to his apartment to hook up lmao.

So I'm not talking out of my ass. I feel you can have a foundation and general love for an idol but overtime especially decades, come to see them change and see hidden sides of them you didn't know existed then develop opinions of them that arent always fluffy.

People forget a lot of folks lives were saved by kpop back then and today. Some people wouldn't be alive today without their bias. I'm sure he's gotten people through tough times like hes gotten me through tough times and good times. But I will say I wish I could take a lot of that time back and invest that love & energy when I was in school into myself or hobbies. A life lesson learned.

AND THANK YOU! 15 YEARS SIS! THATS A WHOLE PERSON LMFAO. Thats the span of a highschool students life. Idk. I guess I believe in tough love.

[masterofrecords]

Angstober day 27: System Collapse

I probably spent way too much time making sure my sandhi were accurate in this one. Hooray to the one semester of Sanskrit I'd once taken - never thought it would come in useful.

The Flame of the Countless Deaths

The connection between the leylines is tentative, volatile. Hard as he tries, Kalidasa cannot fully feel the other locations, but it’s better than nothing.

Breathe in, breathe out. His heart beats in sync with the weak, dying magic of the world.

He is about to cease to exist. He is everywhere.

Keeping track of time is hard. There is no time where his mind is, and yet the time is everything now. Sounds of fighting reach him, and he isn’t sure if it is his brothers and sisters fighting at the Mrtyunamjvalah temple below, or if it’s echoes reaching him from across the world, the last cries seeping in through the unstable network.

It hardly matters.

The first seals are barely beginning to settle when the first interruption rocks the leyline.

Kalidasa frowns, breathing steady as he tries to pull closer, figure out where the disruption is coming from. One of the second seals comes with a delay, and with it, Qiao Xiu’s unusually terse voice in Kalidasa’s head, “Got off schedule, but we’re fine.”

And it is fine. The seals should be done simultaneously for them to be stable, but on the cosmic scale, some minutes are a minor issue. The disturbance caused by whatever happened on Qiao Xiu’s end dies down as the rituals continue, and Kalidasa keeps hoping. “Take care,” he replies, and listens to the silence once more.

Time passes through him. More hours, more seals, more fighting seemingly everywhere. The powers that don’t want their divinity sealed off are not going to let it go smoothly – those running the rituals were prepared for it, each group made precautions for it.

Some hid the sites, some set up traps, some placed guards. Below Kalidasa, surrounding the circle where the ritual is taking place, are the monks that do not expect to make it to sundown.

Kalidasa wonders – no, hopes that it will be enough.

After four seals have taken root, things go downhill.

“Hoards of demons,” Zamani’s voice follows the tidal wave of unstable magic. “We’ll try to get back on track.”

He isn’t sure why they report to him. There is nothing he can do, he cannot even send the word out without breaking his connection to the leyline. Perhaps, Kalidasa muses, they just want him not to worry, aware that he’s watching over them.

“Do your best,” is all he can think of replying.

Perhaps there is some comfort they gain from knowing he’s still there, for however much longer it might be.

To his sorrow, the leylines do not have the time to stabilize before the next big interruptions. With each seal, it seems, the price of mistakes becomes greater. “Man down. Will try to finish with eleven.”

The few words of comfort Kalidasa can give don’t seem at all sufficient.

He utters them anyway and watches in dismay as the perturbations grow stronger and stronger, no longer needing their missteps to feed themselves. Something is bound to crack, Kalidasa worries, but the fighting seems to have stopped for the most part.

The air is thick with death, and Kalidasa keeps repeating the same prayers for departed souls over and over again. It is all he can do.

Most have completed eight seals when another shock makes Kalidasa jerk, almost throwing him out of his trance. Something goes wrong, somewhere above and on the inside, and Kalidasa isn’t sure where it is in the real world, but he watches helplessly as the connection to one of the leylines breaks, sending ripples through the entire network.

He hadn’t realized before that there is noise in his ears, but it’s growing more and more uncomfortable to the point where he cannot easily ignore it. It is so loud that he almost misses the voice reaching for him through the void.

He barely recognizes Remi.

“I’m sorry,” is all he hears, and perhaps there was more to the message, but it’s gone, dissolved in static as waves of uncertainty wash over the leylines.

Four more seals to go.

The cut off leyline returns slowly, and he knows it’s Remi’s group giving it one more try, no matter how desperate the situation looks on their side. The rituals continue, exhaustion bleeding to Kalidasa instead of finesse as the hours of work take toll on everyone.

The rituals finish in an unsteady cacophony, a rough patch rather than neat embroidery on the fabric between the planes. Kalidasa feels each backlash and winces, knowing they mean more deaths he will probably never learn about.

His magic feels weaker and weaker as more leylines are cut off, but it’s not fully gone. The seals are still fluid, like unfinished stitches, but Kalidasa holds on to hope.

It’s the only thing he can do.

The people of Mrtyunamjvalah leave, knowing better than to disturb him. His own skin feels frayed, and Kalidasa wonders what is happening outside, but dares not open his eyes.

There is still time. There is still hope.

Whatever the outcome, he will be there to witness it.

[jmars-fanart]

2024 Exciting Update in Everything

It’s been a month! omg… When you start to be in a flow in doing everything, time flies and you wouldn’t even notice. I was like in a time machine again.

I remember it was the golden week, and when I was back to work, there were tons of task waiting to be done. And then my arm hurt and I didn’t know why. Luckily I had gotten my current work all done, so I decided to take some rest for my arm while I was to improve my productivity system and update everything for my art pages.

And it’s a month that has passed. I feel better with my arm now! And with the improved system, I feel like I can start to get more things done!

I've updated my Kofi goal and revamped my commission board and page! Prices unchanged and there will be a supporter discount and discount offer for Pokémon SV characters requests this summer! No new types added yet, but I’m exploring chibi style, sketch collage, and character design—

Especially character design, it’s the comms type I’ve always wanted to do! Just like concept designs I did for my original characters! I think I will open this type someday after I've posted and shared some art of my original characters! Stay tuned if you like my style for the concept designs or are interested in this comms type! I’ll make a pinned blog about my comms and things later!

Speaking of OCs, I’m planning more original content on my art pages, sharing what I’ve drawn for them and making new pieces about them. I’ve been talking about it but now I feel it’s time. Really excited and can’t wait for you to meet them! I didn’t really draw them all so this will go with some concept design process update, it must be fun to share!

Also, I decide to open a new blog for my original work! Actually, that was what I was doing with this blog at the beginning, though it ends up becoming a fanart-focused blog now. I will make this blog remain fanart-focused, sharing mine and rebloging others', and my fanfics will also be shared here.

Then I have to mention my King Mettaton story. I haven't given it up despite translation challenges and everything. I’m starting to think maybe I should share the fic even if it’s still untranslated. The translation softwares can help readers nowadays. After all, if I don't start sharing the story, no one will ever read and know the story. I finally got over my perfectionism I guess… I’ll urge myself that translating at least one sentence a day and call it still a progress, so someday I will eventually complete the fanfic translation. I will stick with the plan that sharing the story on Tumblr. But maybe also on Ao3? I’ve heard that is the site where most people share their fanfics, perhaps I could open an account there for my KMTT story and other fanfics too.

Lastly, I’m launching my Patreon! Some supportors suggested it, and I think it’s a good timing to make another fresh start for my artist journey, after I’ve made this far. Updates on Patreon will sync with Kofi, so you can support me on your preferred platform. I'm exploring more content and offer too!

Life gets busy, but connecting with you all and sharing art bring me joy! I just can’t imagine a life without all of these, so even though I’d be busy sometimes, I will always manage to come back no matter what happened! I’ll keep up the pace and be more active on here!

Stay tuned and thank you all for your support! 💖✨ As always, I'll give a shoutout to people who have financially supported me ☕️ You have my eternal gratitude for being part of my journey!

🌻 BridgeWowDah

🌻 Shell

🌻 Quinlynn Hayner

🌻 kazzyrus

🌻 v

🌻 Sophtopus

🌻 Ko‑fi Supporter

🌻 Timothy

🌻 MagicPenguin

🌻 Michelle

🌻 Dimitri

🌻 Amber "Blackjack" B.

If any other new ideas for the plan for my pages, I will keep updating this post!

[duhragonball]

Neon Genesis Evangelion 23

"Heads up, NERV, becuase the 16th Angel is going to bring you down! That's right, you may have defeated all those other Angels, but I'm even stronger than all of them put together! I'm like a laser rope or something, and I've got creepy powers that let me burrow under people's skin or whatever. Oh, and those big guns your Evas use? Big deal! Those don't work on me! Now, take your best shot, humans, because it's the only chance you're gonna... wait."

"Kid, are you okay? Uh... don't you want to shoot at me or something?"

"Ma'am, I think the red one's having some kind of problem, maybe you could send out... Ma'am? Hello?"

"Uh... maybe I should come back tomorrow? Is that okay? Yeah, we'll pick this up some other time. Uh... sorry about... whatever just happened. Yeesh."

So Asuka is doing... well, I wouldn't call it "okay", but she's playing video games all day and spending every night at her friends' house. I mean, there's probably worse ways to cope with everything she's been through.

The SEELE group is mad at Gendo Ikari for several reasons, but most recently he lost the Lance of Longius during the most recent Angel battle, and they seem to think it's extremely important to their future plans. Gendo argues that the top priority of NERV is to destroy the Angels, and the Lance was the only way to do that. But they don't see it that way. During this little conference, another Angel is sighted over Tokyo-3, so Gendo excuses himself to deal with that. Meanwhile, SEELE openly worries that Gendo will betray them soon.

Let me try to summarize what I know about these guys. They seem to have something called the "Dead Sea Scrolls", which apparently allows them to predict certain future events. It occurred to me today that the name "Dead Sea Scrolls" may be a reference to the site of Second Impact, since Admiral Clownshoes once compared the waters of post-Impact Antarcica as a literal "dead sea".

Anyway, the SEELE plan apparently is their agenda to guide humanity beyond the dangers predicted in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The NERV Agency is charged with executing that plan, and SEELE also seems to believe that the Lance of Longius is critical to their success. They also think there should be at least eight Eva Units active.

But Gendo Ikari can barely keep three Evas in the field at the same time, and he seems to think that the only one he absolutely needs is Unit 01. So SEELE is mad about the destruction of Units 03 and 04, and the Lance being chucked into outer space, but Gendo Ikari considers this acceptable losses.

SEELE's dilemma is that they don't like or trust Gendo, but they have no alternative but to let him run the show. He's the only one who can, and yet they seem adamant that they understand the situation better than he does. Recently, they tried to turn Admiral Clownshoes against Gendo, but nothing came of it, so now they need another pawn to use against him. This turns out to be Ritsuko Akagi, so seems to be a better choice, since she actually knows more about what's going on.

So with the 16th Angel headed their way, the only one ready to fight it is Rei in Unit 00. Shinji is set up in Unit 01, but Gendo doesn't want to use him because no one is sure what might happen after that latest incident where Unit 01 went berserk and ate an Angel. As for Unit 02, Asuka suits up one more time to pilot it, but her sync rating has declined to the point where she literally can't operate the Eva anymore. Gendo orders it launched for use as a decoy, but it can't even step off the elevator when it reaches the surface. This doesn't help Asuka's morale at all.

Anyway, I think that's a really cool screenshot of Rei up there. I don't know, she just looks really sharp.

The Angel goes right for Rei, who grab it, but her gun is ineffective, and the Angel sends some sort of creepy veins into her Eva, and then into her own body.

Like Shinji from before, she experiences some sort of vision of another being, which appears in her form. Once again, I can't tell if this is the Angel or her own Eva. It offers to merge with her, and she refuses.

She snaps out of it and realizes that she was the one crying over her loneliness, and not the other she encountered in her mind. I think the Angel's effect on her is supposed to be intensely painful, but Rei's so stoic and unexpressive that she just isn't letting on.

With no other options, Gendo deploys Shinji to assist, but Rei doesn't want to put him at risk, so she activates some sort of self-destruct on her Eva. She refuses to abandon the Eva, because she needs to stay with it to maintain its AT field. I'm not sure why the self-destruct would work, since Rei already shot the Angel at point-blank range with no effect, but it does destroy the target, so I guess she knows what she's doing.

Ritsuko leads a recovery mission and they find the entry plug from Unit 00, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence of survivors.

Afterward, Misato tries to comfort Shinji but he refuses any affection from her, as it his wont. Then Misato gets a phone call...

And Rei's alive! Suspiciously, she has all the same injuries she had when she debuted in Episode 1, but I don't know if that's supposed to mean anything. Shinji thanks Rei for sacrificing Unit 00 to save him from the Angel's powers, but she has no memory of doing that.

Shinji doesn't understand, and she replies that it's "probably because I'm the third one." Hoo-boy.

At her home, Rei... well, a Rei, I suppose... she finds that broken pair of glasses from the time Gendo rescued her from the entry plug. She had kept them as a momento of that day, but now Rei... this Rei... grips them tightly, as though trying to crush them. Then she stops, and starts crying, and she doesn't know why.

Rei's apparent survival does raise some awkward questions. Admiral Clownshoes warns that this might cause problems with SEELE, and Gendo says he's bypassed this by sending them "an alternative."

That is, apparently, Ritsuko, who has been brought before SEELE to answer their questions in Rei's place. This is sort of like when SEELE questioned Misato a while back, because they wanted to talk to Shinji, and Misato refused to allow it because of his poor mental state. Well, this time Ritsuko is standing in for Rei, probably because Gendo didn't want SEELE to learn more about Rei.

And for some reason, Ritsuko appears to be nude for this interview? I mean, she could be wearing some strapless dress or something. I don't know what the point of this is. Anyway, she acts cool about it until SEELE informs her that Gendo was the one who put her here on the hot seat in Rei's place.

Meanwhile, Misato finally opens that little capsule Kaji gave her the last time they had sex, and it contains a little microchip. His voice mail to her said that he had sent her the same information at least thirty-six ways, but he knew most of them wouldn't make it. Presumably, this was the one that got through. I had wondered why Misato hadn't bothered to follow up on Kaji's investigation of NERV's secrets, and it looks like she's been too busy grieving over him to get to this point. So it looks like she's finally ready. Maybe Rei's miraculous survival was what tipped the scales.

Later, Ritsuko calls Shinji and takes him down to the bowels of NERV headquarters, but Misato shows up to meet them and pulls a gun on Ritsuko. Misato wants to see the secret for herself, and Ritsuko agrees, if Shinji can come along. Misato's fine with that, so off they go.

She takes them to a room that looks a lot like Rei's apartment, and Ritsuko explains that Rei grew up in that room. Then she shows them a chamber full of failed Eva models, including the one Shinji's mom was working on when she died. Apparently Shinji doesn't remember that he saw her die, but Ritsuko tells him he was there when it happened.

Then she takes them to the room where Rei would soak in that tube full of Tang. As I thought, this is how they made the Dummy Plug, but it's more than just recording Rei's brain patterns.

All around the room is a big tank full of Reis. I kind of saw this coming, but still, this is pretty creepy.

What's extra creepy is how they all open their eyes and smile at Shinji when he says their name. Ritsuko explain what they are and what they're for, but I don't really get it. Let me just transcribe the subtitles:

"Right, this is the production factory. These are all dummies. They are also replacement parts for Rei. Man found God, and they tried to pick him up. For that Man was punished! That was fifteen years ago, and the God they found disappeared. Then Man tried to resurrect God with his own hands, and created Adam. From Adam, Man created what resembles God, Himself. That is Eva! We put supposedly mindless human souls in Eva. All the souls were salvaged souls. Rei is the only container that can hold the souls. The souls are born only in Rei. The Room of Guaf is empty. These are empty containers. They have no souls. So, I want to destroy them because I hate them."

Ritsuko triggers some sort of destruct mechanism that causes the Rei bodies to disintegrate. As they die (?), Ritsuko explains that she was willing to endure any humiliation for Gendo Ikari, but in the end, he would always prefer "these dolls" over her.

And she knew it would be this way, because she was there when her mother tried to win Gendo's heart, and ended up destroying herself because she couldn't win over Rei. I guess Ritsuko also had the hots for Gendo? She might be speaking in a more platonic sense, I don't know. The point is that all her years of loyal service to Gendo are meaningless, and he'll sell her out to protect Rei in a heartbeat.

That's what she realized in the SEELE conference, so I'm not clear on what exactly went on there. Did they punish her for the loss of Unit 00? Was that why Gendo sent her in Rei's place? Is that why Ritsuko was nude? In any event, Ritsuko's finally decided she's had enough, so she's turning on Gendo, at least as far as destroying all the spare Reis and showing Misato and Shinji all the super secret stuff.

The thing is, does that even matter? I mean, Gendo's no dummy. He probably betrayed Ritsuko this way knowing she would turn on him like this. For all we know, this is part of his plan. Maybe that's why Ritsuko starts crying, and why she pleads for Misato to kill her.

Misato declines to shoot Ritsuko, and considers that the tragedy of this whole project lies in its people, including herself.

So... yeah. NERV has been mass-producing Rei for years, and I think it's reasonable to assume Rei is at least partially based on Yui Ikari. I'm not sure that Gendo is like, in love with the clones or something. The Akagis may have been frustrated that he likes Rei more than them, but I think it's more of a situation where Gendo is too fixated on his work to love any woman, even a woman who helps him with his work. And the work is embodied by Rei so that's why he gets along so well with Rei. I guess.

The next episode looks forward to the final battle against the 17th Angel, which is supposed to be the last one, but apparently they still haven't finished Episode 24, since the preview is all rough sketches and animation layouts. I guess we'll see what we see...

[sunny-satellites]

I'm gonna be honest, professionalism is a disease. Sometimes you just need the words to bring reality to someone who won't listen and they can't start with per my last e-mail.

There's a specific site at my job that drives me nuts because they just don't listen to instructions carefully and this problem is endemic across their entire management pool. They'll also constantly cross lines and do shit like call me on teams without warning because they *know* I'm good at my job and I'll fix the damn problem if I can, but sometimes I'm in the middle of doing other shit and I can't be pissed to fuck around for fifteen minutes to reset johnny dipshit's RSA because he chronically can't remember a 4 digit number.

So this week was a gigantic headache because small minded upper management made an absolutely awful decision and has set a 90 day ticking time bomb on our password policy due to a delayed overreaction from a security breach that happened in October, they forcibly reset every call centers password and unfortunately because of more dumb shortsightedness they specifically decided to flag it for VMware logins. VMware is not directly attached to our primary IDP so it caused a ton of IDP flowback issues usually locking people out of random applications on other subdomains and often locking people out of active directory login entirely.

I've had to basically route a large portion of this intake for this specific issue and it's been mostly resolved as everyone who got flagged in these domains has reset their shit and had a temporary password issued and their accounts synced for proper primary IDP flow down.

I got a guy today however who managed to dodge this issue and I told him I'd have to route his issue to another team because someone already picked up this ticket, but genius middle management refuses to let people be unproductive for a bit and he's in my dms telling me to reset chuckledick's password again.

I can't tell him he's a technological hazard and that his mother should pound sand on the beach that makes you old and block him because that's ~unprofessional~ so instead I tell him this is a bad idea because the department under me already reset his shit and synced it from the jump server and this will reset it back to square one and probably break any other access that was working along the way. I know what the issue is and that it's elsewhere but I'm a network engineer so I *shouldn't* modify this person's OUs if it's already someone else's ticket. However he's not taking my polite "No" for an answer so I reset the person's acct and issue a temporary password, he tells me he'll be back in 5 minutes. It takes him 25, meanwhile I'm regularly refreshing the domain that has NT logins registered on it and see that the password update flag doesnt reset, meaning chuckledick cant log in.

I fuckin set myself to busy so these people will stop bothering me and leave him a message before he can even return: "I see user was unable to log in meaning this issue is IDP domain flow down related like I had initially diagnosed, in the future please refrain from wasting (network dept name)'s time and arguing with us over tickets already assigned to the correct department. I hope you take this lesson to heart." Which is about the politest way I can tell this person he is a fucking fool and I hate working with him.

[hallowed-nebulae]

3, 8, and 9 for the fanfic ask game?

from this ask game

3: What’s a fic idea that you have but haven’t written yet?

I have a FFXIV au where G'raha Tia is the Warrior of Light somehow, and admittedly I'm not sure how well that'd work considering -gestures at Shadowbringers and Crystal Exarch- but it would be SO FUN I can just tell

8: What kind of document do you use to you write? Microsoft Word? Google Docs? Straight in the AO3 text box?

Okay so this one I've mentioned a few times in tags and such, but I don't actually use a proper word processor to write in! The program I use is Obsidian.md, which is a note-taking app, and it's been super helpful. Being able to have various different documents open at once makes referencing things easier, and the variety of themes available means I get to pick and choose which theme to use (I'm using the Shiba theme, incidentally, but I might change it to a different one so long as the new one has custom background options available. We'll see on that one). The only downside is that since it's on my local drive (or whatever drive you store your files on, mine is on my USB), it can only be used on my laptop since I've not downloaded the Obsidian app and I'm not willing to pay to be able to sync files, ahaha. But the free version has pretty much everything but sync and publishing of sites available, so you can use it for note-taking or writing or such very easily.

In conclusion, try Obsidian out today.

9: What’s your favorite line(s) or scene(s) that you have written?

Oh this is a question. Being honest, I'm not entirely sure if it's my favorite, but I do really like this one scene from Taking Notes and Munching Pastries --

"Well, most people in class are cowards," you declare, "who might deserve a good pounding now and then to know how good they’ve got it for not having to fight all the time." Niko snorts. "Don’t let them hear you say that," he warns, though his lips curl into a smile at the end and his eyes are doing a horrible job of hiding amusement, "they might take offense and try to hit you." "Let ‘em!" you declare, leaning forwards again and then beginning to climb onto the top of your chair to stand on it. "They’re all too weak to throw a good punch or kick, and I can beat ‘em all any day!" "Rina!" Niko hisses at you, and lunges at you to keep you from climbing on top of the chair entirely. "Remember what I said about not climbing furniture in public places? We already got kicked out of the cafe closer to your apartment, we don’t need to get kicked out of here too." "Fine." You huff, and sit back down into your chair ‘properly’, though you lift one leg onto the arm of the chair so that a foot is hanging off of the side. "But still!"

It was written all the way back in 2020 and is one of my first fics, and was definitely one of the first I wrote in second person POV, which is now my preferred POV to write in. I've a soft spot for it still, aha. It's been a while since I wrote anything Digimon-related -- I should go properly watch those Re:Digitize Decode playthroughs that are up on YouTube, now that the fantranslation has been out and such, so I can properly know the game's story and characters, as opposed to the word-of-mouth and scouring-the-wikis method I had to use back then.

I think my friend @aikotters was there when I finished the fic, ha -- funny to think we've been friends for so long (even if we've mostly moved into different fandoms, but hey, friendship outlasts fandoms if it's a good friendship, right?)

(Speaking of which, thanks for all the encouragement aiko, whenever I finish the next Miracles Verse fic I'll gift it to you)